Niccolo Machiavelli

Signor Machiavelli was acquainted with Maestro Leonardo da Vinci. They were friends who also collaborated on projects for the Florentine Republic. Surprisingly, most of these endeavors failed, which is difficult to imagine with these two great intellects.

“Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli probably first met in the town of Imola during 1502. Their paths crossed at the court of Cesare Borgia, where–for different reasons–each was in residence from October through the end of the year. Leonardo had taken a position as Borgia’s military architect and engineer. Niccolò, second chancellor of the government of Florence, was on a diplomatic mission to keep an eye on the unscrupulous Cesare…

Most of the projects on which Leonardo and Machiavelli collaborated were failures. The ditches intended to divert the Arno at Pisa collapsed because of a combination of incompetence and bad luck. The project was abandoned amid recrimination and criticism of its cost, ending any hope of implementing Leonardo’s broader plan to make Florence a seaport. The following year, Leonardo had another disaster with his Council Hall fresco. The preliminary drawing for the Battle of Anghiari was the wonder of all who saw it. But because Leonardo used an experimental technique on the wall, paint ran and dripped, work on it was abandoned, and eventually the partially completed fresco was destroyed.” (1)

Brief biography of our first Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci

Would it surprise you to learn that the original ideas for the life preserver or scuba fins at your pool, lake, or beach came from a man who lived over 500 years ago? When you step out of the water, if you should see a helicopter hovering overhead, did you know that such a flying machine was thought of before the American continent was colonized? What if our helicopter pilot has to bail out? Luckily for him or her, that same inventor came up with the idea for a parachute. This was the man from Vinci, who is known to most of the world simply as Leonardo.

Early Life

On April 15th, 1452, Leonardo was born in a village called Anchiano, near the small Tuscan town of Vinci, which was located near present day Florence. He was the son of Ser Piero, a notary, and Caterina, a young peasant woman. His surname, da Vinci, means “from Vinci.” Leonardo was a curious child, for he frequently would take long walks in the countryside. There he would observe the flight of birds, the motion of rivers, and the various species of animal life.

“Pity the student who does not surpass his master.”

Leonardo was a student of life with a quest for knowledge, and his lifetime of observations has given the world thousands of pages of detailed notes and drawings. Some of his favorite areas of study were painting and sketching, anatomy, astronomy, aviation, biology, geology, hydraulic engineering, and weaponry. Many were topics that were not discussed until centuries after his death. He was born before his time, since he always looked into the future.

At the age of sixteen, Leonardo became an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was a famous Florentine artist and sculptor. Although most of his time was dedicated to mixing paints and moving slabs of white marble, Leonardo would roam the streets of Florence, making observations of people in his ever present notebooks. Leonardo was very private about his numerous notebooks, and he wrote in a strange fashion: right to left and backwards. He was left handed, and the only way to read such a script was to hold the pages up to a mirror.

Mona Lisa

Leonardo is perhaps best known to the world as an artist. His oil painting, “Mona Lisa,” also known as “La Gioconda,” is a famous masterpiece. It resides in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. According to Giorgio Vasari, the biographer of Leonardo da Vinci, the name of the model was Lisa Gherardini. She was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, who was an affluent merchant. “Mona” is a contraction for “Madonna,” which in that time was similar to the formal use of “Madam” today. The painting became known as the Mona Lisa.

In 2004, an Italian art historian, Giuseppe Pallanti, wrote a book called “Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo’s Model.” According to a reference in the Wikipedia article about Mona Lisa, “The portrait of Mona Lisa, done when Lisa Gherardini was aged about 24, was probably commissioned by Leonardo’s father himself for his friends as he is known to have done on at least one other occasion.” (2)

A Lifetime of Curiosity

Leonardo was always fascinated with the questions of why and how things worked. For example, his detailed sketches of human anatomy are still used today in medical textbooks, and his studies of the possibility of human flight ultimately gave the world airplanes, hang gliders, and helicopters.

Leonardo lived in the time of the Renaissance, which means “reawakening.” It was a period of vast artistic development in Europe. The city of Florence was the center of art and culture, and it attracted the best artists and sculptors of that time. After Leonardo finished his apprenticeship, he became a teacher himself. “Pity the student who does not surpass his master.” He was known as maestro to his students, which meant “master” in Italian. One of his students, Raffaelo (Raphael) Sanzio, would later become famous for his work in St. Peter’s Basilica, along with many other masterpieces.

Before his death in 1519, Leonardo expressed a lifetime of observations in his “Treatise on Art,” which was a book that explained the master’s views on painting, sculpting, and sketching. Leonardo believed that it was necessary for an artist, “To know the inner structure of man.” During a life filled with constant learning, Leonardo, the man from Vinci, not only taught his pupils to look for answers inside of men, but also to seek knowledge within the world where they live.

References

(1) “A Mysterious Friendship.” “Fortune is a River,” Chapter 1, by Professor Roger D. Masters of Dartmouth College.

(2) Wikipedia article: “Mona Lisa.”

Copyright © 2007 by Steve Amoia.