On Sunday, April 26, 1478, the bells of the cathedral were ringing loudly over Florence, almost drowning out the noise of the crowds in the street. Shutters were being thrown open and people were shouting excited questions at each other. Distantly at first, but growing in volume, was another sound—an ugly one—the sound of an approaching, angry mob. Leonardo, holding a roll of drawings closer under his arm, stopped and listened. Suddenly the questioning voices stopped. The bells continued ringing and now the angry shouts of the mob could be heard. “Lorenzo is dead! Giuliano is dead! Death to traitors! Pazzi! Pazzi!” “On to the Palace of the Signoria! They’ve captured the Archbishop! He’s a prisoner there!” “Get a ram and we’ll break the door down!” The people in the street were caught up in the surging mass. Already soldiers of the Medici were spreading out through the city. Cobblestones were ripped from the street, and swords, knives, and clubs were being brandished in the air. Leonardo, backed against a wall of a house, was soon left in an almost deserted street. Still holding the drawings, he made his way carefully back to his studio. As it turned out, Lorenzo was not dead at all. It was on this Sunday that the Pazzi conspiracy had broken out in Florence. In the cathedral, the ailing Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of Lorenzo, was killed by assassins. Lorenzo himself escaped with only a scratched arm. The Pazzi family were rival bankers of the Medicis and had joined in this plot with Girolamo Riario, a relative of Pope Sixtus IV, and Francesco Salviati, a long-time enemy of Lorenzo. A hired professional thug completed the members of the conspiracy. Girolamo Riario hated the Medicis because they refused him money for his own ambitions, and the Pope opposed Lorenzo because Lorenzo was supporting raids against papal territory. As for Archbishop Salviati, he had for years nursed a personal hatred for Lorenzo. Leonardo, backed against a wall, was soon left in an almost deserted street. When the assassination attempt failed, the Archbishop and Francesco de’ Pazzi fled to the Palace of the Signoria for protection. However, the members of the Council of Florence, who were meeting, then became suspicious and bolted the doors after them. Both men were later killed by the Medici followers and their bodies were hung from the barred windows of the Palace. In the terror of the days afterward, eighty victims lost their lives. The Pazzi conspiracy also had an effect on Leonardo’s future, as we shall see later on. Leonardo had been on his way to the Palace that morning. He had been given his first painting assignment, or commission, the previous January. This was to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of San Bernardo in the Palace, and just the month before he had received the sum of twenty-five florins as a partial payment. Some time before January of 1478, Leonardo had left Verrochio and had found a place of his own. The commission had come to Leonardo through the influence of his father, who was now one of the leading notaries, or lawyers, of the city. Though still poor, Leonardo could now devote this new independence to his widening fields of study. Leonardo’s studio was like his childhood room in one respect—it was still filled with all the different things that had aroused his curiosity. Books were everywhere—on his tables and shelves and piled on the floor—books by Ptolemy, Pliny, and Strabo on geography and natural history, by Aristotle on physics, even one by Guido, a tenth-century monk, who has been called the father of modern music. In addition, there were books on arithmetic, agriculture, geometry, grammar, philosophy, fables, poetry and even one containing jokes. A map of the world hung on the wall, together with his drawings; and, scattered throughout the whole studio were the plants, fossils, rocks and animal skeletons he There was also a huge table extending down the middle of Leonardo’s studio upon which were many drawings and instruments for working geometrical problems. His easel near the window supported a painting—a study for his commission in the Palazzo. And on his desk was a confusion of papers containing notes all written in his “secret” writing. At twenty-six Leonardo was deep in the study of mechanical law, geometry, and botany. For example, he had observed the rings in trees and their relationship to the age of the trees. In mechanics, he was absorbed in drawing models of a “variable speed drive.” By meshing three cogged wheels of different diameters to a common lantern wheel, Leonardo saw that different speeds of rotation could be obtained at the same time. This same principle is used in the gear shift of modern automobiles. About mechanics Leonardo wrote that it was “the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruit of mathematics.” Now, too, he was starting to write about his observations on the flight of birds, the formations of clouds and the behavior of smoke in the air. He compared the flying of birds to the swimming of fish in the sea, and the flow of air to the flow of water. Two hundred years before Newton, Leonardo would define the principles of aerodynamic reciprocity, as contained in Newton’s Third Law of Motion. At this time, Leonardo had an idea for making the Unfortunately, Leonardo’s painting commission for the Palace of the Signoria was never completed. By the end of the year 1478, the Pope, angered by the killing of the Archbishop during the Pazzi conspiracy, had declared war on the Republic of Florence. Ferdinand, the King of Naples, was persuaded to help in this war against Florence and the Medicis. As the papal forces were approaching the fortresses on the Florentine hills, the Council of Florence discontinued Leonardo’s commission in order to conserve money for the defense of the city. Disappointed though he was, Leonardo did not allow The military appointment that Leonardo hoped for didn’t come. Unfortunately for the Medicis, the war with the papal forces was being lost. One by one, the fortresses under siege surrendered; more and more of the Florentine troops were fleeing. Leonardo continued the work on his military machines for, although he was having some success painting Madonnas for private homes and had even received a commission from the King of Portugal for a tapestry design, he still wanted official recognition for his inventions from Lorenzo de’ Medici. During these weeks late in the year of 1479, Leonardo conceived many ingenious devices to wage war. Besides the small artillery piece, he designed a bombard, or rock-throwing cannon, which did not recoil when it was fired. This was followed by a light gun arranged in three tiers of barrels, mounted so that while one tier was fired, the second was being loaded and the third was cooling (a forerunner of the modern machine gun). Another was a device to repel enemy ladders. It consisted of a horizontal beam laid parallel to the top of a fortress wall; the beam could be pushed outward by one man or several men using a system of Leonardo’s design for a machine gun. It had thirty-three barrels in three banks of eleven each. While one bank was fired, one cooled and the other was reloaded. Unfortunately for Leonardo, just as he was ready to show these inventions to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the last fortress outside Florence surrendered and a three-month truce followed. Lorenzo himself went to Naples and persuaded King Ferdinand to withdraw from the war. By 1480, peace returned once again to Florence. As for the Medicis, military machines no longer interested them. Greatly disappointed at not having his inventions used—or even looked at—Leonardo began to search about for new fields of creative activity. |