In the Footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci
Few cities are as closely associated with a single genius as Florence is with Leonardo da Vinci. While researching Gioconda, I followed the places that shaped Leonardo’s early life, from the hills of Vinci to the workshop where he first learned his craft.
I headed out of Florence’s hot streets into the cool Tuscan countryside, where the quiet village of Vinci, a short drive away, stands as a living shrine to Leonardo. The museum in the village gives a feel for the scope of his inventions and the range of his interests. I stood before a reconstruction of Leonardo’s flying machine, which he called his ‘great bird’, wondering how close he’d come to testing it and whether he would have survived the flight. The sky above the hills of Monte Albano was alive with birds: swallows, kestrels and egrets. Leonardo must have worked out his design here, watching them on the wing. I paused a while at the font in the church of Santa Croce where he was baptised as a child then headed for a cool, dark bistro and waited for the sun to wear out.
When it did, I took the path to Anchiano. It is a pretty, country path that takes you through the valley. Leonardo’s father was the local notary, Ser Piero da Vinci, and the house registered in his name at the time of Leonardo’s birth stands on a hill overlooking the view that Leonardo sketched as a boy, before his departure for Florence. Inside the thick stone walls of Ser Piero’s old home Leonardo comes to life. His bizarre reverse script covers the walls, and his sketches of the surrounding countryside lie in a glass cabinet in one of the rooms.
I had booked into the Hotel Mona Lisa in Florence. It was hard not to and the hotel did not disappoint. She was on every wall of the lounge: with or without a moustache, big breasted, small breasted, modern, retro, surreal. I had planned on starting out here as Leonardo did, at the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio where he first picked up a brush, but an inquiry at the tourist office drew a blank. ‘There were many bottega workshops during the Renaissance,’ they said apologetically, ‘but most are lost to memory.’ It took a visit to the archives and a long, confused conversation with the national library about membership, but by the end of the second day I had a tenuous indication. Patiently, I traced the old address to its modern equivalent, and set off eagerly, driven by the emotion of a place lost to memory and the prospect of finding the workshop that had produced the finest art in Florence. Standing finally outside Verrocchio’s workshop, it was easy to imagine the young Leonardo stepping through the doorway with more curiosity than confidence. Of course, the workshop was no longer a workshop. Now it was just a shady café, humming with the sound of espresso machines. A few locals were sitting drinking coffee and reading papers, perhaps no more aware of what had once happened here than the proprietor of the café, who casually told me that there was a kind of storeroom at the rear, but that nobody really used it anymore. That didn’t stop me from dreaming of the artists that had once inhabited the space. Places might move on but history can always leave a mark, even if it’s only in the mind.
If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy my novel Gioconda, inspired by the life of Leonardo da Vinci.
