Sublime

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

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.

During this time, Leonardo continued his anatomical studies, dissecting at least three corpses in Rome, probably at the Hospital of the Holy Spirit (Santo Spirito), and refining his drawings of the human heart. Dissections were not illegal, but Leonardo was stopped from continuing with them. “The pope has found out that I have skinned three corpses

Leonardo’s most famous early drawing may have been inspired by or related to this visit by the Duke of Milan.35 It is of a craggy Roman warrior in profile wearing an ornate helmet (fig. 5), and it was derived from a drawing by Verrocchio, whose studio had designed a helmet as one of Florence’s gifts to the duke. Intricately drawn with a silverpoint