THE LIFE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI
PART 5
In June 1506, after a 6 year absence, Leonardo returns to Milan.
We’ll come too, Maestro! - No, wait for me. I’ll be right back.
Oh, no, this is too much! Even sitting on the table!
Go! Get that stuff out! Out!
Father Agostino, help me set another table. One can't even live here!
And you certainly can't eat!
2 years! For 2 good years the refectory was closed because of that painting there!
And now everyone here painting and drawing as if it were a school.
This is a place for eating, school is done on benches!
Eh, I say that painting there is a real disgrace!
Instead they should make a door there to the kitchen. - Yes, a door.
Yes! The stuff comes out so cold you can’t eat it!
And the prior father says: "Patience". Patience, my foot!
Go study at a school! - But...
And then everyone in the cloister eating sprawled out... - Isn't that Leonardo?
There’s Leonardo! He’s here! Leonardo, the Maestro! - Hey, come!
What happened at the Grazie was would happen in San Francesco Grande,
before the "Virgin of the Rocks".
Never were paintings in the world more studied in Italy.
The Maestro!
Those two works he left in Milan
have become the model for painting itself.
The Maestro!
In Milan, Leonardo discovers he's "the Maestro".
His art, destined to leave an imprint on all Lombard painting,
is laid out like a triumph.
Maitre Léonard!
Charles D'Amboise, governor of the duchy of Milan,
is a valiant warrior and an art connoisseur.
Young and refined, he loves all that is beautiful.
Beautiful women and beautiful things.
He welcomes Leonardo as a prince, happy he has decided to return to Milan.
I would be happy to stay here but I don’t think I can stay more than 3 months.
Only 3 months.
Then I must go back to Florence, I have commitments with the Signoria.
And then, Pier Solderini...
Impossible, we were waiting for you!
His Majesty will never allow you to leave.
Do you know when he saw the "Supper" he wanted to cut it out and bring it to France?
Engineers came from Paris, but it was too difficult.
No, you will remain. We will write to Pier Solderini.
Answer him thus,
"To the excellent Marshal Charles D'Amboise, etc", with all his titles,
"that we had the honor to receive your letter regarding your wish"
"to entertain Maestro Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, but... but..."
"But the said Maestro Leonardo…" - take note -
"has taken a good sum of money for small work on a large task"
"which he should have done but hasn’t."
"So return him to Florence immediately!"
His Majesty Louis XII, King of France.
Forgive me, are you the ambassador of the Signori of Florence? - Yes, Majesty.
And what is your name? - Pandolfini, Majesty.
Ah, Mr. Pandolfini,
since you're the ambassador, it's necessary the gentlemen in Florence heed me well.
Let them know that I want Maestro Leonardo to stay in Milan
until I arrive myself in Milan.
My dear Pandolfini, write what I tell you in this way to Florence
and show me the letter before entrusting it to your courier.
I would like to point out to Your Majesty that in Milan your Majesty is at home
and can order Leonardo not to leave.
Do as I told you.
Which works of Maestro Leonardo, would your majesty like to have?
I don't know yet. Maybe I'll order him to do my portrait.
Leonardo da Vinci is a painter of great talent, Majesty. - I know.
And you, my man, you know him? - Yes, certainly. For many years.
Then write yourself to Maestro Leonardo
telling him not to leave Milan until the Signoria of Florence writes him.
This interview, which took place in January of 1507 in the castle of Blois in France,
came to us word for word from a report of the astounded Pandolfini
to the Signoria of Florence.
But Louis Xll is not satisfied with this.
Écrivez-nous de suite une lettre.
"À la très haute seigneurie de Florence,"
Écrivez. "Très cher..."
Très cher et grands amis...
"Très cher et grands amis,"
"pour ce que nous avons necessairement besoin de maître Léonard à Vinci,"
"peintre de votre cité de Florence,"
"ecrivez-lui de sorte qu'il ne se parte de la ditte ville en fin à notre venue,"
"ainsi que j'ai dit à votre ambassadeur" - It means...?
It means, write him not to leave as I told your ambassador.
"Et vous nous ferez très grand plaisir en ce faisant" - And that?
It means we will make him happy.
"Ecrit de Blois, Le 13ème jour de Janvier. Louis".
From the castle of Blois, Louis.
"Dear friends"! Calls us "dear friends" and then "write","do" orders Louis!
And all this for a dirty wall.
Sit down, write. Respond thus,
"To his most noble and Christian Majesty Louis XII by God's will, King of France,"
"Obedient to your request,"
"we are happy to grant our illustrious fellow citizen Leonardo da Vinci,"
"according to your august wish…"
“The water that touches the rivers is the last of the one that went"
"and the first of the one that comes.”
And for the present, perhaps for the first time in his life,
which seems without drama but in reality is so thoroughly tormented,
is a time of peace for him, of reposeful sweetness.
Florence forgotten, he has established himself in Milan, near San Babila.
But he spends much of the time in Vaprio d'Adda,
in the villa of Gerolamo Melzi, Captain of the Milanese militia.
The son of Gerolamo, Francesco Melzi...
They fired! It's Salay! Salay with the hunters!
I shot! I shot! We shot!
Forward, forward! A duck!
But I didn’t get it. The other side, this way, come on!
Francesco Melzi was 17 years old, so says Vasari who knew him years later
and questioned him at length before writing Leonardo's Life.
"Francesco Melzi in Leonardo’s time was a beautiful youth much loved by him,”
"just as today he is a handsome and kind old man".
Talented, noble and generous,
he nourishes for Leonardo an admiration and a complete devotion.
In contrast to that Salay who has filled his Maestro's life with intrusiveness,
who is capricious, rebellious, perhaps insolent,
always greedy for money that with a 1000 excuses he is lent and never pays back.
In contrast to that Salay thieving, stubborn, lying and greedy,
Francesco Melzi is descended from a noble family.
He is noble of appearance, of heart, of feelings.
Salay will disappear from Leonardo's life.
Melzi will never abandon him. He will follow him everywhere, even to France.
He will adapt himself for him, old and sick,
to the most humble care. He will attend him to his death.
Here! It's here!
There it is again! Hear how Salay shouts!
It's here! I got it!
I got it! Come on! - We're coming!
I got her by the wing. Hurry with the boat, come on!
Come on, give it to me!
Madonna, how cold the water is!
Heads up! - Madman!
Get up!
Stop acting mad!
At Vaprio, on behalf of Charles D'Amboise,
Leonardo was studying a navigable canal between Lake Lecco and Milan.
Hey, people!
This navigable canal, never built, was to overcome the unevenness of the ground
To overcome it, Leonardo invents a successive system of sluices,
the solution which the Panama Canal engineers would discover 400 years later.
Maestro, do you write in Arabic? - Why? - I can’t read anything.
I have so many words in my language,
that I grieve more to not understand things than to be at a loss for words.
Can you read anything? - Not me!
Can you read this?
"The perpetual basin..."
But it's written reversed!
For Leonardo, this is a long and serene period of reflection and recollection.
In Milan, in the studio near San Babila, he reorders his notes,
which now make up volumes.
Draw, Francesco. Draw! - Yes, Maestro.
Maestro, these books? - Over there, Andrea.
Those drawings over there, next to the anatomy.
Are these the drawings, Maestro?
No, put them down. Francesco!
In these pages, which a few years after Leonardo's death will be dispersed,
there are sketched various treatises which he thinks one day to publish.
The treatise on painting, the book on mechanics, the treatise on water.
Above all, the book of anatomy, for which he has already prepared 140 drawings.
Francesco! Listen, Francesco. - Yes, Maestro?
You who know how the papers are ordered, where are they now? - Over here, Maestro.
"Francesco! Francesco!"
Francesco, do me a favor, come here. I can’t find them myself.
"Francesco, Francesco! Be at my behest so!"
Hey, where are you running to?
"Will you get me that folio? That folio I want so?"
Majesty!
Luigi XII, on May 24th of that year, entered Milan.
He immediately wanted to see Leonardo and, an unprecedented thing for a king,
he came to his studio. - Majesty.
Oh, Le voila! Le voilà! Notre cher and bien aimé Léonard de Vince.
Mon cher maitre, I'm really happy that the Signoria of Florence
has given us permission to keep you in our service.
And it is a real joy for me to be in your studio, amid so many masterpieces.
My God, how beautiful! - It's the king! - Yes, it's him!
C'est une grande merveille. - It's almost all the work of my students.
And far from finished. - Pas encore terminée?
Oh, mais cette dame!
I’ll pay whatever you want but I’m taking it to France.
Luckily it’s a small panel and not a wall like the "Last Supper".
Majesty, it's not finished yet. - Not even this one? - Not yet.
But if your Majesty wants to see the projects for the new canals...
Yes, let's see them. It will be a great work.
D'Amboise?
That confiscated vineyard...
The Maestro is once again the owner.
To show you our admiration, we decided to grant you a privilege
of 12 ounces of water. - 12 ounces? - What? - Yes, 12 ounces of water.
From the San Cristoforo canal.
Let's see the projects for this canal, D'Amboise.
De cet canal dont vous m'avez dit tant de merveilles.
12 ounces of water, in a time when water was like gold, a true royal gift.
That vineyard given to him by the Moor and confiscated by the conquerors,
represented for Leonardo the land to which he was deeply attached.
A place where to one day stop, he always wandering from one city to another,
just as one day the Vinci house could be his. Seeing that it already is his.
Or rather should be his.
For some months now Uncle Francesco, the great friend of his childhood, is dead.
And to repay the great nephew who always supported him with money,
he left that old house in Vinci and the little land surrounding it.
You... You wanted it very badly from uncle and wanted it as your own while he lived.
And you want it badly from me!
Whom would you like it from better? Francesco or me? For you!
He knows that I can not alienate my heir. Have you given such money to Leonardo?
No! You wanted me to be a heir because I could not, as your heir,
demand the money I ought to have had from Francesco!
Ser Piero, his father, had died 3 years before without having made a will.
The seven legitimate sons, based on the illegitimacy of Leonardo,
excluded him from his inheritance and divided the paternal goods.
Leonardo made no claim, said not one word.
Now the brothers want to challenge him again, always on account of illegitimacy,
the little land Uncle Francesco left him.
The old man, for years, was neglected in Vinci, a stone's throw from Florence.
And only Leonardo, in his travels from one city to another, went to visit him.
Only he sent him money to live on.
Only now that he's dead, those petty bourgeois scoundrels remember their uncle,
to challenge him, so great and famous, over two spans of land,
flaunting their legitimacy.
Because you really want to leave, here’s this letter.
"To the very excellent Gonfalonier, Pier Solderini."
“Today Maestro Leonardo da Vinci comes,”
“painter to the most Christian king, whom with difficulty we received permission,”
“because he wants to settle certain disputes with his brothers for his uncle’s legacy.”
“So he can immediately return...” "So he can immediately return..."
“We pray your excellency that his cause is immediately...” Is it clear?
“Immediately expedited, lending him every possible aid."
This is my letter.
And this...
A notre cher et grand ami, le gonfalonier perpetuel et seigneurie de Florence".
This is a letter written by his Majesty
so that the process is "le plus bref que se pourra".
Go to Florence and come back soon.
This way, you’ll see, it'll be a matter of days.
It was not a matter of days.
Day after day, the suit was never discussed
and neither did the proceedings begin.
The letters of the king and D'Amboise had given only empty promises to Leonardo.
Maestro, the Gonfaloniere apologizes for not being able to receive you.
He’s in council and tells you to wait confidently.
In the meantime, Leonardo lived in Piero Libaccio Martelli's house,
a rich Florentine family related to the Medici.
Sit down.
And write,
“To his Lordship the most reverend Cardinal Ippolito d'Este.”
“Finding that my older brother doesn't want me to keep a will,”
“though right is on my side again,”
“I would like to request your most reverend Lordship...”
“a commendatory letter for Signor Raffaello Geronimo,”
“whose suit the gonfalonier postponed.”
After the king of France and after the governor of Milan,
Leonardo also invokes the aid of Cardinal d'Este.
But the days pass and the suit always sleeps in the archives.
Maestro, the Gonfaloniere apologizes for just being unable to receive you,
but he assures you that the case proceeds and the deeds are already at the offices.
And so one day, on the stairs of the offices, he meets Niccolò Macchiavelli.
Well, Maestro Leonardo and the suit? - Eh, my dear Ser Niccolò! Bad! Bad!
The suit is always at the same place.
I had the King of France write, I had the governor of Milan write,
and then Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, and it's always at the same place!
Ser Giuliano, your brother, is he not a notary in Florence? Where the suit is.
You know the offices, the bureaucracy, the archives...
A brother who intrigues nearby is worth more than a king who writes from afar.
So what do you recommend? - Go yourself to the offices, knock on doors.
Toc, toc, toc. "May I? Dear Secretary, everything depends entirely on you,"
“you are a very powerful person." Another office, toc, toc, toc.
"May I, Head Archivist? The suit is in your hands,”
“if you could begin to give orders for the paperwork... "
Another office: "Messer Giovanni, you have the date stamp"
"and it depends entirely on you to fix the dates. Trust me, I will be very grateful".
Listen to me. Do exactly as I say.
Leonardo followed Macchiavelli's advice and went knocking from office to office.
Excuse me very much, I've been in the offices downstairs,
because I have a suit... - Suits, suits... Over there, forward!
Here there are no suits.
Documents, papers!
From the other office they have me...
Listen, sorry, from the other office they told me to come here for a suit that I...
They didn’t explain it right. It’s the other office. - The other?
That other... - I told you the other one.
Sorry, I was in the adjoining office and they directed me to you.
My suit is with the notary Giuliano DA Vinci. - Sorry, but I don’t deal with suits.
But if they told me to come here! - Maybe here, but not me, the other office.
Beyond the counter, try that.
Enough, I can’t take it anymore! I want my suit to be discussed!
I can’t spend my life from one office to another! "Go here, then there!"
Here is the relation that Leonardo wrote to Macchiavelli
and which we find written in the Atlantic Codex.
"My Messer Niccolò, I went to see if the register had my brother’s name."
"The book wasn't there. I was sent to many places, finally I went to the date stamper"
"and I said I begged him that tomorrow I wanted the suit read and taken care of."
"He replied that tomorrow was impossible, that this asked for too many things,"
"too many things which cannot be done".
The suit was never made.
The flea had conquered the lion.
You’re sleeping on these papers!
Leonardo adapted himself to any arrangement.
Thus concludes his second meeting with justice and bureaucracy.
And some still ask themselves why Leonardo vented
and portrayed people in this manner.
Leonardo did not like people.
He was not a saint like St. Francis, who loved them in spite of themselves.
Or a prophet, like Savonarola, who loves them because he scourges them.
Or passionate like Michelangelo,
who loves them and hates them because he needs a constant contrast with them.
Leonardo could not love them.
Their greed, laziness and the obstinate pride of their ignorance offended him.
In the preface to the notebooks on anatomy, he writes,
"Often, when I see some men pick up a book,"
”I wonder if he’ll put it to his nose like a monkey”
"or ask me if it’s edible".
The intelligence given to man is an incomparable good
”but many men”, he writes crudely,
”can call themselves only passages for food and producers of dung,”
”so that they leave nothing behind in the world except in the outhouses."
He was shy, aristocratic, solitary.
But he also wrote, "I’m not done with being of use.”
And he wrote, "Nor I am weary of doing good.”
Every human being helps as he can and as he knows other men.
And how he has benefited them his whole work attests to it.
Here will suffice a brief mention of the urban project imagined by him.
While his contemporaries, when offered the opportunity
to design a city out of thin air, they conceived scenic cities,
marvelous squares flanked by rich and often useless buildings,
Leonardo from the first faced three fundamental problems:
Roads, hygienic services - ie sewers - and decentralization.
The city he imagines is intersected by canals that bring goods to markets.
Higher than these canals is a network of roads for wagons, horses and fast traffic.
Higher still, at the level of the houses, another network of streets for pedestrians.
And here, very modern, a provision for terrace houses.
Air, sewers, light, transport routes,
semirural cities that would surround the industrialized metropolis:
Thus he served men.
Unfortunately, even these projects that would have upset the Milan structure,
remained projects.
In March 1511, the Marshal D’Amboise,
he who more than a protector had been a friend to him, suddenly dies.
One of those wars between the small states in which Italy's divided, breaks out again,
and the French leave Lombardy.
Leonardo spends those tumultuous days at Vaprio d'Adda, in the Melzi villa.
They were the last of that period of serenity and happiness.
One of the anatomy papers is dated "Vaprio, January 2, 1513".
But he knew he could no longer prolong leaving.
Milan's new masters would have vented their ire upon those who worked with the French,
just like how the French had persecuted those who worked with Ludovico the Moor.
Hurry, up! You too! Come on, boys!
Once again, at the age of 60,
Leonardo has to face a journey that appears dark.
The baggage!
Giuliano de'Medici, brother of the new Pope Leo X,
offers him hospitality and work in Rome.
And once again, at 60, Leonardo leaves home, habits, friends...
Maestro, everything is ready. ...for an unknown city.
But this time, in addition to Salay, selfish and noisy as always,
a friend accompanies him: Francesco Melzi.
We don't know if the youth left a mother or brothers at Vaprio,
or other people dear to him.
We do know that he didn’t want to leave Leonardo.
Up, on the horse!
Leonardo writes,
“We left Milan for Rome on September 24, 1513”
“with Gianfranco de' Melzi, Salay, Lorenzo and the Fanfoglia.”
Rome: No trade or industries,
the population gravitates and lives around the papal court.
Beyond the walls is an abandonment of a desolate and deserted countryside.
Malaria and fever and the vast expanse of the Pontine marshes.
Giuliano de'Medici, brother of the new Pope Leo X,
is the young prince who in Rome offers hospitality to Leonardo.
Very cultivated, refined, deeply ill in his soul and body
he did not live long. - Look here.
And now tell me, is life or death the mistress of the world?
Giuliano had an almost morbid obsession with death.
It is not baseness nor from baseness proceeds
if to avoid a more cruel fate, one hates his own life
and desires death seeing no remedy for his pain.
How many ills has death already cured?
But many who call death cowardly, they do not know how sweet it is.
Your lordship could not have written more beautiful verses.
But I think that nature is more ready with its creation
than time with its consumption.
That’s why death was ordered, to make room for other life forms.
And so death itself is a source of life.
Even this whole dead marsh could be a source of life.
A great undertaking to make clean the Pontine marshes.
The solution proposed by Leonardo was brilliant,
very similar to the solution implemented in the year 1928.
The work was started. Giuliano financed the undertaking.
But the fierce rivalry and the obstacles placed by the people of Sezze and Priverno
prevented its completion.
In Rome, Leonardo is staying at the Vatican,
in a few rooms that Giuliano purposely refurbished for him.
One can still the read the refurbishment costs today
in a book in an office of the Vatican palace.
And here one of the most mysterious chapters of Leonardo's activity unfolds.
For while he was at Rome, he studies a device
that he tries with every means to keep strictly secret.
It is apparently a mirror.
Vasari also writes, "The Vatican waited for the mirrors".
Since he has asked for 2 workers, experts in the manufacture of mirrors.
Komm, er ist oben innen! - Both are Germans.
They are a Maestro Giorgio and a Maestro Giovanni, called exactly “of the mirrors".
Meister Leonardo?
What is it now? - Something I need from an entirely wooden model,
with all its details. Otherwise, I can’t understand what I'm working on.
In Germany, when we work... - Not necessary. Make it piece by piece.
I must know what I’m doing! - You are paid to do as ordered.
I am paid by Signor de 'Medici, like you! - Really! - You are...!
Well… that's true.
Maestro?
Maestro, how can you stand them? - Francesco...
Patience protects one from insults.
Like clothes from the cold.
G’day, Madame! - What are those voices there?
We have beautiful mirrors. Do you like this? - No. - It's closed!
But it's beautiful! One moment... Hans, bring mir die kiste!
Hier! Here you are, look: This is wonderful.
It makes your face more beautiful. Very beautiful!
This is even more... this is perfect!
Maestro Giova', how much is the mirror?
You are not paid to sell mirrors
and turn my workshop into a fair! - I can and you can't forbid it!
You must be gone from this courtyard in an hour.
Old fool! Blöder Hund!
No! Breaking a mirror brings bad luck!
I'll take this bad luck to this ass who makes mirrors curved upside down,
and keeps secret everything he does!
That alchemist! That necromancer!
That necromancer...?
Go, Francesco. You may go.
Perhaps encouraged by Giuliano de'Medici,
who suffers an unhealthy fascination with death,
Leonardo has resumed his anatomical studies with fervor.
He tries to discover the reason for life itself. He writes,
“The spirit is a power joined to the body”
“because it cannot stand by itself.”
And he writes, - “The soul wants to be with the body”
“because without the organs of its body it cannot see or hear.”
Maestro!
I'm sorry, I’ve orders to forbid you visiting the mortuary anymore.
But the magnificent Signor Giuliano... - An order from the Intendant General.
Sir Intenden... - I'm sorry! But it's an order from above.
From the cardinal? - Higher, much higher.
There was a complaint against you for necromancy
presented by your German worker.
His Holiness didn't want to take it into account,
but decided you should stop these rituals... - Studies!
...these repulsive studies on the dead!
“My dear most illustrious Giuliano, it very much pains me... very much...”
“having to turn to you against the malice of this German.”
"He wants…"
“He wants, at any cost, to have the finished models in wood to bring to his country.”
“Which I refused him.”
"Secondly, he set up a shop filled with mirrors to send to the fairs."
"He spends his time with the Swiss guard killing birds for these junk shops."
“But above all, he made the pope stop the anatomy study,”
“condemning it, not allowing me to enter the hospital.”
It touches the heart to see Leonardo reduced to these daily miseries
because a worker obstructs him in his study.
Especially when we think about what such work could be.
Putting together long studies on concave mirrors, on chromatic aberration,
on tools designed to obtain wide-angle bending mirrors,
it was thought that he was working on a large reflecting telescope.
A telescope, to be clear, on the principle of that of Monte Palomar.
Leonardo is tired, restless.
He arrived at that age when a man needs the warmth of a house,
the affection of family members sitting calmly at rest before him,
reviewing his past life.
But he has no home, he never had one.
As a boy he was put in Verrocchio’s shop.
The one that should have been his house
has always been cluttered by the numerous wives and children of Ser Piero.
Since then he has changed many cities and masters, including this one he doesn’t love.
But even Rome loves him.
In the papal court he is isolated, apparently surrounded by respect,
but a strange respect mixed with discomfort and fear.
The old man, in his laboratory, pursues secret studies of alchemy.
And that horrible practice of cutting up corpses. - Maestro.
As for the affections... - Maestro, it's so late.
The only comfort is his constant friendship with Francesco Melzi.
And Salay? - He's in his room.
Lorenzo has locked the storage below? - Yes, Maestro.
And the lab? - Yes.
Leave the door open, let Salay come home when he returns home.
If he returns home.
The noisy and gaudy Roman environment seems like home to Salay.
That boy who "stole the soldi" is 35 years old today.
Despite all the patience of Leonardo, he has become a mediocre painter.
Sad perhaps too and discontented with a life that has left him nothing,
because the only good offered to him,
the friendship and affection of a man like Leonardo,
he, with his own hands, squandered.
What are you doing here? - I went around to see if everything was closed.
And what are you doing here? - What does it represent?
If you saw it you’d know.
You saw it too. He showed it to you. What is it?
A young man pointing outside the frame.
But what does it mean? What he is pointing to outside the picture?
He told you.
- Ssh! Don’t make noise!
You're drunk.
I will die murdered.
Poor Salay. In fact, he died from a gunshot wound, nobody knows by whom,
a few years after Leonardo's death.
During his Roman period, Leonardo also painted
a Leda that has not come down to us.
There are only a few drawings remaining.
And two versions, of which this is the most reliable.
Raphael, mindful of his admiration for La Gioconda, made a drawing of Leda,
that in its attitude reminded so many of his Galatea.
Perhaps in the whole papal court,
Raphael, kind in spirit, today is the one who is rich and famous
as he was in Florence, is the only one who admires and defends Leonardo openly.
We find him presenting to Leone X the "Miraculous Fishing",
one of the sketches for the tapestries of the Sistine Chapel.
Beautiful!
Truly beautiful!
Good thing that St. Peter doesn't resemble Leonardo
like your Plato in the "School of Athens".
Leonardo, Holiness, is the highest thinker of our times.
Oh, as a thinker he can think! Rather too much.
Some time ago I set up a small picture
and he immediately began to distill the oils and herbs
for the paint he would have given to the finished painting. Of which I said,
"Woe is me, he thinks about the end before the beginning of the work!"
On January 1515, Francois I ascended the throne of France.
He's very young, 20 years old. Cultured, intelligent, brave,
following in the footsteps of Charles VII and Louis XII, he also comes down to Italy.
And on September 13, at Melegnano faces and defeats the Milanese.
The battle lasts 2 days and leaves 18000 dead on the ground.
Francois I thus opened wide the gates of Italy.
The precarious balance of the little states of Italy appears once again compromised.
One must look to oneself. Pope Leo X hastens to go to Bologna,
being preceded and accompanied by artists and celebrities
that make his court more magnificent.
And in the train, among others, Leonardo,
who is a rich object to show with pride to foreigners.
Leo X rushes to Bologna to meet solemnly with the victorious king
and to prevent any move against the states of the Church.
No, no. I beg you...
Artists?
Non, non, non! Je vous en prie, Mesdames! Gentlemen...
Maitre Léonard. Mon pere, mon cœur se rejouit de vous voir.
But even more if I could see you with us in France.
Bestir thyself lover for the one beloved.
But if the one beloved is not worthy,
the lover makes himself unworthy.
When the lover has joined the beloved,
there is repose.
When the weight is laid down,
there he reposes.
There he reposes.
From 1516 Leonardo lives in France, at a residence of Cloux, in Amboise.
Francesco Melzi, the faithful, has accompanied him.
Salay, however, remained in Italy.
Too late he understood what he lost.
Francois I gave Leonardo a princely income,
but more than a dependent, he is considered a friend.
A few years later, Benvenuto Cellini wrote,
"I don’t want to omit the words I heard the king said of him,"
”which was said before the Cardinal of Ferrara and the Cardinal of Lorena,”
”and the king of Navarre.”
”He said he never believed that any other man was born in the world”
“who knew as much as Leonardo.”
"Not so much of sculpture, painting and architecture,
"so much as he was a great philosopher".
Eh, first draw, Francesco. Draw!
Even in France, never tired of studying,
he designed a canal between the Loire and the Cher.
Maestro, what is he pointing to? - Draw, Francesco. Draw.
What does it mean?
Bestir thyself lover for the one beloved.
Days seem to pass serenely
in that shelter offered by the king’s generosity, asking nothing in return.
What a beautiful river, the Loire! - But it's not the Adda.
Do you know what today is? - The 24th.
June 24th.
In Florence it's the feast of St John.
In Florence...
“June 24th, the ides of St John 1518,”
“in Amboise, in the palace of Cloux.”
Now that he feels his days coming to an end,
an invincible melancholy works through his soul.
He seems resigned and writes,
"A life well spent is long."
And he writes again,
“Given that a well spent day makes for better sleep,”
“so a very useful life gives a happy death.”
Maybe around that time he draws an old man:
Himself, Leonardo.
Next to the study of a whirlpool that makes water against a fixed pole in a current,
the old man, almost listening to the water...
"The water that touches the rivers..."
The old man, leaning against the trunk of a tree,
a stick in his hands like one who has sat down after a very long time,
he looks ahead, more than pensive, almost anguished by thought.
A great thought.
So far his research has had as its only exclusive guide, experience.
Indeed, experiment.
"Experience is the mother of all certainty."
"Wisdom is the daughter of experience."
"No human study can be called true science"
"if it does not pass mathematical proof."
This rigorous mental formation had to lead him to consider
with the greatest skepticism every revealed religion.
"If we doubt the certainty of each thing that passes through the senses,"
”how much more we must doubt the things which rebel against them,”
"like the essence of God, of the soul and the like."
So much so as to make Vasari say,
"He made in his mind a concept so heretical that it did not approach religion"
"esteeming much more being a philosopher than a Christian."
But this experimentalism so deeply rooted in him
never became materialism.
He has always had a deeply religious sense of nature,
deemed it a wonderful and living thing.
"Nature is constrained by reason of its laws which live infused in it."
This concept of a living and wonderful nature
leads him, at first, to recognize the divinity in nature.
But little by little, perhaps on the extreme limit of life, this thought evolves.
"What ingenuity can penetrate nature,”
which language will explain this wonder? Certainly none."
"This leads human discourse to divine contemplation."
Maestro?
I was thinking...
Everything is so perfect, everything is so perfect that...
it is impossible that nothing itself is the cause of its creation.
Let's go.
These are the studies and volumes on mechanics and a treatise on water.
I've always intended to write a treatise on water.
These are the drawings for flight. - Flight?
I studied a machine... A machine!
These are the anatomy studies. More than 20 corpses...
For some months, a paralysis seized Leonardo’s right hand.
... stripping all the nerves and bones.
And here, they're not in order yet,
are sketches for a treatise on painting and perspective.
Oh, that picture!
I'm sorry, Excellency, but it's not finished yet.
An important testimony of the last days of Leonardo
came from Antonio de Beatis, secretary of the cardinal of Aragon.
Antonio?
Yes, Excellency? - Have you seen these paintings? The beauty...
"And the cardinal along with us "
went to visit Messer Leonardo da Vinci, a Florentine,
an old man of more than 70 years”.
Leonardo had to look very old, since since then he was only 65 years old.
"He showed his lordship 3 paintings".
"One of a Florentine lady". - Antonio, please...
"One of the Madonna and her son in the lap of Saint Anne"
"and one of a young St. John the Baptist".
Your Lordship, this St. John is done. - "All very perfect."
The perfection of these paintings transfigures... - Maestro, but...
But there’s the cross!
Before there was not. - And now there is.
Some air. - Yes, Maestro.
It's April 23rd, Holy Saturday. It is the year 1519.
Magister Fleri.
"Let it be shown that before all established before us,"
“Messer Leonardo de Vinci, the king's painter, has dictated his will before us”
“his last will and testament.”
“If followed, recommending his soul to our Messer Domineddio.”
“He bestows and grants to Messer Francesco de Melzo, gentleman of Milan,”
“each and every book that the aforesaid testator has currently”
“and other instruments and portraits concerning his art as a painter.”
“Item, he grants and bestows to Battista de Villanis, his servant,”
“half of a vineyard that is outside the walls of Milan”
“and the other half of the vineyard to Salay the Milanese.”
“Item, gives to Maturine, his maid,”
“a garment of good black cloth lined with fur, a soca of cloth”
“and two ducats in compensation for her good services.”
“He orders and wants the sum of 400 scudi in deposit at Santa Maria Nova de Fiorenza”
“to be given to his brothers by birth residing in Florence.”
“Item, he orders that Francesco de Melzo remains the only executor of the will. "
Battista? In the corridor.
Maturine?
On the Maestro's table.
Giovanni.
In the bedroom.
Light, lamp, oil lamp...
Oil lamp, lamp...
How many words one knows.
Lamp, light, oil lamp...
and Francesco.
Words that are precise things, persons, feelings.
Everything has a word, even the smallest one.
Crumb, ant...
All these endless words that one knows
and things you learn, study, memorize...
All these things which are our accumulated wealth,
that are in ourselves, in one moment...
A moment before I am here,
and only a moment later you die. I am no more.
Nothing remains.
Nothing? No!
And this? And these works?
Paintings, studies! - Poor things, Francesco. Poor things!
Nothing...
Nothing remains. - Maestro! But the memory...
The memory of us that others will keep and will continue to hold inside...
Maybe that.
Only that.
Goodnight.
Go to sleep.
And don’t be late. The lamp ruins the eyes.
Nine days later, on May 2, 1519, Leonardo died.
Francesco Melzi gave the news in a letter to the friars in Florence,
"Sor Giuliano and honorable friars,"
"I believe you have attested to the death of Maestro Leonardo,"
”your brother and to me, how excellent a father,”
”for whose death it would be impossible for me to express the pain I feel.”
”And while these members of mine will support one another,”
”I will own a perpetual sadness,”
”and deservedly, because of the much love he brought me daily.”
”Everybody's feels the loss of such a man"
"of whom there is not in the power of nature to make his equal."
Leonardo is dead.
But a tragic fate continues to rage against him.
Francesco Melzi, as long as he lived, oversees his works admirably,
but his heirs and later time will disperse them.
In part, they will destroy them, as had happened so many times in his life.
His bones were also lost.
The Church of San Fiorentino where he was buried on August 2,
10 years later was devastated by the Huguenots.
At the time of the French revolution, the lead that covered the coffins
was melted down for projectiles and his bones were thrown into a mass grave.
And there it lies, ignored among the others, those of Leonardo.
As ignored and misunderstood his writings will be for centuries by blind posterity.
The prophetic discoveries of one who, more than any other man,
had known how with deep eyes to scrutinize the mysteries of nature.
Bestir thyself lover for the one beloved.
But if the one beloved is not worthy,
the lover makes himself unworthy.
When the lover has joined the beloved,
there is repose.
When the weight is laid down,
there he reposes.
Bestir thyself lover for the one beloved.
But if the one beloved is not worthy,
the lover makes himself unworthy.
When the lover has joined the beloved,
there is repose.
When the weight is laid down,
there he reposes.
There he reposes.
English subtitles by sineintegral@kg