The Last Leonardo: The Making of a Masterpiece. Ben Lewis

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Epigraphs

      Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern, the likes of which I had never seen. I stood for some time in front of it in astonishment. I bent over, resting my left hand on my knee, while shading my eyes with my right. I squinted, shifting first one way and then the other, to see whether I could ascertain anything inside, but this was hindered by the deep darkness within. After having remained there some time, two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire – fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvellous thing within it.

      LEONARDO DA VINCI

      The politics of Leonardo scholarship are like any other politics except that so far no blood is shed.

      SIR KENNETH CLARK

      Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know.

      ITALO CALVINO

      It ain’t where ya from, it’s where ya at

ERIC B. & RAKIM

PROLOGUE

       The Legend of Leonardo

      Centuries ago, in an age when the world was still ruled by monarchs and dukes and countesses dressed in velvet and golden brocade, there lived a man of illegitimate birth, as warm-hearted in his disposition as he was boundless in his curiosity, fierce in his intellect and skilful with his hands. This man was engineer, architect, designer, scientist and painter – the greatest painter, say many, who had ever lived. A genius, say others, who had brought the modern world into being. His pictures were both real and ideal, more beautiful than anything ever seen before. He studied the natural world in its tiniest details, from the leaves on trees to the paws of bears, and in its hidden rules, such as the proportions of the human face and body. He looked far and peered close, sketching the pale horizons of mountains and peeling back men’s skin so he could see the muscles and arteries that lay beneath.

But this artist was also an enigma. When he died, he left riddles and tricks for those who wished to cherish his memory and preserve his legacy. Sometimes his masterpieces were painted with colours that faded or crumbled even before he had finished the work; others were sealed with varnishes that made them darker and darker with the passing of decades. Like many great men, he seemingly cared little for the gift God had given him, painting little and slowly, and instead burying himself in the notebooks that he filled with scribbles of magnificent ideas, which he had neither the patience nor the technology to build. He made fewer paintings than any other great artist in history, and even fewer have survived: at most only nineteen.

      In the centuries that followed his death, people yearned to possess more of his work than they had; there were never enough pictures by this artist to satisfy the world’s craving for his images. Myths and theories proliferated about the pictures that had been lost, hidden or painted over. In the institutes of learning devoted to the arts, there was no higher calling than the study of this artist’s work; and among those scholars who studied his art, there was no greater glory than discovering a lost or forgotten painting, drawing or sculpture by his hand.

      The stakes were high – and, if you fell on them, sharp. The artist never signed or dated his work. He had many pupils, whom he taught