Sublime

Leonardo became known in Milan not only for his talents but also for his good looks, muscular build, and gentle personal style. “He was a man of outstanding beauty and infinite grace,” Vasari said of him. “He was striking and handsome, and his great presence brought comfort to the most troubled soul.”

Léonard a environ 14 ans lorsque son père lui trouve une place d’apprenti chez l’un de ses clients, Andrea del Verrocchio, artiste et ingénieur polyvalent à la tête de l’un des meilleurs ateliers de Florence.

When Leonardo arrived, Milan was ruled by Ludovico Sforza, who was also thirty. A dark-skinned and burly man nicknamed “Il Moro” (the Moor), he was not actually the Duke of Milan yet, though he exercised the authority and would soon grab the title. His father, Francesco Sforza, one of seven illegitimate sons of a military mercenary, had seized powe

King Louis, who had by then appointed Leonardo his “official painter and engineer” (nostre peintre et ingeneur ordinaire), intervened personally from the French court at Blois. Summoning Florence’s ambassador, he firmly requested that Leonardo stay in Milan until his own arrival there. “Your Signoria must render me a service,” he insisted. “He is a

Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo’s patron in Milan, had a reputation for ruthlessness that included, among other alleged acts, poisoning his nephew in order to seize the ducal crown. But Ludovico was a choir boy compared to Leonardo’s next patron, Cesare Borgia. Name any odious activity and Borgia was the master of it: murder, treachery, incest, debaucher

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

“Save me from strife and battle, a most beastly madness,” Leonardo once wrote. Yet for eight months he had put himself at Borgia’s service and traveled with his armies. Why would a person whose notebook aphorisms decry killing and whose personal morality led him to be a vegetarian go to work for the most brutal murderer of the era? Partly this choi