Leonardo da Vinci by Abraham Anna

Author:Abraham, Anna [Abraham, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781612307589
Publisher: 9781612307589
Published: 2014-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Isabella d’Este wanted desperately to be Leonardo’s next patron. Her family was one of Italy’s oldest and most distinguished. Isabella was one of the three d’Este siblings whose marriages in 1491 cemented a new set of alliances in northern Italy. She began her collection with gems, intaglios, and cameos, but branched into busts and small sculptures and soon began commissioning paintings. In 1498, she had written, somewhat imperiously, to Cecilia Gallerani, asking to borrow Leonardo’s “Lady with an Ermine,” so that she could compare it with a portrait by Giovanni Bellini. (The request was a bit indelicate, since Cecilia was well-known to be the mistress of her sister’s husband.) Isabella was filling two large display rooms in her palace with her growing collection, which included two large allegories by Andrea Mantegna, two by Lorenzo Costa, and one by Perugino. But she had no paintings by Leonardo, and she badly wanted one.

Leonardo was probably accepting a standing invitation when he left Milan for Mantua in December 1499, and while he was Isabella’s guest that winter, he did a drawing of her. It shows a proud, aristocratic woman, past her prime, with the air of someone accustomed to getting her way. Shown in profile, the rendering bears a marked resemblance to a portrait of her sister Beatrice by Ambrogio de Predis.

The atmosphere in Isabella’s court may not have been entirely simpatico. Although considered intelligent, she was also strong-willed and capricious; when her lapdog died, court poets were called on to write tributes to it both in Latin and Italian. In any case, by mid-March, Leonardo was in Venice, and Lorenzo Guznago, a musician from Ferrara, visited him in his lodgings there and wrote a letter to Isabella reporting that her portrait was coming along splendidly – “very true to nature and beautifully done. It couldn’t possibly be better.”

While in Venice, Leonardo studied copperplate engraving and was busy with major works of engineering. His notes indicate that he was hired by the Venetian Senate to look into fortifying the Isonzo River, in the Friuli region northeast of the city, to ward off a Turkish invasion.

Leonardo learned of Ludovico Sforza’s last chapter in Milan. Troops loyal to the duke under Galeazzo Sanseverino had entered the city, but Ludovico’s army of Swiss mercenaries was routed, and he was captured and imprisoned. Leonardo’s note was laconic: “The duke lost his state, and his goods, and his freedom, and none of his works was completed.” It was a farewell not only to his patron, but to the great horse and “The Last Supper” as well.

In 1500, back in Florence after eighteen years, Leonardo found the city of his youth a diminished place. The theocracy of Savonarola was gone; the monk had been hanged and burned two years earlier. But Savonarola’s bonfires of the vanities had consumed Florence’s gaiety and confidence along with many of its treasures, and the Medici had yet to return; Florence was now a republic. After the French abandoned Pisa, city fathers had declared

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