The third event was the sum of many small events. Georg and his friend Johannes, in their jealousy, had spread much gossip about Leonardo in court circles. They now took advantage of Giuliano’s death to circulate stories about Leonardo’s dissections of bodies in the hospital. These were added to vicious gossip that Leonardo was pro-French. This news eventually reached Pope Leo X. The Pope himself was perfectly aware of the practice of dissection and, personally, he had turned his eyes the other way. However, as dissection was contrary to Church doctrine, an official complaint to the head of the Church could not be ignored. The Pope used it as an excuse to be rid of this tiresome old man whom he had tolerated only for his brother’s sake. Leonardo was abandoned.
The year 1516 was drawing to a close. Leonardo had decided to seek the patronage offered him by Francis I. So he and Francesco de’ Melzi, his loyal young friend, left Rome for the long journey into France. As he left his native land for the last time, Leonardo looked back over his years—from the silver lute that had sent him to Milan, to the death of Giuliano, to the final rejection of Pope Leo X. Remembering how Lorenzo de’ Medici had sent him to Ludovico so many years before, Leonardo thought to himself with great sadness, “The Medici created and destroyed me.”
13
The Last Years
Leonardo looked around from where he was leaning on the parapet of the Chateau d’Amboise to watch a group of young lords and ladies playing croquet on the emerald-green lawn. The click of the mallets and balls was mingled with the shouts and laughter of the young people. It was late afternoon in May and although the sun was warm the breeze from the west was chilly. Leonardo looked down again from the sheer height of the castle wall across the wide sweep of the Loire river and the valley extending as far as the eye could see. Swallows were swooping low over the banks below and the wind carried their shrilling cries up to him. The forested islands and sandbars interrupted the steady flow of the river and Leonardo could see the reflections sway in the current. He had been studying the river but he realized that his aging eyes were not up to the task of concentrating for long. The wind made them water, so he turned away and started back to his home.
There was much that was familiar in the castle at Amboise. The thick, high walls and round towers and especially the graceful, lacy spires of the king’s residence brought back much that he had known in his native land. The gardens had been planted by Italians—there were orange trees and even a mulberry tree from his beloved plains of Lombardy. The king’s residence and chapel had been constructed and the decorations carved in stone by Italian artisans. Leonardo could stop and talk in his native tongue with many of the men employed by the king. Since the time of Charles VIII, the French had brought in the latest Renaissance styles from Italy. Leonardo’s steps took him back from the castle grounds and down a path with a hand-railing. The steep roofs of the town of Amboise with their chimneys could be seen below him. The path led to a small manor house, like a miniature castle with sharp spires and lacy, carved-stone gables that was set in green lawns and gravel paths.
The Manoir de Cloux, as Leonardo’s house was called, had been a hunting lodge for Francis I, but when Leonardo had arrived he gave the house to Leonardo for his home. Francis, in his admiration for this great man, also gave him seven hundred crowns a year, together with a pension of four hundred for Francesco de’ Melzi.
Leonardo at Chateau d’Amboise on the Loire.
The long journey from Rome had left Leonardo tired and weak and he had fallen ill again shortly after his arrival. This time the attack was more serious and had left him with his right hand permanently crippled. He looked at it now as he opened the door to his room. “Another warning,” he thought, “and there’s still so much to do.”