Voices from the Past Part 77

Throughout my life I have been willing to attempt various disciplines. I am alien to most men because they limit their interests. Almost all of my friends thought in terms of a single field of endeavor. Ambrogio cared nothing for geology. De Predis shunned mathematics.

Boltraffio scorns cartography. Fra Luca shrugs off all but church music. Luini favors frescos. Who is interested in oceanography? Or flying?

I think men should reach out. A rut can lead to a dead end. The portrait artist need not paint portraits all his life. Andrea was one of those rarities (an inspiration!): his world was brush, pastel, oil...marble, bronze, porphyry...cenotaph, altar, sarcophagus...portrait.

Cloux

March 12, 1518

Sleep comes hard: there is frequent pain in my back and legs: insomnia exhausts me: I think of stairways, dikes, weaving machines, cylindrical sails, cadavers, faces...

Many times I have seen Christ's face-as I painted him in my fresco. I remember him, lying in his ghetto... I remember him so ill he could scarcely walk... I remember taking food to him...there, over there, on the wall, is his face in the candlelight.

Sleepless, I have gotten up and sketched those who have been dead for years. Friends, neighbors, filthy seamen on the coast, mountaineers, shepherds, brigands at the Borgia castle.

Here, at Cloux, I have found a girl whose profile is perfect: I have asked her to pose for a silverpoint.

Here, in the heart of France, when I am listening to Francesco talk French I am listening to a clever Frenchman. He could speak the language fairly well before coming-he has perfected his p.r.o.nunciation, his pauses. He says he learned from a boyhood tutor. I ask him to correct me but he never does. Most of our chateau friends speak several languages. When I am explaining technical drawings to the King or members of his court I have to have help when it comes to the vocabulary relating to hydraulics, gears, fossils, and such.

March 18, 1518

My journal is in danger.

Time is leaving me.

I go weeks without adding a thought.

If I see a horse riddled with arrows, a mural that is scaling off-where is the joy? Where the beauty?

Let's go to that valley along the Adda River, in May.

We were laughing then: being alive pleased us. Let's go to Piombino where I sketched the little s.h.i.+ps in the harbor, s.h.i.+ps and pounding waves. Let's walk in the castle garden, among the senatorial statues; I played the lute and both of us sang. And Rustici's! What about Rustici's and that pet porcupine of his?

In Pavia, I lost my way among narrow lanes; it was dusk; it was summer; it became dark; a lantern appeared, another; I found myself at a house of prost.i.tution: the loveliness of that meeting, those unexpected caresses, that girl... O, sleeper, what is sleep? Sleep resembles death. Yet, there are happy dreams. And actual dreams, such as rolling the Colossus into the square and seeing the Milan populace mill around it. And another...my mother, Caterina, embracing me when last we met.

There have been other dreams: working with wood and silk, to perfect a wing...there was that brief moment of flight...my wing...being aloft...lifted above trees and town... I feel that lift as I write. Joy. Beauty.

There were rows of candles and water-lamps s.h.i.+ning in front of my Last Supper; I stepped back to contemplate my work; I looked around; I realized that the fresco was finished. I felt tears of joy, tears that never fell, yet existed. I felt another overwhelming satisfaction in my Anghiari: the horses were alive and came to me as I looked at them... I remembered their names.

Andrea Verrochio came through the refectory door and shook my hand. When I write to him I will remind him...but he is dead.

I have always thought the p.e.n.i.s handsome during copulation, otherwise pitiful. I have never wors.h.i.+pped it as have some men-and women! As a boy it was tantalizing, always there, always a reminder of s.e.x, most often a mystery. I saw copulation enjoyed before I enjoyed it with a girl. It seemed to me that it wasn't much fun. I had to mature. It seems to me that the p.e.n.i.s often has a life of its own, as during the night when it rouses a man, a sentiency of its own perhaps. I note that women like the size of the p.e.n.i.s as large as possible, but a man wants the opposite in a woman's organ.

The Greeks and Romans were p.e.n.i.s wors.h.i.+ppers. As a fertility symbol it amuses me. I wonder how the Egyptians regarded the p.e.n.i.s? They have had centuries to think about it. Young women enjoy displaying their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; some men want to show their masculinity. There is something quite amusing about these s.e.x thoughts.

Juvenile! Life has so many serious problems: hunger, plague, crime. The ecclesiastics laud the cross and crucifixion; I suspect that some of their fervor is part of the p.e.n.i.s contemplation. With the p.e.n.i.s there can be a kind of holy ecstasy, for certain. I had an ivory p.e.n.i.s in my studio in Florence: was it African? Some thought it Babylonian. It does not matter.

Men will always fight among themselves, s.e.xually, politically, socially. I have realized this for years.

Can it be that this realization urged me to fly, to escape perversion and mediocrity? Flying can be a celebration of the mind.

Well, s.e.x means little to me now. Silence means more.

Friends.h.i.+p. Calm. Hope. Ai, those workshops of my youth were so noisy. On crowded streets. Near alleys. Vendors howling their wares. Mule teams. Hors.e.m.e.n. One of my workshops was close to a smithy. Steel on steel mixed with palavering.

Amboise is my silent bottega, walkways, garden, flowers. Here I have so many of my favorites: nasturtiums, ranunculas, roses, poppies, violets, iris, pansies.

Maturina keeps flowers in my studio and my bedroom.

Writing in the sun along the Loire, remembering, remembering:

I recall details of my dissections of pigeons...

Sketching, measuring, I concentrated on bone structure of the wings, then the tail, the balancing properties of the entire bird. Using those dimensions I calculated wing lengths and wing widths for my glider. I laid out a narrow area for a man to lie on, exactly between the wings.

I constructed the glider with the aid of my apprentices. I launched it at Mount Ceceri. Ceceri seemed the likeliest hill since wind currents had to be strong, and constant. Men lifted, pushed, yelled.

"Now...now!"

I dipped into the wind, slid with the wind, lifted. It seemed to me that I hovered for a while above a big willow. Rooftops. Then, in spite of my attempts at balancing, the wing swung down, dropped, spun... I crashed.

That wing measured 15' x 3' x 9'.

I can visualize Milan's pink and red buildings, its fortress Castello between moats, its drawbridges, the fumbling city walls, the filthy streets. Though not as old as Rome, I often felt Milan's shabby antiquity. It was a lesson in futility. So many sieges: 1497, 1500, 1512...military engagements that disrupted every fiber of living. (There is nothing like the filth of a city under siege.)

During the last siege, in 1515, the cannonades drove me out of the city. In my absence my apartment-with its view of the Alps-was looted by riffraff.

The city gates...I remember them: Porta Comasina, Porta Romana, Porta Orientale. Near the Orientale I found a bronze figurine, on one of my walks. Its small head had been uncovered by a recent rain. A priest, carrying a rice bowl.

How I worked during those Milanese years: apses, loggias, transepts, windows, frescos! Survival jobs.

"This door needs immediate repair...place that medallion lower...no red marble here..." I could not equal Donato Bramante's architectural skill. Friend, I wished him well.

Did I spend almost three years in the Castello, in those maddening salas, those perfumed rooms? The only place to avoid the stench of sewage. I urged the Duke to plan a city with upper and lower thoroughfares, a city where there was air s.p.a.ce to lessen the danger of plague.

Fifty thousand dead in '09.

Sieges...death...

Milan...all focused on my cenasolo...my Maria delle Grazie...that refectory...that was my world...those faces, those outspread hands, that table...there is more than one way to break bread...more than one cup.