"Since we hear that His Majesty delights in pictures," wrote Lodovico to Maffeo di Treviglio, the ambassador whom he was sending to Hungary in 1485, "and we have here a most excellent painter, with whose genius we are well acquainted, and who, we are sure, has no equal, we have ordered this master to paint a figure of Our Lady, as beautiful and perfect and holy as he can imagine, without sparing pains or expense. He has already set to work, and will undertake nothing else until this picture is finished, and we are able to send it as a gift to his said Majesty."
The painter who had no equal could be none other than Leonardo; but it would be interesting to know if this picture, originally destined for Matthias Corvinus, was the Nativity eventually given by Lodovico in 1493 to Bianca Maria's future husband, the Emperor Maximilian. All traces of this altar-piece, however, as well as of the Bacchus and other subjects which Leonardo painted for the Moro, have vanished; and the only works that remain to us of his Milanese period are the cartoon of the Virgin and St. Anne now in the Royal Academy, and the "Vierge aux Rochers" in the Louvre, which was originally painted between 1490 and 1494 for a chapel in San Francesco of Milan, the church where the great Condottiere Roberto di Sanseverino was piously buried by his sons, after his death in the battle of Trent. The fame which Leonardo had attained, and the high esteem in which he was held by the Moro, is proved by the verses of contemporary poets, and especially by those of his fellow-countryman, Bellincioni, the court-poet who died in 1492.
"To-day," he sings, "Milan is the new Athens! Here Lodovico holds his Parnassus; here rare and excellent artists flock as bees to seek honey from the flowers; here, chief among them all, is the new Apelles whom he has brought from Florence." In the volume of Bellincioni's Sonnets, published soon after his death by the priest Francesco Tanzio, the name Magistro Leonardo da Vinci appears in a marginal note, and in another sonnet inscribed to "Four illustrious men who have grown up under the shadow of the Moro," the editor gives the respective names of these famous individuals as "the painter Maestro Leonardo Florentino, the goldsmith Caradosso, the learned Greek scholar Giorgio Merula, called the sun of Alessandria, and Maestro Giannino, the Ferrarese gun-founder."
"Rejoice, O Milano," sings the poet in these verses—"rejoice above all, that within your walls you hold one who is foremost among excellent artists, Da Vinci, whose drawing and colouring are alike unrivalled by ancient or modern masters."
The fact that Lodovico was able to keep this great master at his court during so long a period is the best proof we have of his knowledge of men and love of art. These sixteen years were the most brilliant and productive of Leonardo's life. Never again was he to enjoy a freedom and independence so complete, never again was he to find a master as generous, as stimulating to his powers of brain and hand as the great Moro. It was not only that Signor Lodovico gave him the large salary of 2000 ducats—about £4000 of our money—"besides many other gifts and rewards," as Leonardo himself told Cardinal de Gurk, but that he was himself so fine a connoisseur and understanding a patron. More than this, he knew how to deal with men of genius, and could make allowance for their wayward fancies, and humour their caprices with infinite tact and kindliness. And from the little that we glean of his intercourse with Leonardo, he seems to have treated him rather as an equal than as a subject, and more like a friend than a servant.
The glimpses that we catch of Leonardo's private life from the writings of contemporaries, whether in Bandello's novelle, or in Bellincioni's rime, all give the same pleasant impression, and show the ease and liberty which he enjoyed at the court of Milan. And in his own "Trattato" (Cap. 36) the painter describes himself as living in a fine house, full of beautiful paintings and choice objects, surrounded by musicians and poets. Here he sits at his work, handling a brush full of lovely colour, never so happy as when he can paint listening to the sound of sweet melodies. The spacious atelier is full of scholars and apprentices employed in carrying out their master's ideas or making chemical experiments, but careless of the noise of tools and hammers, the fair-haired boy Angelo sings his golden song, and Serafino the wondrous improvisatore chants his own verses to the sound of the lyre. Visitors come and go freely—Messer Jacopo of Ferrara, the architect who was "dear to Leonardo as a brother," the courtly poet Gaspare Visconti, and Vincenzo Calmeta, Duchess Beatrice's secretary, or, it may be, the great Messer Galeaz himself, whose big jennet and Sicilian horse the master has been drawing as models for the great equestrian statue standing outside in the Corte Vecchia. There, among them all, the painter bends over his canvas seeking to perfect the glazes and scumbles of his pearly tints, or trying to realize some dream of a face that haunts his fancy with its exquisite smile. He has, it is true, many labours—"a tanta faccenda!" as he wrote to the councillors of Piacenza—and at times he hardly knows which way to turn, but he is his own master, free to work as he will, now at one, now at another. He has no cares or anxiety. He can dress as he pleases, wear rich apparel if he is so minded, or don the plain clothes and sober hues that he prefers. He has gold enough and to spare; he can help a poorer friend and educate a needy apprentice, or save his money for a rainy day; and, above all, he has plenty of books and leisure to meditate on philosophical treatises, or ponder over the scientific problems in which his soul delights. He can find time to jot down his thoughts on many things, to write his great treatise on painting, and to draw the wonderful interlaced patterns inscribed with the strange words which have puzzled so many generations of commentators. And he has friends, too, dear to his heart—Messer Jacopo, and the wise Lorenzo da Pavia, that master of organs whose hands were as deft in fashioning lyres and viols as in drawing out sweet sounds, with whom he loved to commune of musical instruments and eternal harmonies, and the boy Andrea Salai, with the beautiful curling hair, whom he loved to dress up in green velvet mantles, and shoes with rose-coloured ribbons and silver buckles.
"Such," he tells us, "was I, Leonardo the Florentine, at the court of the most Illustrious Prince Signor Lodovic." And what the Moro was to Leonardo that he showed himself to other artists and men of letters. In the poet's words, he was the magnet who drew men of genius (virtuosi) from all parts of the world to Milan. He might be an exacting and critical master, he was certainly never satisfied with any work short of the best—even Leonardo, we have seen, did not always find him easy to please—but once he discovered a man who was excellent in any branch of knowledge, he thought no cost too great to retain him at his court. And so the foremost scholars and the finest artists, Giorgio Merula and Lancinus Curtius, Caradosso and Cristoforo Romano, Bramante and Leonardo, were all drawn to Milan in turn, and, having once entered the Moro's service, remained there until the end.
"We know, O most illustrious Prince!" wrote Tanzio in his preface to Bellincioni's Sonnets—"we know that you, the Chief of the Insubrians, are no less a lover of your country than of your glorious father, in whose honour you have reared that mighty and immortal work, the great Colossus, which, like himself, remains without a rival. We see you equally anxious to glorify both his memory and your own great city. We see Milan, by your care, not only adorned with peace and wealth, with noble churches and edifices, but with rare and admirable intellects, who all turn to you in their hour of need, as the rivers flow into the vast ocean."
Nor was it only in Milan and Pavia that this revival made itself felt. The new impulse spread from city to city. The lovely Renaissance façade of S. Maria dei Miracoli at Brescia was completed in 1487, and the great Church of the Incoronata at Lodi, begun in 1488, was continued during the next twenty years under the superintendence of Dolcebuono and Amadeo. Bramante supplied designs for the new façade and portals that were added to the cathedral of Como in 1491, and for the majestic church of Abbiategrasso, close to this favourite country house of the Sforzas. A number of other churches, both in Milan and the neighbourhood, were designed by him or his scholars, and bear witness to the revolution which he had effected in Lombard architecture. At Piacenza and Cremona, at Saronno and Lugano, new churches and palaces arose, and the famous Sanctuary of Varallo in the Val Sesia was founded in 1491 by that devout personage, Messer Bernardino Caimo, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The same passion for building and decoration prevailed everywhere. On all sides poets and scholars celebrated Lodovico's name as the Pericles of this new Athens, and joined in the chorus of praise which inspired Pistoia's famous line—
"E un Dio in cielo e il Moro in terra."