Sublime

Rather than commissioning a big piece of public art, the king offered Leonardo an ideal assignment for the culmination of his career: designing a new town and palace complex for the royal court at the village of Romorantin, on the Sauldre River in the center of France, some fifty miles from Amboise. It would, if it came to pass, allow the expressio

What made Vitruvius’s work appealing to Leonardo and Francesco was that it gave concrete expression to an analogy that went back to Plato and the ancients, one that had become a defining metaphor of Renaissance humanism: the relationship between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the earth. This analogy was a foundation for the treatise that

until his death, at age ninety-two, he remained a master of spectacular output, working on paper and canvas; in stone, ceramics, and metal; in every possible variety of mixed media. He also designed posters, advertisements, theater sets and costumes, dresses, logos, and almost every kind of object from ashtrays to headdresses. The number of his cre

Florence’s festive culture was spiced by the ability to inspire those with creative minds to combine ideas from disparate disciplines. In narrow streets, cloth dyers worked next to goldbeaters next to lens crafters, and during their breaks they went to the piazza to engage in animated discussions. At the Pollaiuolo workshop, anatomy was being studi

While he was in Imola with Machiavelli and Borgia, Leonardo made what may be his greatest contribution to the art of war. It is a map of Imola, but not any ordinary map (fig. 87).18 It is a work of beauty, innovative style, and military utility. It combines, in his inimitable manner, art and science.

« Le peintre est assis devant son ouvrage de manière à être parfaitement à l’aise. Il est bien habillé et manie un pinceau léger trempé dans une couleur délicate. Il est vêtu comme il lui plaît. Son logis est propre et rempli d’œuvres magnifiques, et il agrémente souvent son travail de musique ou de la lecture d’excellents ouvrages. »

En rassemblant dans ses carnets un tel enchevêtrement d’idées, Léonard se plie en fait à une pratique devenue populaire en Italie durant la Renaissance : la tenue d’un zibaldone, sorte de recueil de croquis et notes variés.