Voices from the Past Part 64

Madonna's hand 243

Prisoner 248

Sforza horse 251

Birds in flight 261

Plants and designs 264

Mona Lisa 278

Christ's hand 283

Bicycle 296

Head of man 308

Glider 317

This journal was kept by Leonardo da Vinci during the years 1516 to 1519 while he lived in France as the guest of King Francis I; there, he lived in the small residence of Cloux, near the King's summer palace at Amboise on the Loire River. Leonardo writes of his boyhood, his mother, his friends, his easel and mural paintings, his dissections, his colossal bronze horse.

He tells of his attempts at flying, his inventions...

This is a codex of his mind as he divulges his art and the scope of his interests.

To the end of his life he was painting, map-making, carrying out architectural commissions, arranging his treatises on perspective, anatomy, horses, flight, and the arts. His patron, King Francis, called him "Mon Pere." Da Vinci's last years, at Cloux, near Paris, were friendly years.

1516

Cloux

December 10, 1516

MEMORY ...

MEMORY...

I

remember that hot, dusty afternoon in Florence. I ordered everybody out of my studio. I got up from my workbench and demanded that they leave: the tattlers, the oafs, the bores, the faithful. I packed them off. Yelled at them. Stormed. I had work to do, work that would keep me until dawn. I had to have serenity, no ribaldry, no disgruntled silence, no questions, no interruptions of any sort.

I slammed the doors, bolted them.

A mouse scuttled across the room.

Until I resolved the perfect angles, sheet after sheet went into the making of that pelvic drawing.

Queer how memory is: I can see that messy workshop, easels, clay figures on stands, rags, canvases, frames, chisels, pigments, brushes... I can see the mouse watching me from beneath a basket. Again I sense that long afternoon, that long night... I had dried bread, cheese, and port. I remember the church bells. At dawn I slid my work into a special portfolio, then concealed it.

I was often hiding things in those days, hiding sketches, hiding determination, hiding frustrations, goals.