Leonardo Da Vinci Read Online Free PDF

advances in science and learning. It was one of the centers for Italian book publishing. Milan also boasted a university with ninety distinguished professors, the University of Pavia, and one of the best libraries in all of Italy—a dream place to study.
    Milan’s ruler, Duke Ludovico Sforza, while a corrupt dictator, was nurturing a hospitable atmosphere for thinkers and artists. With fewer artists than Florence, there should be less competition for his talents, Leonardo hoped.
    Leonardo drafted a now-famous job application to Duke Sforza.
    “I can invent an infinite variety of machines,” he stated, going way out on a limb to elaborate. He said he could build portable bridges; knew the techniques of constructing bombardments and making cannons; could build ships, armored vehicles, catapults, and other war machines; and could execute sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. Most cleverly, he promised to build the immense bronze horse that Sforza wanted as a memorial to his father. “In painting,” he ended blandly, “I can do as well as anyone else.” His modesty about painting seems odd. But Leonardo was playing up the talents he knew would be valued most by a war-mongering duke.
    He probably never sent the letter—a good thing, as it was mostly bluff. But the letter revealed something about his current mood. Producing art was not Leonardo’s main goal now; he wanted more. His painting was merely useful as a skill he could fall back on if other ventures didn’t pan out.
    Once in Milan, he rented a room and studio space from the Preda family—six brothers, all artists. His best friend was Donato Bramante, a fellow artist and a future designer of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Both men were interested in mathematics, and were followers of artist-author Leon Battista Alberti.
    Leonardo also met frequently with Fazio Cardan—a professor of medicine and mathematics—and his family. Cardan had edited a famous textbook on optics, written by a thirteenth-century English archbishop. During long talks with Cardan, Leonardo learned what was known at that time about how the eye worked. The eye was called the “window of the soul,” a concept that Leonardo took further, to identify it as the central way men could understand “the infinite works of nature.” While others of his day believed the lens was the most important part of the eye, Leonardo was more interested in the retina and how an image is formed there when light strikes it.
    Eventually, by being in the right place at the right time, he did succeed in entering the service of Ludovico Sforza. The duke clearly valued Leonardo, who served him for years as principal military engineer and also as an architect. His job was to be versatile—produce a painting or sculpture here, design a courtyard there, create new and deadly weaponry, entertain the court with his music one day, invent an improved olive press another day.
    During these early years in Milan, disaster struck—another epidemic of the Black Death. The disease hit fast and furiously. More than ten thousand Milanese died. Corpses, swarming with rats, were left for days in town squares, awaiting burial. Possibly it was at this time that Leonardo concocted the rose water perfume he liked to wear, to cover the ever-present “evil smell” of death.
    Leonardo, who somehow avoided getting sick, tried to understand more about the disease. Most people assumed the plague was simply bad fortune destined by the stars, or God’s punishment for wickedness. Many Christians accused Jews of deliberately spreading the disease; an outbreak was often an excuse to step up persecution of the Jews.
    Everyone knew the plague was contagious, but no one knew how to stop it. Although unaware of its cause—bites from infected rats and fleas—Leonardo rightly connected unsanitary living conditions with the disease. His response to the plague was typically ambitious. He drew up a plan to reorganize all of Milan. He wanted to make