A picture taken in center Milan on
May 3, 2019 shows the details of a statue of Italian Renaissance genius
Leonardo da Vinci done by Italian sculpture Pietro Magni. (AFP/Miguel Medina)
Leonardo da Vinci, who died 500
years ago on Thursday, lives in the collective memory as an enigmatic genius
who embodied the Italian Renaissance. Here are some anecdotes about his
extraordinary life and work.
'Fake news': Leonardo died in the
arms of King Francis I
An 1818 painting by French artist
Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres shows Leonardo da Vinci breathing his last with
his patron, France's King Francis I, at his bedside.
The scene was inspired by an account
in "Lives of the Artists" by Giorgio Vasari, first published in 1550.
Vasari, seen as the father of art
history, wrote that Leonardo "died in the arms of the monarch". The
problem is that it could not be true. According to historical records, the king
was a two-day ride away in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, for the baptism
of his second son on May 3, the day after the Renaissance master died.
While the Ingres painting, which
hangs in the Petit Palais in Paris, is the best-known depiction of the
sentimental fiction, it was itself inspired by a 1781 painting by
Francois-Guillaume Menageot, which is on display at the royal chateau of
Amboise after meticulous restoration work for the quincentenary.
Lover of birds, and flight
A story about Leonardo speaks to both
his love of nature and fascination with flight. He would often pity cooped up
birds on sale in markets, plunk down the asking price for them and then release
them into the air. Leonardo had a legendary obsession with the flight of birds
and how understanding the mechanism could lead to the creation of a human
flying machine.
Read also: France, Italy mark 500th
anniversary of Leonardo's death
The face of a traitor
Leonardo was in the habit of roaming
the streets of Milan in search of beautiful or unusual faces, according to
Giorgio Vasari, the 16th-century father of art history. "He would follow
any such... through the whole day, until the figure of the person would become
so well impressed on his mind that, having returned home, he would draw him as
readily as though he stood before him," Vasari wrote.
But when it came to the face of
Judas for The Last Supper, Leonardo was at a loss as to how to portray a man
who "possessed a heart so depraved as to be capable of betraying his
Lord". Work on the famous mural at the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery
dragged on, and its prior grew so impatient that he complained to the Duke of
Milan. He fumed that Leonardo would "sometimes remain half a day...
absorbed in thought before his work, without making any progress that he could
see," Vasari related. "This seemed to him such a strange waste of
time."
Summoned by the Duke, Leonardo
explained that "men of genius are sometimes producing the most when they
seem to be labouring the least" and revealed his difficulty finding a face
for Judas, as well as that of Jesus, which he feared that "he could not
hope to find on earth."
At least for Judas, Leonardo had a
fallback plan. He told the Duke he could always use the prior's face.
Henceforth, "the poor prior, utterly confounded... left Leonardo in
peace," Vasari wrote.
Oh, that smile!
One of the many artistic conventions
that Leonardo da Vinci upended was the portrayal of people smiling, with no
smile more famous than that of his Mona Lisa.
Facial expressions were a source of
deep fascination for Leonardo, who conducted meticulous anatomical studies to
determine the nerves that trigger them.
Biographer Walter Isaacson writes
that while by day Leonardo was painting Mona Lisa, by night he "was in the
depths of the morgue... peeling the flesh off cadavers and exposing the muscles
and nerves underneath."
And how did he get the young wife of
a Florentine silk merchant to smile through hour upon hour of sittings?
Contemporary biographer Giorgio
Vasari wrote in the 1550 work "Lives of the Artists" that Leonardo
saw the need to keep the lady entertained, and hired musicians and jesters for
the purpose. An 1863 painting by Cesare Maccari shows such a studio scene, with
Leonardo's subject flanked by musicians. The work is housed at the Museo
Cassioli Pittura in Siena, Italy.