Original subtitles

Driven by my insatiable curiosity,

I came to the entrance of a large cave.

And immediately I felt in me ...

fear

and desire.

Fear of the darkness around me

and desire to discover the wonders they concealed.

Narrator: You were born in Vinci, Tuscany,

Saturday, April 15, 1452, at three in the morning.

Son of ser Piero, notary, nephew of ser Antonio.

Your name is Leonardo.

Here you are in the only place where you can be truly free.

The dark room of your thoughts,

the temple of your obsessions,

the companion of your solitude.

A timeless place,

where ideas take shape.

LEONARDO: Ask Maestro Antonio how bombards and bastions are planted

in the days and in the night.

NARRATOR: Memories materialize ...

LEONARDO: learns root multiplication from maestro Luca.

Ask for the size of the sun

that Maestro Giovanni Franzese promised me .

NARRATOR: And your infinite desire for knowledge comes alive.

Because of course men want to know.

Narrator: This is your mind.

(LEONARDO'S PHRASES OVERLAP)

NARRATOR: The mind of a genius.

The mind of Leonardo Da Vinci.

LEONARDO: See only the eye, window of the soul,

embrace the beauty of the whole world?

It is the eye that all human arts advises and corrects.

Which leads man to every place.

What measures the height and size of the stars.

Of architecture, perspective and divine painting,

the eye is the one and only father.

Because to understand it is enough to see well.

Narrator: What do you see?

Where does your soul appear?

What are you looking for, Leonardo?

You have outlined your Arno valley in an essential drawing,

like a map of your emotions.

There you learned the ability to observe, to explore, to marvel.

There, during your carefree childhood in Vinci,

on 5 August 1473,

nature is still your close friend.

(DROP OF WATER)

LEONARDO: Human ingenuity will never find a more beautiful invention than nature,

because in his inventions nothing is missing and nothing is superfluous.

The rest, which is the whole, is made by nature,

greater teacher than you.

The water you touch from the rivers is the last of the one that went

and the first of what comes.

So the present time.

NARRATOR: Your childhood in the Tuscan hills

ends when you are just over ten years old.

Your father takes you with him to Florence, but you will not be a notary like him.

He entrusts you to the master Andrea del Verrocchio.

(CLICK CLOCK)

(BRUSIO)

VERROCCHIO: This leg is too big. STUDENT: Yes, master.

NARRATOR: You enter one of the most important shops of the time.

A real school of promising talents,

Pietro Perugino, Botticelli and many others learn the trade there,

under the guidance of the master Verrocchio.

We have been working on this "Baptism of Christ" for too long.

Who made the hands of Our Lord?

The Dove?

This palm?

Badly done, just badly done.

Perugino, how would you picture the angel?

You, Leonardo?

Maestro Verrocchio,

I would picture him as a living angel,

with a face full of grace and sweetness,

mixing light and shadow

and with the different qualities of all colors.

Well. The decor?

Dress light,

that move with the winds.

VERROCCHIO: And the mountains behind?

I'd make them blend into the color of the horizon.

Narrator: Your angel was so graceful and bold in invention,

that Verrocchio never again wanted to touch colors,

indignant that a child knew more than he.

Sad is that disciple who does not surpass the teacher.

(CLICK CLOCK)

The painter is master of all things that can be thought of by man.

Because if he wants to see beauties that will fall in love with him,

it has the power to create them out of thin air.

Painting is science,

grandson of nature and relative of God.

Yet I am not sure I have been able to understand how to give to my figures

motorcycle...

and breath.

Narrator: The movement, the breath,

this you will seek all your life.

Give the soul to painted figures.

Here, in your "Annunciation",

immortalize the moment in which the Virgin Mary receives from the archangel Gabriel

the news that will forever upset his life.

You just need that raised hand, between fear and consent,

to make the painting come alive.

Flowers and plants are like fireworks

who celebrate the miracle of the future birth of Jesus.

The water that gushes from the great mountain fertilizes the land that blooms.

Everything is bathed in a twilight light,

which gives sweetness to the features and depth to the landscape.

You have always been deeply fascinated by the human body,

the proportions, the anatomy, its secret mechanisms ...

With your own hands you dissected over 30 corpses

to understand how it is generated and where the energy of life pulsates .

Age is given by the state of the arteries.

When I made the anatomy of a two year old putto,

I found everything contrary to that of a man like this,

who was a hundred years old,

and he had arid, dry, exhausted veins and arteries .

(BEAT OF A HEART)

The heart is the core that generates the tree of veins.

It is major strength muscle

and very powerful over the other muscles.

(KNOCKING AT THE DOOR)

OFFICER: I notify you, Officials, as a true thing

that Jacopo Saltarelli, aged 17, allows people who request it

to please their miseries, with the grave sin of sodomy.

Among these people Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci.

Narrator: The episode of your sodomy arrest,

occurred after an anonymous complaint,

it is a dark shadow that stretches over your waist.

You reject it,

looking for the scientific reason even for the mechanisms of desire.

Everything for you must be rigorously investigated, even the secrets of your sensuality.

LEONARDO: Sometimes the rod has intellect for itself

and even if the will of man wants to provoke him, he is obstinate,

and does it by itself.

Other times moving by itself,

without license or thoughts of man.

(FIATONE)

Studying and drawing are the only safe haven for me .

Only to them will I have to dedicate myself.

Only to them.

(BEAT OF A HEART) (CLICK CLOCK)

Who does not know how to keep his will in check,

with the beasts he accompanies.

Pleasure and Displeasure are drawn together

since one is born from the other.

With your backs turned,

since they are opposed to each other.

But united in the same body,

since from the same source they arise.

If the figures do not reveal their mind with their limbs and acts,

are twice dead,

because painting itself is not alive.

Hit yourself in the chest with the stone.

(BLOW)

Hit yourself.

(BLOW)

Narrator: Too bad.

Condemnation.

LEONARDO: Again.

Narrator: Penance. Mortification.

Atonement.

Perhaps in this never concluded table,

in which St. Jerome penitent inflicts pain on himself

to purify yourself and reach mystical ecstasy,

you faced the shame of the complaint, of the trial immediately,

trying to sublimate the carnal passions through painting,

your consoler and teacher.

Perhaps that face also speaks of yours.

LEONARDO: Take a glass the size of half a real sheet

and stop it between your gaze and what you wish to portray.

NARRATOR: You have an obsessive need to experiment, to discover,

to find the hidden reason for things.

Only in this way, you can finally paint.

Stand two thirds of your arm away from the glass

and keep your head still.

Close one eye

and mark on the glass what appears to you.

And finally polish it, the glass,

dust it, place good paper on it and finally paint it.

Narrator: In your attempt to unify all knowledge,

you make no difference between the waves of water, those of sound and those of light.

Now you push yourself to represent

even the powerful shockwave of a shared emotion,

which starts from the Virgin and Child and spreads in concentric circles

with a mystical strength,

investing all the witnesses of the supernatural event,

the manifestation of the divine nature of Christ.

The "Adoration of the Magi" is a majestic work of art

which unfortunately remains unfinished.

At 30 your life takes a new and unexpected direction.

Disappointed by Lorenzo the Magnificent,

who sends you to Milan on a diplomatic mission as a lyre player,

offer your talents to Ludovico Sforza known as "Il Moro",

powerful lord of the Lombard city.

You do it with what we can call the first written resume in history.

Although, excluding the too modest reference to your pictorial arts,

you have no concrete experience of what you declare to your future patron.

Signore mio illustrious

without taking anything away from anyone,

I will endeavor to reveal to Your Excellency

my secrets.

I designed bombards that are easy to transport

and capable of terrifying the most bitter enemy.

(EXPLOSION)

I will build giant crossbows of extraordinary power

and covered wagons, safe, unassailable.

In the event of a battle on the sea,

I know effective means of defense and offense.

They are also capable of creating strong but very light bridges .

I can also work on the bronze horse in honor of your father.

And in times of peace I can also paint a little,

no worse and no better than others.

(CLICK CLOCK)

So, son, leave for Milan.

Yes, my father.

I want to see the natural beauty of the world.

And do you think you will be at the service of Ludovico il Moro

will it allow you to do it?

I cannot hope otherwise.

Lorenzo the Magnificent thinks I'm not ready for Rome and the Popes.

Maybe because you are unreliable, slow.

Maybe because you get lost in endless studies that never bear fruit.

My studies are slow,

but only because I am not satisfied with stopping at the surface of things.

Who shortens the works

it offends the dedication, intelligence and love of those who create them.

Narrator: Ser Piero da Vinci.

The notary who could not recognize the fruit of a clandestine relationship.

The man who thus denied you education

that your deep desire for knowledge deserved.

The father you loved despite everything.

You arrive in Milan as a court entertainer.

But you are determined to give life to your ambitions.

This is the opportunity you are waiting for and you do not intend to waste it.

Starting with the last of what you thought were your talents.

Painting is based on perspective

and perspective is nothing other than knowing how to figure well as the eye sees.

But I got another perspective,

which I call ...

aerial.

If in a painting you want to make the distance between one subject and another more vivid ,

you will also have to figure ...

the density of the air.

The air that takes the blue from the moisture corpuscles,

capable of capturing the bright rays of the sun.

This is why the mountains, when they are far away, appear blue.

NARRATOR: This is the intuition you decide to experience

in your first Milanese commission.

Blend the individual parts of the painting

through the sublime invention of the aerial perspective.

Immerse the "Virgin of the Rocks" in a luxuriant nature,

dominated by a shady cave full of mystery,

where Maria, the child and San Giovannino

they become part of the environment you created.

A single organism that breathes in unison,

in time with the heartbeat of the Earth.

(CLICK CLOCK)

Fortunately for you and on your merit, you continue to enjoy

of the favors and protection of Ludovico il Moro.

Leonardo.

My Lord.

I want my favorite

have as a gift the most beautiful portrait of a lady ever seen.

Fear not, Your Excellency.

My painting will try to figure the virtue of such divine beauty.

LEONARDO: Take the mirror and make it your teacher.

If you make us mirror the living thing inside,

and compare that mirrored thing with what you painted,

you'll see if the two are alike.

Never turn your head towards your chest.

If you represent a beauty made of right proportions,

this beauty is not mortal

and falls in love with you.

CECILIA: Time kills beauty

and also love.

LEONARDO: Not the eternal beauty recreated by painting.

Narrator: Cultured, refined and beautiful,

she is the favorite of Ludovico il Moro at only 15 years old.

Her name is Cecilia Gallerani.

You have portrayed your lady with an ermine in her lap,

symbol of purity and chastity,

catching her in the instant of her mental motion, of surprise.

Thus you fix forever the emotion of a moment.

Leon Battista Alberti.

"De Re

Ae...

Building. "

lncipit.

Successfully law.

A man without letters,

that's who I am to them.

But let them accuse me, it is the truth.

Whoever hides behind the authority of other people 's thoughts does not use his wits,

but rather the memory.

They are too ignorant to understand that my studies are children of experience.

Because I am a disciple of experience.

And so, as a teacher, I choose her.

The palm contains four.

Therefore four fingers make a palm

and four palms make a foot.

The measures of man thus from nature are distributed.

1,61803398874989.

The divine proportion.

1,618...

03398874989.

The magic number!

(REPEAT NUMBER)

1,61803398874989.

It is the magic number.

NARRATOR: The divine proportion, i.e. the golden section,

the magic number used by the ancient Greeks for the proportions of temples.

You have to study until you wake up.

Narrator: And that in nature it is found in the curves of the waves,

in the spirals of shells, in the shape of galaxies ...

Or before falling asleep, in bed, in the dark.

Think of the divine proportion.

Get up, come on! Get up.

NARRATOR: After studying the work of Vitruvius,

your intuition lies in relating the golden ratio

to the perfect proportions of the human body.

LEONARDO: I want to understand the universal measure of man

which is made of earth, air, water, fire,

and for this reason it resembles the body of the earth.

A lesser world.

So much does man open his arms,

how much is its height.

From the root of the hair

up to below the chin

it is the tenth part of the height of a man.

Stop!

The space between the chin and the nose

and between the roots of the hair and the eyebrows,

it is similar to the ear

and third part of the man's face.

Boltraffio, come here.

By.

You are without proportion.

Away, away, away!

Leave me alone.

The painter must be lonely.

And if you are alone, you will be all yours.

(Four fingers make a palm, four palms make a foot.)

(A lesser world.)

(I mean the universal measure of man.)

(Earth, air, water, fire.)

(The divine proportion.)

(Between the root of the hair ... Under the chin.)

(The man opens his arms so much ...)

(The divine proportion.)

(I mean the universal measure of man.)

(Which is made of earth, air, water, fire.)

(The divine proportion.)

Narrator: You have won your impossible challenge,

representing the symbolic union between art and science.

The portrait of a body of superb beauty,

inscribed within two perfect forms,

the circle and the square.

A masterpiece, emblem of the Renaissance, in which human and divine intertwine.

In its harmony of forms, it is the perfect image of man,

which becomes the center of nature and the universe.

Fire,

king of the elements,

to punish the water above it, he raises the flame and boils it.

Water, to obey him,

overflows.

And drop down.

But drowns and puts out the fire ...

his master.

Giacomo was still a ten-year-old boy when he came to my shop.

It was July 1490.

As soon as the second day he was with us I had him make two shirts,

a jacket, and a pair of pink socks.

I left the money, lire 4,

to pay for said things in the pouch and he stole everything.

Although I was certain of his guilt,

he indignantly refused to confess.

Thief,

liar, gluttonous and obstinate.

A scoundrel like the devil in Pulci's "Morgante".

I've decided, I'll call you Salaì.

(DEGLUTES) (COUGH)

(RIDE)

(SUSPIRES)

LEONARDO: Maybe ...

Maybe there we are.

Fermo Salaì.

This ox eye is not meant to be eaten,

but to make it anatomy.

See, so it gets hard and when we cut it it doesn't pour out its mood.

Come.

Now watch.

Each image,

even that of the smallest object,

enters the eye upside down.

Then it is immediately overturned

and resumes the position of the external object.

Do you understand, Salaì?

That's how an eye is made and that's how it works.

Now join the others, come on.

Go, I have work to finish. Come on, Salaì.

NARRATOR: Finally the time also comes

to keep the promise made to Ludovico il Moro,

build the largest equestrian monument that ever existed.

The colossal horse in bronze

with which Il Moro wants to celebrate the memory of Francesco Sforza, his father.

The desires of the Moor feed your ambition

and once again you dream of the impossible.

It is not enough for you to model the shapes of a magnificent horse.

Your creature must be ideal, perfect.

A steed in the violent impetus of battle.

But how will all that bronze mass stand on two legs ?

LEONARDO: The surge cannot be sustained, then it will be in step.

But four times the size of natural,

twelve arms in height,

one hundred tons of bronze.

I am not afraid of the myth of the ancients.

(CLICK CLOCK)

It's been ten years, Leonardo.

Ten years that I, your lord, have been waiting.

Where's the statue I paid you for?

- Your Excellency, listen ... - No.

I don't want to listen.

My patience is finished

and your time too.

My lord, please. I have found the solution.

See with your own eyes.

(KISS THE BOOK)

This will be the armor for casting the bronze head.

There is no more time for the glory of the fathers, Leonardo.

Charles Vlll, king of France, is already knocking on the doors of the castle.

The bronze of the horse will be used for the cannons.

You had your chance.

And you wasted it.

Narrator: Your dream of competing with the great architects of antiquity

crumbles into dust.

Are circumstances always hindering you, Leonardo?

What's in the world or in yourself

that prevents you from finishing the quests you face?

LEONARDO: To Your Lordship I submit and ask for help.

I am very sorry to be in need.

But I kept six mouths for 36 months

and I only had 50 ducats.

I won't say anything more about the horse , because I know the times.

My desire is always to obey Your Excellency.

This time I will not disappoint you, my lord.

So you my word.

Narrator: Keep your promise.

Remove the wooden panels that lined the great Sala delle Asse of the castle

and you decide to make magic.

With the design of tree trunks and mulberry trees

you create a perspective illusion capable of breaking through the vault,

turning an interior into an exterior.

Grab the sky, make it yours.

Overcoming the limits imposed by nature,

dare more than any man has done before you.

This is yet another obsession that seduces you and from which you cannot get rid of.

With a considerable and repeated effort of observation,

capture and then figure in the drawing for a moment,

in the order of the thirtieth of a second. Like the flapping of a dragonfly's wings.

LEONARDO: Flying doesn't mean flapping your wings.

Once you know the flight,

you will walk the earth looking at the sky.

Because you have been there

and there you will wish to return.

NARRATOR: Finally in 1494, 12 years after your arrival in Milan,

the time has come to show your talent.

Ludovico il Moro commissions you to paint a mural.

A large wall of 40 square meters,

the northern one of the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

I want to make a work

for which I can show those to come who I have been.

This work will be a long battle.

All my knowledge will come to my aid.

Narrator: Fill out your study notebooks.

The preparatory drawings of the apostles are beautiful,

in pen, ink, sanguine.

For more than three years you will dedicate yourself to this work,

making it truer than truth,

the manifesto of modern art.

(CLICK CLOCK)

The prior of the convent says you work just two hours a day.

And sometimes you don't even touch the brush.

Are you making fun of us, Leonardo?

The prior is telling the truth, Your Excellency.

Because, before I paint, I have to picture the image in my mind.

Only then can I hold the brush.

Be that as it may,

I don't see anything.

That's it, Your Excellency.

Only Judas is missing.

And if the prior still insists, I'll use his face.

(SMILE)

All right.

If you manage to complete the feat and make it a masterpiece,

you will have as a gift a vineyard that I own near the convent.

NARRATOR: You keep searching the streets for faces and bodies

that give life and truth to your characters.

LEONARDO: It's more than a year

that every day, evening and morning, I go to Borghetto,

where all the vile and ignoble people live.

Only to find a suitable face to make the image of my Judas.

NARRATOR: The infinitely ugly, the eccentric, the monstrous,

they fascinate you like a face of divine beauty.

(BRUSIO)

Here it is the face of your Judas, you have found it.

A dinner with friends.

A reunited, acquired, extended family,

like yours, Leonardo.

Where feelings go beyond blood ties.

Twelve men.

And their Master.

Here they are, in the likeness of the apostles of the "Last Supper",

the faces of those human beings you had stopped in your notebooks.

LEONARDO: You who drink,

leave the bag where it is and turn around.

No.

Don't look towards him,

but towards the center.

So.

Instead you turn your face to that other,

surprised, astonished.

Put your hands on the table.

Look over.

Show palms open

and open your mouth in wonder.

Speak in his ear and you reach out to hear him.

In truth,

in truth I tell you,

one of you will betray me.

Look at each other, because you don't know who I'm talking about.

But who is it that betrays you?

Am I, Lord?

- Who's cheating on you? - Is it me, Lord?

- Who's cheating on you? - Is it me, Lord?

- Who's cheating on you? - Is it me, Lord?

NARRATOR: The instant after the betrayal is revealed.

There is an unbearable dismay,

a collective human turmoil in expressions, gestures,

in the posture of the apostles, in front of the words just pronounced by Jesus.

Instead of huddling around the Master, his disciples turn away from him,

as if they fled before their time,

frightened by the words of those they loved so much.

On the table, in an order that seems to follow the harmony of the spirit,

there is bread and wine, portents of Christ's sacrifice.

Jesus gives himself up to his imminent fate

opening his arms to God and to all men.

He welcomes everyone, even Judas,

who holds the price of his curse in his hands .

He is agitated, surrounded, alone, by the darkness of sin.

Behind him, Pietro brandishes the knife,

ready to avenge his Master.

You, only you Leonardo, were able to represent human feelings

as a representation of the divine mystery.

Even today, despite your "Last Supper"

has lost the vibrant colors that you had chosen with care and science,

we arrive in front of this wall

and we are moved by the grace and mystery it emanates.

Because your apostles are alive, they are human, it is us.

After the fall of Ludovico il Moro, Milan ends up in the hands of the French.

Lost your patron,

and after having found shelter in Mantua and Venice, you take refuge in Florence.

Here you continue to perfect your works with infinite devotion.

It is impossible for you to conclude them.

Where others see perfection,

you still persist in looking for it.

Receive a new commission, "Saint Anne, the Virgin and Child".

In this monumental and deeply intimate work,

full of emotion, it is impossible to look away

from the sweet smile that the Virgin gives to her child.

An image of joy and harmony, like a childhood memory.

Caterina Buti del Vacca, your mother, Ser Piero's servant,

after giving birth to you out of wedlock,

he left you to your father's family.

Only in this way could he guarantee you the means to be nourished, cared for, raised.

Giving up on you, his son, to give you a future.

A pure gesture of love.

LEONARDO: The child in the womb, if he breathed, would drown.

(BEAT OF A HEART)

And the breath is not needed,

because he is quickened by his mother's life and food.

Expenses for the death of Catherine.

Narrator: The only page in your notes where you remember your mother.

A cold, impersonal list,

the list of expenses incurred for his burial.

Cross bearing and posture, four shields.

For the bearing of the dead, eight shields

For four priests and four clerics, 20 scudi.

NARRATOR: You, capable of immortalizing in painting

the subtlest disturbance of a soul, do you face your emotions like this?

Are you scared of being human?

What are you defending from?

For the burials, 16 scudi.

(NOISE OF SWORDS COLLECTING)

LEONARDO: You will make dead men covered with dust.

Others who, dying, grit their teeth and roll their eyes.

(NITRITE OF A HORSE)

You will make the dust that mixes with the blood

and turns into red mud.

NARRATOR: In 1502, you spend a few months

at the service of one of the cruelest tyrants in history, Cesare Borgia.

La names of the Architect of the General lngegnero TI lusinga;

it deludes you that you can finally carry out the plans for your war machines.

But the experience is excruciating.

I also found a trick to survive underwater,

but I don't want to write it

and make him an instrument for the evil nature of men,

who would use it to attack ships

and drown them at the bottom of the sea with all the men in it.

NARRATOR: Youthful fantasies become terrible realities of death and pain.

You can't stand it. You have to escape.

Save me from discord,

war is bestial madness.

NARRATOR: When in Florence the Gonfaloniere Pier Soderini

asks you to paint the "Battle of Anghiari"

in the Grand Council hall in Palazzo Vecchio,

bring as a dowry everything you have seen and that has upset you.

Maybe, just by picturing the horror you witnessed,

you will be able to get rid of it.

LEONARDO: For the work at the Palazzo I chose an ancient technique,

pitch and pigment mixed with linseed oil.

The heat of the embers was to fix the painting forever.

But below

the fire dried the color, while above, for the great distance,

the heat did not come

and the paint began to flow.

NARRATOR: The "Battle of Anghiari" melts before your eyes

consigning his desperate fighters to oblivion

and getting lost forever.

LEONARDO: On the 9th of July 1504,

Wednesday at 7, Ser Piero da Vinci died,

80 years of age,

notary of Palazzo del Podestà,

my father.

Narrator: Ser Piero da Vinci, your father.

That same father who even before dying recognizes you as his son,

that same father who leaves you nothing,

if not the shadow, increasingly faded, of his memory.

(CLICK CLOCK)

Yet, even though you may not have known it at the time ,

you have to thank your father for one thing,

a fundamental meeting, for what will happen next.

Master Leonardo,

but who was the sir who came to visit you?

Salaì, it is Messer Francesco del Giocondo

and my father, his notary , sent him to me .

Mona Lisa Gherardini, his third wife, has just given him a son.

And he wants to pay tribute to her with a portrait I made.

And did you already ask him for a few florins for the advance?

I'm not a money painter, Salaì!

SALAÌ: Then it will mean that we will eat paint.

Narrator: It was February 17, 1497.

The story of the most famous painting in the world begins here.

But who does that face really belong to?

Who has haunted you for more than ten years,

to the point of transforming the portrait of a woman into an ideal image,

out of time?

LEONARDO: I will never go back to Florence.

Now the French are the masters of Milan.

NARRATOR: Yes, Leonardo, by now you have nothing to hold you back.

King Louis Xll of France demands your services in Milan.

Bring rebirth to the most important courts of Europe,

together with your immense wealth of studies

and the works you don't want to part with.

(CLICK CLOCK)

Master Leonardo.

(THE WORK CLEARS)

Master Leonardo ...

my name is Francesco Melzi. My father, Girolamo Melzi, sent me.

He hopes to please you.

LEONARDO: Who are you?

Francesco Melzi, my father sent me,

Girolamo Melzi. He hopes to please you.

And I will be her pupil,

secretary

and scribe.

To serve you, Maestro Leonardo.

Your father makes me a very welcome gift, son.

Light, darkness,

color, body.

Come on write.

Figure, site,

removal,

propinquity,

motion and quiet.

There will be ten of my books that will talk about painting.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

All clear?

Yes, Maestro Leonardo.

LEONARDO: Well.

Let's start.

I have many papers to rearrange,

daughters of a lifetime.

Maestro,

watch.

It is all the work of your ingenuity.

Seven happy?

Narrator: In those cards there is everything,

a life entirely devoted to the knowledge of all things.

But they also talk about you.

Because you, Leonardo, are not just a scientist and an artist.

You are also a man.

(CLICK CLOCK)

Salaì, the soft hand, higher up.

To indicate.

So, immobile.

ROOM: Master,

how much longer?

Your tongue will be prevented from thirst and your body from hunger and sleep

before you, with words,

show what the painter shows you in an instant.

Patience, Salaì.

Patience.

Narrator: Salaì, Salaì.

This street boy with a sassy beauty has captured your heart.

Continuous thefts, lies, betrayals ...

every time it makes you angry and hurt but then, invariably, it makes you forgive.

Salaì's face returns in many of your works.

But in the "San Giovanni", you managed to steal his soul.

A beautiful and mysterious creature, androgynous and ambiguous.

A saint, and an evil angel at the same time.

And in his gesture, in his pointing to the sky,

maybe you have put your hope

in a place where happiness is not just a dream destined to break.

At 65, put aside the ambition to be able to insert yourself in papal Rome,

where the absolute protagonists are Michelangelo and Raphael,

you still have the desire to change, to learn and know.

The court of France awaits you,

where King Francis I has requested your services,

offering you a home near his castle.

(CLICK CLOCK)

SALAÌ: The Kingdom of France is not for me, Leonardo.

I'll be much better in Milan.

Stay here, Salaì.

You will get used to this land, you just have to be patient.

The King of France himself appointed me first painter,

engineer and architect.

I can't give up on all of this.

Farewell, master.

Feelings belong to the earth.

Reason, when contemplating, is beyond feelings

NARRATOR: Salaì has abandoned you.

But you know how to live in the company of an absence.

Nostalgia becomes a living and immortal presence in your painting .

And here it is the mystery of the soul,

a subtle and very minute vibration of light

around two shady curls.

Just a shy smile on a woman's face,

so hard to provoke in reality,

so impossible to represent in painting.

Serene and melancholy,

near and far, mother and perfect stranger.

The Mona Lisa remains an elusive creature , a mirage of desire.

This woman, with the look that follows us from whatever side you look at,

seems to make fun of us,

unperturbed with respect to our desire to understand it,

as the centuries pass, the world and nature change.

Because, as you taught us, Leonardo, painting makes it eternal.

Now you have everything you ever wanted,

a patron who appreciates your talent, an important salary,

time and freedom for your studies and your paintings.

You have finally found your home.

But you can't turn off the thoughts that tangle with each other,

like whirlpools of storm.

Why can't you find peace?

What fears do your storms tell?

LEONARDO: Darkness ...

wind, sea luck,

deluge of water,

fiery woods,

rain...

(THUNDER)

Lightning bolts from the sky, earthquakes,

ruin of mountains,

city ​​clearing.

NARRATOR: Even nature becomes hostile to you.

You depict it as terrible, destructive, impossible to govern.

The more you know, the more you would like to know.

But it is not possible, for a simple man, even if great,

decipher the design of the world.

LEONARDO: What I know is a lot,

but what I don't know is too much.

(TUONl)

Age advances

and the time that remains,

little bit.

When I believe learning to live,

I will learn to die.

Like a day well spent

gives happy sleep,

so a life well spent

gives happy to die.

Etc.

Why the soup gets cold.

(TUONl) (CLASSICAL MUSIC)