The last lament of a renaissance man

Originally published 3 March 1997

I had come a long way to see him, across half of France, to the Cas­tle of Cloux, near Amboise, in the val­ley of the Loire. He had been liv­ing there since 1516, at the invi­ta­tion of Fran­cis I, king of France.

The king likes to sur­round him­self with lumi­nar­ies — artists, poets, philoso­phers, tal­ent­ed peo­ple of all sorts. Leonar­do’s rep­u­ta­tion, of course, was known through­out Europe. It was inevitable that the king would draw him to France.

When I met him, I asked why he had left Italy. He answered with sur­pris­ing can­dor: “I was liv­ing in Rome. Michelan­ge­lo and Raphael were there also. How was I to com­pete with those younger men? Those two! And then my patron, Giu­liano de’ Medici, died. It was the pass­ing of an era, a time of indef­i­nite promise, pos­si­bil­i­ty, experimentation…”

His thoughts drift­ed off.

He was 66 years old. With­in a year he would be gone, although I would not have guessed it then. His face showed age but not infir­mi­ty. Long white hair, unkempt, fell about his shoul­ders. White beard. Thick, down-swept brows shad­ed his eyes like awnings. A strong nose. And of course the mouth, seri­ous yet gen­er­ous, not unlike the mouth of the Christ he had paint­ed on the wall of the refec­to­ry of San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie in Milan.

He received me cor­dial­ly, invit­ed me to sit with him near the fire. His life at Cloux was com­fort­able; he lacked for no lux­u­ry. He enjoyed the com­pa­ny of artists and musi­cians, the atten­tion of roy­al­ty. I asked him if he was content.

He was silent for a long time. “Con­tent is not a word I would use,” he said. The cor­ner of his mouth turned up just a lit­tle. “So much. So much unfinished.”

I asked what he meant.

“I have been unlucky,” he said. “So much of my work destroyed or left incom­plete. So many dreams unful­filled. I fear that when I am gone I will soon be forgotten.”

He fin­gered the rich cloth of his gar­ment. “The clay mod­el of my eques­tri­an stat­ue of Ludovi­co Sforza — irrepara­bly dam­aged by sol­diers. My fres­co of the Bat­tle of Anghiari—decayed upon the wall before it was fin­ished, the price, I sup­pose, of exper­i­men­ta­tion. The Ado­ra­tion of the Magi, St. Jerome—mere sketch­es of the works they might have been.”

“Why?” I bold­ly asked. “Why so lit­tle to show for so long and rich a life?” I might have guessed his answer.

He shook his head and smiled. “One thing led to the next. I would start to paint a human hand — the hand of Madon­na, say — and the flesh of the fin­gers would draw me to con­sid­er­a­tion of the bones of the fin­gers, and how they are artic­u­lat­ed, and this would require dis­sec­tion of a cadav­er. The play of light on the flesh of the fin­gers would lead me to the study of mete­o­rol­o­gy, sun, rain. Storm and riv­er. Moun­tains. How do the crags resist the rain? Why seashells upon the peaks? Each rock, each plant…”

He paused. Then qui­et­ly: “Look at the faces of the men and women in the street, when evening falls and the weath­er is bad. What grace and sweet­ness there is in them. How was I to trans­late what I could see with my eyes into the medi­um of paint on pan­el? Paint­ing the flesh is easy, but how does one paint the soul’s inten­tion? One thing led to the next, you see. It is all connected.”

I asked about his many mechan­i­cal inventions.

“There is noth­ing to invent that is not already present in nature. The veins of a leaf, the bones that bear the mem­brane in the wing of a bird, threads of ore with­in the earth. These motifs recur. There are struc­tur­al prin­ci­ples that even the Grand Design­er must employ. The inven­tor’s task is to dis­cov­er these prin­ci­ples, exploit them…”

I said: “I have noticed these sim­i­lar­i­ties in your work — the curls in the hair of your sub­jects, con­vo­lu­tions of air and water, explosions…”

“Yes, yes. This is what made it so dif­fi­cult, so dif­fi­cult to fin­ish. I want­ed per­fec­tion. I want­ed my work to be ani­mat­ed by the forces and ten­sions that ani­mate the world. There was sim­ply too much for one man to do. Oth­ers will fol­low. One man will study anato­my. Anoth­er the motions of the stars. Anoth­er the laws of beams and falling bod­ies. Anoth­er optics. Anoth­er the flow of air and water…”

We stared into the danc­ing flames.

“One day man will take his flight — that great bird. One day the world will fill with his knowl­edge and his fame. He will soar, high­er than the crags, into the firmament.”

I asked: “What do you con­sid­er your great­est work?”

He reflect­ed, then answered: “Per­haps I will be remem­bered because I have no great work. The painter is not worth prais­ing if he is not a uni­ver­sal man. I sought the uni­ver­sal. I scat­tered myself too thin.”

A cryp­tic smile flick­ered upon his mouth, a smile I had seen in one of his portraits.

“All con­nect­ed,” he whis­pered. “All connected.”