IX
Meantime Leonardo, careless of political events and removed from all his friends, was working on a picture begun some time ago to the order of the Servite monks of Santa Maria Annunziata at Florence. It represented St. Anne and the Virgin Mary; perfect knowledge and perfect love. St. Anne was like a sibyl, eternally young; on her downcast eyes, on her delicately curved lips, there played a mystery of seduction, full of the wisdom of the serpent, not unlike Leonardo's own smile. Beside her, the face of Mary, childish and simple, breathed the innocence of the dove. She knew because she loved, while Anne loved because she knew. Looking at this picture, Giovanni thought that for the first time he understood the master's saying, 'that Great Love is the daughter of Great Knowledge.' Leonardo at this time was also designing machines of various kinds and shapes, gigantic cranes, pumps, saws, borers; weaving, fulling, rope-making, and smith's apparatus.
As often before, Giovanni was astonished that he could occupy himself simultaneously in such widely different ways, but the seeming discord was intentional.
'I maintain,' he wrote in his Principles of Mechanics, 'that Force is something spiritual and unseen—spiritual, because the life in it is incorporeal; unseen, because the body in which the force is generated changes neither its weight nor its aspect.'
Leonardo's destiny was decided with that of Cæsar Borgia. The latter, though he never lost audacity and calm, felt that fortune had betrayed him. At the time of the Pope's death and Cæsar's own illness, their enemies leagued themselves and seized the Roman Campagna. Prospero Colonna advanced to the city gates, Baglioni on Perugia. Urbino, Camerino, Piombino recovered their independence. The conclave, assembled for the election of the new Pope, demanded the removal of the duke from Rome. The whole order of things was changed; it seemed as if all were lost.
Those who had trembled before 'the elect of Heaven,' as Machiavelli had called him, now rejoiced at his overthrow, and kicked the dying lion with asses's hoofs. The poets furnished epigrams:—
'Cæsar or nothing! Both we find in thee,
Who Cæsar wast, and soon shalt nothing be.'
Leonardo, conversing one day in the Vatican with Antonio Giustiniani the Venetian, turned the conversation on Machiavelli.
'Has he told you of his book on statecraft?'
'Oh yes; he has mentioned it frequently, but no doubt he spoke in jest. That is not a book to give to the world! Who writes such books? Counsel to rulers? Revelation of the secrets of government?—showing that all rule is violence covered by a mask of justice? 'Twere to teach the hens the methods of the fox; to arm the sheep with wolf's teeth! God guard us from such politics!'
'Then you think Messer Niccolò in error, and that he will change his opinions?'
'Nay! my opinion is with him! We do well to act as he counsels; only let us not speak it. Yet if he do give his book to the world, I doubt it will harm any but himself. The sheep and the fowls will go on trusting the wolves and the foxes. All will be invariable as before. God is merciful; the world will last our time.'