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= Woman in the Moon =

Mona Lisa Novel, or: Nocturne in Paris

by John Argo

Page 32.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1419) was a strange man, and a talented genius. As the brochure related, his life is as much shrouded in mystery on some accounts, as it shines across the ages for his accomplishments. He was not only a gifted artist, but a scientific one. He was one of the first to dissect corpses (as legally as that could be accomplished in late Renaissance and Early Modern Italy or France) so that he could study the technology and biology of muscles and nerves—all the better to realistically paint them. He wanted to understand their facial and other musculature from the ground up, on a technical and mechanical level.

He made studies of heads to get the expressions right. He drew engines of war and technological innovations of many kinds, including submarines and tanks and the like. Historians regard him as the true exemplar of a Universal Genius or Renaissance Man, who was interested in many subjects, dabbled in many disciplines, and made brilliant contributions in everything he touched.

Leonardo was born out of wedlock to very ordinary parents: a local notary (Piero Da Vinci, or Peter of Vinci, whose very place name—from the Latin vicus, neighborhood—connotes a sort of nook or corner tucked away out of sight near Florence). His mother was a peasant named Caterina. The young boy showed so much talent that he gained apprenticeship in the school of the famous painter Andrea del Verrocchio, whose name ‘True Eye’ was a nickname, like so many in an age when people didn’t have last names. For much the same reason, Leonardo became stuck with the monicker ‘from Vinci’ which might as well have been something like ‘from Podunk.’ He overcame his humble beginnings, and is remembered as one of history’s great geniuses.

Leonardo lived for sixty-seven years, a respectable figure for a man of his age in which so many did not make it half so long. The last few years of that time, he lived in France not too far from Paris. There, he completed his most important final painting under puzzling circumstances, without pay. That became the world’s most famous painting: La Gioconda, or Smiling One (a pun on the patron’s name del Giocondo), the so-called Mona Lisa, which had been the property of the Kings of France for centuries, later of the French people, and here it was, hanging in its own special room in the Louvre.

The brochure could only touch on the highlights of Leonardo’s life. What Hannah was most curious about, as she sat next to Yves on the upholstered bench, was how a Renaissance Italian master’s paintings—for example, the Mona Lisa and La Belle Ferronnière among others—could have wound up hanging in the Louvre in Paris.

Then she remembered the brochure that had been dropped by her side on the bench in the Square Viviani. That brochure told the outlines of the story. Da Vinci, a Florentine Italian, who worked in Florence and Milan during his early life, was more or less adopted by the King of France. Leonardo turned 48 years old in 1500, reaching the height of his artistic and intellectual powers. By then, he had his own small group of close assistants, most notably the young artist-journeymen Salai and Francesco Melzi who became the executors and heirs to some of his works. Part of the aura of mystique about Leonardo is that he never married, nor are there any significant love relationships attributed to him, aside from some hints of gay scandal that got him arrested once in his early twenties with several young noblemen, a case soon quashed by one boy’s wealthy family.

From 1513 to 1516, Leonardo (aged 61 to 64) brought his atelier south to Rome, where he worked closely with Michelangelo and Raphael under the sponsorship of Pope Leo X. Leonardo had several things in common with the pope, including their origins in Florence. While Leonardo was from the lower end of society, this particular pope was a prominent member of the Medici family—the same family from which Catherine de Medici, wife of the late Henri II of France, had come.

In the early 1500s, powerful King François I of France (father of Henri II killed half a century later in the jousting tournament) was successfully campaigning against the disunited city states in northern Italy. The pope met with him in Bologna, presumably to negotiate for the preservation of the Papal States in central Italy, as well as a favorable peace in relation to his aristocratic and republican enemies as a Medici. Through the Pope, Leonardo became acquainted with King François, who commissioned Leonardo in 1515 to build him a sort of robotic metal lion. Within a year (1516), Leonardo had moved to France where he became a permanent fixture at the Château d'Amboise, in the Loire Valley not far south of Paris and its surrounding ?le-de-France. The Loire Valley, which runs roughly east-west for 170 miles (280 km) is famous for its picturesque countryside and romantic cities. It is a land of vinyards, fruit trees, and all manner of vegetables and farm produce. It includes a belt of storied ancient and medieval cities like Amboise, Angers, Blois, Chinon, Orléans, Saumur, and Tours. In many of his estates, the powerful new King François installed famous painters and artisans—none more famous than Leonardo.

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