Mike Lankford - Becoming Leonardo: An Exploded View of the Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Ages 015

MOST OF HIM is lost to us, of course. The timbre of the voice, the thoughts visible in his eyes, the physical gestures when happy or sad, the way he walked, his smell, his hands, the habitual grimace his friends knew all too well but no one bothered to recordall that is lost. When he was young there was no reason to write any of it down, and when he was old he became too hard to describe, too strange. What to do with Leonardo?

Its helpful in terms of myth building to have fewer facts rather than more. Were Leonardo born today wed have hospital records, blood types of both parents, genealogies going back to Charlemagne, not to mention the views of his neighbors there in the tiny tourist town of Vinci. Fortunately, for the sake of romance and myth, we have none of that but for a single scrawled entry in a family ledger by his grandfather Antonio: 1452. There was born to me a grandson, the son of Ser Piero my son, on the 15th day of April, a Saturday, at the 3rd hour of the night. He bears the name Lionardo.

Swaddled and lying there in the straw-stuffed cradle, a couple of early spring flies buzzing his face (one perhaps landing on his lip and beating its wings) that little red baby started life with one large problem: He was, by the rules and customs of the day, illegitimate. Outside the law. His parents were not married. They apparently were not even properly introduced. Traditionally it was thought his mother was a local girl who let the neighboring notarySer Pieroget too close in a dark place. New evidence suggests that Leonardos mother Caterina may have been a house slave brought to Italy from elsewhere. Which means, it might have been rape.

Because of the plague and such massive death, Florencethe city-state that ruled Vinci, the tiny village beside Mount Albano where Leonardo was born and which gave him his namehad permitted the importation of slaves, provided they were infidels and converted immediately to Christianity and took Christian names, most often young women from Turkey and North Africa. Caterina was a popular name and it so happened that a wealthy client of Ser Pieros named Vanni di Niccolo owned a slave named Caterina. Niccolo died in 1451 and as executor of his estate Ser Piero wouldve had to deal with his property, including Caterina. The next year a Caterina appeared in Vinci, pregnant by Ser Piero. Nothing is known of her past.

Which would mean little or nothing but for the evidence of Leonardos fingerprints on a few of his paintings, fingerprints that reveal the same dermatoglyphic structurethat is, the same pattern of loops and whorlsas people of Middle Eastern origin.

If true, it could mean Leonardo grew up not just a bastard son living with a weak claim on family, but of mixed race as well. Not obviously so, as it was not remarked on by Vasari or anyone else, but it wouldve been part of his own identity and well-known while growing up in the village. It meant he was two things, not one. And perhaps later this was even a part of his mysteriousness, something ill-defined about him, something he hid.

And if so, then it suggests two more possibilities. One, that if Caterina had a hand in raising him or saw him frequently, and told him stories, both to entertain him and make him proud, then what kind of stories might those be? Fantastic? Heroic? Self-justifying? Stories from her home country? Or perhaps stories she made up? An important question. What kind of cross-cultural tall tales was the little kid hearing? There was at the time a cult of the Magi which had wisdom coming from the east.

And two, notice that as an adult his sense of fashion seemed rather more Turkish than Italian: the long hair and beard curled, the purple cloak, the rings and such. He rather resembled an Ottoman Pasha out for a stroll. This was a deliberate adult identity that may well have started as youthful fantasy and wishful thinking. Caterina may be the key to understanding Leonardos unique identity in later years, but in truth we have nothing but a few fingerprints and a couple of indirect references to guide us. Much later, in 1503 when he was fifty-one, he made an effort to move to Constantinople, writing to the Sultan Bayezid II and offering his services, all while praising Allah.