Queer Places:
Birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci, Via di Anchiano, 50059 Vinci FI
Château du Clos Lucé, 2 Rue du Clos Lucé, 37400 Amboise, Francia
St Hubert, 15 Rue de la Concorde, 37400 Amboise, Francia
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519), more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply
Leonardo, was an
Italian
Renaissance polymath
whose areas of interest included
invention,
painting,
sculpting,
architecture,
science,
music,
mathematics,
engineering,
literature,
anatomy,
geology,
astronomy,
botany,
writing,
history,
and
cartography. He has been variously called the father of
palaeontology,
ichnology,
and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all
time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the
parachute,
helicopter and
tank,[1][2][3]
he epitomised the
Renaissance humanist ideal.
Many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the "Universal
Genius" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity"
and "feverishly inventive imagination",[4]
and he is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals
ever to have lived.[5]
According to art historian
Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent
in recorded history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman,
while the man himself mysterious and remote".[4]
Marco Rosci notes that while there is much speculation regarding his life and
personality, his view of the world was logical rather than mysterious, and
that the empirical methods he employed were unorthodox for his time.[6]
Born
out of wedlock to a
notary,
Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, in
Vinci in the region of
Florence,
Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter
Andrea del Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the
service of
Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome,
Bologna
and Venice,
and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded to him by
Francis I of France.
Château du Clos Lucé, 2 Rue du Clos Lucé, 37400 Amboise, Francia
Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona
Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait[7]
and
The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time.[4]
Leonardo's drawing of the
Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a
cultural icon,[8]
being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts.
A painting by Leonardo,
Salvator Mundi, sold for a world record $450.3 million at a
Christie's auction in New York, 15 November 2017, the highest price ever
paid for a work of art.[9]
Perhaps fifteen of his paintings have survived.[nb
1] Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which
contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of
painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only
by that of his contemporary,
Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered for
his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, a type of
armoured fighting vehicle,
concentrated solar power, an
adding machine,[10]
and the
double
hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible
during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to
metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the
Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, such as an automated
bobbin
winder and a machine for testing the
tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. A
number of Leonardo's most practical inventions are nowadays displayed as
working models at the Museum of Vinci. He made substantial discoveries in
anatomy, civil engineering, geology,
optics, and
hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct
influence on later science.[11]
Within Leonardo's lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his
"outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and
generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind", as described by
Vasari,[64]
as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others.
One such aspect was his respect for life, evidenced by his vegetarianism and
his habit, according to Vasari, of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.[65][66]
It has been
claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or
erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that
Leonardo and three other young men were charged with
sodomy in an
incident involving a well-known male prostitute, Jacopo Saltarelli. The charges were dismissed
for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused,
Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to
Lorenzo de' Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the
dismissal.[70]
Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its
role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in
John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of
erotic drawings.[71]
Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned either in their fields or
for their historical significance. They included the mathematician
Luca
Pacioli,[67]
with whom he collaborated on the book
De divina proportione in the 1490s. Leonardo appears to have had no
close relationships with women except for his friendship with
Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters,
Beatrice and Isabella.[68]
While on a journey that took him through
Mantua, he
drew a portrait of Isabella that appears to have been used to create a painted
portrait, now lost.[15]
Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has
been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the
mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably
by
Sigmund Freud.[69]
Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and
Francesco Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo's brothers of his death, described
Leonardo's feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. Loyal to the
end, Leonardo left Salai, a fat and coarsened grown-up, a bequest in his will
and arranged a dowry for his sister. Salai was not loyal to Leonard and left
the master before the end. His place was taken by a youth of good family and
breeding, Francesco Melzi, who accompanied Leonardo to France. Francis I, a
great patron of the arts (and also of women - he died of syphilis), was
anxious to recruit the prestige of the "divine Leonardo", now famous all over
Europe, to his nothern kingdom. The delicious little Gothic chateau of Cloux
near Amboise, moated and turreted, was placed at his disposal, where he was
assisted and regarded like the sovereign he was. When he died, the faithful
Melzi inherited the incomparable mass of papers, thousands of sheets of notes,
hundreds of drawings, models, figurines that he left behind. Francesco Melzi
lived right up to 1570, within a couple of years of the Massacre of St
Batholomew. The precious evidences of Leonardo's genius remained locked away
in an attic in Milan, until collectors and hunters got on the track and the
collection began to be dispersed.
My published books:
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- Homosexuals in History, A Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature
and the Arts, by A.L. Rowse, 1977