1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:06,000 MUSIC: Intentions of the Mind by Caroline Shaw 2 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:14,000 A good painter must depict two principal things, 3 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:16,280 namely the person 4 00:00:16,280 --> 00:00:19,000 and the intentions of their mind. 5 00:00:20,780 --> 00:00:23,080 The first is easy, 6 00:00:23,080 --> 00:00:25,280 the second difficult. 7 00:00:26,280 --> 00:00:28,280 MUSIC CONTINUES 8 00:00:30,320 --> 00:00:32,360 RUMBLE OF THUNDER 9 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:40,920 - The modernity of Leonardo is that he understands that knowledge 10 00:00:40,920 --> 00:00:43,760 and imagination are intimately related. 11 00:00:45,800 --> 00:00:49,120 - LEONARDO: - Which nerve causes the eye to move 12 00:00:49,120 --> 00:00:52,280 so that the motion of one eye moves the other... 13 00:00:54,280 --> 00:00:56,280 ..on closing the eyelids... 14 00:00:57,760 --> 00:00:59,720 ..on opening the eyes... 15 00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:03,000 ..on expressing wonder. 16 00:01:04,520 --> 00:01:10,480 - There is a delightful, unbridled joy of curiosity in him. 17 00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:14,760 His duty is to the question. 18 00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:21,520 His duty is to the thirst for knowledge. 19 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:29,560 Basically he says, the thing that was given to me by the universe 20 00:01:29,560 --> 00:01:32,000 was the chance to question it... 21 00:01:33,760 --> 00:01:36,000 ..and that is my divine duty. 22 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:39,040 - MUSIC CONTINUES 23 00:02:46,760 --> 00:02:50,880 He began few paintings and finished even fewer. 24 00:02:51,880 --> 00:02:55,000 But, more than 500 years after his death, 25 00:02:55,000 --> 00:02:59,280 those he left behind are among the most revered works of art 26 00:02:59,280 --> 00:03:01,400 of all time. 27 00:03:01,400 --> 00:03:05,760 A draughtsman of incomparable talent, he sketched everything. 28 00:03:05,760 --> 00:03:09,600 People and landscapes, flora and fauna, 29 00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:12,400 machines, both real and imagined, 30 00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:16,560 equations, fables and allegories. 31 00:03:16,560 --> 00:03:21,000 Painting on wood panels made from walnut or poplar trees, 32 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:24,520 he devised new ways to portray how men and women 33 00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:26,920 convey their deepest emotions. 34 00:03:26,920 --> 00:03:29,520 Movements of the mind, he called it, 35 00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:34,000 and elevated painting from a craft to an intellectual pursuit. 36 00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:38,280 He read Greek and Roman philosophers 37 00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:40,760 but frequently questioned their wisdom. 38 00:03:40,760 --> 00:03:44,520 Real knowledge, he believed, was found in nature 39 00:03:44,520 --> 00:03:48,760 and best gained through observation and experience. 40 00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:53,480 He studied fossils and water dynamics, 41 00:03:53,480 --> 00:03:55,200 dissected cadavers 42 00:03:55,200 --> 00:03:59,640 and mapped the circulatory system and the human brain. 43 00:03:59,640 --> 00:04:03,160 He attempted to solve the ancient geometric problem 44 00:04:03,160 --> 00:04:05,000 of squaring the circle 45 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:08,520 and he staged experiments on the nature of falling objects 46 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:12,000 more than a century before Galileo and Newton. 47 00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:15,760 To him, everything - 48 00:04:15,760 --> 00:04:20,520 geology, physics, anatomy, mathematics, art - 49 00:04:20,520 --> 00:04:23,000 was inextricably linked. 50 00:04:24,280 --> 00:04:27,000 Writing backwards in a mirror script, 51 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:30,520 he began treatises on a vast array of subjects, 52 00:04:30,520 --> 00:04:35,000 combining image and text to communicate profound insights 53 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:38,560 that were, in some cases, centuries ahead of their time. 54 00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:44,760 But he left most of them incomplete and published none in his lifetime. 55 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:48,760 A singular genius, he filled his notebooks 56 00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:52,760 with calculations and questions, theories and innovations, 57 00:04:52,760 --> 00:04:55,760 revealing a mind of infinite curiosity. 58 00:04:57,280 --> 00:05:00,000 In an age of astonishing artistic advances 59 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:02,760 and a new-found reverence for humanity, 60 00:05:02,760 --> 00:05:05,520 Leonardo da Vinci made his way, he said, 61 00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:08,760 as a "discepolo dell'esperienza" - 62 00:05:08,760 --> 00:05:11,280 a disciple of experience. 63 00:05:15,480 --> 00:05:17,280 EXHALING 64 00:05:19,760 --> 00:05:21,800 LEONARDO: - Here forms... 65 00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:25,600 ..here colours... 66 00:05:27,280 --> 00:05:30,360 ..here the character of every part of the universe 67 00:05:30,360 --> 00:05:32,840 is concentrated to a point... 68 00:05:32,840 --> 00:05:34,680 - HEARTBEAT 69 00:05:34,680 --> 00:05:38,960 - ..and that point is so marvellous a thing. 70 00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:40,960 - BABY CRIES 71 00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:45,440 - If there's a golden thread that runs through all of Leonardo's work, 72 00:05:45,440 --> 00:05:49,560 I think it's an attempt to crack the code of organic form. 73 00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:53,880 He's persuaded that there are profound likenesses, 74 00:05:53,880 --> 00:05:57,880 profound equivalences to be found in the movement of the stars 75 00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:00,520 and in the behaviour of an ant hill. 76 00:06:01,520 --> 00:06:04,520 That, more than anything else, is what obsessed Leonardo, 77 00:06:04,520 --> 00:06:07,160 and what gives his work a kind of unity. 78 00:06:09,600 --> 00:06:12,680 - LEONARDO: - These indeed are miracles. 79 00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:16,520 In so small a space, the universe can be reproduced 80 00:06:16,520 --> 00:06:20,280 and rearranged in its whole expanse. 81 00:06:40,280 --> 00:06:44,000 - In the spring of 1452, in a tiny village 82 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:48,360 tucked among the Tuscan hills, a prosperous 80-year-old farmer 83 00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:53,520 and landowner named Antonio da Vinci made a note in his ledger. 84 00:06:55,520 --> 00:07:00,520 "There was born to me a grandson, the son of Ser Piero, my son, 85 00:07:00,520 --> 00:07:04,000 "on the 15th day of April, a Saturday, 86 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:06,000 "at the third hour of the night." 87 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:10,920 Ser Piero was a successful notary in his mid-20s, 88 00:07:10,920 --> 00:07:13,000 who lived and worked in Florence 89 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:16,480 but returned at times to his ancestral village of Vinci. 90 00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:20,280 Little is known about the baby's mother 91 00:07:20,280 --> 00:07:22,760 other than her name - Caterina. 92 00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:25,600 Though his parents were from different social classes 93 00:07:25,600 --> 00:07:28,600 and did not marry, the arrival of their son 94 00:07:28,600 --> 00:07:30,520 was cause for celebration. 95 00:07:31,520 --> 00:07:35,000 The day after his birth, the boy was baptised 96 00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:38,280 at the Church of Santa Croce in the centre of town. 97 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:42,520 They called him Leonardo. 98 00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:23,520 Soon after Leonardo's birth, Ser Piero returned to Florence. 99 00:08:23,520 --> 00:08:26,280 Within a year, his father would be married 100 00:08:26,280 --> 00:08:28,520 to a bourgeois Florentine woman, 101 00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:33,720 Caterina to a kiln worker and farmer who lived near Vinci. 102 00:08:33,720 --> 00:08:37,520 - The father, in the case of Leonardo's early childhood, 103 00:08:37,520 --> 00:08:39,360 is an absent figure, 104 00:08:39,360 --> 00:08:43,280 and he probably spent more time with his mother, Caterina. 105 00:08:43,280 --> 00:08:48,000 She was probably a serving girl, a "contadina" - a peasant woman. 106 00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:53,280 - At times, the boy lived with his paternal grandparents, 107 00:08:53,280 --> 00:08:58,280 Antonio and Lucia, and their son Francesco, Leonardo's uncle. 108 00:08:59,520 --> 00:09:03,280 Vinci, a village of fewer than 100 families, 109 00:09:03,280 --> 00:09:06,960 was made up of a medieval castle, a church 110 00:09:06,960 --> 00:09:10,280 and a modest cluster of homes that gave way to vineyards 111 00:09:10,280 --> 00:09:12,240 and olive groves. 112 00:09:12,240 --> 00:09:16,280 Locals harvested medicinal herbs from Vinci's hillsides 113 00:09:16,280 --> 00:09:18,600 to supply the pharmacies of Florence 114 00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:24,000 and diverted a small mountain stream to power the town's olive press. 115 00:09:29,520 --> 00:09:33,840 As a boy, Leonardo was enamoured of his natural surroundings, 116 00:09:33,840 --> 00:09:37,520 exploring his grandfather's orchards and wheat fields 117 00:09:37,520 --> 00:09:40,280 and the hills, valleys and woodlands beyond. 118 00:09:41,280 --> 00:09:43,760 He also grew close to his uncle Francesco, 119 00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:46,640 who loved the leisurely pace of country life. 120 00:10:01,640 --> 00:10:04,280 Because he was born out of wedlock, 121 00:10:04,280 --> 00:10:07,880 Leonardo was limited in what education he could receive 122 00:10:07,880 --> 00:10:11,520 and, eventually, which professions he could pursue. 123 00:10:11,520 --> 00:10:14,760 - The education he got was the kind of education, we think, 124 00:10:14,760 --> 00:10:16,600 that merchants' sons got, 125 00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:18,760 where you get practical mathematics 126 00:10:18,760 --> 00:10:22,160 and you learn how to gauge how much oil is in a barrel. 127 00:10:48,760 --> 00:10:53,520 - In time, Leonardo would regard his lack of a formal education 128 00:10:53,520 --> 00:10:56,160 as among his greatest strengths. 129 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:00,280 RUMBLE OF THUNDER 130 00:11:02,280 --> 00:11:03,920 HOWLING 131 00:11:05,520 --> 00:11:09,280 LEONARDO: - Having wandered some distance among dark rocks, 132 00:11:09,280 --> 00:11:12,280 I came to the entrance of a vast cavern. 133 00:11:15,280 --> 00:11:20,000 And after some time there, two contrary emotions arose in me. 134 00:11:21,760 --> 00:11:23,280 Fear... 135 00:11:24,280 --> 00:11:25,920 ..and desire. 136 00:11:26,920 --> 00:11:29,760 Fear of the sinister, dark cavern. 137 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:35,280 Desire to see whether it contained something wondrous. 138 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:43,280 - The Renaissance is an enlightenment, 139 00:11:43,280 --> 00:11:45,920 a rebirth of classical learning, 140 00:11:45,920 --> 00:11:50,280 but it's also a time of tremendous change and, therefore, uncertainty. 141 00:11:50,280 --> 00:11:52,680 Everything's up for grabs. 142 00:11:52,680 --> 00:11:56,520 And I think the keynote of the time is uncertainty. 143 00:11:56,520 --> 00:11:58,920 With every question comes a doubt. 144 00:11:58,920 --> 00:12:03,000 And I think the story of Leonardo's, about looking into the dark cave, 145 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:06,160 is a very Renaissance viewpoint. 146 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:11,000 - As Europe emerged from a devastating pandemic 147 00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:14,080 that had ravaged the continent in the mid 1300s, 148 00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:16,960 the city states that crowded the Italian peninsula 149 00:12:16,960 --> 00:12:22,160 established maritime trade routes to Constantinople and North Africa, 150 00:12:22,160 --> 00:12:25,960 giving rise to a wealthy class of merchants and bankers 151 00:12:25,960 --> 00:12:29,760 and accelerating an exchange of knowledge that helped ignite 152 00:12:29,760 --> 00:12:34,960 the cultural explosion that would come to be known as the Renaissance. 153 00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:40,000 - It started in the more mature part of the Middle Ages, 154 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:43,800 but the big change occurs with what is called humanism. 155 00:12:43,800 --> 00:12:46,360 Humanism is really the beginning of the Renaissance 156 00:12:46,360 --> 00:12:49,200 and it happens because scholars like Petrarch and others, 157 00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:52,760 for the first time, don't look at the texts of the past 158 00:12:52,760 --> 00:12:54,920 and try to Christianise them. 159 00:12:54,920 --> 00:12:57,600 Before, it was always to take that knowledge 160 00:12:57,600 --> 00:13:00,080 and try to fit the Christian doctrine. 161 00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:03,160 Instead, now they're seeing it for what they are 162 00:13:03,160 --> 00:13:05,240 within the historical context. 163 00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:09,000 It's a secular approach that was not there before. 164 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:11,920 That's what sparks the Renaissance. 165 00:13:11,920 --> 00:13:15,520 - The Renaissance reached its most profound expression 166 00:13:15,520 --> 00:13:20,800 in the city state of Florence, with a blossoming of art and architecture 167 00:13:20,800 --> 00:13:25,520 informed by mathematics and science and classical ideals. 168 00:13:43,760 --> 00:13:49,720 - It's celebrating not only empirical but physical sensation, 169 00:13:49,720 --> 00:13:52,280 and why does it happen, where does it come from, 170 00:13:52,280 --> 00:13:54,040 how do we belong in the world? 171 00:13:54,040 --> 00:14:00,080 There is a recentring of the world into man. 172 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:05,520 - Florence was first established on the banks of the Arno river 173 00:14:05,520 --> 00:14:08,760 by Julius Caesar in 59 BC. 174 00:14:08,760 --> 00:14:10,520 Since the Middle Ages, 175 00:14:10,520 --> 00:14:13,760 it had been the seat of power of the Republic of Florence, 176 00:14:13,760 --> 00:14:17,160 a city state that controlled a large swathe of Tuscany. 177 00:14:18,160 --> 00:14:22,280 Its government, a council made up of members of the leading trade guilds 178 00:14:22,280 --> 00:14:25,920 called the Signoria, was a source of great pride 179 00:14:25,920 --> 00:14:28,320 for the city's inhabitants. 180 00:14:28,320 --> 00:14:32,760 But, in reality, Florence functioned as an oligarchy 181 00:14:32,760 --> 00:14:35,920 in which the richest families controlled the levers of power 182 00:14:35,920 --> 00:14:37,880 from behind the scenes. 183 00:14:38,880 --> 00:14:40,760 Cosimo de' Medici, 184 00:14:40,760 --> 00:14:44,280 the politically astute head of a powerful banking family, 185 00:14:44,280 --> 00:14:48,920 had become Florence's de facto ruler in 1434. 186 00:14:48,920 --> 00:14:53,520 His clever diplomatic manoeuvres had led to a 1454 treaty 187 00:14:53,520 --> 00:14:56,760 among the kingdom's republics and dukedoms 188 00:14:56,760 --> 00:15:01,280 that divided the Italian peninsula, ushering in a delicate peace 189 00:15:01,280 --> 00:15:03,920 for the first time in half a century. 190 00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:08,920 Cosimo was also a generous patron of the arts. 191 00:15:08,920 --> 00:15:12,680 - Increasingly, artists who previously would have sought to work 192 00:15:12,680 --> 00:15:16,280 for the cathedral, to work for the city, to work for one of the guilds, 193 00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:18,280 want to work for the Medici, 194 00:15:18,280 --> 00:15:23,040 because working for the Medici is not only a good fee, 195 00:15:23,040 --> 00:15:29,160 it also guarantees recognition in a new world of art appreciation. 196 00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:34,680 - Florence had long been home to a flourishing garment industry, 197 00:15:34,680 --> 00:15:38,920 with its silk and wool weavers, leather tanners and furriers. 198 00:15:41,280 --> 00:15:46,000 As the arts grew, workshops that produced paintings, sculptures, 199 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:49,760 jewellery and metalworks expanded and prospered. 200 00:15:52,800 --> 00:15:57,200 - The Italian word for a studio is "bottega", and that means a shop, 201 00:15:57,200 --> 00:16:00,280 or, more precisely in this context, a workshop. 202 00:16:00,280 --> 00:16:04,280 A noisy, communal, collective space. 203 00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:07,480 Different people are working on different things. 204 00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:10,920 There's hammers and tongs... 205 00:16:10,920 --> 00:16:13,960 ..and fires that heat up metal... 206 00:16:13,960 --> 00:16:16,960 ..and a lot of smells of solvents. 207 00:16:16,960 --> 00:16:20,000 You might also hear, of course, the clucking of chickens, 208 00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:24,040 because one of the major paints that were used was egg tempera. 209 00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:29,760 - Some time in the 1460s, 210 00:16:29,760 --> 00:16:32,160 Leonardo, now an adolescent, 211 00:16:32,160 --> 00:16:35,520 made the long day's ride from Vinci to Florence, 212 00:16:35,520 --> 00:16:38,080 where his father secured him an apprenticeship 213 00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:40,600 in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, 214 00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:43,920 a talented sculptor, painter and goldsmith. 215 00:16:43,920 --> 00:16:48,680 Verrocchio had trained many of Florence's most celebrated artists. 216 00:16:48,680 --> 00:16:52,280 - I think he recognised very quickly that young Leonardo 217 00:16:52,280 --> 00:16:55,160 was going to be the cream of these young apprentices, 218 00:16:55,160 --> 00:16:57,920 someone that he could outsource some of the work to 219 00:16:57,920 --> 00:17:02,760 and someone he could train up to be an extremely good sculptor, painter, 220 00:17:02,760 --> 00:17:06,360 jewellery designer, whatever he wanted to be. 221 00:17:07,360 --> 00:17:11,000 - In the late 1460s, Verrocchio received a commission 222 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:14,680 from the Medici family to cast a bronze statue of David, 223 00:17:14,680 --> 00:17:18,760 the biblical shepherd boy who had slayed the giant Goliath. 224 00:17:18,760 --> 00:17:21,760 Leonardo, whose contemporaries described him 225 00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:25,760 as a beautiful, curly-haired youth, may have been his model. 226 00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:16,880 As an apprentice, Leonardo prepared wood panels, 227 00:19:16,880 --> 00:19:19,360 ground pigments for paint 228 00:19:19,360 --> 00:19:22,280 and made models in clay and terracotta. 229 00:19:23,280 --> 00:19:25,160 He also learned to draw - 230 00:19:25,160 --> 00:19:28,000 a skill that artists viewed as the foundation 231 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:30,320 for all other artistic endeavours. 232 00:19:30,320 --> 00:19:32,760 - Drawing is the key to almost everything. 233 00:19:32,760 --> 00:19:34,520 If you can't really draw it well, 234 00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:36,920 you're never going to be able to paint it well. 235 00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:40,000 Leonardo said one should find for oneself 236 00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:43,280 a really good master, copy their work, 237 00:19:43,280 --> 00:19:47,000 because it will train your hand to good form. 238 00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:50,480 - He drew with astounding acuity. 239 00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:53,680 If there's one thing that makes Leonardo's drawings distinct 240 00:19:53,680 --> 00:19:57,160 from the beautiful drawings of someone like his master, Verrocchio, 241 00:19:57,160 --> 00:20:03,080 Leonardo adds a note of movement and internal agitation to drawings. 242 00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:06,920 Everything is dissolved into the world of movement. 243 00:20:08,280 --> 00:20:12,880 - Leonardo does a lot of studies of draperies and cloths, 244 00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:17,720 and what it shows is he understands how light hits a curving object, 245 00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:20,760 how shadows are formed... 246 00:20:21,760 --> 00:20:24,760 ..how depth is conveyed in a drawing. 247 00:20:25,760 --> 00:20:29,840 The drapery studies give a sense of light, of depth, 248 00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:31,720 but also of motion. 249 00:20:33,280 --> 00:20:36,520 - LEONARDO: - The painter will produce pictures of small merit 250 00:20:36,520 --> 00:20:39,760 if he makes other artists' work his standard. 251 00:20:40,760 --> 00:20:45,280 But if he studies from natural objects, he will bear good fruit. 252 00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:49,160 - In the summer of 1473, 253 00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:54,000 Leonardo made a small high-angle drawing of the Arno river valley. 254 00:22:44,520 --> 00:22:46,280 BELL CHIMES 255 00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:00,080 - One of the remarkable things about Florence 256 00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:02,800 is that there was a succession of geniuses, 257 00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:07,680 decade after decade after decade, in the 1400s. 258 00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:11,360 When Leonardo came to Florence in the 1460s, 259 00:23:11,360 --> 00:23:14,280 he could look back at the previous 50 years 260 00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:19,240 and see great public works of art. Things that you could see for free. 261 00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:22,520 You could walk through the streets of Florence and see this. 262 00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:27,000 He wants to take his place in the pantheon of great artists 263 00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:31,160 like Alberti, Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. 264 00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:35,640 - Filippo Brunelleschi was the city's most celebrated architect. 265 00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:39,760 In 1418, he had entered a public competition 266 00:23:39,760 --> 00:23:43,000 to engineer a dome for the city's central cathedral, 267 00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,080 Santa Maria del Fiore, 268 00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:48,360 which had been under construction since 1296. 269 00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:53,760 At 143 feet in diameter, the long-planned dome 270 00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:58,320 was intended to be wider than that of Rome's celebrated Pantheon, 271 00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:03,160 still the world's largest 1,300 years after its completion. 272 00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:10,080 Few believed it could ever be built, but Brunelleschi was undeterred. 273 00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:13,360 It took 18 years, but the structure of the dome 274 00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:17,000 was finally completed in 1436, 275 00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:20,360 16 years before Leonardo was born. 276 00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:28,280 Three decades later, Verrocchio won a contract to construct and install 277 00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:30,480 a monumental copper sphere, 278 00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:34,760 8ft in diameter and weighing more than 4,000 pounds, 279 00:24:34,760 --> 00:24:39,000 to complete the lantern atop Brunelleschi's dome. 280 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:42,440 - And Leonardo da Vinci was 19 years old at that point, 281 00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:45,680 and he'd been with Verrocchio for at least a couple of years, 282 00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:47,760 learning his trade. 283 00:24:47,760 --> 00:24:50,920 He would have seen up close and personal 284 00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:53,760 everything that Brunelleschi had achieved. 285 00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:55,600 Leonardo da Vinci says, 286 00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:59,160 I want to do the impossible, I want to create miracles, 287 00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:03,000 because he's inspired by these miraculous works of art 288 00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:05,000 which have come before him. 289 00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:11,920 - In the early 1470s, Verrocchio received a commission 290 00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:16,400 from the Church of San Salvi to paint a baptism of Christ. 291 00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:20,040 The master assigned sections of the work to his talented apprentice, 292 00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,240 including the Messiah's feet... 293 00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:25,400 ..parts of the landscape 294 00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:28,240 and one of the two angels. 295 00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:30,920 While Verrocchio had painted in tempera 296 00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:33,960 and used white highlights to produce contours, 297 00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:36,520 Leonardo worked in oil, 298 00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:39,600 applying imperceptibly thin layers of colour 299 00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:41,600 to develop light and shadow 300 00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:44,880 and create the illusion of three-dimensionality. 301 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,360 - Verrocchio's paintings and sculptures 302 00:25:48,360 --> 00:25:50,600 both had a bit of a sense of motion, 303 00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:55,560 and Leonardo builds on that and does it even better than Verrocchio did. 304 00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:58,280 And it's our first sign that Leonardo 305 00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:03,280 is beginning to surpass Verrocchio as a painter of motion and emotion. 306 00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:11,760 - LEONARDO: - The art of perspective is such that it makes what is flat 307 00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:15,760 appear in relief and what is in relief appear flat. 308 00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:22,560 - Part of Leonardo's heritage was the revolutionary 309 00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:25,400 invention of single-point linear perspective. 310 00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:32,760 So a young man learning art in Florence in the 1460s, 311 00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:35,000 as Leonardo would have done, 312 00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:39,680 he understood that he had to be a complete master of that. 313 00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,520 - Single-point linear perspective - 314 00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:46,760 a method of bringing the illusion of depth to a two-dimensional work, 315 00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,280 had been devised by Brunelleschi, 316 00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:52,520 but it was the architect Leon Battista Alberti 317 00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:55,360 who had enshrined it for Renaissance artists 318 00:26:55,360 --> 00:26:58,080 in his treatise Della Pittura. 319 00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:01,520 - Perspective was very important to the painters. 320 00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:04,280 That's basically how things recede into space 321 00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:08,000 and the vanishing point that parallel lines seem to go to. 322 00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:11,240 Musicians had mathematical theories of harmony 323 00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:15,280 and perspective was rather like that for painters - they had a theory - 324 00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:19,000 so he began to develop an interest not just in the mathematics 325 00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:21,160 of organising space in pictures 326 00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:24,360 but also in how the eye works and how slippery it is. 327 00:27:24,360 --> 00:27:27,760 He's the first of the theorists in painting who realises 328 00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:30,760 that the business of seeing is very complicated. 329 00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:35,920 - LEONARDO: - All objects transmit their image to the eye 330 00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:37,760 by a pyramid of lines... 331 00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:42,000 ..which start from the edges of an object's surface 332 00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:46,280 and, converging from a distance, meet in a single point. 333 00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:52,080 And I will show that this point is situated in the eye, 334 00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:55,360 which is the universal judge of all objects. 335 00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,680 - In 1472, at the age of 20, 336 00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,320 Leonardo joined a painter's guild 337 00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:08,840 whose members were among the most talented artists in Florence - 338 00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:12,520 Filippino Lippi, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 339 00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:16,320 Pietro Perugino and Sandro Botticelli. 340 00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:20,920 Though Leonardo remained a part of Verrocchio's workshop, 341 00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:25,280 he was now a "dipintore" - a professional painter 342 00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:28,200 able to receive his own commissions. 343 00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,000 Florentine artists were frequently hired by churches 344 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:35,160 and the city's wealthiest families 345 00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:38,200 to paint the Bible's most popular subjects - 346 00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:40,280 the Madonna and Child, 347 00:28:40,280 --> 00:28:42,880 the Adoration of the Magi, 348 00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:44,920 the Crucifixion. 349 00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:50,680 Another frequently depicted scene was the Annunciation - 350 00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:54,280 the moment in which the angel Gabriel descends from heaven 351 00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:56,320 to proclaim to the Virgin Mary 352 00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,280 that she will give birth to the Son of God. 353 00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:04,520 It would be the focus of one of Leonardo's first independent works. 354 00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:11,280 Though he borrowed freely in technique from Verrocchio, 355 00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:16,240 Leonardo's Annunciation revealed his grasp of perspective, 356 00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,440 his deftness with light and shadow 357 00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:22,000 and his devotion to nature. 358 00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:32,680 ETHEREAL MUSIC 359 00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:26,520 - He's one of those people who lives in his own head. 360 00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:28,360 We meet those people in life 361 00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:31,760 and we recognise that they live on a planet other than our own. 362 00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,280 There are very, very few times in history when what you did 363 00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:38,360 when you had that kind of restless, 364 00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:40,000 inquiring, creative mind 365 00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:41,760 was to paint pictures. 366 00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:44,600 Renaissance Italy was perhaps the only place in time 367 00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:47,280 when that was so, and we're blessed that it was. 368 00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:03,520 - Leonardo received another commission, to paint a portrait 369 00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,600 of the young poet Ginevra de' Benci - 370 00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,800 the daughter of a wealthy, well-connected banking family 371 00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:12,680 who had occasional dealings with Leonardo's father. 372 00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:18,520 - To look at the Ginevra de' Benci is probably one of the great ways 373 00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:21,720 to understand Leonardo's early painting technique. 374 00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:27,400 It is a very deliberated, very protracted process. 375 00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:32,520 The painting is done on a very thin poplar wood panel 376 00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:36,280 and it has a priming that is gesso. 377 00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,520 Leonardo began by drawing the cartoon - 378 00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,280 a full-scale drawing on paper. 379 00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:47,480 He pricked the outlines... 380 00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:50,600 ..and rubbed with a pouncing bag... 381 00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:53,240 ..while the panel was underneath. 382 00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:56,160 A technique we call "spolvero". 383 00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:04,320 The oil medium, it's basically linseed oil and pigments. 384 00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:09,760 He applied in the thinnest veils 385 00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:14,000 what we call the glazes, or the "velature" in Italian. 386 00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,600 Layer by infinitesimal layer, 387 00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:22,760 he's able to calibrate the tonal transitions 388 00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:27,520 that permit him to explore this "sfumato" technique, 389 00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:31,280 where you blend the gradations in such a way 390 00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:34,000 that they seem to be the manner of smoke. 391 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:38,760 - In a playful reference to Ginevra's name, 392 00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,960 Leonardo surrounded her with juniper branches - 393 00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,160 "ginepro" in Italian. 394 00:33:55,760 --> 00:34:00,000 - We can already see how intensely Leonardo believes 395 00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:03,280 that emotions of the mind and emotions of the soul, 396 00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:07,000 so the "moti dell'animo e moti dell'anima", 397 00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:12,680 shows through this almost inscrutable gaze that she holds, 398 00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:15,360 and there is a connectivity with the viewer 399 00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:18,000 that gives it this tremendous power. 400 00:34:28,240 --> 00:34:29,920 - BATS SCREECH 401 00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:31,600 BELL CHIMES 402 00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:42,000 In April of 1476, 403 00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:45,280 Florentine authorities received an anonymous note 404 00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:48,760 accusing 17-year-old Jacopo Saltarelli 405 00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:50,960 of sodomy and prostitution. 406 00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:57,280 The accuser listed four men as Saltarelli's lovers, or customers, 407 00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:00,520 including 24-year-old Leonardo. 408 00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:05,200 - Theoretically, it's a crime. 409 00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:09,000 Theoretically, it's punishable by death. 410 00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,640 So Leonardo might well have been arrested, 411 00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:16,080 he might well have spent time in the holding cells. 412 00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:20,320 - But among the accused was a son of the Tornabuoni family, 413 00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:22,360 a powerful Florentine clan 414 00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:25,440 with enough connections to have the charges dropped. 415 00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:30,280 Two months later, the four men were absolved. 416 00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:34,000 No further prosecution was pursued against them. 417 00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,760 Homosexuality, though condemned by the Church, 418 00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:43,280 was widely tolerated in 15th century Florence, 419 00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,000 where a number of notable artists and poets 420 00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:48,160 were publicly known to be gay. 421 00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:23,600 Leonardo wrote nothing about his sexuality or the allegation, 422 00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:27,280 but just a few years later he would draw a device 423 00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:32,160 for removing bars from windows and another for opening a prison cell. 424 00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:36,160 They were some of his first mechanical inventions. 425 00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:48,520 LEONARDO: - Painting is born of nature, 426 00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:52,400 or, rather, it is the grandchild of nature... 427 00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:54,280 - BIRDS CHIRP 428 00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:00,640 - ..for all visible things are produced by nature, 429 00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:05,520 and these, her creations, have given birth to painting... 430 00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:12,160 ..so we may justly call it the grandchild of nature 431 00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:14,280 and related to God. 432 00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:18,040 - Nature is God. 433 00:37:19,040 --> 00:37:21,040 Nature is perfection. 434 00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,360 Nature is proportion. 435 00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:30,160 Nature is the entity which obtains every effect 436 00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:34,480 with the shortest and direct way that is possible. 437 00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:41,400 The best a scientist or a painter can do is imitate nature. 438 00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:47,280 - He has an amazing sense that nature is a perfect invention, 439 00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:50,080 that there is nothing superfluous and nothing lacking. 440 00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:52,160 Nature does nothing in vain. 441 00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:53,760 - HORSE SNORTS 442 00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:57,520 - If the bone is that shape, then it must do something. 443 00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:01,920 Every small aspect of that form must have a function. 444 00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:03,440 - BAT SCREECHES 445 00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:07,360 - He does claim that the human being can take things from nature 446 00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:09,760 and put them together in a different way. 447 00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:12,600 That you can invent things that nature didn't invent, 448 00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:15,760 so you could act as a second nature in the world. 449 00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:23,760 - In the late 1470s, Leonardo finally left Verrocchio's studio 450 00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:25,800 and opened one of his own 451 00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:29,400 with his own apprentices and assistants. 452 00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:33,480 Between commissions, he devised and drew machines 453 00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:35,800 for an array of purposes. 454 00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,080 Some were inspired by the designs of classical inventors 455 00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:40,880 or Renaissance engineers, 456 00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:45,840 and all were informed by his close observations of nature - 457 00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:48,600 the spirals in a snail's shell, 458 00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:51,520 the eddies of water in a surging stream 459 00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:55,040 and the swirls of wind induced by a thunderstorm. 460 00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:59,520 He drew an Archimedes' screw - an ancient device 461 00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:02,440 created to force water to flow upwards - 462 00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:07,080 and sketched construction machines, a mill for processing grain 463 00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:11,280 and a human flying contraption featuring bat-like wings. 464 00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:17,920 For Leonardo, building the machines often seemed beside the point. 465 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:20,400 - What is beauty for Leonardo 466 00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:23,640 is proportion and harmony among its parts 467 00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:27,880 and is a balance between light and shade, 468 00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:31,600 is organisation of all the inner parts 469 00:39:31,600 --> 00:39:36,440 in a way that provides an immediate perception of coherence. 470 00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:41,520 This is why I like to call these drawings portraits. 471 00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:44,320 He takes the same care in making them 472 00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:48,280 as he puts into portraying one of his famous ladies. 473 00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:53,920 - In March of 1481, 474 00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:57,920 an order of Augustinian friars hired Leonardo to paint 475 00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:02,280 a massive altarpiece for the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, 476 00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,280 located just outside the city's walls. 477 00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:08,280 His father, who did legal work for the monks, 478 00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:10,400 helped broker the contract. 479 00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:14,520 He was to depict another frequently painted Bible scene, 480 00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,080 known as the Adoration of the Magi, 481 00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:20,280 in which three kings visit the newborn Jesus 482 00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,280 and recognise Him as the Messiah. 483 00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:25,440 - There's little evidence 484 00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,560 that he was personally a very religious person. 485 00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:32,160 It's evident that he knew the stories. 486 00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:35,360 That was his bread and butter as an artist. 487 00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:39,760 Even when he is dealing with non-religious subjects - 488 00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:42,520 rocks or water or trees - 489 00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:46,000 I think he brings that sense that all things 490 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:51,000 are part of this astounding system that God has made. 491 00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:54,520 He never simply bows to conventional religious ideas 492 00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:57,920 and makes himself the illustrator of the catechism. 493 00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,520 He's always looking for something more. 494 00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:05,520 - For the dozens of figures who would populate his painting, 495 00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:09,000 Leonardo sat in the piazzas of Florence, 496 00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,000 quietly observing and sketching. 497 00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:17,760 LEONARDO: - You must wander around and constantly, as you go, 498 00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:23,600 observe, note and consider the circumstances and behaviour of men 499 00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:26,160 as they talk, quarrel, 500 00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:28,280 laugh or fight together. 501 00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:34,160 And make brief sketches of them in a notebook, 502 00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:38,400 for the forms and movements of bodies are so infinite 503 00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,760 that the memory is incapable of retaining them. 504 00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:47,760 So keep these sketches as your guides and masters. 505 00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:53,280 - In one preparatory drawing for his Adoration, 506 00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:56,160 Leonardo used dozens of perspective lines 507 00:41:56,160 --> 00:41:59,160 to create an intricate three-dimensional setting, 508 00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:02,280 which he then populated with animals and figures. 509 00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:08,000 On an 8ft-wide poplar panel coated with gesso, 510 00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:12,000 Leonardo sketched and resketched an underdrawing by hand 511 00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:14,960 using black chalk or charcoal. 512 00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:25,760 On top of this, he began to rough out the figures 513 00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:28,280 in black, brown and blue pigments, 514 00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:30,600 which he applied by brush. 515 00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:41,800 Next he added a thin coat of white paint. 516 00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:47,160 Using layers of diluted black and brown glazes, 517 00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,760 Leonardo masterfully developed contrasting areas of light 518 00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:55,840 and shadow that eventually would give the scene dimension and depth - 519 00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,000 a technique known as "chiaroscuro". 520 00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:07,760 Soon, a riveting scene featuring the Virgin and Child, 521 00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:10,080 three kings kneeling in homage, 522 00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:12,760 a throng of astonished eyewitnesses, 523 00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:14,760 ancient ruins 524 00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:18,760 and horses and soldiers in a distant battle began to emerge. 525 00:43:20,280 --> 00:43:23,760 It was unlike any Adoration ever painted. 526 00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:52,280 - When the star stops and the kings see Mary and the Christ Child, 527 00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:54,200 they are full of great joy. 528 00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:05,000 They feel joy, but there are many people - there are three kings 529 00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:07,520 and then there are all the members of the entourage - 530 00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:12,280 and people do not all respond in exactly the same way. 531 00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,280 So he's really looking at it in a way 532 00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:29,120 that no-one had ever done before, 533 00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:30,720 no-one had ever done before, 534 00:44:30,720 --> 00:44:32,920 and that is simply astounding. 535 00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:21,280 - Among the bystanders in the painting's lower-right corner, 536 00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:25,760 Leonardo painted a male figure, likely a self-portrait, 537 00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:29,000 who gazes away from the scene's dramatic centre. 538 00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:36,000 But less than a year after beginning his Adoration of the Magi, 539 00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,760 Leonardo abandoned the work. 540 00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:43,000 "So grand was his vision..." wrote Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, 541 00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:45,520 one of Leonardo's early biographers, 542 00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:50,000 "..that he saw errors even in things that others called miracles." 543 00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:53,760 - You can feel this sort of dissatisfaction. 544 00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:58,160 He wants to not only capture the snapshot of that scene 545 00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:01,360 but he wants to ask himself, "How would everyone have behaved? 546 00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:03,920 "How would the camels and the animals and the Magi - 547 00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,480 "how would everyone have behaved at that moment?" 548 00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:10,680 He ends up with a lot of unfinished work because the questions he's 549 00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:13,760 setting himself are not questions that you can answer easily. 550 00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:29,240 - LEONARDO: - We do not lack ways of passing our miserable days. 551 00:46:29,240 --> 00:46:32,760 Still, we do not want to spend them in vain, 552 00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:36,920 drawing no praise and leaving no memory of ourselves 553 00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:39,000 in the minds of mortals. 554 00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:44,680 - We can see in Leonardo a despair and a gloom happening. 555 00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:47,680 He hasn't finished the Adoration of the Magi 556 00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:49,920 and he keeps jotting in his notebook... 557 00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,080 - LEONARDO: - Dimmi. Dimmi. Dimmi se mai... 558 00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:55,280 - .."Tell me. Tell me. Tell me if anything ever gets done." 559 00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,760 - "Tell me, Leonardo, why such anguish?" 560 00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:21,720 wrote a friend on a sheet of Leonardo's paper. 561 00:47:21,720 --> 00:47:26,760 "Where will I settle?" Leonardo asked himself on the same page. 562 00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:30,920 - It was time for Leonardo to move on. He knew it. 563 00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:33,320 He needed to seek new horizons. 564 00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:37,000 And he gets an opportunity when there's a delegation 565 00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:39,360 that's sent from Florence to Milan. 566 00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:43,280 It's almost cultural diplomacy, because the people in Florence 567 00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:45,760 are trying to appeal to the Duke of Milan 568 00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:48,680 by sending great architects and artists and painters. 569 00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:52,760 - The delegation likely travelled on horseback, 570 00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:55,400 first climbing the Apennine Mountains, 571 00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:58,000 then riding up the Po River Valley, 572 00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,320 before reaching the plains of Lombardy, 573 00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:03,280 where Milan, a city of 80,000 people 574 00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,280 surrounded by three miles of medieval walls, 575 00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:08,520 rose up before the Alps. 576 00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:12,000 Unlike Florence, a republic whose officials were elected 577 00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:15,160 from the leading guilds, Milan was a city state 578 00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:18,000 ruled for two centuries by merciless strongmen 579 00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:21,000 who went by the title of duke. 580 00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:25,080 Ludovico Sforza, though not officially Milan's duke, 581 00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,320 had sidelined his nephew in 1480 582 00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:32,760 and kept control through brute force and cunning statecraft, 583 00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:36,000 which he used to navigate the ever-shifting alliances 584 00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:40,760 of Italy's duchies, kingdoms, republics and the Papal States. 585 00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:45,680 - Any prince, any government, had to be wary of all the neighbours, 586 00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:47,520 all the other people in Italy, 587 00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:50,520 because there was a kind of tense balance, 588 00:48:50,520 --> 00:48:54,040 a kind of equipoise, between and among these states. 589 00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:59,000 Ludovico was very much a spider at the centre of this web, 590 00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:03,680 which would tremble whenever someone else began to move on the peninsula. 591 00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:06,760 Brilliant figure in many ways, politically astute, 592 00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:09,920 extremely deceitful and unscrupulous and, 593 00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:14,520 by the 1480s, probably militarily 594 00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:18,760 the most powerful person on the Italian peninsula. 595 00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:23,680 - Known as Il Moro - The Moor, in part for his dark complexion - 596 00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:28,000 Sforza had cultivated a court that was among the most sophisticated 597 00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:29,760 in all of Europe. 598 00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:33,760 He kept his palace populated with engineers and poets, 599 00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:36,840 doctors, artists and mathematicians, 600 00:49:36,840 --> 00:49:41,160 whom he commissioned to design and build churches and fortifications, 601 00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:42,920 create works of art 602 00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:46,160 and collaborate on plans for the elaborate pageants 603 00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:48,080 he was fond of staging. 604 00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:52,280 - One of the things that surprises us about Leonardo's choice 605 00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:55,280 to go and live in Milan is that he went from a city 606 00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:58,920 which had always prized its political liberty 607 00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:02,560 to a Soviet-type situation. 608 00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:06,280 He needs the leisure to be able to work his ideas out 609 00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:08,000 in a creative way, 610 00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,280 without the immediate market pressure of producing a work. 611 00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:16,280 - LEONARDO: - Most illustrious Lord, I shall endeavour to explain 612 00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:21,000 myself to Your Excellency, showing Your Lordship my secrets. 613 00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:24,520 - Leonardo dictated a letter, addressed to the Duke, 614 00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:26,760 proclaiming his skill as an engineer 615 00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:30,240 and enumerating his ideas for military devices. 616 00:50:30,240 --> 00:50:33,520 LEONARDO: - I have designs for extremely light 617 00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:37,840 and strong bridges, suitable to be most easily carried, 618 00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:42,760 and, with them, you may pursue the enemy and flee at any time. 619 00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:48,080 I have methods for destroying every stronghold or other fortress, 620 00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:50,160 even if it were built on rock. 621 00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:55,280 I will make safe and unassailable covered chariots, 622 00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:58,280 which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, 623 00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:02,760 can withstand any attack, even by large groups of warriors. 624 00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:06,760 Should bombardment operations fail, 625 00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:09,280 I would contrive catapults, 626 00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:11,520 mangonels, trebuchets 627 00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:15,520 and other admirably efficient machines not in common use. 628 00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:44,080 - There is no evidence Leonardo ever received a reply to his letter 629 00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:46,160 or even sent it. 630 00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:50,160 With no prospect of a job as Sforza's military engineer, 631 00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:52,760 he needed to find other paying work. 632 00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,160 Eventually, he formed a partnership 633 00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:59,520 with brothers Ambrogio and Evangelista de Predis, 634 00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:02,480 who operated a successful local studio. 635 00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:07,760 Together, the three artists secured a commission to paint an altarpiece 636 00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:12,000 for the Chapel of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. 637 00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:17,000 The contract, dated April 25th, 1483, 638 00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,520 specified that the altarpiece should include an image 639 00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:25,000 of the Virgin and Child, flanked by two smaller side panels. 640 00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,000 Leonardo was to paint the central panel. 641 00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:34,760 - Mary, of course, was the most common subject 642 00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:37,280 in medieval and Renaissance art. 643 00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:39,320 - ETHEREAL MUSIC 644 00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:43,280 - Here, Mary is Leonardo's focus. 645 00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:48,760 Mary's right hand, 646 00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:52,280 which is on the back of John the Baptist, 647 00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:54,280 is very tense. 648 00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,000 The fingers are pressing into John's back 649 00:52:57,000 --> 00:52:59,040 but the thumb is over his shoulder, 650 00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:01,600 and what she's doing is holding him back. 651 00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:05,280 Mary, in the popular theology that Leonardo 652 00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:07,280 and everyone at the time knew, 653 00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:10,000 already understood her son must one day die, 654 00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,520 and here he shows her preventing the prophet 655 00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:17,600 of her own son's future death from drawing near to Christ. 656 00:53:17,600 --> 00:53:22,280 Christ, the child at her left, accepts this future death. 657 00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,680 Indeed, He's turned to John the Baptist and He's blessing him. 658 00:53:26,680 --> 00:53:31,000 She's lowering her left hand toward His head, 659 00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:35,280 but her hand can never reach her child's head 660 00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:40,000 because there's a figure, an angel, kneeling behind her son 661 00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:44,840 and the angel is pointing toward John the Baptist. 662 00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:50,280 Mary, as human mother, knows her son must die 663 00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:52,520 but cannot accept that, 664 00:53:52,520 --> 00:53:57,000 and so God sends his angel to prevent Mary's instinctive, 665 00:53:57,000 --> 00:53:59,520 natural, maternal instinct 666 00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:02,760 from avoiding the future Passion. 667 00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:09,760 It is absolutely the most complex Madonna image 668 00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:11,760 of the entire Renaissance. 669 00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:18,280 Its complexity lies in a probing effort 670 00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:21,280 to understand a deep mystery, 671 00:54:21,280 --> 00:54:25,760 which is how, in a woman prepared from all eternity 672 00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:31,280 to bear the Son of God, humanity still fully expresses itself. 673 00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:43,280 - After a disagreement with the monks over money, 674 00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:46,320 Leonardo and his partners withheld the painting. 675 00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:49,520 Their dispute would go unresolved for decades. 676 00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:54,280 - Leonardo will do what Leonardo does, 677 00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:56,520 pretty much disregarding 678 00:54:56,520 --> 00:54:59,280 what the expectations of the patrons are, 679 00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:03,000 and the patrons learned, through their enormous frustrations, 680 00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:06,880 and they would get quite angry that this was who Leonardo was. 681 00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:11,000 - Leonardo soon formed his own studio in Milan, 682 00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:14,160 where he collaborated on portraits and religious works 683 00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:17,000 with assistants and other accomplished masters 684 00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:19,720 and offered instruction to eager apprentices. 685 00:55:20,720 --> 00:55:22,760 He started, but abandoned, 686 00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:27,000 a painting of the 4th century theologian and ascetic Saint Jerome. 687 00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:30,280 He got further with a portrait of a musician, 688 00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:35,280 likely Atalante Migliorotti, who had travelled with him to Milan. 689 00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:40,920 And Leonardo finally began to get commissions from Ludovico Sforza. 690 00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:45,760 Among them was a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, 691 00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:50,000 the well-educated teenage daughter of a Milanese civil servant 692 00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:51,920 who had caught Il Moro's eye, 693 00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:55,520 and, soon after, was living in a suite of rooms in his castle. 694 00:55:57,520 --> 00:56:01,320 - What Leonardo has done is to tell a mini narrative in this image. 695 00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:04,360 She is holding the ermine, 696 00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:07,280 this animal which is symbolic of purity 697 00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:11,440 because the ermine was said to prefer to die rather than get dirty, 698 00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:15,400 and she is turning away from us, 699 00:56:15,400 --> 00:56:18,280 looking and smiling slightly, 700 00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:21,160 so we must imagine the Duke is over there. 701 00:56:22,160 --> 00:56:25,360 We are looking at her, she is looking at the Duke. 702 00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:29,000 She is given status by this unseen presence, 703 00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:31,760 which is just spectacularly remarkable, 704 00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:35,680 given the fact that portraits didn't have narratives in them. 705 00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:40,520 - The way her wrist is cocked protectively around the ermine... 706 00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:45,760 ..the way the eyes of the ermine and the eyes of the lady 707 00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:49,160 are both glancing in the same direction 708 00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,360 and the way the light glints off of her eyes 709 00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:55,240 and off the white ermine, 710 00:56:55,240 --> 00:56:59,840 it's Leonardo at his best, showing a scene in motion. 711 00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:03,600 - The greatest task of the painter is to paint the figure 712 00:57:03,600 --> 00:57:06,280 and the intentions of the mind. 713 00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:12,000 He says, "Where there is no life, make it alive." 714 00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:18,760 - Leonardo moved into a spacious studio and living quarters 715 00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:20,640 at the Corte Vecchia, 716 00:58:20,640 --> 00:58:23,960 a former palace adjacent to Milan's colossal cathedral. 717 00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:29,520 In the new workshop, which he would refer to as "la mia fabrica", 718 00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:35,160 my factory, Leonardo would paint portraits, draw futuristic machines, 719 00:58:35,160 --> 00:58:39,080 and make meticulous observations in dozens of notebooks. 720 00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:40,640 DOG BARKS 721 00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:04,280 - I think we get close to a key quality of Leonardo 722 00:59:04,280 --> 00:59:06,000 in the notebooks. 723 00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:09,240 It's not just that Leonardo knew an awful lot, 724 00:59:09,240 --> 00:59:11,720 it's that he found out an awful lot. 725 00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:16,760 - LEONARDO: - What light and shadow are? What outlines are seen in trees? 726 00:59:16,760 --> 00:59:19,760 What rules should be given to boys learning to paint? 727 00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:23,160 - The way he found out was by asking questions. 728 00:59:23,160 --> 00:59:26,600 - Why the sun appears larger when setting than at noon 729 00:59:26,600 --> 00:59:28,160 when it is nearer to us? 730 00:59:28,160 --> 00:59:31,760 - And indeed the interrogative mode is quite often present 731 00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:33,400 in the notebooks. 732 00:59:33,400 --> 00:59:35,440 - LEONARDO SPEAKS ITALIAN 733 00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:39,760 - Why is that happening? 734 00:59:39,760 --> 00:59:42,520 - How does it happen? - LEONARDO SPEAKS ITALIAN 735 00:59:42,520 --> 00:59:44,360 - LEONARDO SPEAKS ITALIAN 736 00:59:44,360 --> 00:59:47,920 - What is the quality of that thing or person or emotion? 737 00:59:47,920 --> 00:59:49,760 - LEONARDO SPEAKS ITALIAN 738 00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:52,600 - He's posing questions and looking for answers. 739 00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:55,240 - LEONARDO SPEAKS ITALIAN 740 00:59:56,760 --> 01:00:00,560 - The beauty of what he does is that he is 741 01:00:00,560 --> 01:00:05,440 carrying a catalogue of notions that are organised 742 01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:07,760 almost like a stream of consciousness. 743 01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:09,800 - LEONARDO SPEAKS ITALIAN 744 01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:14,120 - His knowledge knows no boundaries. 745 01:00:16,640 --> 01:00:18,480 - LION ROARS 746 01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:21,320 - The way we absorb the world is all at once 747 01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:25,400 and that's the simultaneous gluttonous impact 748 01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:27,320 that you get from his notebooks. 749 01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:33,000 He has to be there and he has to render it right away. 750 01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:37,280 - LEONARDO: - Define first what is meant by height and depth, 751 01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:39,600 also how the elements are situated... 752 01:00:39,600 --> 01:00:43,280 - In one notebook, he designed a city built on two levels 753 01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:45,360 to improve sanitation, 754 01:00:45,360 --> 01:00:48,080 sketched castle and church architecture, 755 01:00:48,080 --> 01:00:51,840 including a study for the dome of Milan's cathedral, 756 01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:54,360 and invented weapons of war. 757 01:00:57,280 --> 01:01:00,760 Leonardo also drew fantastical flying machines. 758 01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:54,520 He wasn't the first to imagine conquering the skies. 759 01:01:54,520 --> 01:01:58,160 Daedalus, a mythic craftsman of ancient Greece, 760 01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:01,160 had fashioned wings for himself and his son Icarus 761 01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:04,560 in an effort to escape their captors on the Isle of Crete. 762 01:02:06,520 --> 01:02:11,280 Aspiring aviators in China, Iran, Scotland and elsewhere 763 01:02:11,280 --> 01:02:16,000 had designed machines and made ill-fated attempts at flight. 764 01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:22,240 LEONARDO: - Remember that your flying machine must imitate the bat 765 01:02:22,240 --> 01:02:26,000 because the web, being connected to the structure, 766 01:02:26,000 --> 01:02:28,480 gives strength to the wings. 767 01:02:29,480 --> 01:02:32,760 - Many of Leonardo's designs were ornithopters - 768 01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:36,160 machines that relied on the human-powered flapping of wings 769 01:02:36,160 --> 01:02:38,240 to achieve flight. 770 01:02:38,240 --> 01:02:43,280 His wings would be constructed of cane, rope and fine linen - 771 01:02:43,280 --> 01:02:46,160 the lightest materials he could find. 772 01:02:46,160 --> 01:02:49,760 Pilots would use pulleys and cords to co-ordinate movement 773 01:02:49,760 --> 01:02:53,280 and pedals and cranks to supply power. 774 01:02:54,280 --> 01:02:58,760 LEONARDO: - A man with large enough wings, duly connected, 775 01:02:58,760 --> 01:03:01,520 might overcome the resistance of the air 776 01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:05,760 and succeed in conquering it and rising above it. 777 01:03:07,520 --> 01:03:10,360 - In order to achieve lift, he needed to create, 778 01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:12,920 basically, a deflection of the air. 779 01:03:12,920 --> 01:03:17,520 We are flying because we are able to redirect the airflow 780 01:03:17,520 --> 01:03:19,600 from horizontal to downward, 781 01:03:19,600 --> 01:03:23,000 and Newton's law says that if you deflect it downward, 782 01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:25,520 the reaction to it is it pushes you up, 783 01:03:25,520 --> 01:03:30,080 and he basically understood that without being able to explain it. 784 01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:35,280 - Though ingenious and of singular artistic beauty, 785 01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:38,520 his flying machines could not have flown. 786 01:03:38,520 --> 01:03:41,280 The materials of his day were too heavy 787 01:03:41,280 --> 01:03:44,240 and human musculature too weak. 788 01:03:45,280 --> 01:03:48,920 LEONARDO: - The dragonfly flies with four wings 789 01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:51,520 and, when the front wings are raised, 790 01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:54,120 the back wings are lowered, 791 01:03:54,120 --> 01:03:58,760 but each pair needs to be sufficient of itself to bear the full weight. 792 01:04:01,760 --> 01:04:05,040 - In the years ahead, Leonardo would fill his notebooks 793 01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:09,080 with drawings of a multitude of other mechanical devices - 794 01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:11,840 hydraulic screws, hoists, 795 01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:15,880 a perpetual motion machine, clocks and their component parts, 796 01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:19,400 springs, gears, ball bearings. 797 01:04:19,400 --> 01:04:23,760 Many of his designs were utilitarian, some theoretical, 798 01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:26,920 but all were devised with great consideration 799 01:04:26,920 --> 01:04:32,280 for the properties of physics, such as friction, inertia and gravity. 800 01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:38,280 - There's a great little phrase Kubrick said, 801 01:04:38,280 --> 01:04:40,160 and I'll paraphrase him, 802 01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:45,440 the lesson in the Icarus myth is not that we shouldn't fly that high, 803 01:04:45,440 --> 01:04:48,280 we just need to build better wings, you know? 804 01:04:48,280 --> 01:04:51,880 And I think Leonardo wants to build better wings. 805 01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:56,800 From irrigation to circulatory systems 806 01:04:56,800 --> 01:04:58,920 to machines of war - 807 01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:00,600 everything. 808 01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:04,720 - One of the greatest inventions by Leonardo 809 01:05:04,720 --> 01:05:07,000 is not the submarine or the aeroplane. 810 01:05:07,000 --> 01:05:08,760 They would not have worked 811 01:05:08,760 --> 01:05:12,280 and I'm sure he was absolutely aware of that. 812 01:05:12,280 --> 01:05:17,400 It is the way in which he used drawings to explain machines. 813 01:05:17,400 --> 01:05:21,280 These drawings are spectacular as drawings. 814 01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:30,480 He's able, for the first time, to portray a complex machine 815 01:05:30,480 --> 01:05:35,480 with one drawing in a way that you can understand perfectly 816 01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:37,920 even its interior parts. 817 01:05:38,920 --> 01:05:43,520 He was making exploded views aside the general view of the machine, 818 01:05:43,520 --> 01:05:47,000 and that was unsurpassed for many, many generations. 819 01:05:55,280 --> 01:05:57,280 - One of my favourite things 820 01:05:57,280 --> 01:05:59,760 is a little musical pun he does, 821 01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:03,280 where he takes Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do, 822 01:06:03,280 --> 01:06:08,600 and arranges those into Italian words that make a sentence, 823 01:06:08,600 --> 01:06:11,480 but they're also, of course, notes, so you can sing it. 824 01:06:11,480 --> 01:06:15,000 And what is being sung is, 825 01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:18,280 "Love alone makes me remember. 826 01:06:18,280 --> 01:06:21,200 "Love alone makes me alert." 827 01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:25,080 And there's a little stray comment on the back 828 01:06:25,080 --> 01:06:28,760 of one of the sheets of paper, "If there is no love, what then?" 829 01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:33,000 - LEONARDO: - Giacomo came to live with me 830 01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:36,160 on the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, 1490. 831 01:06:37,760 --> 01:06:41,280 - In the summer of 1490, Giacomo Caprotti, 832 01:06:41,280 --> 01:06:43,760 a ten-year-old from a nearby village, 833 01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:46,080 joined Leonardo's household. 834 01:06:47,080 --> 01:06:50,160 Caprotti's father had agreed to pay room and board 835 01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:52,960 while his son learned painting from the master. 836 01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:56,000 In time, the boy would show modest talent, 837 01:06:56,000 --> 01:06:59,520 but at first he ran errands, modelled for Leonardo, 838 01:06:59,520 --> 01:07:01,520 and caused trouble. 839 01:07:01,520 --> 01:07:06,920 - He is immediately noted as a mischief maker, a disruptive figure, 840 01:07:06,920 --> 01:07:10,280 and, indeed, the name that is given to him, Salai, 841 01:07:10,280 --> 01:07:13,080 it means little demon, little devil. 842 01:07:13,080 --> 01:07:16,760 And the first thing we learn about him is a long notation 843 01:07:16,760 --> 01:07:19,520 in one of Leonardo's notebooks - 844 01:07:19,520 --> 01:07:23,280 one of the longest continuous pieces of writing about another person 845 01:07:23,280 --> 01:07:25,680 that Leonardo ever put down on paper, 846 01:07:25,680 --> 01:07:28,200 and it's a list of Salai's misdeeds. 847 01:07:29,200 --> 01:07:32,520 - LEONARDO: - The second day, I had two shirts cut for him, 848 01:07:32,520 --> 01:07:34,960 a pair of hose and a jerkin, 849 01:07:34,960 --> 01:07:38,520 and when I put aside some money to pay for these things, 850 01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:41,120 he stole the money out of the purse, 851 01:07:41,120 --> 01:07:43,760 and I could never get him to confess, 852 01:07:43,760 --> 01:07:46,280 though I was quite certain of the fact. 853 01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:50,760 Again, on April 2nd, 854 01:07:50,760 --> 01:07:55,160 Gian Antonio left a silver point on a drawing he had made, 855 01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:58,000 and Giacomo stole it. 856 01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:00,560 - Thief... - Ladro. - ..liar... - Bugiardo. 857 01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:03,200 - ..obstinate... - Ostinato. - ..greedy... - Ghiotto. 858 01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:05,280 - ..Leonardo wrote in the margin. 859 01:08:06,280 --> 01:08:10,280 - Throughout it runs this wonderful sort of twinkle of fondness 860 01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:16,160 from the maestro as he lists these misdeeds of the urchin Salai, 861 01:08:16,160 --> 01:08:19,000 and this fondness for this mischievous 862 01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:21,760 but rather attractive and charismatic young lad 863 01:08:21,760 --> 01:08:26,280 carries on, really, throughout the next 30 years of companionship. 864 01:08:26,280 --> 01:08:30,160 Salai is an apprentice, then assistant, 865 01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:32,280 then companion, 866 01:08:32,280 --> 01:08:35,360 one might almost certainly say lover, 867 01:08:35,360 --> 01:08:39,760 and, erm, finally, sort of indispensable... 868 01:08:39,760 --> 01:08:43,160 ..erm, sort of, partner of Leonardo's life. 869 01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:48,760 He has a very particular look, which becomes the sort of trademark, 870 01:08:48,760 --> 01:08:53,760 almost, of Leonardo's presentation of the beautiful male face, 871 01:08:53,760 --> 01:08:55,920 or, indeed, androgynous face, 872 01:08:55,920 --> 01:08:59,760 because his angels often feature the look of Salai. 873 01:09:00,760 --> 01:09:03,600 - LEONARDO: - Salai, I want to rest, 874 01:09:03,600 --> 01:09:06,280 so no more wars. 875 01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:08,080 No more war. 876 01:09:08,080 --> 01:09:09,840 I surrender. 877 01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:13,320 - There's a contemporary reference to Salai. 878 01:09:13,320 --> 01:09:16,160 Someone says, "Our Leonardo stopped by the other day 879 01:09:16,160 --> 01:09:18,520 "with the insufferable Salai." - SHE LAUGHS 880 01:09:19,520 --> 01:09:22,160 - And yet something's being satisfied. 881 01:09:22,160 --> 01:09:24,920 He was with him for the rest of his life 882 01:09:24,920 --> 01:09:28,000 and I think you sort of can't argue with that. 883 01:09:30,000 --> 01:09:33,000 - LEONARDO: - Pleasure and pain appear as twins, 884 01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:36,080 since there is never one without the other. 885 01:09:36,080 --> 01:09:39,760 They stand back-to-back as though they were attached. 886 01:09:40,760 --> 01:09:44,280 If you take pleasure, know that behind him 887 01:09:44,280 --> 01:09:48,680 is one who will deal you tribulation and repentance, 888 01:09:48,680 --> 01:09:52,280 and they exist as opposites in the same body 889 01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:54,760 because they have the same basis, 890 01:09:54,760 --> 01:10:00,000 and the various forms of evil pleasure are the origin of pain. 891 01:10:02,160 --> 01:10:04,040 - TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: 892 01:10:27,840 --> 01:10:29,680 TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN: 893 01:11:11,880 --> 01:11:14,280 HOOVES CLOPPING 894 01:11:14,280 --> 01:11:20,000 In January of 1490, Ludovico Sforza hosted a lavish celebration 895 01:11:20,000 --> 01:11:24,280 to honour the marriage of his nephew to the Princess of Naples. 896 01:11:24,280 --> 01:11:28,760 The evening featured a sumptuous feast and an elaborate pageant, 897 01:11:28,760 --> 01:11:33,760 Il Paradiso, with costumed actors, music and dancing. 898 01:11:35,000 --> 01:11:39,760 Near midnight, a curtain was drawn to reveal a giant half-egg, 899 01:11:39,760 --> 01:11:43,920 the top edge arrayed with the 12 signs of the zodiac 900 01:11:43,920 --> 01:11:47,040 and the inside gilded with gold. 901 01:11:47,040 --> 01:11:51,520 The seven known celestial bodies were represented by actors. 902 01:11:51,520 --> 01:11:53,840 Candles served as stars. 903 01:11:55,760 --> 01:11:59,280 The performance culminated with the gods descending from heaven 904 01:11:59,280 --> 01:12:02,080 to proclaim the bride's many virtues. 905 01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:08,280 Leonardo had decorated the hall and designed all the costumes and sets. 906 01:12:10,520 --> 01:12:14,280 He had finally found a niche on Sforza's court. 907 01:12:15,760 --> 01:12:20,520 In time, Il Moro would appoint him an official engineer and painter. 908 01:12:21,520 --> 01:12:24,080 - He became a guru of the court. 909 01:12:24,080 --> 01:12:27,000 He had a stipend. He was a "stipendiato". 910 01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:31,280 It gave him space. It also gave him an area where there were musicians, 911 01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:33,600 and he himself was an accomplished musician. 912 01:12:33,600 --> 01:12:36,280 There were poets, there were historians, 913 01:12:36,280 --> 01:12:39,560 there were people doing natural philosophy, there are engineers. 914 01:12:39,560 --> 01:12:42,920 He was a very gracious man, by all accounts. Rather charming. 915 01:12:42,920 --> 01:12:45,760 The court suited him quite well. 916 01:12:45,760 --> 01:12:49,400 - He was someone who loved the humorous and loved the grotesque. 917 01:12:50,400 --> 01:12:52,280 Loved practical jokes. 918 01:12:54,000 --> 01:12:56,600 We might not think of Leonardo da Vinci 919 01:12:56,600 --> 01:12:59,280 as having a sense of humour, but he did. 920 01:12:59,280 --> 01:13:01,920 - LEONARDO: - It was asked of a painter why, 921 01:13:01,920 --> 01:13:06,960 since he painted such beautiful figures, his children were so ugly, 922 01:13:06,960 --> 01:13:11,520 to which the painter replied that he made his pictures by day 923 01:13:11,520 --> 01:13:14,280 and his children by night. 924 01:13:18,280 --> 01:13:22,600 - Leonardo also cultivates a huge network of intellectual friends 925 01:13:22,600 --> 01:13:24,520 and craftsmen, 926 01:13:24,520 --> 01:13:28,320 and his ambitions to write treatises really emerges. 927 01:13:28,320 --> 01:13:34,000 In Milan, there was an interest in more Aristotelian ways of thinking, 928 01:13:34,000 --> 01:13:39,120 which are much more based on empiricism, empirical observation. 929 01:13:39,120 --> 01:13:42,760 Leonardo was able to befriend all these people 930 01:13:42,760 --> 01:13:48,280 who translated treatises that probably enhanced his education 931 01:13:48,280 --> 01:13:51,760 and he kind of got his sea legs as an author. 932 01:13:51,760 --> 01:13:53,680 - RUMBLE OF THUNDER 933 01:13:53,680 --> 01:13:56,880 - Plato said, "You have to start with the great ideas." 934 01:13:56,880 --> 01:14:00,160 Aristotle said, "No, you have to start with the hard facts, 935 01:14:00,160 --> 01:14:03,200 "like rocks and dirt and plants. 936 01:14:03,200 --> 01:14:05,840 "In analysing them, you will come to the larger ideas 937 01:14:05,840 --> 01:14:07,760 "that allow you to construct a system." 938 01:14:07,760 --> 01:14:11,000 And I think that corresponded much more closely 939 01:14:11,000 --> 01:14:14,600 to Leonardo's own curiosity about the natural world 940 01:14:14,600 --> 01:14:16,760 and, in a sense, shaped it. 941 01:14:17,920 --> 01:14:21,280 - Determined to become a writer and intellectual, 942 01:14:21,280 --> 01:14:24,440 Leonardo acquired more and more books. 943 01:14:24,440 --> 01:14:27,960 The German craftsman Johannes Gutenberg 944 01:14:27,960 --> 01:14:32,760 had invented the printing press in 1452 - the year Leonardo was born. 945 01:14:34,760 --> 01:14:38,280 Within two decades, Venice had established itself 946 01:14:38,280 --> 01:14:40,160 as a centre for publishing, 947 01:14:40,160 --> 01:14:43,520 and Milan and Florence each had their own print shops. 948 01:14:45,280 --> 01:14:49,080 - Leonardo was an inveterate and omnivorous reader, 949 01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:52,680 and if he couldn't buy a book, he would borrow it. 950 01:14:52,680 --> 01:14:56,080 He's not just looking at the natural world, he's certainly doing that, 951 01:14:56,080 --> 01:14:59,160 but he's also looking at the best that has been thought and said 952 01:14:59,160 --> 01:15:00,760 by his predecessors. 953 01:15:01,760 --> 01:15:04,160 - LEONARDO: - Try to obtain the Vitolone, 954 01:15:04,160 --> 01:15:06,240 which is in the library of Pavia. 955 01:15:06,240 --> 01:15:10,560 Ask Benedetto Portinari how people go on the ice in Flanders. 956 01:15:10,560 --> 01:15:14,000 Ask Maestro Antonio how mortars are placed on bastions 957 01:15:14,000 --> 01:15:15,640 by day or by night. 958 01:15:15,640 --> 01:15:19,960 Get the Friar at Brera to show you De Ponderibus. 959 01:15:19,960 --> 01:15:23,680 - Leonardo also frequently quoted The Divine Comedy - 960 01:15:23,680 --> 01:15:28,280 the epic poem by Dante Alighieri, Florence's most famous writer. 961 01:15:30,280 --> 01:15:34,760 And he tried to master Latin, long the language of European scholars, 962 01:15:34,760 --> 01:15:38,600 filling page after page of his notebooks with vocabulary words 963 01:15:38,600 --> 01:15:40,760 written in his mirror script. 964 01:16:02,760 --> 01:16:04,760 ETHEREAL MUSIC 965 01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:10,000 LEONARDO: - Not being a literary man, certain presumptuous people 966 01:16:10,000 --> 01:16:13,760 will think that they may reasonably criticise me, 967 01:16:13,760 --> 01:16:17,000 alleging that I am a man without letters. 968 01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:19,160 Foolish men. 969 01:16:19,160 --> 01:16:24,000 They do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience 970 01:16:24,000 --> 01:16:25,680 rather than by words... 971 01:16:27,000 --> 01:16:31,600 ..and experience has been the master of those who wrote well. 972 01:16:33,120 --> 01:16:37,400 Therefore, I shall cite my master in all cases. 973 01:16:39,520 --> 01:16:43,800 - He says that, I am "uomo sanza lettere". 974 01:16:43,800 --> 01:16:46,760 I am a man who has no traditional knowledge. 975 01:16:46,760 --> 01:16:48,760 And this is a kind of admission 976 01:16:48,760 --> 01:16:51,760 which is in fact an expression of proudness. 977 01:16:51,760 --> 01:16:54,920 I have learned, not from libraries, not from books, 978 01:16:54,920 --> 01:16:57,160 but from the observation of nature. 979 01:16:57,160 --> 01:16:59,520 Nature is the real teacher. 980 01:17:00,520 --> 01:17:03,560 I am a disciple of nature. 981 01:17:03,560 --> 01:17:07,880 Many expressions in his notebooks express this frustration 982 01:17:07,880 --> 01:17:10,760 for not being considered as an intellectual. 983 01:17:10,760 --> 01:17:13,160 We would say today, as a scholar. 984 01:17:13,160 --> 01:17:19,000 At the same time, this was tempered by the self-confidence 985 01:17:19,000 --> 01:17:22,520 of knowing much more than those people... 986 01:17:23,520 --> 01:17:28,000 ..being able to perform things that the others not even could conceive. 987 01:17:31,280 --> 01:17:35,560 - Meanwhile, Leonardo had embarked on another ambitious project - 988 01:17:35,560 --> 01:17:40,280 a series of books that together would present his core beliefs 989 01:17:40,280 --> 01:17:43,000 on the art and science of painting. 990 01:17:48,760 --> 01:17:52,360 LEONARDO: - Light is the chaser away of darkness. 991 01:17:54,760 --> 01:17:58,360 Shade is the obstruction of light... 992 01:18:00,280 --> 01:18:04,080 ..and the eye can best distinguish the forms of objects 993 01:18:04,080 --> 01:18:08,920 when it is placed between the shaded and illuminated parts. 994 01:18:10,520 --> 01:18:14,200 - Using candles to illuminate spheres and cylinders, 995 01:18:14,200 --> 01:18:18,000 he observed how light, when cast on curved surfaces, 996 01:18:18,000 --> 01:18:22,440 created shadows of varying intensity and length. 997 01:18:23,520 --> 01:18:25,360 TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: 998 01:18:38,360 --> 01:18:42,280 LEONARDO: - The edges of shadows darken by degrees, 999 01:18:42,280 --> 01:18:48,200 and anyone ignorant of this fact will paint things with no relief, 1000 01:18:48,200 --> 01:18:52,520 and relief is the heart and soul of painting. 1001 01:19:00,120 --> 01:19:02,280 - MAN EXHALES 1002 01:19:02,280 --> 01:19:05,000 Like his old master, Verrocchio, 1003 01:19:05,000 --> 01:19:08,360 Leonardo believed that a deep knowledge of human anatomy 1004 01:19:08,360 --> 01:19:11,280 was essential to depicting the human form. 1005 01:19:12,760 --> 01:19:15,920 But he and his contemporaries were still dependent 1006 01:19:15,920 --> 01:19:19,400 on the medical teachings of ancient physicians and philosophers, 1007 01:19:19,400 --> 01:19:24,040 whose centuries-old theories had mostly gone unchallenged. 1008 01:19:24,040 --> 01:19:27,600 Existing anatomical illustrations, which had been informed 1009 01:19:27,600 --> 01:19:32,000 by those theories, were inaccurate and inadequate. 1010 01:19:33,520 --> 01:19:36,760 LEONARDO: - A painter who learns about the nature of tendons, 1011 01:19:36,760 --> 01:19:40,280 muscles and sinews will know just how many 1012 01:19:40,280 --> 01:19:43,960 and which tendons cause the movement of a limb, 1013 01:19:43,960 --> 01:19:48,520 or which muscle bulges and causes that tendon to contract. 1014 01:19:49,720 --> 01:19:54,280 - Leonardo drew muscles, bones and organs and experimented 1015 01:19:54,280 --> 01:19:58,760 with different techniques, cross sections and transparency. 1016 01:20:00,680 --> 01:20:02,800 TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN: 1017 01:20:30,640 --> 01:20:33,520 Now he obtained a skull... 1018 01:20:33,520 --> 01:20:37,520 ..and set out to map it in a series of drawings. 1019 01:20:37,520 --> 01:20:40,320 - He sectioned it horizontally and vertically. 1020 01:20:40,320 --> 01:20:43,760 You think, well, that's obvious, but it wasn't obvious. Nobody did that. 1021 01:20:43,760 --> 01:20:46,280 There are no anatomical drawings in earlier books 1022 01:20:46,280 --> 01:20:50,080 with sections of the skull, and he's looking at the skull empirically 1023 01:20:50,080 --> 01:20:52,360 for its features, what it looks like, 1024 01:20:52,360 --> 01:20:54,520 and wonderful, delicate drawings, 1025 01:20:54,520 --> 01:20:57,600 which are just awesome in terms of technique. 1026 01:20:57,600 --> 01:21:00,760 And you think, well, he's doing the anatomy of the skull, 1027 01:21:00,760 --> 01:21:04,800 but what he's really looking for is where the centre of the brain is. 1028 01:21:04,800 --> 01:21:07,280 He talks about the pole of the cranium 1029 01:21:07,280 --> 01:21:10,760 and the point where all these proportional systems cross 1030 01:21:10,760 --> 01:21:15,680 is where the senses all go into this central clearing house, as it were. 1031 01:21:15,680 --> 01:21:19,600 Those skull studies, which look like descriptive anatomy, 1032 01:21:19,600 --> 01:21:21,920 are actually devoted to understanding 1033 01:21:21,920 --> 01:21:23,760 the workings of the brain. 1034 01:21:25,080 --> 01:21:27,040 - LEONARDO: - What sneezing is. 1035 01:21:27,040 --> 01:21:28,400 - MAN SNEEZES 1036 01:21:28,400 --> 01:21:31,120 - What yawning is. 1037 01:21:31,120 --> 01:21:33,280 Sweating. 1038 01:21:33,280 --> 01:21:35,320 Fatigue. 1039 01:21:35,320 --> 01:21:37,320 Hunger. 1040 01:21:37,320 --> 01:21:38,920 Sleepiness. 1041 01:21:38,920 --> 01:21:40,320 Thirst. 1042 01:21:40,320 --> 01:21:42,360 Lust. 1043 01:21:43,360 --> 01:21:47,280 - Aristotle had believed that sensory impressions converged 1044 01:21:47,280 --> 01:21:52,280 in a brain cavity, where they were processed, interpreted and stored. 1045 01:21:52,280 --> 01:21:55,280 He called it the Sensus Communis. 1046 01:21:56,280 --> 01:22:00,520 LEONARDO: - The soul seems to be located in the site of reason 1047 01:22:00,520 --> 01:22:05,760 and the site of reason seems to be where all the senses converge. 1048 01:22:05,760 --> 01:22:08,520 This is called the "senso comune". 1049 01:22:10,000 --> 01:22:14,920 And the soul is not all throughout and in every part of the body, 1050 01:22:14,920 --> 01:22:18,600 as many previously believed, because if it were, 1051 01:22:18,600 --> 01:22:22,080 it would not be necessary to have the instruments of the senses 1052 01:22:22,080 --> 01:22:24,280 converge in a single location. 1053 01:22:25,520 --> 01:22:29,520 - To Leonardo, the transmission of information from the eye, 1054 01:22:29,520 --> 01:22:31,760 which he called the window of the soul, 1055 01:22:31,760 --> 01:22:35,240 to the brain and nervous system and the reaction that followed - 1056 01:22:35,240 --> 01:22:39,760 joy, fear, concern, surprise - 1057 01:22:39,760 --> 01:22:43,240 was the essence of the human experience. 1058 01:22:43,240 --> 01:22:47,280 Artists, he believed, should understand this phenomenon 1059 01:22:47,280 --> 01:22:51,760 and the science behind it to effectively portray emotion, 1060 01:22:51,760 --> 01:22:55,280 reveal character and tell riveting stories. 1061 01:23:30,760 --> 01:23:33,760 Leonardo saw proportion in the natural world 1062 01:23:33,760 --> 01:23:37,640 as evidence of nature's matchless gift for design. 1063 01:23:37,640 --> 01:23:41,880 Using male models, he began a meticulous study. 1064 01:23:42,880 --> 01:23:46,000 LEONARDO: - On the changing measurements of the human body 1065 01:23:46,000 --> 01:23:49,240 through the movements of the limbs from different views... 1066 01:23:50,240 --> 01:23:54,280 ..the measurements of the human body vary in each limb 1067 01:23:54,280 --> 01:23:58,680 according to how much it is bent and from different views 1068 01:23:58,680 --> 01:24:04,360 so that they grow or diminish to a varying extent on one side, 1069 01:24:04,360 --> 01:24:08,160 while they grow or diminish on the opposite side. 1070 01:24:12,040 --> 01:24:14,000 - Seeking inspiration, 1071 01:24:14,000 --> 01:24:16,920 Leonardo studied a treatise by Vitruvius, 1072 01:24:16,920 --> 01:24:19,800 a Roman architect of the 1st century BC, 1073 01:24:19,800 --> 01:24:22,760 who wrote about the symmetry between the human body 1074 01:24:22,760 --> 01:24:25,160 and a skilfully designed temple, 1075 01:24:25,160 --> 01:24:28,920 and carefully measured the proportions of what he described 1076 01:24:28,920 --> 01:24:30,760 as a well-shaped man. 1077 01:24:31,760 --> 01:24:33,800 - And this was classical belief - 1078 01:24:33,800 --> 01:24:37,760 that the symmetry and proportion of the human body 1079 01:24:37,760 --> 01:24:42,120 reflected as in a microcosm the greater harmony of the world. 1080 01:24:43,120 --> 01:24:46,280 - "Just as the human body yields a circular outline, 1081 01:24:46,280 --> 01:24:50,000 "so too a square figure may be found from it", 1082 01:24:50,000 --> 01:24:52,240 wrote Vitruvius. 1083 01:25:13,600 --> 01:25:16,840 LEONARDO: - The space between the parting of the lips 1084 01:25:16,840 --> 01:25:21,280 and the base of the nose is one-seventh of the face. 1085 01:25:21,280 --> 01:25:24,240 - Leonardo's very, very scientific about it. 1086 01:25:24,240 --> 01:25:27,760 - The space from the mouth to the bottom of the chin... 1087 01:25:27,760 --> 01:25:30,000 - He does all sorts of measurements. 1088 01:25:30,000 --> 01:25:33,080 - ..and equal... - From the forehead to the nose... - ..the mouth. 1089 01:25:33,080 --> 01:25:36,920 - ..to the chin, to the navel, to the genitals, of all of his assistants, 1090 01:25:36,920 --> 01:25:40,280 so he gets all the proportions exactly right, 1091 01:25:40,280 --> 01:25:43,080 the way Vitruvius had suggested. 1092 01:25:43,080 --> 01:25:47,160 - The distance from the top of the nose, where the eyebrows begin, 1093 01:25:47,160 --> 01:25:51,080 to the bottom of the chin is two-thirds of the face. 1094 01:26:07,520 --> 01:26:11,280 - Leonardo is interested in the human proportion 1095 01:26:11,280 --> 01:26:15,560 and he thinks that's divine enough to be represented. 1096 01:26:16,560 --> 01:26:20,840 He says, "There is enough poetry and enough cosmos 1097 01:26:20,840 --> 01:26:25,120 "and enough infinite in another human being 1098 01:26:25,120 --> 01:26:29,320 "or a rock and a waterfall or a half-smile." 1099 01:26:45,280 --> 01:26:50,520 - LEONARDO: - Caterina came on the 16th day of July, 1493. 1100 01:26:51,600 --> 01:26:53,680 - TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: 1101 01:27:08,520 --> 01:27:11,280 Since leaving Vinci decades earlier, 1102 01:27:11,280 --> 01:27:14,280 Leonardo had rarely made any note of his mother, 1103 01:27:14,280 --> 01:27:19,280 who, by 1493, was in her mid-60s and widowed. 1104 01:27:41,000 --> 01:27:44,280 One year later, on a page of his notebook, 1105 01:27:44,280 --> 01:27:47,520 he recorded the costs of burying her. 1106 01:27:47,520 --> 01:27:50,360 LEONARDO: - For the bier, eight soldi. 1107 01:27:50,360 --> 01:27:53,760 A pall over the bier, 12 soldi. 1108 01:27:53,760 --> 01:27:57,280 For bearing and placing the cross, four soldi. 1109 01:27:58,280 --> 01:28:02,280 For four priests and four clerics, 20 soldi. 1110 01:28:02,280 --> 01:28:05,920 For the gravediggers, 16 soldi. 1111 01:28:05,920 --> 01:28:08,760 Sugar and candles, 12 soldi. 1112 01:28:12,280 --> 01:28:15,280 Every evil leaves pain in our memory 1113 01:28:15,280 --> 01:28:18,160 except the supreme evil - death, 1114 01:28:18,160 --> 01:28:22,280 which destroys this memory along with our life. 1115 01:28:26,280 --> 01:28:31,760 - In November of 1493, Ludovico Sforza hosted a celebration 1116 01:28:31,760 --> 01:28:35,920 for his niece Bianca, who was marrying the King of Germany. 1117 01:28:35,920 --> 01:28:40,360 On display for the occasion was a colossal 20-foot-high clay horse 1118 01:28:40,360 --> 01:28:44,920 sculpted by Leonardo, the model for part of a bronze monument 1119 01:28:44,920 --> 01:28:47,000 honouring Il Moro's father. 1120 01:28:48,000 --> 01:28:52,000 "I'm certain that neither Greece nor Rome", one astonished witness said, 1121 01:28:52,000 --> 01:28:54,280 "ever saw anything more massive." 1122 01:28:55,280 --> 01:28:57,000 HORSE NEIGHS 1123 01:28:57,000 --> 01:29:00,880 The artist had studied live horses obsessively, 1124 01:29:00,880 --> 01:29:04,520 measuring their proportions and drawing their features 1125 01:29:04,520 --> 01:29:06,160 in his notebooks. 1126 01:29:13,960 --> 01:29:17,080 - I think he was better at horses than anyone has ever been. 1127 01:29:18,080 --> 01:29:19,960 - HORSE SNORTS 1128 01:29:19,960 --> 01:29:22,760 - HORSE NEIGHS - He has the horse rearing... 1129 01:29:22,760 --> 01:29:26,520 - ..and then he has the neck and the head turned in three different ways, 1130 01:29:26,520 --> 01:29:28,640 and there's so much motion. 1131 01:29:30,280 --> 01:29:32,360 You see all the different possibilities 1132 01:29:32,360 --> 01:29:34,800 and you see how accurate he is with all of them, too. 1133 01:29:35,800 --> 01:29:39,280 - Rather than cast the massive statue in the tried and tested way, 1134 01:29:39,280 --> 01:29:41,160 divided into pieces, 1135 01:29:41,160 --> 01:29:44,640 Leonardo planned to create one giant mould. 1136 01:29:46,520 --> 01:29:49,760 LEONARDO: - When you shall have made the mould upon the horse, 1137 01:29:49,760 --> 01:29:53,280 you must make the thickness of the metal in clay. 1138 01:29:53,280 --> 01:29:55,520 Dry it in layers. 1139 01:29:55,520 --> 01:29:59,760 Make the outside mould of plaster to save time in drying 1140 01:29:59,760 --> 01:30:01,520 and the expense in wood. 1141 01:30:02,520 --> 01:30:05,520 And with this plaster, enclose the irons 1142 01:30:05,520 --> 01:30:09,520 both outside and inside to a thickness of two fingers. 1143 01:30:10,520 --> 01:30:12,520 Make terracotta. 1144 01:30:13,880 --> 01:30:18,280 - He planned to build a lattice metal frame to secure the mould 1145 01:30:18,280 --> 01:30:21,280 before lowering it upside-down into a pit 1146 01:30:21,280 --> 01:30:24,080 using a pulley machine of his own design. 1147 01:30:25,080 --> 01:30:28,920 Finally, he would pour molten bronze through holes 1148 01:30:28,920 --> 01:30:30,680 spread across the mould, 1149 01:30:30,680 --> 01:30:34,800 using furnaces arrayed around the pit to cool the metal evenly. 1150 01:30:35,800 --> 01:30:41,280 Ludovico Sforza gave him the 75 tonnes of bronze he needed, 1151 01:30:41,280 --> 01:30:46,520 but in the fall of 1494, before Leonardo could put it to use, 1152 01:30:46,520 --> 01:30:50,000 SWORDS CLANGING Sforza confiscated it all. 1153 01:30:50,000 --> 01:30:54,280 The French King, Charles VIII, had ordered his troops south 1154 01:30:54,280 --> 01:30:56,280 to conquer the Kingdom of Naples, 1155 01:30:56,280 --> 01:30:59,360 setting the entire Italian peninsula on edge. 1156 01:31:00,360 --> 01:31:02,760 To preserve his control over Milan, 1157 01:31:02,760 --> 01:31:06,200 Il Moro quickly aligned himself with Charles. 1158 01:31:06,200 --> 01:31:09,160 At the same time, he sent the valuable metal 1159 01:31:09,160 --> 01:31:11,520 to his father-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, 1160 01:31:11,520 --> 01:31:13,320 who feared a French invasion 1161 01:31:13,320 --> 01:31:16,520 and planned to make cannons with Leonardo's bronze. 1162 01:31:17,760 --> 01:31:21,000 - He couldn't have been human if he wasn't disappointed 1163 01:31:21,000 --> 01:31:24,280 at losing this commission, which, had he been able 1164 01:31:24,280 --> 01:31:28,520 to bring it to fruition, it really would have made his reputation. 1165 01:31:28,520 --> 01:31:31,000 It would have been his work of fame. 1166 01:31:31,000 --> 01:31:35,760 - Ludovico Sforza would soon assign a new project to Leonardo - 1167 01:31:35,760 --> 01:31:39,280 a painting Leonardo believed few would ever see. 1168 01:31:40,760 --> 01:31:45,080 In the early 1490s, Il Moro had chosen a monastery 1169 01:31:45,080 --> 01:31:47,520 to serve as a mausoleum for his family. 1170 01:31:48,760 --> 01:31:52,520 Home to an order of Dominican friars, the site featured 1171 01:31:52,520 --> 01:31:57,040 a cloistered garden, quarters for the monks, a sacristy, 1172 01:31:57,040 --> 01:32:01,280 and the recently completed church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. 1173 01:32:02,280 --> 01:32:05,520 To adorn the south wall of the refectory, 1174 01:32:05,520 --> 01:32:10,440 Sforza commissioned a fresco of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. 1175 01:32:10,440 --> 01:32:12,280 For the north end, 1176 01:32:12,280 --> 01:32:15,520 Leonardo was to paint a scene suitable for the monks 1177 01:32:15,520 --> 01:32:18,520 who dined there in silent contemplation. 1178 01:32:18,520 --> 01:32:21,360 The final meal Christ shared with his apostles 1179 01:32:21,360 --> 01:32:23,280 before he was crucified - 1180 01:32:23,280 --> 01:32:25,280 The Last Supper. 1181 01:32:26,760 --> 01:32:29,760 It would be his most ambitious painting to date, 1182 01:32:29,760 --> 01:32:34,280 featuring multiple figures engaged in a complex, dynamic narrative 1183 01:32:34,280 --> 01:32:38,160 on a physical scale much larger than any of his previous works, 1184 01:32:38,160 --> 01:32:42,200 including the abandoned Adoration of the Magi. 1185 01:32:43,200 --> 01:32:46,360 - It's a difficult subject for painters because it's a long, 1186 01:32:46,360 --> 01:32:50,000 thin, wide picture, which is slightly difficult to organise, 1187 01:32:50,000 --> 01:32:54,400 and you want some drama, or Leonardo wanted drama in it. 1188 01:32:54,400 --> 01:32:56,280 - For the most part, 1189 01:32:56,280 --> 01:32:59,720 Last Supper paintings would be very sedate scenes. 1190 01:32:59,720 --> 01:33:02,600 If you look at these paintings, Christ and the apostles 1191 01:33:02,600 --> 01:33:05,920 ranged across the table mostly in silence, 1192 01:33:05,920 --> 01:33:09,400 eating, maybe one or two talking together, 1193 01:33:09,400 --> 01:33:11,760 and they're very placid scenes. 1194 01:33:34,520 --> 01:33:38,600 - He bought a Bible, a widely-read Italian language edition 1195 01:33:38,600 --> 01:33:42,400 that had been translated from Latin two decades earlier. 1196 01:33:43,400 --> 01:33:48,080 The Gospels - the books attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 1197 01:33:48,080 --> 01:33:50,600 offered varied but similar accounts 1198 01:33:50,600 --> 01:33:54,760 of the evening on which Jesus gathered his 12 apostles 1199 01:33:54,760 --> 01:33:58,280 and, during dinner, staggered them with a declaration. 1200 01:33:59,760 --> 01:34:02,920 "He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, 1201 01:34:02,920 --> 01:34:04,920 "the same shall betray me." 1202 01:34:05,920 --> 01:34:09,000 - It's an incredibly emotional moment, 1203 01:34:09,000 --> 01:34:12,280 where we have this charismatic religious leader 1204 01:34:12,280 --> 01:34:15,520 with His band of brothers, and they're meeting in 1205 01:34:15,520 --> 01:34:18,960 an occupied city whose authorities are plotting against them. 1206 01:34:18,960 --> 01:34:21,520 And, of course, sitting in their midst is a traitor - 1207 01:34:21,520 --> 01:34:23,520 the one who is going to betray the leader. 1208 01:34:23,520 --> 01:34:26,280 And I think Leonardo is probably electrified by this story 1209 01:34:26,280 --> 01:34:30,520 and he was going to tell it in a very dramatic, theatrical way. 1210 01:34:30,520 --> 01:34:34,280 A way in which no artist previously had thought about, 1211 01:34:34,280 --> 01:34:36,080 let alone attempted. 1212 01:34:37,080 --> 01:34:42,120 - Leonardo began exploring how the disciples, roiled by Christ's words, 1213 01:34:42,120 --> 01:34:45,360 would twist their limbs, wring their hands, 1214 01:34:45,360 --> 01:34:47,280 and distort their faces. 1215 01:34:48,280 --> 01:34:51,520 LEONARDO: - One who was drinking and has left the glass 1216 01:34:51,520 --> 01:34:55,200 where it was and turned his head towards the speaker. 1217 01:34:55,200 --> 01:34:59,280 Another, weaving the fingers of his hands together, 1218 01:34:59,280 --> 01:35:02,160 turns, frowning to his companion. 1219 01:35:02,160 --> 01:35:04,760 - For Leonardo, he had to understand 1220 01:35:04,760 --> 01:35:07,720 how the body worked as a responsive machine. 1221 01:35:08,720 --> 01:35:12,160 What happens when Christ says, "One of you will betray me", 1222 01:35:12,160 --> 01:35:15,160 with the brain and the nervous impulses and so on? 1223 01:35:16,160 --> 01:35:19,520 He would see, if he was looking, say, at a disciple 1224 01:35:19,520 --> 01:35:23,000 who reacts to Christ's pronouncement by, say, throwing out their arms, 1225 01:35:23,000 --> 01:35:25,760 that figure is expressing "il concetto dell'anima" - 1226 01:35:25,760 --> 01:35:28,840 the purpose of the mind, the purpose of the soul. 1227 01:35:28,840 --> 01:35:33,000 It's a way of expressing character and expressing emotion. 1228 01:35:37,280 --> 01:35:41,360 - Leonardo erected scaffolding along the north end of the refectory 1229 01:35:41,360 --> 01:35:43,280 and began his mural... 1230 01:35:44,520 --> 01:35:47,600 ..first by coating the wall with a layer of plaster, 1231 01:35:47,600 --> 01:35:49,520 then a binding agent, 1232 01:35:49,520 --> 01:35:53,000 and on top of that, a primer of lead white. 1233 01:35:55,000 --> 01:35:58,760 He pounded nails into the plaster for reference, and used a ruler 1234 01:35:58,760 --> 01:36:03,280 to draw construction lines and a stylus to etch grids. 1235 01:36:05,520 --> 01:36:07,280 Using the incisions, 1236 01:36:07,280 --> 01:36:10,280 he laid out the scene's ceiling and walls, 1237 01:36:10,280 --> 01:36:13,600 constructing a space with realistic scale and depth 1238 01:36:13,600 --> 01:36:15,520 and geometric harmony. 1239 01:36:17,000 --> 01:36:20,760 One nail hole at the very centre would serve as the point 1240 01:36:20,760 --> 01:36:24,000 at which all prospective lines would converge. 1241 01:36:25,760 --> 01:36:29,160 It was where he would paint the face of Christ. 1242 01:36:34,760 --> 01:36:37,520 LEONARDO: - Filippo, Simone, 1243 01:36:37,520 --> 01:36:40,520 Matteo, Tome, 1244 01:36:40,520 --> 01:36:42,520 Jacopo Maggiore... 1245 01:36:42,520 --> 01:36:46,760 - He made sketches in chalk and used a brush to paint outlines 1246 01:36:46,760 --> 01:36:48,760 directly atop the plaster. 1247 01:36:51,520 --> 01:36:54,000 - ..Pietro, Andrea... 1248 01:36:55,000 --> 01:36:56,760 ..Bartolomeo. 1249 01:37:00,040 --> 01:37:04,280 - The moment you lay down the first mark or the first line, 1250 01:37:04,280 --> 01:37:07,920 you're engaged in a process of evaluating every next step 1251 01:37:07,920 --> 01:37:11,440 and understanding whether or not you have to make some major changes 1252 01:37:11,440 --> 01:37:13,000 or some minor changes. 1253 01:37:13,000 --> 01:37:15,760 This is what's going on all the way through the process. 1254 01:37:15,760 --> 01:37:19,000 - Rather than follow the traditional technique for fresco 1255 01:37:19,000 --> 01:37:22,520 in which pigments ground in water are painted on wet plaster 1256 01:37:22,520 --> 01:37:25,280 and bind to the wall in a matter of hours, 1257 01:37:25,280 --> 01:37:30,280 Leonardo used a mixture of oil and tempera that he concocted himself. 1258 01:37:32,000 --> 01:37:35,520 - This allowed him the luxury of painting 1259 01:37:35,520 --> 01:37:38,680 during a long process of time, 1260 01:37:38,680 --> 01:37:42,000 so he was not limited to eight hours a day 1261 01:37:42,000 --> 01:37:44,800 and just one part of the design, 1262 01:37:44,800 --> 01:37:49,280 and it also, very importantly, allowed him to create 1263 01:37:49,280 --> 01:37:53,000 the transitions of tone and the transitions of light, 1264 01:37:53,000 --> 01:37:57,280 because you could not get the effect of light with fresco. 1265 01:38:00,520 --> 01:38:02,280 - In layer upon layer, 1266 01:38:02,280 --> 01:38:05,080 he applied the pigments that would, over time, 1267 01:38:05,080 --> 01:38:06,880 bring the scene to life... 1268 01:38:07,880 --> 01:38:10,520 ..often disregarding his initial outlines 1269 01:38:10,520 --> 01:38:13,280 as the contours of his design evolved. 1270 01:38:15,760 --> 01:38:19,280 For Christ's garments, he used vermilion, 1271 01:38:19,280 --> 01:38:23,240 a pigment made from a brick-red mineral called cinnabar, 1272 01:38:23,240 --> 01:38:27,880 and ultramarine, created by crushing lapis lazuli, 1273 01:38:27,880 --> 01:38:31,520 a costly but brilliant blue metamorphic rock 1274 01:38:31,520 --> 01:38:34,160 that could only be found in Afghanistan. 1275 01:38:35,760 --> 01:38:39,080 "Often he would not put down his brush from first light 1276 01:38:39,080 --> 01:38:41,920 "until nightfall, forgetting to eat and drink", 1277 01:38:41,920 --> 01:38:45,280 wrote the novelist Matteo Bandello, who, as a boy, 1278 01:38:45,280 --> 01:38:48,160 had watched as Leonardo toiled on the mural. 1279 01:38:51,280 --> 01:38:54,760 On other days, he added little to the wall. 1280 01:38:57,080 --> 01:38:59,000 BIRDS CHIRP 1281 01:39:00,520 --> 01:39:03,520 Meanwhile, Sforza had grown impatient 1282 01:39:03,520 --> 01:39:07,760 with Leonardo's unhurried pace and directed his secretary 1283 01:39:07,760 --> 01:39:09,760 to draft a revised agreement 1284 01:39:09,760 --> 01:39:12,600 that would impose a deadline on the artist. 1285 01:39:15,280 --> 01:39:18,280 Within months, Leonardo was finished. 1286 01:39:20,400 --> 01:39:22,440 ETHEREAL MUSIC 1287 01:39:34,280 --> 01:39:37,600 The mural rose 15 feet from bottom to top 1288 01:39:37,600 --> 01:39:41,760 and spanned 29 feet across the refectory's north wall. 1289 01:39:44,520 --> 01:39:48,280 It showcased his gift for blending tones and colours, 1290 01:39:48,280 --> 01:39:50,600 his mastery of light and shadow 1291 01:39:50,600 --> 01:39:53,760 and his command of geometry, which he wielded 1292 01:39:53,760 --> 01:39:58,280 with great precision to bring harmony to a moment of chaos. 1293 01:40:18,760 --> 01:40:21,000 - It's often said he's portraying a moment, 1294 01:40:21,000 --> 01:40:24,600 that it's like a kind of flash photograph of what's going on. 1295 01:40:24,600 --> 01:40:27,440 It is in a way, but it's more complicated than that 1296 01:40:27,440 --> 01:40:30,600 because if you look in the picture, the main thing is that Christ 1297 01:40:30,600 --> 01:40:32,760 is saying, "One of you will betray me." 1298 01:40:32,760 --> 01:40:36,000 - And they're all saying, "Is it I?", "Is it I?", "Is it I?" 1299 01:40:36,000 --> 01:40:40,680 And this central figure, totally focused on what's going to happen 1300 01:40:40,680 --> 01:40:44,280 the next day, and on the sign that he's giving of the offering 1301 01:40:44,280 --> 01:40:48,520 of His body and blood, He gazes down in deep sadness. 1302 01:40:48,520 --> 01:40:50,920 He doesn't look at the apostles. 1303 01:40:50,920 --> 01:40:53,760 - And all the disciples react in a particular way 1304 01:40:53,760 --> 01:40:57,760 apart from Judas, who is rigid and his tendons on his neck stick out 1305 01:40:57,760 --> 01:41:01,000 because he's aware of what's going to happen. 1306 01:41:03,520 --> 01:41:06,720 The announcement of betrayal then ripples out. 1307 01:41:12,720 --> 01:41:14,760 - TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: 1308 01:41:39,520 --> 01:41:43,000 - This was the heart of the painting for him, because it allowed him 1309 01:41:43,000 --> 01:41:46,280 to show gesture and action and facial expression - 1310 01:41:46,280 --> 01:41:48,160 the motions of the mind. 1311 01:41:49,280 --> 01:41:53,760 All of this three, four seconds that happens at this table 1312 01:41:53,760 --> 01:41:57,360 is unfolding before our eyes in this single image, 1313 01:41:57,360 --> 01:42:00,280 and the brilliance of him being able to bring this off 1314 01:42:00,280 --> 01:42:01,920 is truly astounding. 1315 01:42:04,760 --> 01:42:08,520 - Leonardo da Vinci had magnificently rendered the gestures, 1316 01:42:08,520 --> 01:42:10,520 both subtle and dramatic, 1317 01:42:10,520 --> 01:42:14,000 that testified to the psychological states of his subjects... 1318 01:42:15,520 --> 01:42:18,280 ..and he had resoundingly answered the question 1319 01:42:18,280 --> 01:42:21,000 that he had asked himself many times before. 1320 01:42:23,000 --> 01:42:26,000 "Tell me if anything was ever done." 1321 01:42:32,000 --> 01:42:35,600 - For him, painting was an entire 1322 01:42:35,600 --> 01:42:38,920 philosophical meditation. 1323 01:42:38,920 --> 01:42:43,000 It is so much a process of thinking, 1324 01:42:43,000 --> 01:42:45,560 of engaging, of feeling, 1325 01:42:45,560 --> 01:42:49,760 that was essential in his creative process. 1326 01:42:51,000 --> 01:42:55,520 And, really, this is part of the reason that this painting 1327 01:42:55,520 --> 01:43:01,000 has that transformative, transcendental aspect to it. 1328 01:43:02,280 --> 01:43:04,920 When we go as viewers and look at it, 1329 01:43:04,920 --> 01:43:07,280 we all fall into the same reverie. 1330 01:43:21,280 --> 01:43:24,720 - The artist now turned his attention to other projects. 1331 01:43:24,720 --> 01:43:28,600 He provided illustrations for De Divina Proportione - 1332 01:43:28,600 --> 01:43:32,360 a book on mathematics by his friend Luca Pacioli. 1333 01:43:33,360 --> 01:43:35,520 He painted another mural for Sforza - 1334 01:43:35,520 --> 01:43:39,600 a canopy of tangled tree branches knit together by a golden rope 1335 01:43:39,600 --> 01:43:43,240 for the vaulted ceiling of a tower in the Duke's castle. 1336 01:43:44,240 --> 01:43:48,280 But in early 1499, Louis XII, 1337 01:43:48,280 --> 01:43:52,520 who had recently succeeded his cousin Charles as King of France, 1338 01:43:52,520 --> 01:43:55,600 began mustering his troops for another invasion 1339 01:43:55,600 --> 01:43:57,520 of the Italian peninsula. 1340 01:43:57,520 --> 01:44:01,280 This time, the French planned to depose Sforza. 1341 01:44:02,880 --> 01:44:04,400 TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: 1342 01:44:26,280 --> 01:44:28,600 Il Moro fled to Innsbruck. 1343 01:44:28,600 --> 01:44:31,280 The French took Milan without a fight. 1344 01:44:49,520 --> 01:44:54,440 Louis XII arrived that fall and visited the refectory. 1345 01:44:54,440 --> 01:44:58,280 When he saw the beauty of Leonardo's Last Supper, 1346 01:44:58,280 --> 01:45:01,520 he decided that he wanted to take it back to France, 1347 01:45:01,520 --> 01:45:05,520 but his engineers could find no way to safely remove the mural. 1348 01:45:08,280 --> 01:45:10,680 After 18 years in Milan, 1349 01:45:10,680 --> 01:45:14,520 Leonardo decided it was time for him to move on. 1350 01:45:15,520 --> 01:45:17,840 He was 47 years old. 1351 01:45:19,000 --> 01:45:22,520 His best known painting remained out of sight 1352 01:45:22,520 --> 01:45:24,760 in a monastery's dining hall. 1353 01:45:25,960 --> 01:45:27,760 RUMBLE OF THUNDER 1354 01:45:31,760 --> 01:45:36,520 - Leonardo was tremendously ambitious, intellectually ambitious. 1355 01:45:36,520 --> 01:45:42,520 He had no concern for being a successful professional painter 1356 01:45:42,520 --> 01:45:45,520 and to be admired and adored for that. 1357 01:45:46,520 --> 01:45:50,280 He wants to be admired for his intellect. 1358 01:45:52,520 --> 01:45:55,360 - Eager to find a patron who would support his artistic 1359 01:45:55,360 --> 01:46:00,000 and scientific curiosity, Leonardo headed east toward Venice 1360 01:46:00,000 --> 01:46:02,520 with his friend Luca Pacioli. 1361 01:46:04,280 --> 01:46:07,760 Although he had no commissions on the horizon, 1362 01:46:07,760 --> 01:46:11,280 Leonardo da Vinci's greatest work was yet to come. 1363 01:46:18,240 --> 01:46:20,280 ETHEREAL CHORAL SINGING 1364 01:46:52,900 --> 01:46:57,780 The ancients described man as the world in miniature, 1365 01:46:57,780 --> 01:47:02,900 because inasmuch as man is composed of earth, water, air 1366 01:47:02,900 --> 01:47:08,620 and fire, his body resembles that of the planet. 1367 01:47:08,620 --> 01:47:11,020 And as man has in him bones, 1368 01:47:11,020 --> 01:47:14,500 the supports and framework of his flesh, 1369 01:47:14,500 --> 01:47:19,500 the world has its rocks, the supports of the Earth. 1370 01:47:19,500 --> 01:47:23,020 As man has in him a pool of blood, in which the lungs 1371 01:47:23,020 --> 01:47:25,700 rise and fall in breathing, 1372 01:47:25,700 --> 01:47:30,660 so the body of the Earth has its ocean tide, which likewise 1373 01:47:30,660 --> 01:47:33,980 rises and falls every six hours - 1374 01:47:33,980 --> 01:47:36,140 as if the world breathed. 1375 01:47:38,660 --> 01:47:41,980 - There is a very ancient idea, which he adopts and develops 1376 01:47:41,980 --> 01:47:45,300 very strongly, and that is the relationship 1377 01:47:45,300 --> 01:47:47,300 of the microcosm and the macrocosm. 1378 01:47:47,300 --> 01:47:49,540 The microcosm is our body, 1379 01:47:49,540 --> 01:47:53,340 the macrocosm is the whole system out there, including the body 1380 01:47:53,340 --> 01:47:55,740 of the Earth, as he put it. 1381 01:47:55,740 --> 01:47:58,300 What Leonardo does is to give it visual power. 1382 01:47:58,300 --> 01:48:02,380 He can draw bits of the body, he can draw bits of the Earth. 1383 01:48:02,380 --> 01:48:07,060 And as he draws them, the analogy is graphically illustrated. 1384 01:48:07,060 --> 01:48:10,220 So he gives the microcosm a completely new birth - 1385 01:48:10,220 --> 01:48:12,940 lease of life - and it's a visual lease of life. 1386 01:48:14,980 --> 01:48:18,340 - There are certain supreme figures in the life of our civilisation, 1387 01:48:18,340 --> 01:48:20,460 who fascinate us, in part because they seem to belong 1388 01:48:20,460 --> 01:48:22,460 to two worlds at once. Shakespeare's like that. 1389 01:48:22,460 --> 01:48:25,060 Bach among musicians is very much like that. 1390 01:48:25,060 --> 01:48:28,060 In many respects, a man of the past, in many other respects, 1391 01:48:28,060 --> 01:48:31,500 a visionary of the musical future. 1392 01:48:31,500 --> 01:48:34,860 And Leonardo is perhaps supreme amongst all of that kind. 1393 01:48:36,460 --> 01:48:39,540 He is someone who in many respects is a pre-scientific 1394 01:48:39,540 --> 01:48:41,540 and therefore pre-modern thinker. 1395 01:48:41,540 --> 01:48:44,860 So in lots of ways he still belongs to the world of antiquity. 1396 01:48:44,860 --> 01:48:48,660 At the same time, his intellectual freedom, his dissatisfaction 1397 01:48:48,660 --> 01:48:52,740 with received wisdom, that restlessness is very much part 1398 01:48:52,740 --> 01:48:54,740 of the modern spirit. 1399 01:48:54,740 --> 01:48:57,380 It's very much part of the scientific spirit. 1400 01:49:14,060 --> 01:49:17,820 - The governor of the castle, taken prisoner. 1401 01:49:17,820 --> 01:49:21,140 Visconti carried away and his son killed. 1402 01:49:21,140 --> 01:49:26,300 The Duke has lost his state, property and liberty, 1403 01:49:26,300 --> 01:49:29,820 and none of his projects have been completed. 1404 01:49:32,740 --> 01:49:34,860 - On April 10th, 1500, 1405 01:49:34,860 --> 01:49:38,140 Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo da Vinci's patron 1406 01:49:38,140 --> 01:49:42,820 for more than a decade, was captured and imprisoned by the French Army 1407 01:49:42,820 --> 01:49:44,420 of Louis XII. 1408 01:49:45,900 --> 01:49:50,180 By then, Leonardo had already left for Venice with his friend, 1409 01:49:50,180 --> 01:49:53,460 the mathematician, Luca Pacioli. 1410 01:49:53,460 --> 01:49:58,020 Along the way, he had stopped in Mantua, where he made a drawing 1411 01:49:58,020 --> 01:50:02,740 of Isabella d'Este, a sophisticated and influential patron of the arts, 1412 01:50:02,740 --> 01:50:05,740 who wished to add a work by Leonardo to her collection. 1413 01:50:07,100 --> 01:50:09,460 She would hound him for years for a painting 1414 01:50:09,460 --> 01:50:11,100 that he would never make. 1415 01:50:13,180 --> 01:50:16,380 Leonardo stayed barely a month in Venice, 1416 01:50:16,380 --> 01:50:19,740 then headed south - to Tuscany. 1417 01:50:20,860 --> 01:50:23,580 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 1418 01:51:10,660 --> 01:51:14,940 In the decades ahead, he would broaden his scientific inquiries, 1419 01:51:14,940 --> 01:51:16,940 secure the perfect patron, 1420 01:51:16,940 --> 01:51:20,740 and pour the sum of his knowledge into a masterpiece that would become 1421 01:51:20,740 --> 01:51:22,940 the most famous painting of all time. 1422 01:51:36,580 --> 01:51:40,540 In the years since Leonardo had left Florence, the city had turned away 1423 01:51:40,540 --> 01:51:44,060 from the openness that had made it the centre of the Renaissance. 1424 01:51:45,220 --> 01:51:48,700 Mired in a seemingly endless conflict with neighbouring Pisa 1425 01:51:48,700 --> 01:51:51,260 and facing an economic collapse, 1426 01:51:51,260 --> 01:51:56,100 Florentines had expelled their ruler, Piero de' Medici, in 1494 1427 01:51:56,100 --> 01:52:00,740 and embraced a fiery, silver-tongued Dominican friar and reformer 1428 01:52:00,740 --> 01:52:03,780 who believed that God spoke through him. 1429 01:52:03,780 --> 01:52:08,580 Girolamo Savonarola had excoriated the Vatican for its corruption 1430 01:52:08,580 --> 01:52:10,620 and warned the people of Florence 1431 01:52:10,620 --> 01:52:14,140 to cease their decadent ways or face the wrath of God. 1432 01:52:15,820 --> 01:52:20,340 Repent of Florence, he urged them, before it is too late. 1433 01:52:20,340 --> 01:52:22,380 - Savonarola was a powerful preacher 1434 01:52:22,380 --> 01:52:25,220 because he understood the power of the word, 1435 01:52:25,220 --> 01:52:27,740 and he knew how to use it to scare people, 1436 01:52:27,740 --> 01:52:29,740 to say, "You've gone too far." 1437 01:52:29,740 --> 01:52:34,340 The vanity, the costumes, the jewellery, the festivities, 1438 01:52:34,340 --> 01:52:38,660 the art representing human feelings instead of God. 1439 01:52:38,660 --> 01:52:41,580 And there is a moment when people follow him because they are afraid, 1440 01:52:41,580 --> 01:52:44,060 because superstition is still very strong. 1441 01:52:47,460 --> 01:52:51,780 - His followers had gathered paintings, carnival masks, perfumes, 1442 01:52:51,780 --> 01:52:56,180 dice games, mirrors and other items they considered vanities, 1443 01:52:56,180 --> 01:53:00,700 piled them in the Piazza della Signoria and set them ablaze. 1444 01:53:04,940 --> 01:53:09,100 But by 1498, Florence had grown weary of Savonarola's piety 1445 01:53:09,100 --> 01:53:12,500 and prophecies and condemned him as a heretic. 1446 01:53:15,460 --> 01:53:18,020 He was hanged and burned in the piazza. 1447 01:53:19,820 --> 01:53:26,300 - The Florence that Leonardo came back to was sadly a different one 1448 01:53:26,300 --> 01:53:29,180 from the one he had left in 1482, 1449 01:53:29,180 --> 01:53:30,940 not least because many of the people 1450 01:53:30,940 --> 01:53:34,300 that he had known, such as Domenico Ghirlandaio 1451 01:53:34,300 --> 01:53:37,580 and Verrocchio, were deceased by this point, 1452 01:53:37,580 --> 01:53:40,780 but also there had been a kind of brain drain in Florence 1453 01:53:40,780 --> 01:53:45,780 in the 1490s, largely because of Girolamo Savonarola. 1454 01:53:48,460 --> 01:53:50,740 - Leonardo's father, Ser Piero, 1455 01:53:50,740 --> 01:53:54,060 74 years old and still a practising notary, 1456 01:53:54,060 --> 01:53:56,420 lived with his fourth wife and their children 1457 01:53:56,420 --> 01:54:00,260 in Florence's San Pier Maggiore neighbourhood. 1458 01:54:00,260 --> 01:54:03,340 The artist took up residence nearby at the church 1459 01:54:03,340 --> 01:54:07,980 of Santissima Annunziata, whose monks, long-time clients 1460 01:54:07,980 --> 01:54:11,740 of Ser Piero, commissioned Leonardo to paint an altarpiece 1461 01:54:11,740 --> 01:54:15,380 depicting Mary, the baby Jesus and Mary's mother, 1462 01:54:15,380 --> 01:54:18,540 Saint Anne, for their chapel. 1463 01:54:18,540 --> 01:54:22,460 Once again, he seemed in no rush to satisfy his patrons. 1464 01:54:22,460 --> 01:54:27,500 "The life of Leonardo is unsettled and in disarray," one cleric said. 1465 01:54:27,500 --> 01:54:31,860 "His priority is geometry and he has very little patience for the brush." 1466 01:54:33,260 --> 01:54:36,860 Mathematics was hardly his only distraction. 1467 01:54:36,860 --> 01:54:39,780 In the hills south of town, he sketched the villa 1468 01:54:39,780 --> 01:54:41,700 of a wealthy Florentine merchant. 1469 01:54:41,700 --> 01:54:45,460 He advised one church on how to overhaul their drainage system, 1470 01:54:45,460 --> 01:54:48,500 and another on how to reconstruct their bell tower, 1471 01:54:48,500 --> 01:54:51,060 which had collapsed in an earthquake. 1472 01:54:51,060 --> 01:54:55,260 He also visited the remains of Emperor Hadrian's villa near Rome. 1473 01:54:56,500 --> 01:55:00,260 Leonardo eventually produced a full-scale preparatory drawing 1474 01:55:00,260 --> 01:55:04,500 of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, which is now lost. 1475 01:55:04,500 --> 01:55:08,220 But when the cartoon, as it was called, was exhibited for two days 1476 01:55:08,220 --> 01:55:13,340 at Santissima Annunziata, it created an enormous sensation. 1477 01:55:13,340 --> 01:55:15,300 "Men and women, young and old, 1478 01:55:15,300 --> 01:55:17,180 "flocked in solemn procession 1479 01:55:17,180 --> 01:55:19,180 "to see the wonders of Leonardo," 1480 01:55:19,180 --> 01:55:22,100 his biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote. 1481 01:55:22,100 --> 01:55:24,940 The entire population was astounded. 1482 01:55:26,140 --> 01:55:29,300 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 1483 01:55:43,140 --> 01:55:45,860 TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 1484 01:56:04,220 --> 01:56:07,740 Though he once again failed to deliver the finished painting, 1485 01:56:07,740 --> 01:56:11,700 Leonardo would continue to explore the theme of the Madonna and Christ, 1486 01:56:11,700 --> 01:56:14,660 with Saint Anne, producing a second cartoon 1487 01:56:14,660 --> 01:56:17,660 featuring John the Baptist as a child 1488 01:56:17,660 --> 01:56:19,660 and eventually, a painting. 1489 01:56:22,420 --> 01:56:24,980 On April 15th, 1502, 1490 01:56:24,980 --> 01:56:27,420 Leonardo turned 50 years old. 1491 01:56:27,420 --> 01:56:30,620 Again, in search of a patron, he attached himself 1492 01:56:30,620 --> 01:56:32,660 to another strong man in need 1493 01:56:32,660 --> 01:56:35,900 of a military engineer and cartographer. 1494 01:56:35,900 --> 01:56:40,380 Cesare Borgia, the ruthless son of Pope Alexander VI 1495 01:56:40,380 --> 01:56:42,580 and commander of the papal troops, 1496 01:56:42,580 --> 01:56:46,500 was planning a campaign to bring Romagna, an unruly territory 1497 01:56:46,500 --> 01:56:49,100 east of Florence, under his control. 1498 01:56:50,220 --> 01:56:54,980 - Borgia is the opportunist, almost gangster warlord 1499 01:56:54,980 --> 01:56:58,260 of the outlying territories of the Romagna. 1500 01:56:58,260 --> 01:57:01,540 He suddenly takes over this huge swathe of territory, 1501 01:57:01,540 --> 01:57:06,060 becomes a sort of a player in the power politics of the peninsula 1502 01:57:06,060 --> 01:57:08,140 almost overnight. 1503 01:57:08,140 --> 01:57:11,500 - While the rest of Florence fretted that Borgia would soon turn up 1504 01:57:11,500 --> 01:57:13,740 at the city's gates with his army, 1505 01:57:13,740 --> 01:57:16,260 Leonardo set out to join his new patron. 1506 01:57:17,700 --> 01:57:19,700 Travelling the countryside, 1507 01:57:19,700 --> 01:57:22,500 Leonardo sketched a sunlit copse of trees. 1508 01:57:23,620 --> 01:57:26,300 - A body illuminated by solar rays, 1509 01:57:26,300 --> 01:57:28,540 passing between the thick branches 1510 01:57:28,540 --> 01:57:33,180 of trees will produce as many shadows as there are branches 1511 01:57:33,180 --> 01:57:35,780 between the sun and itself. 1512 01:57:37,780 --> 01:57:40,980 Make a harmony from the different folds of water, 1513 01:57:40,980 --> 01:57:43,940 as you saw at the Fountain of Rimini 1514 01:57:43,940 --> 01:57:47,100 on the 8th of August, 1502. 1515 01:57:47,100 --> 01:57:50,060 This is how grapes are carried in Cesena. 1516 01:57:51,580 --> 01:57:54,420 - In the towns and villages seized by Borgia's army, 1517 01:57:54,420 --> 01:57:56,900 Leonardo surveyed the fortifications, 1518 01:57:56,900 --> 01:57:59,900 pacing off distances and using a compass 1519 01:57:59,900 --> 01:58:01,980 to determine the measurements. 1520 01:58:01,980 --> 01:58:04,940 He also gathered topographical data 1521 01:58:04,940 --> 01:58:08,500 and drew meticulous maps featuring the hills and mountains, 1522 01:58:08,500 --> 01:58:11,780 lakes and rivers of eastern Tuscany. 1523 01:58:11,780 --> 01:58:14,820 By fall, Leonardo had reached Imola, 1524 01:58:14,820 --> 01:58:18,500 a well-fortified town on the edge of the Apennine Mountains, 1525 01:58:18,500 --> 01:58:21,620 where Borgia had established his headquarters. 1526 01:58:21,620 --> 01:58:24,620 He was joined there by a young diplomat, 1527 01:58:24,620 --> 01:58:27,140 whom the Republic of Florence had sent to assess 1528 01:58:27,140 --> 01:58:30,340 Borgia's intentions - Niccolo Machiavelli. 1529 01:58:31,860 --> 01:58:35,780 That winter, while Borgia brutally put down uprisings, 1530 01:58:35,780 --> 01:58:38,020 and Machiavelli kept Florence informed 1531 01:58:38,020 --> 01:58:40,340 with carefully-worded dispatches, 1532 01:58:40,340 --> 01:58:45,300 Leonardo produced a detailed overhead map of Imola. 1533 01:58:45,300 --> 01:58:49,580 - And Leonardo comes up with his best military invention, 1534 01:58:49,580 --> 01:58:51,500 which is not a machine, 1535 01:58:51,500 --> 01:58:54,060 it's an aerial view map, 1536 01:58:54,060 --> 01:58:55,980 because he knows that information 1537 01:58:55,980 --> 01:58:58,780 is the most important weapon you can have. 1538 01:58:58,780 --> 01:59:01,620 He didn't have a plane to do it, 1539 01:59:01,620 --> 01:59:03,900 but Leonardo paces around the town 1540 01:59:03,900 --> 01:59:07,380 and figures out how it would look from above. 1541 01:59:07,380 --> 01:59:11,060 - In early 1503, Borgia took Siena, 1542 01:59:11,060 --> 01:59:14,820 but when his father, Pope Alexander VI, died, 1543 01:59:14,820 --> 01:59:17,940 the new Pope had Borgia arrested. 1544 01:59:17,940 --> 01:59:19,980 He was expelled from Italy 1545 01:59:19,980 --> 01:59:23,260 and eventually murdered in an ambush in Spain. 1546 01:59:24,500 --> 01:59:28,820 Niccolo Machiavelli would one day compose an influential treatise 1547 01:59:28,820 --> 01:59:30,620 on political power, 1548 01:59:30,620 --> 01:59:35,140 informed in part by his astute observations of Borgia. 1549 01:59:37,220 --> 01:59:40,180 Though it is not known how much Leonardo had seen 1550 01:59:40,180 --> 01:59:41,660 while in Borgia's service, 1551 01:59:41,660 --> 01:59:44,820 he was certainly aware of war's violent toll. 1552 01:59:47,380 --> 01:59:49,660 "War is bestial madness," he wrote. 1553 01:59:51,180 --> 01:59:54,420 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 1554 02:00:27,100 --> 02:00:31,940 In the spring of 1503, Leonardo returned again to Florence, 1555 02:00:31,940 --> 02:00:36,060 where he purchased a small farm in the hills above the city. 1556 02:00:37,140 --> 02:00:39,460 Later that year, he began a portrait 1557 02:00:39,460 --> 02:00:42,300 of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, 1558 02:00:42,300 --> 02:00:43,780 a prosperous silk merchant. 1559 02:00:45,700 --> 02:00:47,700 He also pursued a new project 1560 02:00:47,700 --> 02:00:51,380 that allowed him to explore one of his lifelong passions - 1561 02:00:51,380 --> 02:00:52,980 water. 1562 02:00:52,980 --> 02:00:56,020 - So, his entire life of Leonardo, 1563 02:00:56,020 --> 02:00:58,940 he was compiling 1564 02:00:58,940 --> 02:01:02,300 seven different indices of a treatise - 1565 02:01:02,300 --> 02:01:05,580 a very ambitious treatise that he wanted to devote to water. 1566 02:01:05,580 --> 02:01:08,620 And he is so much intrigued by water 1567 02:01:08,620 --> 02:01:13,340 that he also strived to understand its molecular structure. 1568 02:01:14,380 --> 02:01:18,380 - Observe the motion of the water's surface, 1569 02:01:18,380 --> 02:01:20,700 which resembles that of air, 1570 02:01:20,700 --> 02:01:22,380 and has two motions - 1571 02:01:22,380 --> 02:01:25,740 one follows the flow of the surface, 1572 02:01:25,740 --> 02:01:28,820 the other forms the lines of the eddies. 1573 02:01:28,820 --> 02:01:33,460 - Water is also important as a field in which you can develop models 1574 02:01:33,460 --> 02:01:35,780 to control the energy of water. 1575 02:01:35,780 --> 02:01:38,340 Water can be disastrous for man. 1576 02:01:38,340 --> 02:01:40,500 Man cannot live without water, 1577 02:01:40,500 --> 02:01:42,820 but he has to keep control of that. 1578 02:01:44,220 --> 02:01:45,860 - At Machiavelli's behest, 1579 02:01:45,860 --> 02:01:50,020 the Republic of Florence hired Leonardo to draw military maps 1580 02:01:50,020 --> 02:01:54,460 and advise on a major engineering project involving the Arno River. 1581 02:01:55,540 --> 02:01:58,860 Florence was now plotting to retake the strategically-important city 1582 02:01:58,860 --> 02:02:03,460 of Pisa, which straddled the mouth of the Arno, 45 miles to the west. 1583 02:02:05,140 --> 02:02:07,740 Machiavelli hoped to divert the river 1584 02:02:07,740 --> 02:02:10,020 and deny Pisa access to the sea. 1585 02:02:11,260 --> 02:02:15,540 Leonardo calculated that it would take 1.3 million man hours 1586 02:02:15,540 --> 02:02:20,140 to dig a ditch large enough to change the Arno's course. 1587 02:02:20,140 --> 02:02:24,020 - He devised this idea of diverting the Arno, 1588 02:02:24,020 --> 02:02:26,420 and people went out and dug channels. 1589 02:02:26,420 --> 02:02:28,140 They actually implemented this 1590 02:02:28,140 --> 02:02:29,900 at great cost, 1591 02:02:29,900 --> 02:02:31,660 and it didn't work. 1592 02:02:33,180 --> 02:02:35,220 Leonardo was not the sole author of the scheme, 1593 02:02:35,220 --> 02:02:37,860 but it couldn't have done his reputation much good. 1594 02:02:37,860 --> 02:02:40,860 I think it heightened his sense that rather than trying to say 1595 02:02:40,860 --> 02:02:43,860 to the Arno, "I want you to go down there," you actually had to do 1596 02:02:43,860 --> 02:02:46,260 very subtle things to make it flow 1597 02:02:46,260 --> 02:02:47,900 in the direction that you wanted. 1598 02:02:49,260 --> 02:02:54,020 - The river, if it is to be diverted from one place to another, 1599 02:02:54,020 --> 02:02:59,060 must be coaxed and not treated roughly or with violence. 1600 02:03:00,260 --> 02:03:02,700 - Leonardo also designed a canal 1601 02:03:02,700 --> 02:03:06,060 that would bypass the Arno's unnavigable stretches 1602 02:03:06,060 --> 02:03:08,460 and give Florence access to the sea. 1603 02:03:09,620 --> 02:03:15,460 In 1502, Florentine-born navigator Amerigo Vespucci had returned 1604 02:03:15,460 --> 02:03:19,100 from a transatlantic voyage and declared that the land 1605 02:03:19,100 --> 02:03:23,020 he had reached was not Asia, but a separate continent. 1606 02:03:24,100 --> 02:03:28,380 Leonardo's canal would have allowed the Republic to directly participate 1607 02:03:28,380 --> 02:03:31,340 in explorations of the New World, 1608 02:03:31,340 --> 02:03:34,420 but work on the costly project never began. 1609 02:03:36,540 --> 02:03:39,100 Though neither of Leonardo's ambitious ideas 1610 02:03:39,100 --> 02:03:42,340 for taming the Arno River were realised, 1611 02:03:42,340 --> 02:03:43,900 he soon began compiling 1612 02:03:43,900 --> 02:03:48,020 his observations and conclusions on water dynamics, geology, 1613 02:03:48,020 --> 02:03:51,260 and astronomy for a treatise in which he would attempt 1614 02:03:51,260 --> 02:03:53,020 to understand the forces 1615 02:03:53,020 --> 02:03:55,940 that had shaped the Earth over many aeons. 1616 02:03:59,940 --> 02:04:02,380 That fall, the Republic hired him 1617 02:04:02,380 --> 02:04:04,500 to paint a monumental fresco 1618 02:04:04,500 --> 02:04:08,620 to adorn one wall in the city's enormous Grand Council Hall, 1619 02:04:08,620 --> 02:04:11,380 where members of the ruling Signoria met. 1620 02:04:11,380 --> 02:04:14,700 It would be three times larger than The Last Supper, 1621 02:04:14,700 --> 02:04:19,420 commemorating Florence's triumph over Milan on the plain of Anghiari 1622 02:04:19,420 --> 02:04:21,220 more than 60 years earlier. 1623 02:04:23,540 --> 02:04:27,580 - The Battle of Anghiari was a battle just within living memory, 1624 02:04:27,580 --> 02:04:30,460 in which a heavily-outnumbered Florentine troop 1625 02:04:30,460 --> 02:04:32,980 defeated the Milanese Army, 1626 02:04:32,980 --> 02:04:36,020 and Leonardo was presumably expected 1627 02:04:36,020 --> 02:04:39,100 to produce a stirring battle scene 1628 02:04:39,100 --> 02:04:43,220 with ranks of horsemen and bold captains. 1629 02:04:43,220 --> 02:04:47,980 - He was given a studio in a suite of rooms reserved for papal visits 1630 02:04:47,980 --> 02:04:50,860 at the church of Santa Maria Novella. 1631 02:04:50,860 --> 02:04:54,020 While labourers erected scaffolding and covered his windows 1632 02:04:54,020 --> 02:04:57,420 to diffuse the light so he could begin his cartoon, 1633 02:04:57,420 --> 02:05:01,940 Leonardo jotted down compositional ideas, created models of soldiers 1634 02:05:01,940 --> 02:05:04,780 in wax, and filled a notebook 1635 02:05:04,780 --> 02:05:08,780 with sketches of horses in various poses. 1636 02:05:08,780 --> 02:05:12,460 - Now, he also gives us a description of how to do a battle, 1637 02:05:12,460 --> 02:05:15,180 and he describes everything that's going on in the battle. 1638 02:05:15,180 --> 02:05:18,100 He then says, "You've got to calculate the dust in the air 1639 02:05:18,100 --> 02:05:21,820 "and how it's brighter above than below." 1640 02:05:21,820 --> 02:05:26,620 - First, you must represent the smoke of artillery mingling in the air 1641 02:05:26,620 --> 02:05:29,020 with the dust tossed up by the movement 1642 02:05:29,020 --> 02:05:30,780 of horses and combatants. 1643 02:05:32,740 --> 02:05:37,340 The dust, being a thing of earth, has weight. 1644 02:05:37,340 --> 02:05:40,780 It is the finest part that rises highest, 1645 02:05:40,780 --> 02:05:43,620 so that part will be least visible 1646 02:05:43,620 --> 02:05:47,220 and will seem almost the same colour as the air. 1647 02:05:49,300 --> 02:05:52,220 - This extraordinary description of how to do a battle, 1648 02:05:52,220 --> 02:05:55,700 and I've likened it to a visual layout of what you do in a film, 1649 02:05:55,700 --> 02:05:58,740 and even a film would find it hard to capture all that. 1650 02:05:58,740 --> 02:06:02,620 - Some might be shown disarmed 1651 02:06:02,620 --> 02:06:05,220 and beaten down by the enemy, 1652 02:06:05,220 --> 02:06:08,540 turning upon the foe with teeth and nails 1653 02:06:08,540 --> 02:06:11,700 to take an inhuman and bitter revenge. 1654 02:06:11,700 --> 02:06:15,940 You might see some riderless horse rushing among the enemy, 1655 02:06:15,940 --> 02:06:18,340 his mane flying in the wind 1656 02:06:18,340 --> 02:06:21,940 and wreaking destruction with his hooves. 1657 02:06:21,940 --> 02:06:24,700 And there must not be a single spot 1658 02:06:24,700 --> 02:06:28,380 of flat ground that is not trampled with gore. 1659 02:06:30,420 --> 02:06:33,860 - Leonardo was very keen on articulating 1660 02:06:33,860 --> 02:06:37,180 the "pazzia bestialissima", as he calls war. 1661 02:06:37,180 --> 02:06:39,940 It's really madness. 1662 02:06:39,940 --> 02:06:43,620 And so, the horses and the figures 1663 02:06:43,620 --> 02:06:47,060 begin to have similar expressions 1664 02:06:47,060 --> 02:06:50,340 of great fierceness. 1665 02:06:50,340 --> 02:06:55,500 And he works very closely at making these comparisons of physiognomy. 1666 02:07:00,980 --> 02:07:03,820 - BELL TOLLING 1667 02:07:03,820 --> 02:07:07,220 - On the 9th of July, 1504, 1668 02:07:07,220 --> 02:07:12,420 Wednesday, at 7 o'clock, died Ser Piero da Vinci, 1669 02:07:12,420 --> 02:07:16,300 notary at the Palazzo del Podesta - my father. 1670 02:07:16,300 --> 02:07:22,060 Aged 80 years, leaving behind ten sons and two daughters. 1671 02:07:24,460 --> 02:07:28,300 - Ser Piero had secured his son Leonardo's apprenticeship 1672 02:07:28,300 --> 02:07:31,340 in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, 1673 02:07:31,340 --> 02:07:35,660 and later helped him to get some of his most important commissions. 1674 02:07:35,660 --> 02:07:37,780 But there's almost no evidence 1675 02:07:37,780 --> 02:07:39,940 of how Leonardo felt about his father. 1676 02:07:41,460 --> 02:07:43,060 There was no will. 1677 02:07:43,060 --> 02:07:48,180 Born out of wedlock, he was not entitled by law to any inheritance. 1678 02:07:48,180 --> 02:07:51,300 His half-siblings made sure he received nothing. 1679 02:07:52,620 --> 02:07:55,180 Leonardo returned to his epic battle scene. 1680 02:07:56,900 --> 02:07:58,940 In the late summer of 1504, 1681 02:07:58,940 --> 02:08:02,260 Florence's Signoria commissioned a second mural 1682 02:08:02,260 --> 02:08:04,700 for the council's meeting hall. 1683 02:08:04,700 --> 02:08:08,660 The new assignment went to a talented and prickly young artist 1684 02:08:08,660 --> 02:08:13,380 who, at 29 years old, had already carved several sculptures 1685 02:08:13,380 --> 02:08:16,820 that would become among the best known works of the Renaissance. 1686 02:08:17,980 --> 02:08:22,940 Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti had briefly been apprenticed 1687 02:08:22,940 --> 02:08:26,980 to the great Florentine master Ghirlandaio, and had enjoyed 1688 02:08:26,980 --> 02:08:31,100 the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici before moving to Rome, 1689 02:08:31,100 --> 02:08:34,820 where he'd sculpted a breathtaking marble Virgin and Christ, 1690 02:08:34,820 --> 02:08:37,140 called The Pieta, 1691 02:08:37,140 --> 02:08:38,380 and signed it - 1692 02:08:38,380 --> 02:08:41,780 an audacious and nearly unheard of gesture in his day. 1693 02:08:43,100 --> 02:08:46,100 In a letter to his father, Michelangelo claimed 1694 02:08:46,100 --> 02:08:48,660 that he had made the impossible possible. 1695 02:08:49,740 --> 02:08:51,820 He had then returned to Florence, 1696 02:08:51,820 --> 02:08:54,180 only to find that it was Leonardo 1697 02:08:54,180 --> 02:08:57,340 whose homecoming was the talk of the town. 1698 02:08:57,340 --> 02:09:02,180 - Michelangelo had a pretty brutal personality. 1699 02:09:02,180 --> 02:09:05,020 He was very solitary, given to moods. 1700 02:09:05,020 --> 02:09:07,900 I mean, very passionate man, very secretive. 1701 02:09:07,900 --> 02:09:12,140 And so, it's the complete antithesis of Leonardo. 1702 02:09:13,740 --> 02:09:16,060 - But Michelangelo's next work, 1703 02:09:16,060 --> 02:09:19,020 a 17 foot tall marble colossus of David, 1704 02:09:19,020 --> 02:09:22,660 would become an enduring symbol of civic pride for Florence. 1705 02:09:24,980 --> 02:09:28,460 - Do not make all the muscles in your figures prominent, 1706 02:09:28,460 --> 02:09:32,060 because muscles are not visible unless the limbs 1707 02:09:32,060 --> 02:09:35,900 in which they are situated are exerting great force. 1708 02:09:35,900 --> 02:09:38,220 Otherwise, you will have depicted 1709 02:09:38,220 --> 02:09:41,540 a sack of walnuts rather than a human form. 1710 02:09:44,740 --> 02:09:47,660 - At a meeting to discuss where Michelangelo's statue 1711 02:09:47,660 --> 02:09:51,340 would be displayed, Leonardo suggested it should be placed 1712 02:09:51,340 --> 02:09:54,100 in the loggia behind a low wall. 1713 02:09:56,100 --> 02:09:58,140 The committee disagreed. 1714 02:09:58,140 --> 02:10:02,300 The David would go outside the main entrance to Florence's city hall. 1715 02:10:03,820 --> 02:10:06,940 - Leonardo not only wants to sideline Michelangelo's David, but he wants 1716 02:10:06,940 --> 02:10:09,060 to sideline Michelangelo as well. 1717 02:10:09,060 --> 02:10:12,100 And so he's a bit of a dissenting voice in that...in that committee, 1718 02:10:12,100 --> 02:10:14,700 because everyone else is really, as they would be, impressed 1719 02:10:14,700 --> 02:10:19,100 by this huge, more than life-sized sculpture of the muscular David. 1720 02:10:20,300 --> 02:10:25,220 - And so, Leonardo had had to cope with this great genius, 1721 02:10:25,220 --> 02:10:27,700 who is at the height of his powers 1722 02:10:27,700 --> 02:10:32,740 and really able to pull off the colossal. 1723 02:10:32,740 --> 02:10:37,340 And I do believe that Leonardo had a crisis of confidence. 1724 02:10:37,340 --> 02:10:41,860 - Concerned by Leonardo's slow pace on the Battle of Anghiari, 1725 02:10:41,860 --> 02:10:46,740 the Republic of Florence demanded that he begin painting right away. 1726 02:10:49,340 --> 02:10:54,860 - On Friday, at the stroke of the 13th hour, I began painting. 1727 02:10:56,300 --> 02:10:58,900 As I made the first brushstroke, 1728 02:10:58,900 --> 02:11:05,460 the weather turned and the court bell rang, calling man to judgment. 1729 02:11:05,460 --> 02:11:08,820 And immediately, it began raining 1730 02:11:08,820 --> 02:11:11,500 and poured until evening. 1731 02:11:11,500 --> 02:11:14,460 And it was like night. 1732 02:11:14,460 --> 02:11:16,580 - Leonardo has to get things right. 1733 02:11:16,580 --> 02:11:20,060 He looks at nature and it's a complicated system. 1734 02:11:20,060 --> 02:11:21,540 Optically, it's complicated. 1735 02:11:21,540 --> 02:11:23,500 In terms of movement, it's complicated. 1736 02:11:23,500 --> 02:11:25,620 And he wants his painting to do everything. 1737 02:11:25,620 --> 02:11:30,860 But of course, to have this level of obeying natural law 1738 02:11:30,860 --> 02:11:33,940 in all its complexity - to have this ability to deal 1739 02:11:33,940 --> 02:11:37,660 with movement, the psychological movement and the physical movement, 1740 02:11:37,660 --> 02:11:40,420 ultimately, it's an impossible agenda. 1741 02:11:43,460 --> 02:11:47,500 - That fall, just as the central scene of Leonardo's mural 1742 02:11:47,500 --> 02:11:51,180 had begun to take shape on the west wall of the council hall, 1743 02:11:51,180 --> 02:11:56,220 he stopped painting, abandoning yet another commission. 1744 02:11:56,220 --> 02:12:00,220 TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 1745 02:12:25,380 --> 02:12:29,620 It's unlikely Michelangelo ever began the mural he had been assigned 1746 02:12:29,620 --> 02:12:32,140 to paint on the opposite wall. 1747 02:12:32,140 --> 02:12:36,300 Only another artist's copy of his cartoon survives. 1748 02:12:36,300 --> 02:12:40,700 Florence would eventually hire Giorgio Vasari to replace Leonardo's 1749 02:12:40,700 --> 02:12:45,340 incomplete painting, but not before other artists were inspired 1750 02:12:45,340 --> 02:12:47,500 to reproduce his battle scene. 1751 02:12:50,260 --> 02:12:54,460 - What it depicted was the bestiality of war, not the glory 1752 02:12:54,460 --> 02:12:58,980 and the victory, but this melee of terrified horses 1753 02:12:58,980 --> 02:13:02,860 and sort of snarling soldiers, hacking into each other. 1754 02:13:02,860 --> 02:13:05,500 And it's a frightening painting. 1755 02:13:05,500 --> 02:13:08,260 - And I think we feel that there's something almost nihilistic 1756 02:13:08,260 --> 02:13:10,860 in what survives, what we understand of the Battle of Anghiari, 1757 02:13:10,860 --> 02:13:12,780 where it seems in the famous image 1758 02:13:12,780 --> 02:13:15,660 of the two horsemen facing each other down, 1759 02:13:15,660 --> 02:13:17,980 that doesn't seem to be good versus evil, 1760 02:13:17,980 --> 02:13:21,420 it doesn't seem to be nobility versus nobility, 1761 02:13:21,420 --> 02:13:23,940 it just seems to be violence versus violence. 1762 02:13:23,940 --> 02:13:29,660 - One witness who had seen it praised Leonardo's incomplete effort. 1763 02:13:29,660 --> 02:13:32,140 "Having climbed the stairs of the Great Hall, 1764 02:13:32,140 --> 02:13:36,460 "looked closely at a group of horses and men, part of a battle scene 1765 02:13:36,460 --> 02:13:38,940 "by Leonardo da Vinci, 1766 02:13:38,940 --> 02:13:41,900 "it will strike you as a miraculous thing." 1767 02:13:49,140 --> 02:13:54,500 - The bird is a machine that functions according to mathematical law. 1768 02:13:54,500 --> 02:13:58,140 Man has the capacity to create this machine 1769 02:13:58,140 --> 02:14:02,260 and all its motions, but without as much power. 1770 02:14:02,260 --> 02:14:06,860 Such a machine lacks nothing except the bird's soul, 1771 02:14:06,860 --> 02:14:09,860 which must be counterfeited by man. 1772 02:14:11,300 --> 02:14:15,700 - Now Leonardo returned to a subject that had captivated him 1773 02:14:15,700 --> 02:14:17,860 for as long as he could remember. 1774 02:14:25,820 --> 02:14:30,820 - This writing about the kite seems to be my destiny, 1775 02:14:30,820 --> 02:14:37,300 because in my earliest childhood recollection, I was in my cradle 1776 02:14:37,300 --> 02:14:42,100 and a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail, 1777 02:14:42,100 --> 02:14:45,300 striking my lips several times. 1778 02:14:47,980 --> 02:14:52,020 - He has this idea of this kite, this bird of prey, flying down 1779 02:14:52,020 --> 02:14:56,100 and actually putting its tail in his mouth, as if kind of like 1780 02:14:56,100 --> 02:15:00,220 a shaman receiving the secrets of nature from an animal. 1781 02:15:00,220 --> 02:15:02,900 And this idea that it was his destiny, as he calls it - 1782 02:15:02,900 --> 02:15:05,100 we might call it his obsession - 1783 02:15:05,100 --> 02:15:08,500 to pursue the subject of birds from this moment on. 1784 02:15:09,780 --> 02:15:17,620 - My sense is that, as he was ageing, that he begins to fashion himself 1785 02:15:17,620 --> 02:15:25,380 more in the guise of the great philosopher, thinker, magician. 1786 02:15:25,380 --> 02:15:29,860 And so, the prophetic voice starts becoming more and more apparent 1787 02:15:29,860 --> 02:15:34,620 in his manuscripts of this mature and later period. 1788 02:15:34,620 --> 02:15:39,340 - He continued to design flying machines, but his focus 1789 02:15:39,340 --> 02:15:41,660 would now be more scientific. 1790 02:15:41,660 --> 02:15:45,260 He sketched the birds darting and diving above the hills north 1791 02:15:45,260 --> 02:15:49,220 of Florence, and noted how they beat their wings to compress the air 1792 02:15:49,220 --> 02:15:52,300 and rode the currents to climb and soar. 1793 02:15:54,460 --> 02:15:58,540 Later, in his studio, Leonardo refined his drawings 1794 02:15:58,540 --> 02:16:03,580 and reworked his analysis of wind patterns, aerodynamics and gravity. 1795 02:16:04,540 --> 02:16:09,900 - When the bird wants to lift off, it raises its shoulder bones 1796 02:16:09,900 --> 02:16:15,020 and beats its wings toward itself, compressing the air between the tips 1797 02:16:15,020 --> 02:16:17,580 of the wings and the bird's chest, 1798 02:16:17,580 --> 02:16:20,060 which causes the bird to rise up. 1799 02:16:21,380 --> 02:16:25,460 - And you can see how he draws the movement of air. 1800 02:16:25,460 --> 02:16:30,660 You need to use the drag of the body in order for the wind to do the work 1801 02:16:30,660 --> 02:16:32,420 for you, to lift you up. 1802 02:16:33,940 --> 02:16:38,100 These are delicate understandings of how aerodynamics work. 1803 02:16:38,100 --> 02:16:41,300 So, to me, is that somebody that had a complete understanding 1804 02:16:41,300 --> 02:16:46,540 of dynamic soaring and how birds use gravity to store the energy 1805 02:16:46,540 --> 02:16:49,060 and the wind itself to do the work. 1806 02:16:51,060 --> 02:16:55,340 - In time, he would gather his impressions in a compact manuscript, 1807 02:16:55,340 --> 02:16:58,220 or codex, dedicated to the flight of birds. 1808 02:16:59,700 --> 02:17:04,220 - All the principles that Leonardo is exploring about what makes 1809 02:17:04,220 --> 02:17:09,180 a bird fly are always based on geometrical proofs. 1810 02:17:09,180 --> 02:17:15,220 So it's this constant dialogue with geometry and mathematics. 1811 02:17:15,220 --> 02:17:17,740 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 1812 02:17:38,820 --> 02:17:42,980 Though Leonardo would continue to study birds for years to come, 1813 02:17:42,980 --> 02:17:45,340 he would never realise his dream to build 1814 02:17:45,340 --> 02:17:48,180 a human-powered aircraft capable of flight. 1815 02:17:49,780 --> 02:17:53,900 It would be almost 500 years before anyone would succeed. 1816 02:17:55,700 --> 02:17:58,900 TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 1817 02:18:22,020 --> 02:18:25,420 - Vasari, the artist, really sums up something 1818 02:18:25,420 --> 02:18:28,660 that Leonardo often tried to do. 1819 02:18:28,660 --> 02:18:34,700 He waxes eloquent about Leonardo's capacity to suggest movement 1820 02:18:34,700 --> 02:18:38,700 and feeling, even with just a few strokes of the brush. 1821 02:18:38,700 --> 02:18:42,460 And he shows us something tra il vedi e non vedi, 1822 02:18:42,460 --> 02:18:45,460 something between what you see and what you don't see. 1823 02:18:45,460 --> 02:18:48,300 And of course, we all often have this experience - 1824 02:18:48,300 --> 02:18:52,540 we see out of the corner of our eye a gesture, a facial expression, 1825 02:18:52,540 --> 02:18:57,220 a twitch of the lips, and we see it and then it changes, 1826 02:18:57,220 --> 02:19:00,540 it's not there, we can't study it, we can't fix it. 1827 02:19:00,540 --> 02:19:03,700 Normally, it's something that an artist cannot capture, 1828 02:19:03,700 --> 02:19:05,300 and yet Leonardo does. 1829 02:19:06,500 --> 02:19:11,300 - The influence of his techniques and of his vision was enormous. 1830 02:19:11,300 --> 02:19:14,500 It's hard to think of one of the great glories of Western art, 1831 02:19:14,500 --> 02:19:17,180 the painting of Venice in the latter part of the 15th century, 1832 02:19:17,180 --> 02:19:20,980 beginning of the 16th century - the painting of Giorgione, Bellini 1833 02:19:20,980 --> 02:19:24,060 and Titian - without Leonardo's optical example. 1834 02:19:24,060 --> 02:19:27,100 While some of that came down from the north in the way of 1835 02:19:27,100 --> 02:19:31,620 oil painting techniques, it's quite clear that a lot of it exuded upward 1836 02:19:31,620 --> 02:19:33,940 from Florence and Rome, into Venice. 1837 02:19:33,940 --> 02:19:38,060 That idea, which is very distinctly Leonardesque, that we should see 1838 02:19:38,060 --> 02:19:42,180 the world as a beautiful passing pattern of light and colour, 1839 02:19:42,180 --> 02:19:44,700 rather than as a series of stock forms 1840 02:19:44,700 --> 02:19:46,380 set in a two-dimensional space. 1841 02:19:48,300 --> 02:19:51,620 - In the spring of 1506, Leonardo was ordered back 1842 02:19:51,620 --> 02:19:55,860 to French-occupied Milan by a judge who found that the artist 1843 02:19:55,860 --> 02:19:58,980 had failed to deliver the main panel of an altarpiece 1844 02:19:58,980 --> 02:20:02,820 that he and his collaborators had been commissioned to paint 1845 02:20:02,820 --> 02:20:04,820 more than two decades earlier. 1846 02:20:04,820 --> 02:20:08,900 Florence's city council, still expecting Leonardo to complete 1847 02:20:08,900 --> 02:20:13,780 the Battle of Anghiari, reluctantly granted him a three-month leave. 1848 02:20:13,780 --> 02:20:17,500 Milan's French overseers were all too happy to welcome 1849 02:20:17,500 --> 02:20:20,900 Leonardo back to the city where his Last Supper 1850 02:20:20,900 --> 02:20:24,820 had once so impressed King Louis XII. 1851 02:20:24,820 --> 02:20:28,620 Governor Charles d'Amboise authorised a raft of projects 1852 02:20:28,620 --> 02:20:30,580 for Leonardo, including plans 1853 02:20:30,580 --> 02:20:33,380 for an elaborate summer villa and garden, 1854 02:20:33,380 --> 02:20:36,980 and theatrical spectacles to keep the court entertained. 1855 02:20:38,300 --> 02:20:42,260 "We must confess, we loved him even before meeting him in person," 1856 02:20:42,260 --> 02:20:45,740 wrote d'Amboise, who praised the extraordinary power 1857 02:20:45,740 --> 02:20:47,220 of Leonardo's gifts. 1858 02:20:48,820 --> 02:20:51,860 Leonardo's three-month leave came and went. 1859 02:20:51,860 --> 02:20:56,180 When Dubois wrote to request that he stay longer in Milan, 1860 02:20:56,180 --> 02:20:59,740 the head of Florence's city council, Piero Soderini, 1861 02:20:59,740 --> 02:21:01,700 called Leonardo a laggard. 1862 02:21:02,700 --> 02:21:05,860 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 1863 02:21:28,220 --> 02:21:33,060 But when Leonardo's uncle Francesco died in 1507, leaving everything 1864 02:21:33,060 --> 02:21:37,740 to his beloved nephew, the artist was forced to return to Florence, 1865 02:21:37,740 --> 02:21:40,860 where his siblings, determined to again disinherit 1866 02:21:40,860 --> 02:21:44,340 their half-brother, had taken the matter to court. 1867 02:21:45,900 --> 02:21:49,260 - It is a moment of great difficulty. 1868 02:21:49,260 --> 02:21:55,820 Francesco basically had been the figure that had been most present 1869 02:21:55,820 --> 02:21:59,500 for Leonardo when he was growing up in Vinci. 1870 02:21:59,500 --> 02:22:02,460 - As the legal proceedings dragged on, 1871 02:22:02,460 --> 02:22:05,700 Leonardo immersed himself in refining what was now 1872 02:22:05,700 --> 02:22:10,460 nearly two decades of notes on the theory and practice of painting. 1873 02:22:14,820 --> 02:22:18,820 - If the painter wishes to see enchanting beauties, 1874 02:22:18,820 --> 02:22:21,140 he has the power to create them. 1875 02:22:23,300 --> 02:22:26,500 If he wants to see frightful monstrosities 1876 02:22:26,500 --> 02:22:31,140 or things that are funny, ridiculous or truly heart-rending, 1877 02:22:31,140 --> 02:22:34,180 he is their lord and master. 1878 02:22:34,180 --> 02:22:39,060 In fact, anything that exists in the universe, in essence, 1879 02:22:39,060 --> 02:22:43,300 presence or imagination, he has first in his mind, 1880 02:22:43,300 --> 02:22:45,260 then in his hands, 1881 02:22:45,260 --> 02:22:48,700 and they are so excellent that they can generate 1882 02:22:48,700 --> 02:22:53,980 a well-proportioned harmony in the same time as a single glance, 1883 02:22:53,980 --> 02:22:55,580 as real things do. 1884 02:22:57,020 --> 02:22:59,660 - He's always, in the Treatise On Painting, using "you", 1885 02:22:59,660 --> 02:23:02,020 the addressee is "you", the second-person address, 1886 02:23:02,020 --> 02:23:03,300 which I really, really like. 1887 02:23:03,300 --> 02:23:05,500 But I sometimes feel like he's talking to himself, 1888 02:23:05,500 --> 02:23:08,060 the way we talk to ourselves, like, "You've got to get this right." 1889 02:23:08,060 --> 02:23:11,820 So it seems like a conversation with himself in which he's trying 1890 02:23:11,820 --> 02:23:13,460 to work it out a little bit. 1891 02:23:13,460 --> 02:23:17,340 So, for instance, when he wants to talk about how shadows 1892 02:23:17,340 --> 02:23:21,020 don't all have the same colour, he says, "If you see a woman 1893 02:23:21,020 --> 02:23:23,740 "in a meadow dressed in white, that part of the woman 1894 02:23:23,740 --> 02:23:26,180 "that is turned toward the sun will be white in a way 1895 02:23:26,180 --> 02:23:27,940 "that reflects the sun's rays. 1896 02:23:27,940 --> 02:23:29,940 "That part of her that is next to the meadow 1897 02:23:29,940 --> 02:23:31,780 "will reflect the meadow." 1898 02:23:31,780 --> 02:23:33,340 It's so beautiful. 1899 02:23:35,020 --> 02:23:38,340 - One of the things he always emphasised was, look at form 1900 02:23:38,340 --> 02:23:41,420 in the world and try and see not what you expect to see - 1901 02:23:41,420 --> 02:23:44,940 a face, a shoulder, a torso - but see what's there. 1902 02:23:46,220 --> 02:23:50,140 So, Leonardo was acutely aware of the possibility of that kind 1903 02:23:50,140 --> 02:23:53,740 of imaginative projection into places where no-one would look 1904 02:23:53,740 --> 02:23:55,860 for representational form. 1905 02:23:57,300 --> 02:24:01,580 - When you look at a wall spotted with stains or with a mixture 1906 02:24:01,580 --> 02:24:06,340 of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you might notice 1907 02:24:06,340 --> 02:24:11,020 a resemblance to various landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, 1908 02:24:11,020 --> 02:24:17,380 rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills variously arranged. 1909 02:24:17,380 --> 02:24:21,260 Or again, you may see battles and figures in action, 1910 02:24:21,260 --> 02:24:23,540 or strange faces and costumes, 1911 02:24:23,540 --> 02:24:28,540 and an endless variety of objects which you could reduce 1912 02:24:28,540 --> 02:24:30,900 to complete and well-drawn forms. 1913 02:24:33,020 --> 02:24:36,540 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 1914 02:24:56,980 --> 02:25:01,900 Four centuries later, the German artist Max Ernst would recall 1915 02:25:01,900 --> 02:25:04,860 that Leonardo's advice to seek familiar forms 1916 02:25:04,860 --> 02:25:10,100 in unexpected places - walls, stains, clouds - had provoked 1917 02:25:10,100 --> 02:25:12,980 an unbearable visual obsession 1918 02:25:12,980 --> 02:25:16,300 and left him staring endlessly at floorboards. 1919 02:25:17,820 --> 02:25:23,340 - Leonardo was, more than any single artist, the one who emancipated 1920 02:25:23,340 --> 02:25:26,460 painters, visual artists, from their role essentially 1921 02:25:26,460 --> 02:25:30,460 as glorified artisans, craftsmen, into the role that they occupy 1922 02:25:30,460 --> 02:25:33,460 to this day as seers and philosophers 1923 02:25:33,460 --> 02:25:36,540 and sort of princes of the mind. 1924 02:25:36,540 --> 02:25:38,780 From very early on, people recognised that Leonardo 1925 02:25:38,780 --> 02:25:40,740 was another class of creature. 1926 02:25:40,740 --> 02:25:43,620 They saw that he had gifts that were discontinuous 1927 02:25:43,620 --> 02:25:44,900 with other people's gifts. 1928 02:25:44,900 --> 02:25:49,420 So when Leonardo's self-imagining and self-fashioning was as a poet, 1929 02:25:49,420 --> 02:25:53,460 a philosopher, someone who transcended the artisanal, 1930 02:25:53,460 --> 02:25:57,380 and in very real ways, he was the very first artist, 1931 02:25:57,380 --> 02:26:00,540 certainly in Western history, to play that role. 1932 02:26:00,540 --> 02:26:06,100 - One day, Leonardo visited the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, 1933 02:26:06,100 --> 02:26:09,860 where for years he had stored drawings, manuscripts, 1934 02:26:09,860 --> 02:26:13,340 a collection of books and his savings. 1935 02:26:13,340 --> 02:26:16,380 On this day, he was there to see a patient. 1936 02:26:18,180 --> 02:26:22,100 - The old man, a few hours before his death, 1937 02:26:22,100 --> 02:26:25,700 told me he was over 100 years old 1938 02:26:25,700 --> 02:26:30,620 and that he felt nothing physically wrong with him except weakness. 1939 02:26:30,620 --> 02:26:34,860 Thus, sitting on a bed in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova 1940 02:26:34,860 --> 02:26:39,620 in Florence, with no other movement or sign of suffering, 1941 02:26:39,620 --> 02:26:43,460 he passed on from this life. 1942 02:26:43,460 --> 02:26:48,660 And I dissected his body to see the cause of this gentle death. 1943 02:26:50,180 --> 02:26:54,180 - It had been nearly two decades since Leonardo's initial attempt 1944 02:26:54,180 --> 02:26:58,940 to map the human body, an effort that had resulted in a revolutionary 1945 02:26:58,940 --> 02:27:02,980 study of the human skull and an illustration that would become 1946 02:27:02,980 --> 02:27:06,900 one of the best-known drawings ever made - The Vitruvian Man. 1947 02:27:08,340 --> 02:27:12,380 His preoccupation with the human figure, and insistence 1948 02:27:12,380 --> 02:27:17,660 that the painter know both its outer and inner form, had never waned. 1949 02:27:17,660 --> 02:27:21,140 But his concept of the nervous and circulatory systems 1950 02:27:21,140 --> 02:27:25,100 was still heavily influenced by the Greek physician Galen, 1951 02:27:25,100 --> 02:27:28,700 whose inaccurate theories on blood flow and respiration remained 1952 02:27:28,700 --> 02:27:32,900 widely accepted more than 1,500 years after his death. 1953 02:27:34,980 --> 02:27:37,860 - Galen was a second-century physician, 1954 02:27:37,860 --> 02:27:40,740 and he wrote widely on the subject. 1955 02:27:40,740 --> 02:27:46,860 These formed the basis of understanding of anatomy, physiology 1956 02:27:46,860 --> 02:27:49,660 for the next nearly 1,600 years. 1957 02:27:49,660 --> 02:27:53,340 And that was that the blood was made in the liver continuously, 1958 02:27:53,340 --> 02:27:56,500 and the heart basically was there to churn the blood 1959 02:27:56,500 --> 02:27:59,740 and to heat it, and it communicated with the airways directly 1960 02:27:59,740 --> 02:28:03,060 so it could get rid of the evil spirits and so forth. 1961 02:28:03,060 --> 02:28:06,980 - Doctors in Bologna had performed public dissections 1962 02:28:06,980 --> 02:28:10,060 on the bodies of condemned criminals for their students 1963 02:28:10,060 --> 02:28:11,620 since the early 1300s. 1964 02:28:13,260 --> 02:28:17,260 For Leonardo, the practice offered him an opportunity to merge 1965 02:28:17,260 --> 02:28:21,300 rigorous scientific exploration with expert artistry 1966 02:28:21,300 --> 02:28:24,460 and to challenge Galen's uncontested views. 1967 02:28:26,820 --> 02:28:29,980 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 1968 02:28:59,340 --> 02:29:03,180 He depicted the blood vessels of the old man's neck, thorax 1969 02:29:03,180 --> 02:29:07,940 and upper torso, and the nerves and blood vessels of his head. 1970 02:29:07,940 --> 02:29:11,220 Then he moved through the abdominal organs, stomach, 1971 02:29:11,220 --> 02:29:13,660 liver, bladder and kidneys. 1972 02:29:13,660 --> 02:29:16,380 He made notes on the colon and intestines 1973 02:29:16,380 --> 02:29:18,860 and the heart's importance in heating the blood - 1974 02:29:18,860 --> 02:29:21,940 a theory of Galen's which would prove to be incorrect. 1975 02:29:24,260 --> 02:29:27,740 And once again, he looked to nature to help him make sense 1976 02:29:27,740 --> 02:29:31,980 of his discoveries, comparing the arteries and veins to tree branches, 1977 02:29:31,980 --> 02:29:35,740 and the heart to the seed from which the tree springs. 1978 02:29:37,260 --> 02:29:42,740 - Why the veins of old people become so long and become sinuous 1979 02:29:42,740 --> 02:29:47,500 when they used to be straight, and the walls become so thick 1980 02:29:47,500 --> 02:29:50,020 that it prevents the motion of the blood - 1981 02:29:50,020 --> 02:29:56,460 this causes the death of the elderly without disease. 1982 02:29:56,460 --> 02:29:59,620 - And what he got out of that dissection was astonishing. 1983 02:29:59,620 --> 02:30:03,340 He said, "I could see that the artery that surrounded the heart 1984 02:30:03,340 --> 02:30:05,900 "was silted up, and this is like a river." 1985 02:30:08,260 --> 02:30:11,300 And he knew, as a canal engineer and river engineer, if it silted up, 1986 02:30:11,300 --> 02:30:14,180 then it didn't flow properly and it caused all sorts of trouble. 1987 02:30:14,180 --> 02:30:19,940 So, the old man died from having a silted-up system of blood vessels. 1988 02:30:21,020 --> 02:30:23,460 - And from that, he makes the first description 1989 02:30:23,460 --> 02:30:26,260 of coronary atherosclerosis in the world. 1990 02:30:26,260 --> 02:30:29,020 And it isn't just a chance, you know, by the way, 1991 02:30:29,020 --> 02:30:31,860 this is what killed him - he goes on to describe 1992 02:30:31,860 --> 02:30:34,780 in several places the tortuosity of the vessels, 1993 02:30:34,780 --> 02:30:37,420 and I want to dissect the young and the old, the animals 1994 02:30:37,420 --> 02:30:39,860 and the birds, and try and understand what's 1995 02:30:39,860 --> 02:30:41,620 going on in these vessels. 1996 02:30:41,620 --> 02:30:45,540 - The scope of Leonardo's investigations grew. 1997 02:30:45,540 --> 02:30:49,140 He planned a book that would describe human anatomy 1998 02:30:49,140 --> 02:30:52,020 from the foetus to the fully grown man and woman, 1999 02:30:52,020 --> 02:30:56,220 their proportions, skeletal framework, muscular systems 2000 02:30:56,220 --> 02:30:58,620 and the nature of the senses. 2001 02:30:58,620 --> 02:31:02,180 - My way of depicting the human body 2002 02:31:02,180 --> 02:31:07,700 will be as clear to you as if a real man were standing before you. 2003 02:31:07,700 --> 02:31:12,420 And the reason is that, if you wish thoroughly to know the parts 2004 02:31:12,420 --> 02:31:17,500 of the human body anatomically, you or your eye must see it 2005 02:31:17,500 --> 02:31:21,940 from different aspects, considering it from below and from above 2006 02:31:21,940 --> 02:31:25,740 and from its sides, turning it about and seeking 2007 02:31:25,740 --> 02:31:28,060 the origin of each part. 2008 02:31:28,060 --> 02:31:32,540 And in this way, the natural anatomy is sufficient 2009 02:31:32,540 --> 02:31:34,100 for your comprehension. 2010 02:31:35,060 --> 02:31:38,580 - TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 2011 02:32:06,700 --> 02:32:10,540 In an ambitious study of the inner workings of the female torso, 2012 02:32:10,540 --> 02:32:15,060 Leonardo combined what he'd learned of both human and bovine anatomy 2013 02:32:15,060 --> 02:32:18,420 to create a detailed, three-dimensional drawing 2014 02:32:18,420 --> 02:32:21,700 of the main organs and vascular system. 2015 02:32:21,700 --> 02:32:23,940 Though it contained inaccuracies - 2016 02:32:23,940 --> 02:32:27,700 his rendering of the heart had two, not four, chambers - 2017 02:32:27,700 --> 02:32:30,820 it was Leonardo's most complete effort to capture what 2018 02:32:30,820 --> 02:32:34,580 he referred to as the cosmography of the lesser world. 2019 02:32:39,180 --> 02:32:41,100 - He's looking at the respiratory system, 2020 02:32:41,100 --> 02:32:42,740 he's looking at the blood system, 2021 02:32:42,740 --> 02:32:46,220 he's looking at the urogenital system. 2022 02:32:46,220 --> 02:32:48,940 And it's a supreme mapping of all these things, 2023 02:32:48,940 --> 02:32:50,900 all in one drawing. 2024 02:32:50,900 --> 02:32:52,300 An awesome drawing. 2025 02:32:52,300 --> 02:32:56,300 This vision of the body of the woman as the body of the Earth, 2026 02:32:56,300 --> 02:32:58,700 as the microcosm/macrocosm. 2027 02:32:58,700 --> 02:33:03,020 It's a great statement of the unity of all things in nature. 2028 02:33:06,420 --> 02:33:10,740 - Later, Leonardo would befriend a young physician who taught anatomy 2029 02:33:10,740 --> 02:33:15,460 at the University of Pavia, Marcantonio della Torre. 2030 02:33:15,460 --> 02:33:19,220 As Della Torre dissected cadavers for his students, 2031 02:33:19,220 --> 02:33:21,340 Leonardo would make drawings. 2032 02:33:22,500 --> 02:33:28,860 - He really develops a methodical approach to how to visualise 2033 02:33:28,860 --> 02:33:32,900 dissection, and also how to communicate it in a drawing. 2034 02:33:32,900 --> 02:33:35,100 - On The Cause Of Breathing... 2035 02:33:35,100 --> 02:33:36,620 Causa De La Litare... 2036 02:33:36,620 --> 02:33:37,700 Causa Del Moto... 2037 02:33:37,700 --> 02:33:39,260 On The Cause Of The Motion Of... 2038 02:33:39,260 --> 02:33:44,260 - We see him lifting, pointing out what is skin layer, 2039 02:33:44,260 --> 02:33:48,740 then lifting and pointing out what is muscle, 2040 02:33:48,740 --> 02:33:53,340 and then showing us what the bone structure is. 2041 02:33:53,340 --> 02:33:55,900 - On The Cause Of Losing Feeling In Any Limb... 2042 02:33:55,900 --> 02:33:59,540 - And we can see this unpacking, say, in layers. 2043 02:33:59,540 --> 02:34:03,660 - Tears come from the heart and not from the brain. 2044 02:34:03,660 --> 02:34:08,740 - We have an artist who has completely figured out, broken down 2045 02:34:08,740 --> 02:34:12,620 the nuts and bolts of how the body functions, 2046 02:34:12,620 --> 02:34:17,140 but also how one presents it in a way that communicates 2047 02:34:17,140 --> 02:34:19,980 all the scientific information. 2048 02:34:19,980 --> 02:34:25,540 This is completely new, and what we have is the artist 2049 02:34:25,540 --> 02:34:28,860 leading the scientific discoveries. 2050 02:34:28,860 --> 02:34:34,420 It's the most amazingly sequential way of thinking about anatomy 2051 02:34:34,420 --> 02:34:36,020 that we will ever see. 2052 02:34:38,140 --> 02:34:43,580 - His foetus in utero, drawn in brown ink and red chalk, would one day 2053 02:34:43,580 --> 02:34:48,620 be understood as a ground-breaking study of embryonic anatomy, 2054 02:34:48,620 --> 02:34:51,420 as well as a breathtaking work of art. 2055 02:34:53,220 --> 02:34:59,020 - The child does not breathe because he is constantly in water, 2056 02:34:59,020 --> 02:35:03,540 and he has no need to breathe because he is kept alive 2057 02:35:03,540 --> 02:35:07,780 and nourished by the life and food of the mother. 2058 02:35:07,780 --> 02:35:13,900 It thus follows that the same soul governs and nourishes both bodies. 2059 02:35:15,900 --> 02:35:19,780 - Over the years, Leonardo would compile a massive trove 2060 02:35:19,780 --> 02:35:22,780 of anatomical drawings informed by dozens 2061 02:35:22,780 --> 02:35:25,540 of human and animal dissections. 2062 02:35:25,540 --> 02:35:30,220 Even though he would never publish any of them in his lifetime, 2063 02:35:30,220 --> 02:35:32,580 his illustrations are to this day 2064 02:35:32,580 --> 02:35:35,140 admired for their astonishing accuracy. 2065 02:35:35,140 --> 02:35:40,020 Still, his devotion to mastering every fibre of the human body 2066 02:35:40,020 --> 02:35:42,260 is evident in each painting, 2067 02:35:42,260 --> 02:35:47,580 including his incomplete Saint Jerome Praying In The Wilderness. 2068 02:35:47,580 --> 02:35:51,980 Other artists often portrayed Saint Jerome as a penitent hermit 2069 02:35:51,980 --> 02:35:54,420 who beat his chest with a stone while wilting 2070 02:35:54,420 --> 02:35:56,780 under a merciless desert sun. 2071 02:35:56,780 --> 02:36:00,940 According to legend, he had earned the devotion of a lion 2072 02:36:00,940 --> 02:36:03,340 by removing a thorn from its paw. 2073 02:36:07,420 --> 02:36:10,900 Leonardo had precisely depicted the bones and muscles 2074 02:36:10,900 --> 02:36:14,700 beneath the skin of Jerome's shoulder and neck to illustrate 2075 02:36:14,700 --> 02:36:16,500 the saint's deep anguish. 2076 02:36:21,140 --> 02:36:24,100 - If you look at the anatomy of what we call the anterior triangle 2077 02:36:24,100 --> 02:36:27,540 of the neck, with Saint Jerome's head turned to one side, 2078 02:36:27,540 --> 02:36:29,540 it shows the sternomastoid muscle, 2079 02:36:29,540 --> 02:36:32,940 the scalene muscles very, very clearly. 2080 02:36:32,940 --> 02:36:34,540 It's the poise of the body, 2081 02:36:34,540 --> 02:36:37,620 it's the movements of the head, the control, the muscles 2082 02:36:37,620 --> 02:36:40,780 that are working, informs you so much about what's in the head 2083 02:36:40,780 --> 02:36:44,140 and what's in the mind and what's in the heart. 2084 02:36:52,460 --> 02:36:56,500 - By April of 1508, the legal dispute with his half-brothers 2085 02:36:56,500 --> 02:37:00,940 had been resolved in Leonardo's favour, and he had left Florence 2086 02:37:00,940 --> 02:37:02,540 and returned to Milan. 2087 02:37:03,780 --> 02:37:07,300 Later that year, he finally delivered a new version 2088 02:37:07,300 --> 02:37:11,500 of the altarpiece, known today as The Virgin Of The Rocks, 2089 02:37:11,500 --> 02:37:15,780 bringing a nearly two-decades-old disagreement to a close. 2090 02:37:18,060 --> 02:37:22,100 When he and his entourage found a new home in a Paris church, 2091 02:37:22,100 --> 02:37:26,700 they were joined by Francesco Melzi, the well-educated 14-year-old son 2092 02:37:26,700 --> 02:37:30,020 of a Milanese engineer and military captain. 2093 02:37:30,020 --> 02:37:33,540 Melzi had come to apprentice as a painter, 2094 02:37:33,540 --> 02:37:37,820 but it was as Leonardo's personal assistant that he would become 2095 02:37:37,820 --> 02:37:42,700 indispensable and perhaps closer to Leonardo than anyone, 2096 02:37:42,700 --> 02:37:46,460 including his companion and lover, Salai. 2097 02:37:46,460 --> 02:37:48,100 - Francesco Melzi was more like 2098 02:37:48,100 --> 02:37:51,100 Leonardo's secretary, amanuensis, 2099 02:37:51,100 --> 02:37:54,220 more of an intellectual companion than Salai. 2100 02:37:54,220 --> 02:37:56,580 Melzi was more aristocratic, 2101 02:37:56,580 --> 02:37:58,860 Salai is pretty working class in origin. 2102 02:37:58,860 --> 02:38:01,780 Perhaps there was a bit of friction between Salai and Melzi 2103 02:38:01,780 --> 02:38:06,340 because they fulfilled different roles in Leonardo's entourage. 2104 02:38:06,340 --> 02:38:10,020 - In time, Melzi would ensure the survival 2105 02:38:10,020 --> 02:38:11,940 of many of Leonardo's manuscripts. 2106 02:38:13,540 --> 02:38:17,900 - Before going any further, I shall do some experiments, 2107 02:38:17,900 --> 02:38:23,140 because I intend to first produce the experience and then use reason 2108 02:38:23,140 --> 02:38:28,140 to prove why the experience is forced to act that way. 2109 02:38:28,140 --> 02:38:30,500 And this is the true rule whereby 2110 02:38:30,500 --> 02:38:34,820 those who investigate natural effects must proceed. 2111 02:38:34,820 --> 02:38:38,860 And although nature begins with the cause and ends 2112 02:38:38,860 --> 02:38:43,140 in experience, we must proceed in the opposite sense. 2113 02:38:43,140 --> 02:38:46,340 In other words, starting from experience 2114 02:38:46,340 --> 02:38:49,420 and using that to investigate the cause. 2115 02:38:50,780 --> 02:38:53,460 - Though Muslim scientists in the Middle East 2116 02:38:53,460 --> 02:38:56,980 had long been testing their theories with experiments, 2117 02:38:56,980 --> 02:39:01,260 most natural philosophers in Europe continued to follow the example 2118 02:39:01,260 --> 02:39:05,020 of Aristotle, whose scientific conclusions had relied 2119 02:39:05,020 --> 02:39:06,940 solely on observation. 2120 02:39:09,500 --> 02:39:13,060 - Leonardo comes of age at a time when the first stirrings 2121 02:39:13,060 --> 02:39:16,300 of scientific revolution was just being felt. 2122 02:39:17,460 --> 02:39:20,180 It progressed by narrowing the problems 2123 02:39:20,180 --> 02:39:22,060 that it was asking itself. 2124 02:39:23,060 --> 02:39:25,180 Leonardo's mind is still elsewhere. 2125 02:39:25,180 --> 02:39:28,300 He's trying to think, what if you looked at it all at once, 2126 02:39:28,300 --> 02:39:29,980 how would you solve it? 2127 02:39:31,260 --> 02:39:36,100 But he has the kind of restless curiosity of intellect 2128 02:39:36,100 --> 02:39:39,540 and the perpetual dissatisfaction with the received solution, 2129 02:39:39,540 --> 02:39:42,180 which are core, kind of the Promethean fire 2130 02:39:42,180 --> 02:39:44,140 of the scientific revolution. 2131 02:39:44,140 --> 02:39:49,460 So if we see Leonardo helping to set alight that great adventure, 2132 02:39:49,460 --> 02:39:51,020 I don't think we're wrong. 2133 02:39:51,020 --> 02:39:54,460 - His early work, definitely his writings, 2134 02:39:54,460 --> 02:39:56,660 are influenced by Aristotle. 2135 02:39:56,660 --> 02:40:00,220 But as he aged, he became more of a scientist. 2136 02:40:00,220 --> 02:40:04,500 You could see that his approach was more of an analytical approach, 2137 02:40:04,500 --> 02:40:08,580 a combination, a hybrid of experiments and theory. 2138 02:40:09,860 --> 02:40:14,260 - Force arises from dearth or abundance. 2139 02:40:14,260 --> 02:40:17,780 It is the child of physical motion and the grandchild 2140 02:40:17,780 --> 02:40:21,980 of spiritual motion, and the mother and origin of gravity. 2141 02:40:23,500 --> 02:40:27,860 Gravity is limited to the elements of water and earth, 2142 02:40:27,860 --> 02:40:30,500 but this force is unlimited 2143 02:40:30,500 --> 02:40:34,180 and it could be used to move infinite worlds 2144 02:40:34,180 --> 02:40:36,540 if instruments could be made by which 2145 02:40:36,540 --> 02:40:38,540 the force could be generated. 2146 02:40:41,100 --> 02:40:44,540 - He realised that every object at the given height 2147 02:40:44,540 --> 02:40:47,260 takes the same time to reach the ground. 2148 02:40:47,260 --> 02:40:51,380 Very quickly, he realises there's something called acceleration. 2149 02:40:51,380 --> 02:40:53,500 - Leonardo understood that gravity 2150 02:40:53,500 --> 02:40:56,260 caused falling objects to accelerate. 2151 02:40:56,260 --> 02:41:01,220 Seeking to measure this force, he designed an experiment. 2152 02:41:01,220 --> 02:41:05,660 He filled a jar with sand and then emptied it while moving 2153 02:41:05,660 --> 02:41:10,500 the tilted jar horizontally, increasing his speed as he went. 2154 02:41:10,500 --> 02:41:14,580 When the falling sand formed an isosceles right triangle, 2155 02:41:14,580 --> 02:41:17,540 he knew that the acceleration of his lateral motion 2156 02:41:17,540 --> 02:41:21,660 matched the acceleration of the falling sand, due to gravity. 2157 02:41:22,700 --> 02:41:26,020 - And in his experiments, he tried different accelerations 2158 02:41:26,020 --> 02:41:29,460 and he shows the patterns of the sand and then shows 2159 02:41:29,460 --> 02:41:33,660 that exactly at the moment that he has achieved that degree, 2160 02:41:33,660 --> 02:41:37,340 9.81 metres per second per second, that we know today, 2161 02:41:37,340 --> 02:41:40,020 he gets exactly the triangle that is here. 2162 02:41:40,020 --> 02:41:44,660 - Leonardo called it the equalisation of motion, and it allowed him 2163 02:41:44,660 --> 02:41:48,340 to roughly calculate Earth's gravitational constant. 2164 02:41:48,340 --> 02:41:52,140 It would be a century before Galileo's experiments 2165 02:41:52,140 --> 02:41:57,500 proved gravity's universal effect on objects, and far longer 2166 02:41:57,500 --> 02:42:01,420 before Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein would use calculus, 2167 02:42:01,420 --> 02:42:07,060 not yet invented in Leonardo's time, to define and explain gravity. 2168 02:42:07,060 --> 02:42:09,900 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2169 02:42:41,820 --> 02:42:44,420 - It shows clearly that he had the imagination, 2170 02:42:44,420 --> 02:42:49,340 he had the power of putting an experiment together in order 2171 02:42:49,340 --> 02:42:52,100 to look at a theory that he had. 2172 02:42:52,100 --> 02:42:55,060 And that is not something that you find 2173 02:42:55,060 --> 02:42:57,780 in every, even normal scientist. 2174 02:42:57,780 --> 02:43:03,220 For him, it was a burning question to answer, a puzzle that he wanted 2175 02:43:03,220 --> 02:43:05,100 to understand for himself. 2176 02:43:05,100 --> 02:43:08,940 And that's what I think is the character of a genius. 2177 02:43:10,580 --> 02:43:13,180 - In a manuscript dedicated to the physical world 2178 02:43:13,180 --> 02:43:17,420 and its mechanics, Leonardo compiled his scientific observations 2179 02:43:17,420 --> 02:43:21,940 and theories on geology, astronomy and especially water. 2180 02:43:23,060 --> 02:43:24,900 - So, water was mobile and visible, 2181 02:43:24,900 --> 02:43:27,420 you could see what was going on, 2182 02:43:27,420 --> 02:43:29,940 and he enhanced his ability to see it. 2183 02:43:29,940 --> 02:43:32,180 He set up experimental tanks. 2184 02:43:32,180 --> 02:43:36,580 Water poured out of a rectangular mouth into this tank, 2185 02:43:36,580 --> 02:43:40,820 and he used millet seeds to see what's going on in the water 2186 02:43:40,820 --> 02:43:44,260 and to try to understand these things. 2187 02:43:44,260 --> 02:43:48,420 So water epitomised the movement of nature, but it had the advantage 2188 02:43:48,420 --> 02:43:52,820 of being mobile, visible and could be subject to experiment. 2189 02:43:54,300 --> 02:43:58,740 - Natural philosophers as far back as Aristotle had believed that rain 2190 02:43:58,740 --> 02:44:01,020 could not be the only source of water 2191 02:44:01,020 --> 02:44:03,220 feeding mountain springs and streams. 2192 02:44:04,580 --> 02:44:07,980 In seeking to test their theories, Leonardo turned again 2193 02:44:07,980 --> 02:44:13,900 to the ancient analogy of the microcosm and macrocosm. 2194 02:44:13,900 --> 02:44:19,140 - Just as the blood surges upward and pours through the broken veins 2195 02:44:19,140 --> 02:44:24,980 of the forehead, so from the lowest depths of the sea, the water rises 2196 02:44:24,980 --> 02:44:29,220 to the mountain tops, where, finding its veins broken, 2197 02:44:29,220 --> 02:44:33,460 it flows downwards and returns to the sea. 2198 02:44:33,460 --> 02:44:37,340 - When he tries to form a pattern about how water gets to the top 2199 02:44:37,340 --> 02:44:40,220 of the mountain, and he makes an analogy with our blood, 2200 02:44:40,220 --> 02:44:44,700 he realises, oh, that's not correct, because he tests it out 2201 02:44:44,700 --> 02:44:47,220 by showing how heated water can move up and down. 2202 02:44:47,220 --> 02:44:51,820 - The water of the ocean cannot make its way from the roots 2203 02:44:51,820 --> 02:44:54,580 to the tops of the mountains. 2204 02:44:54,580 --> 02:44:57,980 - So he went through a lot of different solutions 2205 02:44:57,980 --> 02:45:00,540 that had been proposed, and he did experiments. 2206 02:45:00,540 --> 02:45:02,460 Some of them real experiments, we're quite sure, 2207 02:45:02,460 --> 02:45:06,020 some copied from other places, like the siphoning. 2208 02:45:06,020 --> 02:45:08,660 Leonardo made a lot of different sketches, and he thought 2209 02:45:08,660 --> 02:45:11,140 about what happens in gravity as he thought 2210 02:45:11,140 --> 02:45:14,300 about it in those times, and it just didn't add up. 2211 02:45:14,300 --> 02:45:15,820 So he kept on going. 2212 02:45:15,820 --> 02:45:21,220 - Eventually, he concluded correctly that precipitation alone 2213 02:45:21,220 --> 02:45:26,300 supplied the water that flowed down from mountain peaks. 2214 02:45:26,300 --> 02:45:31,020 While studying a valley, Leonardo noticed marine fossils embedded 2215 02:45:31,020 --> 02:45:35,700 in layers of rock that had been carved by a river over the ages. 2216 02:45:35,700 --> 02:45:40,300 For many, the fossils were evidence of the great biblical flood 2217 02:45:40,300 --> 02:45:43,060 which had inundated the entire planet. 2218 02:45:44,100 --> 02:45:46,860 - He accepts the Bible as a book of revelation 2219 02:45:46,860 --> 02:45:48,700 and the books of the saints and so on. 2220 02:45:48,700 --> 02:45:51,180 He says, "I let be the sacred writings, 2221 02:45:51,180 --> 02:45:53,540 "for they are the supreme truth." 2222 02:45:53,540 --> 02:45:57,100 But that then frees him, as it were, to describe nature. 2223 02:45:57,100 --> 02:46:00,940 And he can see that there's evidence that these creatures 2224 02:46:00,940 --> 02:46:03,620 were living there, actual living colonies, 2225 02:46:03,620 --> 02:46:06,380 they weren't just left there by floods, as it were. 2226 02:46:06,380 --> 02:46:12,340 - You must first inquire whether the deluge was caused by rain 2227 02:46:12,340 --> 02:46:14,620 or by the swelling of the sea. 2228 02:46:14,620 --> 02:46:20,420 And then you must show how neither rain nor flooding rivers 2229 02:46:20,420 --> 02:46:23,980 nor overflowing seas could have caused the shells, 2230 02:46:23,980 --> 02:46:27,780 being heavy objects, to have floated up the mountains. 2231 02:46:29,300 --> 02:46:31,700 - TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 2232 02:46:54,940 --> 02:46:58,180 - He concludes that the Earth must be very ancient. 2233 02:46:58,180 --> 02:47:00,380 And that, of course, is a rather challenging idea, 2234 02:47:00,380 --> 02:47:04,980 because it's saying that the Earth, if we look at it analytically, 2235 02:47:04,980 --> 02:47:07,940 isn't something which is made in seven days, seven nights. 2236 02:47:09,900 --> 02:47:14,300 - Leonardo carries with him all the questions in the world. 2237 02:47:14,300 --> 02:47:16,460 The notebooks are a dialogue with the world 2238 02:47:16,460 --> 02:47:19,180 and a dialogue with yourself. 2239 02:47:19,180 --> 02:47:22,140 And it doesn't matter if the empirical observation 2240 02:47:22,140 --> 02:47:23,900 leads to confirmation. 2241 02:47:23,900 --> 02:47:28,300 There are many errors, and not all of them are original ideas. 2242 02:47:28,300 --> 02:47:33,460 Of course, he is reworking ideas that come from the past, but I think 2243 02:47:33,460 --> 02:47:37,420 that the progress of knowledge and the human mind is not a line, 2244 02:47:37,420 --> 02:47:39,980 it's not linear, it's little revolutions. 2245 02:47:42,900 --> 02:47:46,020 - One of the things that was very important to Renaissance artists, 2246 02:47:46,020 --> 02:47:48,340 Leonardo included, was the idea of a demonstration, 2247 02:47:48,340 --> 02:47:51,420 that you would add something to this extraordinary, 2248 02:47:51,420 --> 02:47:54,980 NASA-like project of conquering the world of visual appearances. 2249 02:47:54,980 --> 02:47:57,780 And one of the things that Leonardo adds very strongly is this idea 2250 02:47:57,780 --> 02:48:00,780 of aerial perspective, that the atmosphere with which 2251 02:48:00,780 --> 02:48:03,580 things are seen changes the way that they're seen. 2252 02:48:03,580 --> 02:48:06,940 And Leonardo, the beautiful blur, enters the world 2253 02:48:06,940 --> 02:48:10,460 and he distinguishes between - and he deliberately blurs - 2254 02:48:10,460 --> 02:48:13,140 makes optical, makes suggestive, 2255 02:48:13,140 --> 02:48:16,380 invites what's called the beholder's share into the picture, 2256 02:48:16,380 --> 02:48:21,220 in effect, to complete and deepen, enrich, sweeten the form 2257 02:48:21,220 --> 02:48:22,580 that we can't entirely see. 2258 02:48:22,580 --> 02:48:24,980 That's a Leonardesque contribution. 2259 02:48:26,580 --> 02:48:30,860 - Above Lake Como, toward Germany, is the valley of Chiavenna, 2260 02:48:30,860 --> 02:48:34,660 where the River Mera flows into this lake. 2261 02:48:34,660 --> 02:48:39,940 Here are barren and very high mountains with huge rocks. 2262 02:48:39,940 --> 02:48:44,140 They are impossible to climb, except on foot. 2263 02:48:46,420 --> 02:48:50,740 - On a trip to the mountains north of Milan, Leonardo observed 2264 02:48:50,740 --> 02:48:56,900 how atmospheric phenomena - light, haze, vapour, as well as altitude 2265 02:48:56,900 --> 02:49:00,860 and distance - affected the appearance of the landscape, 2266 02:49:00,860 --> 02:49:04,540 the intensity of colours, the sharpness of details. 2267 02:49:06,300 --> 02:49:09,300 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2268 02:49:20,500 --> 02:49:22,340 - He is really thinking about 2269 02:49:22,340 --> 02:49:25,020 what the atmosphere does to colour 2270 02:49:25,020 --> 02:49:27,140 and to light in the distance. 2271 02:49:28,340 --> 02:49:31,460 It is the way in which he creates infinity. 2272 02:49:33,380 --> 02:49:36,740 - I say that the blueness we see in the atmosphere 2273 02:49:36,740 --> 02:49:41,140 is not intrinsic colour, but is caused by warm vapour 2274 02:49:41,140 --> 02:49:45,460 evaporating into minute and imperceptible atoms 2275 02:49:45,460 --> 02:49:48,060 on which the solar rays fall, 2276 02:49:48,060 --> 02:49:52,140 rendering them luminous against the infinite darkness 2277 02:49:52,140 --> 02:49:54,660 of the fiery sphere which lies beyond. 2278 02:49:56,020 --> 02:49:59,940 - He becomes quite obsessed by the idea that you have 2279 02:49:59,940 --> 02:50:03,740 infinite gradations in tone in a colour. 2280 02:50:04,740 --> 02:50:09,260 You also get these indivisible, ethereal qualities. 2281 02:50:09,260 --> 02:50:12,660 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2282 02:50:21,940 --> 02:50:25,940 Back in his studio in Milan, Leonardo returned to a theme 2283 02:50:25,940 --> 02:50:28,420 he had been exploring on and off for years - 2284 02:50:28,420 --> 02:50:33,260 the Madonna and Child with Mary's mother, Saint Anne. 2285 02:50:33,260 --> 02:50:36,900 In the years since his cartoon depicting the three figures 2286 02:50:36,900 --> 02:50:41,020 had caused a stir in Florence, he had made studies of an infant 2287 02:50:41,020 --> 02:50:45,500 holding a lamb and created another full-scale cartoon 2288 02:50:45,500 --> 02:50:49,380 that also featured Saint John as an infant. 2289 02:50:49,380 --> 02:50:52,340 Now he began work on a painting. 2290 02:50:54,020 --> 02:50:56,780 In a preparatory drawing of the Madonna, 2291 02:50:56,780 --> 02:51:00,980 Leonardo explored her features using the sfumato technique, 2292 02:51:00,980 --> 02:51:03,060 blending shadows in ways so subtle 2293 02:51:03,060 --> 02:51:06,460 that her contours practically vanished. 2294 02:51:06,460 --> 02:51:11,300 - The line itself has neither matter nor substance, 2295 02:51:11,300 --> 02:51:16,660 and may rather be called an imaginary idea than a real object. 2296 02:51:16,660 --> 02:51:20,540 And this being its nature, it occupies no space. 2297 02:51:22,260 --> 02:51:24,780 - He made it his business, his whole life, 2298 02:51:24,780 --> 02:51:28,180 is how can you account for the way things appear without 2299 02:51:28,180 --> 02:51:31,220 any drawn lines, which are not visible in nature? 2300 02:51:31,220 --> 02:51:34,220 So the sfumato comes in there because sfumato refers 2301 02:51:34,220 --> 02:51:38,060 to the modelling of figures and how they turn in space. 2302 02:51:38,060 --> 02:51:39,900 And then the most difficult of all, 2303 02:51:39,900 --> 02:51:42,260 of how to make it look like it's surrounded by air. 2304 02:51:42,260 --> 02:51:45,340 - Leonardo is very insistent that there are no lines in nature. 2305 02:51:45,340 --> 02:51:48,460 There are edges, so if you're drawing, you draw the edge. 2306 02:51:48,460 --> 02:51:50,820 But this is not a natural thing. 2307 02:51:50,820 --> 02:51:52,060 He says there are no lines in nature, 2308 02:51:52,060 --> 02:51:56,020 you simply have a surface which hits another surface and that's it. 2309 02:51:56,020 --> 02:51:58,500 There's no line that runs down that point. 2310 02:51:58,500 --> 02:52:03,380 And as things get a little way away from the eye, so you don't see 2311 02:52:03,380 --> 02:52:05,700 these edges precisely. 2312 02:52:05,700 --> 02:52:10,660 And he said at one point, the eye does not know the edge of any body. 2313 02:52:11,860 --> 02:52:15,940 - All bodies exist in space 2314 02:52:15,940 --> 02:52:18,620 and all bodies are dimensional. 2315 02:52:18,620 --> 02:52:24,340 And space is all about relationships between things. 2316 02:52:26,700 --> 02:52:29,340 When you're drawing a figure, you have to draw the back side 2317 02:52:29,340 --> 02:52:31,700 of it and the front side of it. 2318 02:52:31,700 --> 02:52:36,620 You have to account for the proximity between things 2319 02:52:36,620 --> 02:52:41,700 by being able to draw the side that you can't see, and then extend 2320 02:52:41,700 --> 02:52:45,620 the drawing from that part you can't see to the place where the image 2321 02:52:45,620 --> 02:52:47,300 you can see actually is. 2322 02:52:47,300 --> 02:52:50,500 You look at the world as if you have X-ray eyes. 2323 02:52:51,900 --> 02:52:56,060 - The rocky outcrops and distant vertical peaks he'd sketched in 2324 02:52:56,060 --> 02:53:01,260 fine detail would inform the outdoor space he intended for his subjects. 2325 02:53:03,580 --> 02:53:08,860 On a 5.5ft tall by 3.5ft wide poplar panel, Leonardo probed both 2326 02:53:08,860 --> 02:53:12,420 the psychological states of Saint Anne, Mary and Jesus 2327 02:53:12,420 --> 02:53:14,860 and their natural surroundings. 2328 02:53:14,860 --> 02:53:18,060 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2329 02:54:02,780 --> 02:54:09,900 - We really do see all the sum of all of Leonardo's scientific 2330 02:54:09,900 --> 02:54:13,700 knowledge, artistic knowledge make their appearance 2331 02:54:13,700 --> 02:54:15,140 in the painting. 2332 02:54:15,140 --> 02:54:18,860 If we look at the foreground especially and see 2333 02:54:18,860 --> 02:54:23,060 the stratification of the rocks, he's going to create the continuum 2334 02:54:23,060 --> 02:54:26,660 of the atmospheric perspective from the foreground 2335 02:54:26,660 --> 02:54:28,540 to the deep distance. 2336 02:54:28,540 --> 02:54:32,740 His objective is to suggest an infinity of space. 2337 02:54:40,100 --> 02:54:44,100 - Leonardo would continue to refine the painting for years. 2338 02:54:44,100 --> 02:54:48,540 But like so many of his previous works, it too would go unfinished. 2339 02:54:50,220 --> 02:54:53,380 TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 2340 02:55:10,060 --> 02:55:14,700 In December 1511, an alliance of city states attacked Milan 2341 02:55:14,700 --> 02:55:18,660 in an attempt to drive the French Army off the Italian peninsula. 2342 02:55:20,460 --> 02:55:23,260 Amidst the upheaval and a devastating outbreak 2343 02:55:23,260 --> 02:55:26,500 of the plague, Leonardo and his retinue decamped 2344 02:55:26,500 --> 02:55:31,020 to his apprentice Francesco Melzi's family villa along the Adda River, 2345 02:55:31,020 --> 02:55:33,460 about 20 miles northeast of Milan. 2346 02:55:34,620 --> 02:55:37,980 There, he explored the valley and its surrounding hills, 2347 02:55:37,980 --> 02:55:41,140 and drew plans for improving the Villa Melzi. 2348 02:55:42,460 --> 02:55:47,500 At night, he continued his studies of the motion of candle flames. 2349 02:55:47,500 --> 02:55:51,300 - I can imagine Leonardo is working at night on his table. 2350 02:55:51,300 --> 02:55:54,060 Of course, the light is candlelight. 2351 02:55:54,060 --> 02:55:59,140 And he stopped a minute and looking how the candle started to form 2352 02:55:59,140 --> 02:56:02,580 this little globe of light at the beginning, 2353 02:56:02,580 --> 02:56:05,580 and it goes on for two pages to describe 2354 02:56:05,580 --> 02:56:10,420 the dynamics, again, process, and then the way 2355 02:56:10,420 --> 02:56:15,220 in which from the round initial shape it comes to become pyramidal 2356 02:56:15,220 --> 02:56:17,140 and why it get pointed, 2357 02:56:17,140 --> 02:56:21,220 and what is happening to the air which is warmed up 2358 02:56:21,220 --> 02:56:24,420 that create vortices like air. 2359 02:56:24,420 --> 02:56:29,060 He could find all the laws of nature in the candlelight. 2360 02:56:29,060 --> 02:56:31,700 They were at work all together. 2361 02:56:31,700 --> 02:56:37,180 - At Villa Melzi, Leonardo had also returned to his anatomical studies, 2362 02:56:37,180 --> 02:56:41,060 dissecting ox hearts to determine how blood flows 2363 02:56:41,060 --> 02:56:43,220 through their chambers and valves. 2364 02:56:43,220 --> 02:56:48,420 He now recognised that rather than having two chambers, as anatomists 2365 02:56:48,420 --> 02:56:52,980 had believed since the second century, the human heart had four. 2366 02:56:53,940 --> 02:56:57,300 "Marvellous instrument invented by the Supreme Master," 2367 02:56:57,300 --> 02:56:59,540 he had written below a drawing. 2368 02:57:00,860 --> 02:57:04,900 - He came up with this totally accurate idea that the valves begin 2369 02:57:04,900 --> 02:57:07,180 to close while the blood's still flowing through them. 2370 02:57:07,180 --> 02:57:10,620 And he translates that along with other knowledge to say, 2371 02:57:10,620 --> 02:57:12,740 well, look, that's what must happen to the blood. 2372 02:57:12,740 --> 02:57:14,820 It must form these vortices. 2373 02:57:14,820 --> 02:57:18,020 And the vortex which is forming as the blood is still flowing 2374 02:57:18,020 --> 02:57:21,940 out of the heart is actually unfurling the leaflets, 2375 02:57:21,940 --> 02:57:24,460 so they can close in perfect harmony. 2376 02:57:24,460 --> 02:57:26,100 And then he challenges himself - 2377 02:57:26,100 --> 02:57:28,540 well, what if I'm wrong, what happens then? 2378 02:57:28,540 --> 02:57:32,980 He then designed an experiment to demonstrate how this happens. 2379 02:57:32,980 --> 02:57:35,140 - He writes notes to himself 2380 02:57:35,140 --> 02:57:38,740 that how to actually pour hot wax 2381 02:57:38,740 --> 02:57:41,860 inside the calf heart, and then use 2382 02:57:41,860 --> 02:57:45,620 that wax model to make a glass model out of it, 2383 02:57:45,620 --> 02:57:49,620 and buy some silk fabrics and cut it to the shape 2384 02:57:49,620 --> 02:57:54,260 of the leaflets of the heart of the calf, and sew it together 2385 02:57:54,260 --> 02:57:59,980 and then put together perhaps the first synthetic heart valve ever. 2386 02:57:59,980 --> 02:58:05,620 Then he uses water and a hand pump and use grass seeds to do 2387 02:58:05,620 --> 02:58:08,700 visualisation, basically watching how the flow pattern forms 2388 02:58:08,700 --> 02:58:12,460 every time the heart valve opened or closed. 2389 02:58:12,460 --> 02:58:15,180 - The first-ever drawing of a synthetic heart valve, 2390 02:58:15,180 --> 02:58:18,620 which is exactly like heart valves we use today, tissue valves. 2391 02:58:18,620 --> 02:58:20,060 But he didn't stop there. 2392 02:58:20,060 --> 02:58:23,900 He went on, and he described why the aortic valve, pulmonary valve, 2393 02:58:23,900 --> 02:58:26,580 had to have three leaflets - not two, not four - 2394 02:58:26,580 --> 02:58:29,500 through geometric proof. Beautiful geometric proof. 2395 02:58:29,500 --> 02:58:34,140 - It would be more than 450 years before scientists, 2396 02:58:34,140 --> 02:58:39,180 using modern imaging techniques, proved Leonardo's theory correct. 2397 02:58:40,420 --> 02:58:43,340 - Why? Why did he do this? 2398 02:58:43,340 --> 02:58:46,100 First of all, there was no use for it. There's no cardiac surgery, 2399 02:58:46,100 --> 02:58:48,380 there's no cardiology, you couldn't do anything with it. 2400 02:58:48,380 --> 02:58:49,820 So it wasn't of any use to anybody. 2401 02:58:49,820 --> 02:58:52,940 It was purely understanding for understanding's sake. 2402 02:58:55,860 --> 02:59:00,460 - Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age. 2403 02:59:01,900 --> 02:59:07,660 And if you understand that old age is nurtured by wisdom, 2404 02:59:07,660 --> 02:59:11,660 you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age 2405 02:59:11,660 --> 02:59:13,900 will not lack for nourishment. 2406 02:59:15,820 --> 02:59:18,660 - Leonardo was now 60 years old. 2407 02:59:18,660 --> 02:59:21,900 Francesco Melzi drew the master in red chalk. 2408 02:59:23,500 --> 02:59:28,700 - One of the most beautiful observations in his writing is, 2409 02:59:28,700 --> 02:59:34,460 "Behold how, when we're away, we long to return to our home country 2410 02:59:34,460 --> 02:59:36,740 "and to our former state, 2411 02:59:36,740 --> 02:59:39,900 "how like it is to the moth with the flame. 2412 02:59:39,900 --> 02:59:44,060 "But the man who desires each new day and each new hour, thinking 2413 02:59:44,060 --> 02:59:49,020 "that they are too slow in coming, does not realise that he is longing 2414 02:59:49,020 --> 02:59:50,780 "for his own destruction." 2415 02:59:52,900 --> 02:59:58,420 - By March 1513, Leonardo was back in Milan, where Swiss mercenaries 2416 02:59:58,420 --> 03:00:03,460 had ousted the French and Sforza's son now claimed the title of Duke. 2417 03:00:04,980 --> 03:00:09,260 The political landscape was shifting all over the Italian peninsula. 2418 03:00:09,260 --> 03:00:15,420 The previous year, after almost two decades in exile, the Medici family, 2419 03:00:15,420 --> 03:00:18,420 now led by Giovanni and Giuliano, 2420 03:00:18,420 --> 03:00:20,660 had regained power in Florence. 2421 03:00:20,660 --> 03:00:25,100 When Pope Julius II died in March of 1513, 2422 03:00:25,100 --> 03:00:29,180 the conclave of cardinals chose Giovanni to replace him. 2423 03:00:29,180 --> 03:00:31,860 He took the name Leo X. 2424 03:00:33,060 --> 03:00:35,900 Giuliano followed his brother to the Vatican 2425 03:00:35,900 --> 03:00:38,940 and soon invited Leonardo to join them. 2426 03:00:40,140 --> 03:00:42,180 Many of Italy's greatest artists 2427 03:00:42,180 --> 03:00:44,540 had already joined the Vatican court, 2428 03:00:44,540 --> 03:00:48,380 including Michelangelo, who had recently completed a fresco 2429 03:00:48,380 --> 03:00:51,540 on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 2430 03:00:51,540 --> 03:00:55,580 and Raphael Sanzio, a 30-year-old painter from Urbino, 2431 03:00:55,580 --> 03:00:58,580 who had been heavily influenced by Leonardo. 2432 03:00:59,700 --> 03:01:04,900 Raphael had quickly become a star in Rome and a favourite of the Pope. 2433 03:01:04,900 --> 03:01:08,340 In his recently completed masterpiece for the papal palace, 2434 03:01:08,340 --> 03:01:10,100 the School Of Athens, 2435 03:01:10,100 --> 03:01:14,020 Raphael had modelled the ancient Greek philosophers on himself 2436 03:01:14,020 --> 03:01:16,340 and his contemporaries. 2437 03:01:16,340 --> 03:01:19,620 Plato, one of the central figures, 2438 03:01:19,620 --> 03:01:21,380 was based on Leonardo. 2439 03:01:22,900 --> 03:01:26,420 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2440 03:01:44,620 --> 03:01:49,980 That fall, Giuliano de Medici installed Leonardo in his entourage 2441 03:01:49,980 --> 03:01:52,620 at the Vatican's Villa Belvedere 2442 03:01:52,620 --> 03:01:54,300 and paid him a monthly stipend. 2443 03:01:55,660 --> 03:01:58,420 Pope Leo commissioned a painting from Leonardo 2444 03:01:58,420 --> 03:02:01,180 but soon became frustrated. 2445 03:02:01,180 --> 03:02:05,180 "Alas, this man will never do anything," the Pope complained. 2446 03:02:05,180 --> 03:02:10,260 "He is already thinking of the end before he has even begun to work." 2447 03:02:10,260 --> 03:02:15,060 The stipend left Leonardo free to study botany, mathematics 2448 03:02:15,060 --> 03:02:19,740 and architecture, and to create amusements for the court. 2449 03:02:19,740 --> 03:02:23,300 Once, when a gardener at the villa found a strange lizard, 2450 03:02:23,300 --> 03:02:27,140 Leonardo gave it wings, horns and a beard, 2451 03:02:27,140 --> 03:02:30,660 and kept it in a box so he could frighten his friends. 2452 03:02:32,740 --> 03:02:35,780 But Leonardo grew unhappy in Rome. 2453 03:02:35,780 --> 03:02:39,580 He complained that a new assistant was rude and lazy, 2454 03:02:39,580 --> 03:02:43,220 that authorities prevented him from performing dissections, 2455 03:02:43,220 --> 03:02:46,180 and he began writing in code, 2456 03:02:46,180 --> 03:02:50,060 paranoid that a German mirror maker was spying on him. 2457 03:02:55,620 --> 03:02:57,380 - Tenebre. Darkness. 2458 03:02:57,380 --> 03:02:59,220 Vento. Wind. 2459 03:02:59,220 --> 03:03:02,020 Tempest at sea. Fortuna di mare. 2460 03:03:02,020 --> 03:03:04,780 Forests on fire. Silva in focate. 2461 03:03:06,220 --> 03:03:08,900 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2462 03:03:17,780 --> 03:03:21,460 - The air was dark because of the dense rain which fell 2463 03:03:21,460 --> 03:03:23,500 in a bleak descent. 2464 03:03:23,500 --> 03:03:28,380 All around may be seen venerable trees uprooted and stripped 2465 03:03:28,380 --> 03:03:30,100 by the fury of the winds. 2466 03:03:31,660 --> 03:03:33,460 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2467 03:04:06,620 --> 03:04:09,020 - Bolts from heaven. Saette del cielo. 2468 03:04:09,020 --> 03:04:12,500 Earthquakes and crumbling mountains. 2469 03:04:12,500 --> 03:04:19,060 And above these judgments, dark clouds split by the forked flashes 2470 03:04:19,060 --> 03:04:23,180 lighting up on all sides the depth of the gloom. 2471 03:04:30,060 --> 03:04:34,940 - I wonder if those deluge drawings are, in part, self-portrait. 2472 03:04:34,940 --> 03:04:36,780 They're mysterious. 2473 03:04:36,780 --> 03:04:40,540 The flare-up of his mind towards the end of his life, 2474 03:04:40,540 --> 03:04:42,980 the agitation of all of that idea. 2475 03:04:47,540 --> 03:04:52,860 - In 1516, Giuliano de' Medici died of tuberculosis. 2476 03:04:52,860 --> 03:04:57,020 With his patron gone, Leonardo accepted an invitation 2477 03:04:57,020 --> 03:05:01,980 that would take him beyond Italy for the first time in his life. 2478 03:05:01,980 --> 03:05:06,460 Francis I, the charismatic 21-year-old King of France, 2479 03:05:06,460 --> 03:05:10,900 was building a court at his chateau in Amboise to enhance his reputation 2480 03:05:10,900 --> 03:05:13,820 as an enlightened and cultured monarch. 2481 03:05:14,940 --> 03:05:19,580 Leonardo, now 64 years old, packed all his belongings 2482 03:05:19,580 --> 03:05:23,100 and travelling by mule with Francesco Melzi, Salai 2483 03:05:23,100 --> 03:05:26,100 and a new servant named Battista de Villanis, 2484 03:05:26,100 --> 03:05:31,420 headed north over the Alps toward the Loire River valley of France. 2485 03:05:31,420 --> 03:05:33,460 He did not expect to return. 2486 03:05:34,860 --> 03:05:38,700 The King installed Leonardo at the Chateau du Cloux, 2487 03:05:38,700 --> 03:05:43,340 an elegant manor house down the road from his castle at Amboise. 2488 03:05:43,340 --> 03:05:46,580 He paid Leonardo a generous salary 2489 03:05:46,580 --> 03:05:50,260 and provided him with a housekeeper who prepared his meals. 2490 03:05:51,580 --> 03:05:54,780 - Francis I is very ambitious in military terms, 2491 03:05:54,780 --> 03:05:56,660 but also in cultural terms. 2492 03:05:56,660 --> 03:05:58,500 He knows the Renaissance, 2493 03:05:58,500 --> 03:06:01,260 what the Italians are doing, is the hot thing, 2494 03:06:01,260 --> 03:06:05,180 and he wants to buy into that Italianate, Renaissance culture. 2495 03:06:05,180 --> 03:06:08,180 And Leonardo was clearly a kind of tourist attraction 2496 03:06:08,180 --> 03:06:09,860 for Francis's court. 2497 03:06:09,860 --> 03:06:14,140 He could say, "I've got the greatest artist in the world down here." 2498 03:06:14,140 --> 03:06:16,900 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2499 03:06:54,100 --> 03:06:57,980 The Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini said that Francis 2500 03:06:57,980 --> 03:07:01,980 was besotted with those great virtues of Leonardo's. 2501 03:07:01,980 --> 03:07:05,140 The King could never believe there was another man born 2502 03:07:05,140 --> 03:07:08,300 in this world who knew as much. 2503 03:07:08,300 --> 03:07:11,100 TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 2504 03:07:50,860 --> 03:07:54,620 Leonardo had finally found the perfect patron. 2505 03:07:54,620 --> 03:07:59,500 He staged spectacles, as he had in Milan, and sketched designs 2506 03:07:59,500 --> 03:08:03,660 for a new royal palace at Romorantin that was never built. 2507 03:08:05,300 --> 03:08:09,340 What may have been a small stroke made painting difficult, 2508 03:08:09,340 --> 03:08:13,540 but he continued to draw and to teach. 2509 03:08:13,540 --> 03:08:15,740 TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2510 03:08:33,380 --> 03:08:38,060 In October 1517, Leonardo received a visit from an acquaintance 2511 03:08:38,060 --> 03:08:41,340 he had met in Rome, Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona. 2512 03:08:42,820 --> 03:08:46,140 During a tour of his studio, Leonardo proudly shared 2513 03:08:46,140 --> 03:08:49,220 his manuscripts, which the cardinal's assistant 2514 03:08:49,220 --> 03:08:53,500 described as an infinity of volumes, as well as several unfinished 2515 03:08:53,500 --> 03:08:56,500 paintings that he'd carried with him from Rome. 2516 03:08:56,500 --> 03:09:00,180 They included a mysterious and sensual likeness 2517 03:09:00,180 --> 03:09:01,980 of Saint John the Baptist, 2518 03:09:01,980 --> 03:09:05,940 and his depiction of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. 2519 03:09:08,500 --> 03:09:12,820 Leonardo also showed them a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, 2520 03:09:12,820 --> 03:09:15,900 the wife of a well-to-do Florentine silk merchant, 2521 03:09:15,900 --> 03:09:19,340 which he had been commissioned to paint 14 years earlier. 2522 03:09:20,740 --> 03:09:24,420 At the time, she had been 24 years old 2523 03:09:24,420 --> 03:09:26,540 and was the mother of five children. 2524 03:09:27,860 --> 03:09:31,500 Leonardo had carried the painting from Florence to Milan, 2525 03:09:31,500 --> 03:09:35,100 then to Rome, and finally over the Alps to France. 2526 03:09:36,580 --> 03:09:39,460 Like many of his works, it had, over time, 2527 03:09:39,460 --> 03:09:42,460 become something more than a commission. 2528 03:09:43,780 --> 03:09:47,580 - He's poured into that painting his knowledge of the microcosm, 2529 03:09:47,580 --> 03:09:51,420 the body of the woman, the body of nature. 2530 03:09:51,420 --> 03:09:54,100 The movement of hair, 2531 03:09:54,100 --> 03:09:55,420 light on surfaces, 2532 03:09:55,420 --> 03:09:58,580 atmospheric perspective in the landscape. 2533 03:09:58,580 --> 03:10:01,940 So he's taken this straightforward subject and turned it 2534 03:10:01,940 --> 03:10:03,740 into something wonderful. 2535 03:10:03,740 --> 03:10:08,500 It ceases to become a functional likeness and it becomes a statement 2536 03:10:08,500 --> 03:10:10,660 about the woman in nature. 2537 03:10:10,660 --> 03:10:13,260 It becomes a statement about the beloved woman, 2538 03:10:13,260 --> 03:10:16,220 equivalent to Italian poetry. 2539 03:10:16,220 --> 03:10:19,660 The woman who is idealised into some sublimated form, 2540 03:10:19,660 --> 03:10:22,180 who's completely unbelievable, in a way. 2541 03:10:24,860 --> 03:10:27,740 - The Earth has a living soul 2542 03:10:27,740 --> 03:10:30,380 and its flesh is the soil. 2543 03:10:30,380 --> 03:10:34,340 Its bones are the strata and structures of the rocks 2544 03:10:34,340 --> 03:10:36,140 which form the mountains. 2545 03:10:42,580 --> 03:10:44,900 Its blood is its veins of water. 2546 03:10:47,580 --> 03:10:51,100 The pool of blood around the heart is the ocean. 2547 03:10:52,820 --> 03:10:57,820 Its breathing by the rise and fall of blood through the pulses 2548 03:10:57,820 --> 03:11:02,380 is likewise, in the Earth, the ebb and flow of the sea. 2549 03:11:04,380 --> 03:11:07,420 - TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 2550 03:12:52,300 --> 03:12:57,140 - The soul leaves the body with such reluctance. 2551 03:12:57,140 --> 03:13:03,300 And I do believe that its pain and sorrows are not without cause. 2552 03:13:06,220 --> 03:13:09,700 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2553 03:13:40,740 --> 03:13:45,140 Over the years, Leonardo had filled many thousands of notebook pages 2554 03:13:45,140 --> 03:13:48,460 with an astonishing array of observations and fables, 2555 03:13:48,460 --> 03:13:51,780 grocery lists and instructions for painters, 2556 03:13:51,780 --> 03:13:55,060 sketches of faces and studies of nature. 2557 03:13:55,060 --> 03:13:59,900 Now, in quiet moments, he returned to the geometric problems 2558 03:13:59,900 --> 03:14:03,500 that had perplexed and delighted him for decades. 2559 03:14:03,500 --> 03:14:08,660 He drew circles and arcs in boxes, trying, as he had for many years, 2560 03:14:08,660 --> 03:14:12,540 to solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle. 2561 03:14:14,300 --> 03:14:16,900 On a page dedicated to an 1,800-year-old 2562 03:14:16,900 --> 03:14:20,740 Euclidean geometry problem, he trailed off - 2563 03:14:20,740 --> 03:14:23,260 it was time to eat. 2564 03:14:23,260 --> 03:14:26,140 "Et cetera," he wrote, "because the soup is getting cold." 2565 03:14:28,260 --> 03:14:31,100 It was among his last notebook entries. 2566 03:14:38,100 --> 03:14:43,020 As his health began to fail, Leonardo put his estate in order. 2567 03:14:43,020 --> 03:14:47,140 On April 23rd 1519, in Amboise, 2568 03:14:47,140 --> 03:14:50,260 before a royal notary and seven witnesses, 2569 03:14:50,260 --> 03:14:53,060 Leonardo signed his last will and testament. 2570 03:14:54,980 --> 03:14:58,100 To the brothers who had battled him for an inheritance, 2571 03:14:58,100 --> 03:15:00,420 he left a generous sum of money. 2572 03:15:01,460 --> 03:15:05,020 He divided his property in Milan between his servant 2573 03:15:05,020 --> 03:15:09,980 Battista de Villanis and Salai, who had already built a house there. 2574 03:15:11,860 --> 03:15:16,460 The most significant bequest would go to Francesco Melzi, 2575 03:15:16,460 --> 03:15:19,540 who would also serve as executor. 2576 03:15:19,540 --> 03:15:22,660 He was to inherit Leonardo's pension and clothes, 2577 03:15:22,660 --> 03:15:26,260 as well as his intellectual and artistic legacy - 2578 03:15:26,260 --> 03:15:30,220 all of the books, manuscripts and paintings in his possession. 2579 03:15:33,500 --> 03:15:38,660 Leonardo da Vinci died nine days later, on May 2nd 1519, 2580 03:15:38,660 --> 03:15:40,380 at the age of 67. 2581 03:15:44,900 --> 03:15:49,020 He was buried in the Church of Saint-Florentin, in Amboise. 2582 03:15:50,620 --> 03:15:53,180 "On account of his many divine qualities," 2583 03:15:53,180 --> 03:15:55,020 Giorgio Vasari said, 2584 03:15:55,020 --> 03:15:58,780 "his name and his renown shall never be extinguished." 2585 03:16:02,420 --> 03:16:06,500 "It is impossible for me to express the pain his death has caused me," 2586 03:16:06,500 --> 03:16:08,460 Francesco Melzi wrote. 2587 03:16:08,460 --> 03:16:12,860 "It is beyond nature's power to reproduce such a man." 2588 03:16:15,260 --> 03:16:18,540 - The one act an artist brings to the world 2589 03:16:18,540 --> 03:16:21,940 is to give you a way of gazing into it. 2590 03:16:21,940 --> 03:16:24,700 Can you look at it through my eyes? 2591 03:16:24,700 --> 03:16:27,100 That's the greatest gift an artist brings. 2592 03:16:27,100 --> 03:16:29,580 And Leonardo does that. 2593 03:16:31,820 --> 03:16:35,780 Very few artists have given us their soul or their mind. 2594 03:16:35,780 --> 03:16:37,460 Leonardo gives us both. 2595 03:16:45,580 --> 03:16:48,100 - Leonardo dies as a kind of legend. 2596 03:16:48,100 --> 03:16:50,860 But if you'd asked, say, in the 1600s, 2597 03:16:50,860 --> 03:16:54,100 what did they think Leonardo's paintings looked like, 2598 03:16:54,100 --> 03:16:55,500 it's deeply problematic. 2599 03:16:55,500 --> 03:16:58,220 There are not many of them, they're not publicly available, 2600 03:16:58,220 --> 03:17:00,980 so the picture of what Leonardo actually looked like 2601 03:17:00,980 --> 03:17:04,060 and what he really did was pretty cloudy. 2602 03:17:09,940 --> 03:17:13,900 - Though few of Leonardo's works could be seen, his writings 2603 03:17:13,900 --> 03:17:16,700 on the theory of art began circulating among artists 2604 03:17:16,700 --> 03:17:18,100 in the mid-1500s, 2605 03:17:18,100 --> 03:17:23,300 first as handwritten manuscripts abridged from his book On Painting, 2606 03:17:23,300 --> 03:17:28,420 and later in a print edition published in Italian and French. 2607 03:17:28,420 --> 03:17:32,940 The complete book, compiled by Francesco Melzi, was eventually 2608 03:17:32,940 --> 03:17:37,260 rediscovered in the Vatican Libraries and published in 1817. 2609 03:17:39,300 --> 03:17:45,140 In the 1800s, a handful of writers began to probe more deeply, offering 2610 03:17:45,140 --> 03:17:50,180 new insight and lavishing Leonardo's masterpieces with lyrical praise. 2611 03:17:51,300 --> 03:17:54,260 "She is older than the rocks among which she sits," 2612 03:17:54,260 --> 03:17:57,060 wrote Walter Pater of the Mona Lisa. 2613 03:17:57,060 --> 03:18:00,260 He called her "the symbol of the modern idea". 2614 03:18:02,940 --> 03:18:08,860 Historians turned up new documents, letters, contracts, wills 2615 03:18:08,860 --> 03:18:13,620 containing more facts and providing more nuance to his life and times. 2616 03:18:15,300 --> 03:18:18,860 As academic interest in Leonardo grew, 2617 03:18:18,860 --> 03:18:21,140 so did his cultural importance. 2618 03:18:22,340 --> 03:18:24,820 In a slim volume published in 1910, 2619 03:18:24,820 --> 03:18:29,420 the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud offered his analysis 2620 03:18:29,420 --> 03:18:33,580 of Leonardo's memory of a bird visiting him in his cradle. 2621 03:18:35,020 --> 03:18:40,260 The bird, Freud decided, represented Caterina, Leonardo's mother. 2622 03:18:42,740 --> 03:18:47,580 In 1911, an Italian handyman wrapped the Mona Lisa in his smock 2623 03:18:47,580 --> 03:18:50,260 and smuggled it out of the Louvre in Paris, 2624 03:18:50,260 --> 03:18:52,540 where it had hung since 1804. 2625 03:18:56,140 --> 03:18:59,620 28 months after the heist, authorities caught the thief 2626 03:18:59,620 --> 03:19:01,540 when he attempted to sell the painting to 2627 03:19:01,540 --> 03:19:03,500 an antiques dealer in Florence. 2628 03:19:05,740 --> 03:19:09,860 Leonardo's masterpiece had never been more famous. 2629 03:19:11,380 --> 03:19:15,020 - And then we get into the surrealist Marcel Duchamp, 2630 03:19:15,020 --> 03:19:18,860 who does this painting that's a cheap postcard of the Mona Lisa 2631 03:19:18,860 --> 03:19:21,620 with a moustache and beard graffitied onto it. 2632 03:19:21,620 --> 03:19:25,540 You get the poster of Mona Lisa smoking a joint. 2633 03:19:25,540 --> 03:19:30,740 The wonderful Andy Warhol 30 silkscreen Giocondas in one. 2634 03:19:30,740 --> 03:19:32,580 Nat King Cole's Mona Lisa. 2635 03:19:32,580 --> 03:19:34,500 Cole Porter, You're The Top. 2636 03:19:34,500 --> 03:19:36,780 Bob Dylan, Visions Of Johanna - 2637 03:19:36,780 --> 03:19:39,740 "The Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, 2638 03:19:39,740 --> 03:19:41,460 "you can tell by the way she smiled." 2639 03:19:41,460 --> 03:19:43,580 - # You can tell by the way she smiled... # 2640 03:19:43,580 --> 03:19:48,620 JFK: - Mr Minister, we in the United States are grateful for this loan 2641 03:19:48,620 --> 03:19:52,580 from the leading artistic power in the world. 2642 03:19:52,580 --> 03:19:56,020 - # When the jelly-faced women all sneeze 2643 03:19:56,020 --> 03:19:58,940 # Hear the one with the moustache say 2644 03:19:58,940 --> 03:20:02,100 # "Jeez, I can't find my knees..." # 2645 03:20:07,780 --> 03:20:11,580 The Last Supper had barely survived an Allied air strike 2646 03:20:11,580 --> 03:20:13,580 during the Second World War, as well 2647 03:20:13,580 --> 03:20:16,860 as numerous ill-conceived attempts at restoration. 2648 03:20:18,420 --> 03:20:21,940 But recent, more sophisticated efforts to repair the mural, 2649 03:20:21,940 --> 03:20:25,180 which had begun to flake off the wall within Leonardo's lifetime, 2650 03:20:25,180 --> 03:20:28,540 have secured the fragile work for visitors who come 2651 03:20:28,540 --> 03:20:30,980 to the former monastery in droves. 2652 03:20:35,140 --> 03:20:41,460 In recent decades, engineers, surgeons, pilots, playwrights, 2653 03:20:41,460 --> 03:20:46,900 architects and artists everywhere have found wisdom and inspiration 2654 03:20:46,900 --> 03:20:50,740 in the unmatched trove of notebook pages and drawings 2655 03:20:50,740 --> 03:20:54,740 that encompass Leonardo's life of boundless seeking. 2656 03:20:57,340 --> 03:21:00,100 TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN: 2657 03:21:43,140 --> 03:21:45,300 - Leonardo, Leonardo, Leonardo! 2658 03:21:46,380 --> 03:21:47,900 - At $400 million. 2659 03:21:47,900 --> 03:21:50,780 Leonardo's Salvator Mundi, selling here at Christie's, 2660 03:21:50,780 --> 03:21:52,420 $400 million is the bid. 2661 03:21:52,420 --> 03:21:54,740 And the piece is...sold. 2662 03:21:54,740 --> 03:21:56,580 - APPLAUSE 2663 03:21:56,580 --> 03:22:00,140 - Sir Kenneth Clark called him the most curious man in history. 2664 03:22:00,140 --> 03:22:04,420 He was always interested, he was always wanting to know. 2665 03:22:04,420 --> 03:22:07,260 And I think, more than even the paintings, 2666 03:22:07,260 --> 03:22:11,540 more than the mysterious Lisa, more than the Last Supper, 2667 03:22:11,540 --> 03:22:15,820 is this sense of Leonardo, the man who never took no for an answer 2668 03:22:15,820 --> 03:22:17,540 in terms of finding things out. 2669 03:22:23,620 --> 03:22:26,980 - TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH: 2670 03:23:09,300 --> 03:23:11,060 - He has a love of the world. 2671 03:23:11,060 --> 03:23:14,980 Nothing was dull or boring or quotidian to him, 2672 03:23:14,980 --> 03:23:17,980 it was all a marvel. 2673 03:23:17,980 --> 03:23:20,940 That's the blessed state I feel he was sort of in, 2674 03:23:20,940 --> 03:23:24,740 because the world is that abundant, it is that rich. 2675 03:23:24,740 --> 03:23:28,140 It is there for us, like he saw, 2676 03:23:28,140 --> 03:23:31,740 and the more you attend, the richer it is, 2677 03:23:31,740 --> 03:23:34,660 and the more you find your own place in it 2678 03:23:34,660 --> 03:23:37,140 as part of the marvellous machine.