Leonardo da Vinci, Pathfinder of Science

by Henry S. Gillette

The narrow streets of the city were so crowded that is was necessary for the da Vinci family, together with their servants and the donkeys laden with household effects, to go single file. Leonardo rode behind his father, shouting questions, and, at the same time, turning his head from side to side so as not to miss a thing. Brought up in the solitude of mountains and valleys, and accustomed to the quiet life of a village, the boy of fifteen was overwhelmed with the excitement of the city.

Leonardo rode behind his father, turning his head from side to side so as not to miss a thing.

The party was now making its way past the booths of hundreds of shops, past magnificent palaces built by wealthy merchants, and across squares filled with the produce from hundreds of farms. Every now and then, Leonardo caught a glimpse of the cathedral dome, one of the architectural marvels of its day. He had seen the cathedral with its bell tower and also the towering spire of the Palazzo della Signoria—which means the Palace of the Lords—from a hill as they approached the city. This palace still stands and today it is called the Palazzo Vecchio or Old Palace. But now these sights were lost to view in the midst of the narrow streets, other churches, flags, and the lines of washing that seemed to hang everywhere. Frequently, Piero’s party was pressed against a wall as a procession shoved its way through a street. Sometimes it was by armed horsemen escorting a rich banker to some appointment; other times it was a file of cowled monks observing some saint’s day and carrying huge wax candles before them.

After they had crossed the magnificent square of the Signoria, in front of the Palace of the same name, Piero leaned down from his horse and asked a blacksmith where Verrochio’s studio might be. The man shouted above the din of clanging hammers:

“Everybody knows that shop, Signor—it’s down that street and to the right! You can’t miss it—ask anybody!”

The man was right, for the workshop of Verrochio was not hard to find. Verrochio was considered one of Florence’s finest artists and everybody knew of him. He was a short, broad-shouldered man of thirty-two with a round face, shrewd eyes, a thin mouth and dark curly hair that reached almost to his shoulders. In his workshop were two other apprentices—young Pietro Perugino, who was six years older than Leonardo, and Lorenzo di Credi, a boy of eight. They all lived in the house together and, after Leonardo was shown where he would sleep and had put away the few things he had brought with him from Vinci, he was taken to the place where he would work.

Verrochio, whose real name was Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni, had taken the name of his teacher, a renowned goldsmith, as was the custom in the shops at that time. Verrochio himself was a skilled goldsmith. But to be an artist and to have your own workshop in the year 1467 meant being a specialist in many things. Into Verrochio’s place came a great variety of artistic work—painting pictures, sculpting and architecture, goldsmithing, designing and making armor, creating decorated furniture, designing mechanical toys, and even preparing stage scenery.

Verrochio, of course, would attend to the greater creative tasks, while his apprentices did the chores of grinding colors, preparing panels for painting, making armatures for his sculpture, hewing to size the marble for a statue, preparing molds for casting, building models for a new palace or church—in fact, all the countless number of preparations to the finished work. Sometimes, if an apprentice showed extraordinary talent, he would be allowed to work on the finished painting or assist with the final strokes of the chisel. Verrochio was a busy man and a successful artisan. To further his own ambitions, he was now absorbed in the perfecting of mathematical perspective and the study of geometry.

The curious Leonardo had come to the right man. In Verrochio’s workshop, where so many crafts were learned at the same time, his powers of observation were able to develop; his hunger to know about mathematics was fed. In Verrochio, Leonardo found a teacher who would encourage these investigations and urge him to study a wide variety of subjects. Leonardo now felt his lack of a fuller education. He started to borrow mathematics textbooks and to seek out men who could teach him what he needed to know. After each day’s work was over, Leonardo would continue on into the night, catching up on his neglected studies and discovering for himself new areas of thought such as anatomy, movement and weight, botany, and another subject which was to occupy much of his later years—hydraulics, or the useful application of water power.