Part 2

“Ah, Leonardo,” his father said when he appeared in the family dining room. “I saw Benedetto dell’Abbaco on the way in town and he tells me you haven’t been to school as often as you should—is that true?”

“Yes, Papa—but I’m not doing badly.”

“Signor Benedetto might agree, at least in your mathematics. He tells me you ask him questions that often make him stop and think. But Leonardo, you have other subjects—Latin, reading, and writing—as well as arithmetic. You mustn’t neglect the others, my boy. But come—let us eat.”

Together they sat down with the rest of the family—a large, prosperous, and happy gathering. When dinner was over Leonardo made hurried excuses to all the family, protesting that he was too tired to sing, and escaped back into his room. For a long time he worked, unaware that the house was growing quieter. Finally he laid down his brushes and his maul stick, pushed his chair back and smiled a triumphant smile. The shield was finished. Tomorrow he would ask his father in to look at it.

Conscious now that everybody had gone to bed, Leonardo blew out his candle and opened the shutters. The night sky was a panoply of stars and only here and there was the dark loneliness of the valley relieved by pinpoints of light. Leonardo leaned his head against the window frame and stared at the blue infinity above him. What exactly were the stars? Did all of them move around the earth? What was the haze that obscured the horizon ever so faintly? What was that sea-snail doing in the mountains? Why? How?

The next morning Leonardo found his father and Uncle Francesco in the garden deep in conversation about their vineyards and olive groves.

“Papa, I have a surprise for you up in my room—can you come now?”

“Yes, Leonardo. What is it you have found now—not a better way to raise my grapes, I’ll wager!”

The elder da Vinci put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and went with him up to the door of his room.

“Wait here, Papa, until I say to come in.”

Leonardo unlocked his door, lifted the cloth from the shield standing on the easel and opened the shutter just a trifle so that a soft light filled the room.

“Papa—you can come in now.”

Piero entered—he had long forgotten the round piece of wood—and suddenly he froze in the middle of the room.

“Have mercy on me!” he said when he saw the horrible fire-breathing creature. In the dimness of the room, the monster and the murky cave from which it was emerging were terribly real. Piero actually started to back out of the room in fright, when Leonardo laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Papa, this work has served its purpose; take it away, then, for it has produced the intended effect.”

The shield was the talk of the house; it was set up and marveled at. As for Piero, he resolved to take it with him to Florence secretly and sell it, giving his peasant friend some cheap substitute that he would buy in the marketplace.

So, a few days later, Leonardo’s father saddled his horse and had the shield wrapped and packed in his saddlebag. Also, unknown to his son, he took some of the boy’s drawings. Piero had now realized that Leonardo might have a rare talent. Moreover, he was planning to move to Florence with his family so that he could be nearer to the Badia, or the law offices of the city, for whom he had been frequently employed. There, thought Piero, Leonardo’s talent could be developed under the best of teachers.

It was many days before Leonardo’s father returned; when he did, he gathered his family together and it was obvious to all that he had exciting news. First, Piero announced that he and Francesca would move to Florence since he and a law partner were now engaged in securing office space from the Badia. It was a handsome office centrally located opposite the palace of the Podestà, or chief magistrate.

Then, turning to Leonardo, he said: “I have shown some of your drawings to Master Andrea del Verrochio and his enthusiasm for your skill has decided me to place you in his studio as an apprentice. What do you think of that?”

Leonardo was stunned. Verrochio, the great artist and sculptor! Florence! The city-state whose power and influence had spread far beyond her own walls. Now he would study in earnest; now he would find the answers to his never-ending questions. He embraced his father and could say nothing.

2 Florence

The Italy of Medieval and Renaissance days was not a unified country as it is today. It was, of course, part of the Holy Roman Empire, but the main governing forces in the land were in the city-states, of which Florence was one of the most powerful. A city-state was much more than a city—it was almost a kingdom in itself. Each had its own army, and very often there were large-scale wars between such city-states as Milan, Naples, Rome, Venice—and of course Florence. The Italians of those days considered themselves citizens—not of Italy as a whole—but of their particular cities; people coming from other cities were looked upon as “foreigners,” even though they looked the same, wore the same style of clothing, and spoke the same language!

All the power, influence, and ideas of this period in history were concentrated within the city-states. A man might be a very fine artist, engineer, or philosopher, but unless he managed to bring his work to the attention of the ruler of one of the cities, he was likely to remain in obscurity. Thus it was that Piero da Vinci, knowing that his son would have to have a powerful patron if he was to succeed at all, brought Leonardo to Florence.

In 1467, when the da Vinci family entered Florence, the city had been under the rule of the Medici family for some thirty-three years. As it was in most of these city-states, the head of the ruling family—at this time Piero de’ Medici—was in charge of the government of Florence and the surrounding countryside. But Piero was fifty-one years old and ailing, and he had only two years of life left at the time of Leonardo’s arrival.

None of this was in Leonardo’s mind as he rode with his father through one of the great, guarded gates of the city. He was thinking, not of politics, but of the fabulous sights that awaited him in this rich center of commerce and activity.

The narrow streets of the city were so crowded that is was necessary for the da Vinci family, together with their servants and the donkeys laden with household effects, to go single file. Leonardo rode behind his father, shouting questions, and, at the same time, turning his head from side to side so as not to miss a thing. Brought up in the solitude of mountains and valleys, and accustomed to the quiet life of a village, the boy of fifteen was overwhelmed with the excitement of the city.

The party was now making its way past the booths of hundreds of shops, past magnificent palaces built by wealthy merchants, and across squares filled with the produce from hundreds of farms. Every now and then, Leonardo caught a glimpse of the cathedral dome, one of the architectural marvels of its day. He had seen the cathedral with its bell tower and also the towering spire of the Palazzo della Signoria—which means the Palace of the Lords—from a hill as they approached the city. This palace still stands and today it is called the Palazzo Vecchio or Old Palace. But now these sights were lost to view in the midst of the narrow streets, other churches, flags, and the lines of washing that seemed to hang everywhere. Frequently, Piero’s party was pressed against a wall as a procession shoved its way through a street. Sometimes it was by armed horsemen escorting a rich banker to some appointment; other times it was a file of cowled monks observing some saint’s day and carrying huge wax candles before them.

After they had crossed the magnificent square of the Signoria, in front of the Palace of the same name, Piero leaned down from his horse and asked a blacksmith where Verrochio’s studio might be. The man shouted above the din of clanging hammers: