Sublime

Leonardo was a genius, one of the few people in history who indisputably deserved—or, to be more precise, earned—that appellation. Yet it is also true that he was a mere mortal.

In order to make money, Leonardo at times helped his apprentices produce pieces as if on an assembly line, as had been the practice in Verrocchio’s studio.

Borgia’s passport described Leonardo as he had fancied himself ever since his letter to the Duke of Milan twenty years earlier: as a military engineer and innovator rather than a painter. He had been warmly embraced, in fulsome and familial terms, by the most vibrant warrior of the age. For the moment, the man who had been described as no longer ab