Voices from the Past Part 94

"Yesterday, I dreamed that the sun was coming through my window at Vinci...there were bunches of grapes on our table...bare table, in the sun. Caterina was sitting opposite me, her hands in the sun. I seemed to be about thirty years old. She seemed to be about the same age.

Our dog lay on the floor, waiting for me to take him out.

"I felt imprisoned by the sunlight, happily imprisoned... I was imprisoned by the beauty in Caterina's face. My eyes followed the grain of the table, mixed with the bunches of grapes, went out into the street, returned to her face, her smile.

"...You have asked me about happiness. Does anyone know what happiness is? It is so often illusory. For you, Francesco, it's a woman...or a swim in the lake. For me it was always work. If a great discipline haunts a man throughout his life...well, he's lucky. You have seen me happy. You didn't throw in your lot with a bitter man.

"We see King Francis...we watch him...he is eaten up with regrets...he is scheming, plotting...worrying...battlefields gnaw his guts...if we want sanity there are Vaprios, little rivers, little hills."

He asked me for another cover.

Cloux

This was our last conversation-on April 23rd.

Melzi - I heard that you created a mirror machine while you were in Rome.

Da Vinci - I tried to amplify the stars-study them.

Melzi - Please explain.

Da Vinci - A series of mirrors and lens.

Melzi - To catch the light?

Da Vinci - I could position the mirrors and the lens.

You have to visualize them, in a shallow cradle, some pieces one and two inches square, some pieces two and three inches square, most of them concave, all specially ground, to fit together like an eye, to focus like the eye. They could be raised or lowered, tilted, under a lens which I could also focus.

Melzi - They brought the sky closer?

Da Vinci - All of the mirrors and lens were destroyed by the man who had cut and polished them. He smashed them. Malice...fear...envy...

Melzi - A bitter experience, Maestro!

Da Vinci - That's how it was...in Rome. The Pope learned of these experiments and ousted me from the Vatican.

He fell asleep.

Cloux

May 20, 1519

A

s requested in Maestro Leonardo da Vinci's will, sixty men, each carrying a lighted taper, accompanied his coffin to St. Hubert's chapel, on the evening of May the 4th. Royalty, chateau-pages, soldiers, visitors, servants made up the procession from the manor house to the Amboise chapel. It was a cloudy, threatening evening. The chapel bell tolled.

A bearded priest, in black vestments, performed the requiem. Royalty crammed the chapel. The royal green flag, sewn with hundreds of white salamanders, blanketed the casket. Wreathes of roses and carnations leaned against wall cabinets where there were lighted candles.

Men chanted a Gregorian chant.

The Maestro was buried close to the chapel, under chestnut and cypress, buried by torch and taper light.

The chapel doors were wide open as someone played the organ. Six men lowered the coffin.

Leonardo's death was the saddest moment of my life.

When King Francis returned to Amboise, later in May, I walked with him to the burial place and he laid flowers on "Mon Pere's" grave. Fog filtered the grove and dripped on us. A hard day for the monarch.

King Francis has retained all of da Vinci's paintings.

I was willed his drawings, sketches, journal, treatises, music, and correspondence.

Soldiers accompanied me on my return to Vaprio.

Villa Vaprio

July 13, 1519

My father and mother welcomed me home.

Father gave me a northlight room, on the third floor. I will place my easel near the windows that face the Adda, face the little bridge where the Maestro used to fish for temolo.

I have hung my copy of his Mona Lisa on the entry wall and have laid his red velvet cloak over the back of a chair.

I am arranging some of his drawings on a center table.

There is ample s.p.a.ce for his Anghiari cartoon on the inside wall. I have ordered broad shelves for his books and his small bronzes, his drawings and treatises, his brushes and pigments. I will purchase a leather box for his correspondence.

I will do what I can to bring order to his writings.