Sublime

And then there was Salai. He was designated to get the other half of the vineyard. Since he was already living there and had built a house on a portion of the land, it would be hard for Leonardo to have done otherwise with the property. But that was all Salai was bequeathed in the will. There had apparently been an estrangement, one that had grown

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Leonardo’s foul mood and his lack of artistic productivity, in stark contrast to Michelangelo and Raphael at the time, served to alienate him from the Medici orbit. The situation worsened when Giuliano’s influence declined; he was sent off in early 1515 to marry the daughter of a French duke and then died a year later after a long bout with tubercu

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While in Milan in 1507, Leonardo met a fourteen-year-old named Francesco Melzi (fig. 101). He was the son of a distinguished nobleman who was a captain in the Milanese militia and later a civil engineer who worked to reinforce the city’s fortifications, endeavors that fascinated Leonardo. The Melzis lived in the largest villa in the town of Vaprio,

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Francesco di Giorgio from Siena.8 Thirteen years older than Leonardo, he was another exemplar of an artisan who combined art, engineering, and architecture. He had begun as a painter, moved as a young man to Urbino to work as an architect, returned to Siena to run the underground aqueduct system, and was a sculptor in his spare time. He was also in

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