All language subtitles for Leo1

Major funding

for "Leonardo da Vinci" was provided by

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society and its members:

The Paul and saundra montrone family,

Stephen a. Schwarzman,

Diane and hal brierley,
Carol and ned spieker,

and these additional members.

Funding was also provided
by Gilbert s. Omenn

and Martha darling,

the Alfred p. Sloan foundation,

the Robert and Mercedes
eichholz foundation,

the corporation for public broadcasting

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A good painter must
depict two principal things

namely, the person,

and the intentions of their mind.

The first is easy, the second difficult.

The modernity of Leonardo
is that he understands

that knowledge and
imagination are intimately related.

Which nerve causes the eye to move

so that the motion of
one eye moves the other...

On closing the eyelids,
on opening the eyes,

on expressing wonder?

There is a delightful, unbridled joy

of curiosity in him.

His duty is to the question.

His duty is to the thirst for knowledge.

Basically, he says,

"the thing that was given
to me by the universe

"was the chance to question it,

and that is my divine duty."

Man, speaking French:

He began few paintings
and finished even fewer...

But more than 500 years after his death,

those he left behind

are among the most
revered works of art of all time.

A draftsman of incomparable talent,

he sketched everything...
people and landscapes,

flora and fauna, machines
both real and imagined,

equations, fables, and allegories.

Painting on wood panels
made from walnut or poplar trees,

he devised new ways to
portray how men and women

convey their deepest emotions

"movements of the mind," he called it,

and elevated painting from a craft

to an intellectual pursuit.

He read Greek and Roman philosophers

but frequently questioned their wisdom.

Real knowledge, he
believed, was found in nature

and best gained through
observation and experience.

He studied fossils and water dynamics,

dissected cadavers

and mapped the circulatory
system and the human brain.

He attempted to solve the
ancient geometric problem

of squaring the circle,

and he staged experiments
on the nature of falling objects

more than a century
before Galileo and Newton.

To him, everything

geology, physics,
anatomy, mathematics, art

was inextricably linked.

Writing backwards in a mirror script,

he began treatises on
a vast array of subjects,

combining image and text to
communicate profound insights

that were, in some cases,
centuries ahead of their time,

but he left most of them incomplete

and published none in his lifetime.

A singular genius, he filled his notebooks

with calculations and questions,
theories and innovations,

revealing a mind of infinite curiosity.

In an age of astonishing
artistic advances

and a newfound reverence for humanity,

Leonardo da Vinci
made his way, he said,

as a "disscepolo della sperientia,"

a disciple of experience.

Here forms... Here colors...

Here the character of
every part of the universe

is concentrated to a point...

And that point is so marvelous a thing.

If there's a golden thread

that runs through all of Leonardo's work,

I think it's an attempt to
crack the code of organic form.

He's persuaded that there
are profound likenesses,

profound equivalences to be found

in the movement of the stars,

and in the behavior of an ant hill.

That, more than anything
else, is what obsessed Leonardo

and what gives his work a kind of unity.

These indeed are miracles.

In so small a space, the
universe can be reproduced

and rearranged in its whole expanse.

In the spring of 1452,

in a tiny village tucked
among the tuscan hills,

a prosperous, 80-year-old
farmer and landowner

named Antonio Da Vinci
made a note in his ledger.

"There was born to me a grandson

"the son of ser piero, my
son... on the 15th day of April,

a Saturday, at the
third hour of the night."

Ser piero was a successful
notary in his mid-20s

who lived and worked in Florence

but returned at times to
his ancestral village of vinci.

Little is known about the baby's mother

other than her name... caterina.

Though his parents were
from different social classes

and did not marry,

the arrival of their son
was cause for celebration.

The day after his birth,
the boy was baptized

at the church of Santa
croce in the center of town.

They called him Leonardo.

Man, speaking Italian:

Soon after Leonardo's birth,

ser piero returned to Florence.

Within a year, his
father would be married

to a bourgeois florentine woman,

caterina to a kiln worker and
farmer who lived near vinci.

The father in the case of
Leonardo's early childhood

is an absent figure,

and he probably spent more
time with his mother caterina.

She was probably a serving girl,

a con tad in a, a peasant woman.

At times, the boy lived

with his paternal
grandparents Antonio and Lucia

and their son francesco,
Leonardo's uncle.

Vinci, a village of
fewer than 100 families,

was made up of a medieval castle,

a church, and a modest cluster of homes

that gave way to
vineyards and olive groves.

Locals harvested medicinal
herbs from vinci's hillsides

to supply the pharmacies of Florence

and diverted a small mountain stream

to power the town's olive press.

As a boy, Leonardo was
enamored of his natural surroundings,

exploring his grandfather's
orchards and wheat fields

and the hills, valleys,
and woodlands beyond.

He also grew close
to his uncle francesco,

who loved the leisurely
pace of country life.

Because he was born out of wedlock,

Leonardo was limited in what
education he could receive

and, eventually, which
professions he could pursue.

The education he got
was the kind of education,

we think, that merchants' sons got

where you get practical mathematics

and you learn how to Gauge
how much oil is in a barrel.

In time, Leonardo would regard

his lack of a formal education
as among his greatest strengths.

Having wandered some
distance among dark rocks,

I came to the entrance of a vast cavern...

And after some time there,

two contrary emotions arose in me:

Fear and desire

fear of the sinister, dark cavern,

desire to see whether it
contained something wonderous.

The renaissance is an enlightenment,

a rebirth of classical learning,

but it's also a time of tremendous change

and, therefore, uncertainty.

Everything's up for grabs,

and I think the keynote
of the time is uncertainty.

With every question comes a doubt,

and I think the story of
Leonardo's about looking

into the dark cave is a
very renaissance viewpoint.

As Europe emerged from
a devastating pandemic

that had ravaged the
continent in the mid-1300s,

the city-states that
crowded the Italian peninsula

established maritime trade routes

to constantinople and north Africa,

giving rise to a wealthy class
of merchants and bankers

and accelerating an
exchange of knowledge

that helped ignite the cultural explosion

that would come to be
known as the renaissance.

It started in the more mature
part of the middle ages,

but the big change occurs
with what is called humanism.

Humanism's really the
beginning of the renaissance,

and it happens because
scholars like petrarch and others

for the first time don't
look at the texts of the past

and try to christianize them.

Before, it was always
to take the knowledge

and try to fit the Christian doctrine.

Instead, now they see a need

for what they are within
the historical context.

It's a secular approach.
It was not there before.

That's what sparks the renaissance.

The renaissance reached

its most profound expression
in the city-state of Florence

with a blossoming of art and architecture

informed by mathematics and
science and classical ideals.

Man, speaking French:

It's celebrating not only empirical,

but physical sensation

and why does it happen,
where does it come from,

how do we belong in the world.

There is a re-centering
of the world into man.

Florence was first established

on the banks of the arno
river by Julius Caesar in 59 b.C.

Since the middle ages, it
had been the seat of power

of the republic of Florence,

a city-state that controlled
a large swath of Tuscany.

Its government, a council
made up of members

of the leading trade
guilds called the signoria,

was a source of great pride
for the city's inhabitants,

but in reality, Florence
functioned as an oligarchy

in which the richest families
controlled the levers of power

from behind the scenes.

Cosimo de' medici,

the politically astute head
of a powerful banking family,

had become Florence's
de facto ruler in 1434.

His clever diplomatic maneuvers
had led to a 1454 treaty

among the kingdoms,
republics, and dukedoms

that divided the Italian peninsula,

ushering in a delicate peace

for the first time in half a century.

Cosimo was also a
generous patron of the arts.

Increasingly, artists who
previously would've sought

to work for the cathedral,
to work for the city,

to work for one of the guilds
want to work for the medici

because working for the
medici is not only a good fee,

it also guarantees recognition

in a new world of art appreciation.

Florence had long been home

to a flourishing garment industry

with its silk and wool weavers,
leather tanners, and furriers.

As the arts grew, workshops
that produced paintings,

sculptures, jewelry, and metalworks

expanded and prospered.

The Italian word for a studio is "bottega,"

and that means a shop or,
more precisely in this context,

a workshop... a noisy,
communal, collective space.

Different people are
working on different things.

There's hammers and tongs

and fires that heat up metal

and a lot of smells of solvents.

You might also hear, of
course, the clucking of chickens

because one of the major paints
that were used was egg tempera.

Sometime in the 1460s,
Leonardo, now an adolescent,

made the long day's
ride from vinci to Florence,

where his father secured
him an apprenticeship

in the workshop of
Andrea del verrocchio.

A talented sculptor,
painter, and goldsmith,

verrocchio had trained

many of Florence's
most celebrated artists.

I think he recognized very
quickly that young Leonardo

was going to be sort of the cream

of these young apprentices,

someone that he could
outsource some of the work to,

and someone he could train up
to be an extremely good sculptor,

painter, jewelry designer,
whatever he wanted to be.

In the late 1460s, verrocchio
received a commission

from the medici family to
cast a bronze statue of David,

the biblical Shepherd boy who
had slayed the giant Goliath.

Leonardo... whose
contemporaries described him

as a beautiful, curly-haired youth

may have been his model.

Delieuvin, speaking French:

Bramly, speaking French:

Woman, speaking Italian:

As an apprentice, Leonardo
prepared wood panels,

ground pigments for paint,

and made models in Clay and terracotta.

He also learned to draw,
a skill that artists viewed

as the foundation for all
other artistic endeavors.

Drawing is the key to almost everything.

If you can't really draw it well,

you're never gonna
be able to paint it well.

Leonardo said, one
should find for oneself

a really good master, copy their work

because it will train
your hand to good form.

He drew with astounding acuity.

If there's one thing that
makes Leonardo's drawings

distinct from the beautiful drawings

of someone like his master verrocchio,

Leonardo adds a note of movement

and internal agitation to drawings.

Everything is dissolved
into the world of movement.

Leonardo does a lot of
studies of draperies and cloths,

and what it shows is,

he understands how
light hits a curving object,

how shadows are formed...

How depth is conveyed in a drawing.

The drapery studies give
a sense of light, of depth,

but also of motion.

The painter will produce

pictures of small merit if he makes

other artists' work his standard,

but if he studies from natural objects,

he will bear good fruit.

In the summer of 1473,

Leonardo made a
small, high-angle drawing

of the arno river valley.

Bramly, speaking French:

Borgo, speaking Italian:

One of the remarkable
things about Florence

is that there was a
succession of geniuses

decade after decade
after decade in the 1400s.

When Leonardo came
to Florence in the 1460s,

he could look back at
the previous 50 years

and see great public works of art,

things that you could see for free.

You could walk through
the streets of Florence

and see this.

He wants to take his place
in the pantheon of great artists

like alberti, ghiberti, and brunelleschi.

Filippo brunelleschi

was the city's most celebrated architect.

In 1418, he had entered
a public competition

to engineer a dome for
the city's central cathedral,

Santa Maria del Fiore,

which had been under
construction since 1296.

At 143 feet in diameter,

the long-planned dome
was intended to be wider

than that of Rome's
celebrated pantheon,

still the world's largest

1,300 years after its completion.

Few believed it could ever be built,

but brunelleschi was undeterred.

It took 18 years, but
the structure of the dome

was finally completed in 1436,

16 years before Leonardo was born.

Three decades later,
verrocchio won a contract

to construct and install a
monumental copper sphere

8 feet in diameter and
weighing more than 4,000 pounds

to complete the lantern
atop brunelleschi's dome.

And Leonardo da Vinci
was 19 years old at that point,

and he'd been with verrocchio

for at least a couple of
years learning his trade.

He would've seen up close and personal

everything that
brunelleschi had achieved.

Leonardo da Vinci says, "I
want to do the impossible."

I want to create miracles,"
because he's inspired

by these miraculous works of
art which have come before him.

In the early 1470s,

verrocchio received a commission
from the church of San salvi

to paint a baptism of Christ.

The master assigned
sections of the work

to his talented apprentice,
including the Messiah's feet,

parts of the landscape,
and one of the two angels.

While verrocchio had painted in tempera

and used white highlights
to produce contours,

Leonardo worked in oil,

applying imperceptibly thin layers of color

to develop light and shadow

and create the illusion
of 3-dimensionality.

Verrocchio's paintings and sculptures

both had a bit of a sense of motion,

and Leonardo builds on that

and does it even better
than verrocchio did,

and it's a first sign that
Leonardo's beginning

to surpass verrocchio as a
painter of motion and emotion.

The art of perspective is such

that it makes what is flat appear in relief

and what is in relief appear flat.

Part of Leonardo's heritage

was the revolutionary invention

of single-point linear perspective,

so a young man learning
art in Florence in the 1460s,

as Leonardo would have done,

he understood that he had to
be a complete master of that.

Single-point linear perspective,

a method of bringing the illusion of depth

to a two-dimensional work,

had been devised by brunelleschi,

but it was the architect
Leon battista alberti

who had enshrined it
for renaissance artists

in his treatise "della pittura."

Perspective was very
important to the painters.

That's basically how
things recede into space

and the vanishing point that
parallel lines seem to go to.

Musicians had mathematical
theories of Harmony,

and perspective was
rather like that for painters.

They had a theory,

so he began to develop an interest

not just in the mathematics
of organizing space in pictures,

but also in how the eye
works and how slippery it is.

He's the first of the theorists in painting

who realizes that the business
of seeing is very complicated.

All objects transmit
their image to the eye

by a pyramid of lines

which start from the
edges of an object's surface

and, converging from a
distance, meet in a single point...

And I will show that this
point is situated in the eye,

which is the universal
judge of all objects.

In 1472, at the age of 20,

Leonardo joined a painter's
guild whose members

were among the most
talented artists in Florence

filippino lippi, domenico ghirlandaio,

Pietro perugino, and sandro botticelli.

Though Leonardo remained a
part of verrocchio's workshop,

he was now a dipintore,
a professional painter,

able to receive his own commissions.

Florentine artists were
frequently hired by churches

and the city's wealthiest families

to paint the Bible's most popular subjects

the Madonna and child,
the adoration of the magi,

the crucifixion.

Another frequently depicted
scene was the annunciation,

the moment in which the angel Gabriel

descends from heaven to
proclaim to the virgin Mary

that she will give birth to the son of god.

It would be the focus
of one of Leonardo's

first independent works.

Though he borrowed freely
in technique from verrocchio,

Leonardo's "annunciation"

revealed his grasp of perspective,

his deftness with light and shadow,

and his devotion to nature.

Vecce, speaking Italian:

He's one of those people
who lives in his own head.

We meet those people in life,

and we recognize that they live
on a planet other than our own.

There are very, very few times in history

when what you did
when you had that kind

of restless, inquiring, creative
mind was to paint pictures.

Renaissance Italy was
perhaps the only place and time

when that was so, and
we're blessed that it was.

Leonardo received another commission

to paint a portrait of the
young poet ginevra de' benci,

the daughter of a wealthy,
well-connected banking family

who had occasional dealings
with Leonardo's father.

To look at the "ginevra de' benci"

is probably one of the
great ways to understand.

Leonardo's early painting technique.

It is a very deliberated,
very protracted process.

The painting is done on a
very thin poplar wood panel,

and it has a priming that is gesso.

Leonardo began by doing the cartoon,

a full-scale drawing on paper.

He pricked the outlines

and rubbed with a pouncing bag

while the panel was underneath,

a technique we call spolvero.

The oil medium, it's basically
linseed oil and pigments.

He applied in the thinnest veils

what we call the glazes,
or the velature in Italian.

Layer by infinitesimal layer,

he's able to calibrate the tonal transitions

that permit him to explore
the sfumato technique

where you blend the
gradations in such a way

that they seem to be
the manner of smoke.

In a playful reference to ginevra's name,

Leonardo surrounded
her with Juniper branches,

ginepro in Italian.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

We can already see how
intensely Leonardo believes

that the motions of the
mind, the motions of the soul,

so the moti Dell'animo, e moti Dell'anima

show through this almost
inscrutable gaze that she holds,

and there is a
connectivity with the viewer

that gives it this tremendous power.

In April of 1476,

florentine authorities
received an anonymous note

accusing 17-year-old jacopo saltarelli

of sodomy and prostitution.

The accuser listed 4
men as saltarelli's lovers

or customers, including
24-year-old Leonardo.

Theoretically, it's a crime.

Theoretically, it's punishable by death,

so Leonardo might
well have been arrested.

He might well have spent
time in the holding cells.

But among the accused was a son

of the tornabuoni family,
a powerful florentine clan

with enough connections
to have the charges dropped.

Two months later, the
4 men were absolved.

No further prosecution
was pursued against them.

Homosexuality, though
condemned by the church,

was widely tolerated in
15th-century Florence,

where a number of
notable artists and poets

were publicly known to be gay.

Bramly, speaking French:

Leonardo wrote nothing
about his sexuality

or the allegation, but
just a few years later,

he would draw a device for
removing bars from windows

and another for opening a prison cell.

They were some of his
first mechanical inventions.

Painting is born of nature,

or, rather, it is the grandchild of nature...

For all visible things
are produced by nature,

and these, her creations,
have given birth to painting...

So we may justly call it

the grandchild of
nature and related to god.

Nature is god.

Nature is perfection.

Nature is proportion.

Nature is the entity
which obtains every effect

with the shortest and
direct way that is possible.

The best a scientist or a painter can do

is imitate nature.

He has an amazing sense

that nature is a perfect invention,

that there is nothing
superfluous and nothing lacking.

Nature does nothing in vain.

If the bone is that shape,
then it must do something.

Every small aspect of that
form must have a function.

He does claim that the
human being can take things

from nature and put them
together in a different way

and that you can invent
things that nature didn't invent,

so you could act as a
second nature in the world.

In the late 1470s,

Leonardo finally left verrocchio's studio

and opened one of his own

with his own apprentices and assistants.

Between commissions, he
devised and drew machines

for an array of purposes.

Some were inspired by the designs

of classical inventors or
renaissance engineers,

and all were informed by his
close observations of nature

the spirals in a snail's shell,

the Eddies of water in a surging stream,

and the swirls of wind
induced by a thunderstorm.

He drew an Archimedes screw,

an ancient device created to
force water to flow upwards,

and sketched construction machines,

a mill for processing grain,

and a human flying contraption
featuring bat like wings.

For Leonardo,

building the machines often
seemed beside the point.

What is beauty for
Leonardo is proportion

and Harmony among its parts

and is a balance
between light and shade,

is organization of all
the inner parts in a way

that provide an immediate
perception of coherence.

This is why I like to call
these drawings portraits.

He takes the same care in making them

as he puts into portraying
one of his famous ladies.

In march of 1481, an
order of augustinian friars

hired Leonardo to paint
a massive altarpiece

for the monastery of
San donato a scope to

located just outside the city's walls.

His father, who did
legal work for the monks,

helped broker the contract.

He was to depict another
frequently painted Bible scene

known as the adoration of the magi

in which 3 kings visit the newborn Jesus

and recognize him as the Messiah.

There's little evidence
that he was personally

a very religious person.

It's evident that he knew the stories.

That was his bread
and butter as an artist.

Even when he is dealing
with nonreligious subjects

rocks or water or trees

I think he brings that sense that all things

are part of this astounding
system that god has made.

He never simply bows to
conventional religious ideas

and makes himself the
illustrator of the catechism.

He's always looking for something more.

For the dozens of figures

who would populate his painting,

Leonardo sat in the piazzas of Florence

quietly observing and sketching.

You must wander around

and constantly as you go, observe, note,

and consider the circumstances
and behavior of men

as they talk, quarrel,
laugh, or fight together...

And make brief sketches
of them in a notebook,

for the forms and movements
of bodies are so infinite

that the memory is
incapable of retaining them...

So keep these sketches
as your guides and masters.

In one preparatory
drawing for his "adoration,"

Leonardo used dozens
of perspective lines

to create an intricate,
3-dimensional setting

which he then populated
with animals and figures.

On an 8-foot-wide poplar
panel coated with gesso,

Leonardo sketched and
resketched an under drawing by hand

using black chalk or charcoal.

On top of this, he began
to rough out the figures

in black, brown, and blue pigments

which he applied by brush.

Next, he added a thin coat of white paint.

Using layers of diluted
black and brown glazes,

Leonardo masterfully
developed contrasting areas

of light and shadow that
eventually would give the scene

dimension and depth,

a technique known as chiaroscuro.

Soon, a riveting scene
featuring the virgin and child,

3 kings kneeling in homage,

a throng of astonished eyewitnesses,

ancient ruins,

and horses and
soldiers in a distant battle

began to emerge.

It was unlike any adoration ever painted.

Delieuvin, speaking French:

When the star stops and the kings see

Mary and the Christ child,
they are full of great joy.

They feel joy, but there are many people

there are 3 kings,

and then there are all the
members of the entourage,

and people do not all respond
in exactly the same way.

Delieuvin, speaking French:

So he's really looking at it in a way

that no one had ever done before,

no one had ever done before,
and that is simply astounding.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

Among the bystanders

in the painting's lower right corner,

Leonardo painted a male figure,

likely a self-portrait,

who gazes away from the
scene's dramatic center...

But less than a year after beginning

his "adoration of the magi,"
Leonardo abandoned the work.

"So grand was his vision,"
wrote Giovanni paolo lomazzo,

one of Leonardo's early biographers,

that "he saw errors

even in things that
others called miracles."

You can feel this sort of dissatisfaction.

He wants to not only capture
the snapshot of that scene,

but he wants to ask himself,

"how would everyone have behaved?

"How would the camels
and the animals and the magi

how would everyone have
behaved at that moment?"

He ends up with a lot of unfinished work

because the questions
he's setting himself

are not questions that
you can answer easily.

We do not lack ways of
passing our miserable days.

Still, we do not want
to spend them in vain,

drawing no praise,

and leaving no memory of ourselves

in the minds of mortals.

We can see in Leonardo a despair,

and a gloom happening.

He hasn't finished the
"adoration of the magi,"

and he keeps jotting in his notebook...

Dimmi. Dimmi. Dimmi
se mai fu fat to cosa...

"Tell me. Tell me.

Tell me if anything ever gets done."

Bramly, speaking French:

"Tell me, Leonardo, why such anguish?"

Wrote a friend on a
sheet of Leonardo's paper.

"Where will I settle?" Leonardo
asked himself on the same page.

It was time for Leonardo
to move on. He knew it.

He needed to seek new
horizons, and he gets an opportunity

when there is a delegation

that's sent from Florence to Milan.

It's almost cultural diplomacy
because the people in Florence

are trying to appeal to the Duke of Milan

by sending great architects
and artists and painters.

The delegation likely
traveled on horseback,

first climbing the a pen nine mountains,

then riding up the po river valley

before reaching the plains of lombardy,

where Milan, a city of 80,000 people

surrounded by 3 miles of medieval walls,

Rose up before the alps.

Unlike Florence, a
republic whose officials

were elected from the leading guilds,

Milan was a city-state
ruled for 2 centuries

by merciless strongmen
who went by the title of Duke.

Ludovico sforza, though
not officially Milan's Duke,

had sidelined his nephew
in 1480 and kept control

through brute force
and cunning statecraft,

which he used to navigate
the ever-shifting alliances

of Italy's duchies, kingdoms, republics,

and the papal states.

Any prince, any
government had to be wary

of all the neighbors, all
the other people in Italy

because there was a
kind of tense balance,

a kind of equipoise between
and among these states.

Ludovico was very much a
spider at the center of this web

which would tremble
whenever someone else

began to move on the peninsula,

brilliant figure in many
ways, politically astute,

extremely deceitful and unscrupulous,

and by the 1480s, probably militarily

the most powerful person
on the Italian peninsula.

Known as il moro, the moor,

in part for his dark complexion,

sforza had cultivated a court

that was among the most
sophisticated in all of Europe.

He kept his palace populated
with engineers and poets,

doctors, artists, and mathematicians

whom he commissioned
to design and build churches

and fortifications, create works of art,

and collaborate on plans
for the elaborate pageants

he was fond of staging.

One of the things that surprises us

about Leonardo's choice
to go and live in Milan is that

he went from a city
which had always prized

its political Liberty to
a Soviet-type situation.

He needs the leisure to
be able to work his ideas out

in a creative way without
the immediate market pressure

of producing a work.

Most illustrious lord,

I shall endeavor to explain
myself to your excellency,

showing your lordship my secrets.

Leonardo dictated a letter
addressed to the Duke

proclaiming his skill as an engineer

and enumerating his
ideas for military devices.

I have designs for extremely light

and strong Bridges, suitable
to be most easily carried,

and with them, you
may pursue the enemy

and flee at any time.

I have methods for
destroying every stronghold

or other fortress, even
if it were built on rock.

I will make safe and
unassailable covered chariots

which, entering among
the enemy with their artillery,

can withstand any attack,
even by large groups of warriors.

Should bombardment operations fail,

I would contrive catapults,
mangonels, trebuchets,

and other admirably efficient
machines not in common use.

Bramly, speaking French:

There is no evidence
Leonardo ever received

a reply to his letter or even sent it.

With no prospect of a job
as sforza's military engineer,

he needed to find other paying work.

Eventually, he formed a partnership

with brothers ambrogio
and evangelista de predis,

who operated a successful local studio.

Together, the 3 artists
secured a commission

to paint an altarpiece for the chapel

of the confraternity of the
immaculate conception.

The contract... dated April 25, 1483

specified that the altarpiece
should include an image

of the virgin and child, flanked
by two smaller side panels.

Leonardo was to paint the central panel.

Mary, of course, was
the most common subject

in medieval and renaissance art.

Here, Mary is Leonardo's focus.

Mary's right hand,

which is on the back of John the baptist,

is very tense.

The fingers are
pressing into John's back,

but the thumb is over his shoulder,

and what she's doing
is holding him back.

Mary, in the popular
theology that Leonardo

and everyone at the time knew,

already understood her
son must one day die,

and here, he shows her
preventing the prophet

of her own son's future death
from drawing near to Christ.

Christ, the child at her left,
accepts this future death.

Indeed, he's turned to John the baptist,

and he's blessing him.

She's lowering her left
hand toward his head,

but her hand can never
reach her child's head

because there's a figure, an angel,

kneeling behind her son,

and the angel is pointing
toward John the baptist.

Mary, as human mother,

knows her son must die
but cannot accept that,

and so god sends his angel to prevent.

Mary's instinctive,
natural, maternal instinct

from avoiding the future passion.

It is absolutely

the most complex Madonna
image of the entire renaissance.

Its complexity lies in a probing effort

to understand a deep
mystery, which is how,

in a woman prepared from all
eternity to bear the son of god,

humanity still fully expresses itself.

After a disagreement
with the monks over money,

Leonardo and his partners
withheld the painting.

Their dispute would go
unresolved for decades.

Leonardo will do what Leonardo does,

pretty much disregarding

what the expectations of the patrons are,

and the patrons learned through
their enormous frustrations,

and they would get quite angry...
that this was who Leonardo was.

Leonardo soon formed
his own studio in Milan,

where he collaborated on
portraits and religious works

with assistants and other
accomplished masters

and offered instruction
to eager apprentices.

He started but abandoned a painting

of the 4th-century theologian
and ascetic Saint Jerome.

He got further with a
portrait of a musician,

likely atalante migliorotti,

who had traveled with him to Milan,

and Leonardo finally
began to get commissions

from ludovico sforza.

Among them was a
portrait of Cecilia gallerani,

the well-educated teenage daughter

of a milanese civil servant
who had caught il moro's eye

and soon after was living in
a suite of rooms in his castle.

What Leonardo has done
is to tell a mini-narrative

in this image.

She is holding the ermine,

this animal which is symbolic
of purity because the ermine

was said to prefer to
die rather than get dirty,

and she is turning away from us,

looking, and smiling slightly,

so we must imagine
the Duke is over there.

We're looking at her.
She is looking at the Duke.

She is given status by
this unseen presence,

which is just spectacularly
remarkable, given the fact

that portraits didn't
have narratives in them.

The way her wrist is cocked

protectively around the ermine,

the way the eyes of the
ermine and the eyes of the lady

are both glancing in the same direction,

and the way the light
glints off of her eyes

and off the white ermine,

it's Leonardo at his best,
showing a scene in motion.

The greatest task of the painter

is to paint the figure and
the intentions of the mind.

He says, "where there
is no life, make it alive."

Speaking Italian:

Leonardo moved into a spacious studio

and living quarters at the corte vecchia,

a former palace adjacent
to Milan's colossal cathedral.

In the new workshop,
which he would refer to

as "la Mia fabric a," my factory,

Leonardo would paint portraits,
draw futuristic machines,

and make meticulous
observations in dozens of notebooks.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

I think we get close to a
key quality of Leonardo

in the notebooks.

It's not just that Leonardo
knew an awful lot.

It's that he found out an awful lot.

What light and shadow are?

What outlines are seen in trees?

What rules should be given
to boys learning to paint?

The way he found out
was by asking questions...

Why the sun appears larger when setting

than at noon when it is nearer to us?

And indeed the interrogative mode

is quite often present in the notebooks.

Why is that happening?

How does it happen?

What is the quality of that
thing or person or emotion?

He's posing questions
and looking for answers.

The beauty of what he does is that

he is carrying a catalog of notions

that are organized almost
like a stream of consciousness.

His knowledge knows no boundaries.

The way we absorb
the world is all at once,

and that's the simultaneous,
gluttonous impact

that you get from his notebooks.

He has to be there, and he
has to render it right away.

Define first what is
meant by height and depth,

also how the elements are situated...

In one notebook, he designed a city

built on two levels to improve sanitation;

sketched castle and church architecture,

including a study for the
dome of Milan's cathedral;

and invented weapons of war.

Leonardo also drew
fantastical flying machines.

Vecce, speaking Italian:

He wasn't the first to
imagine conquering the skies.

Daedalus, a mythic
craftsman of ancient Greece,

had fashioned wings for
himself and his son icarus

in an effort to escape their
captors on the isle of crete.

Aspiring aviators in China,
Iran, Scotland, and elsewhere

had designed machines and
made ill-fated attempts at flight.

Remember that your flying machine

must imitate the bat because the web,

being connected to the structure,

gives strength to the wings.

Many of Leonardo's
designs were ornithopters,

machines that relied on the
human-powered flapping of wings

to achieve flight.

His wings would be constructed
of cane, rope, and fine linen,

the lightest materials he could find.

Pilots would use pulleys and
cords to coordinate movement

and pedals and cranks to supply power.

A man with large enough wings

duly connected might
overcome the resistance of the air

and succeed in conquering
it and rising above it.

In order to achieve lift,

he needed to create, basically,

a deflection of the air.

We are flying because we
are able to redirect the airflow

from horizontal to downward.

And Newton's law says that
if you deflect it downward,

the reaction to it is, it pushes you up,

and he basically understood that

without being able to explain it.

Though ingenious and
of singular artistic beauty,

his flying machines could not have flown.

The materials of his day were too heavy

and human musculature too weak.

The dragonfly flies with 4 wings,

and when the front wings are raised,

the back wings are lowered,

but each pair needs
to be sufficient of itself

to bear the full weight.

In the years ahead,

Leonardo would fill his
notebooks with drawings

of a multitude of other
mechanical devices

hydraulic screws, hoists,

a perpetual motion machine, clocks,

and their component parts...
Springs, gears, ball bearings.

Many of his designs were
utilitarian, some theoretical,

but all were devised
with great consideration

for the properties of physics,

such as friction, inertia, and gravity.

There's a great little phrase kubrick said,

and I'll paraphrase him.

The lesson in the icarus myth

is not that we shouldn't fly that high.

We just need to build
better wings, you know,

and I think Leonardo
wants to build better wings

from irrigation to circulatory systems

to machines of war, everything.

One of the greatest
invention by Leonardo

is not the submarine or the airplane.

They would not have worked,

and I'm sure he was
absolutely aware of that.

It's the way in which he used
drawings to explain machines.

These drawings are
spectacular as drawings.

He's able, for the first time,
to portray a complex machine

with one drawing in a way that
you can understand perfectly

even its interior parts.

He was making exploded views

aside the general view of the machine,

and that was unsurpassed
for many, many generations.

One of my favorite things is
a little musical pun he does

where he takes do re mi fa sol la ti do

and arranges those

into Italian words that make a sentence,

but they're also, of course,
notes, so you can sing it,

and what is being sung is,

"love alone makes me remember.

Love alone makes me alert,"

and there's a little, stray comment

on the back of one of the sheets of paper

"if there is no love, what then?"

Giacomo came to live with me

on the feast of Saint
Mary magdalene, 1490.

In the summer of
1490, giacomo caprotti,

a 10-year-old from a nearby village,

joined Leonardo's household.

Caprotti's father had
agreed to pay room and board

while his son learned
painting from the master.

In time, the boy would
show modest talent,

but at first, he ran errands,
modeled for Leonardo,

and caused trouble.

He's immediately noted
as a mischief maker,

a disruptive figure,

and indeed, the name
that is given to him, salai,

it means little demon, little devil,

and the first thing we learn about him

is a long notation in Leonardo's

one of Leonardo's
notebooks, one of the longest

continuous pieces of
writing about another person

that Leonardo ever put down on paper,

and it's a list of salai's misdeeds.

The second day,

I had two shirts cut for him,
a pair of hose, and a jerkin,

and when I put aside some
money to pay for these things,

he stole the money out of the purse,

and I could never get him to confess,

though I was quite certain of the fact.

Again, on April 2,

gian Antonio left a silver point
on a drawing he had made,

and giacomo stole it.

- "Thief..."
- ladro...

- "Liar..."
- bugiardo...

- "Obstinate..."
- ostinato...

- "Greedy"...
- Ghiotto.

Leonardo wrote in the margin.

Throughout it runs this
wonderful sort of twinkle

of fondness from the maestro

as he lists these
misdeeds of the urchin salai,

and this fondness for this mischievous

but rather attractive and
charismatic young lad

carries on, really,

throughout the next 30
years of companionship.

Salai is a apprentice,

then assistant, then companion

one might almost certainly say lover,

and finally sort of indispensable

sort of partner of Leonardo's life.

He has a very particular look

which becomes the
sort of trademark, almost,

of Leonardo's presentation
of the beautiful male face,

or, indeed, androgynous face

because his angels often
feature the look of salai.

Salai, I want to rest, so no more wars.

No more war. I surrender.

There's a contemporary
reference to salai.

Someone says, "our Leonardo
stopped by the other day

with the insufferable salai,"

and yet something's being satisfied.

He was with him for the rest of his life,

and I think you sort
of can't argue with that.

Pleasure and pain appear as twins

since there is never
one without the other.

They stand back to back as
though they were attached.

If you take pleasure,
know that behind him

is one who will deal you
tribulation and repentance,

and they exist as
opposites in the same body

because they have the same basis,

and the various forms of evil pleasure

are the origin of pain.

Bramly, speaking French:

Speaking Italian:

In January of 1490,

ludovico sforza hosted a
lavish celebration to honor

the marriage of his nephew
to the Princess of Naples.

The evening featured a sumptuous feast

and an elaborate pageant, "il paradiso,"

with costumed actors,
music, and dancing.

Near midnight, a curtain
was drawn to reveal

a giant half-egg, the top edge arrayed

with the twelve signs of the zodiac

and the inside gilded with gold.

The 7 known celestial bodies
were represented by actors.

Candles served as stars.

The performance culminated with
the gods descending from heaven

to proclaim the bride's many virtues.

Leonardo had decorated the hall

and designed all the costumes and sets.

He had finally found a
niche on sforza's court.

In time, il moro would appoint him

an official engineer and painter.

He became a guru of the court.

He had a stipend. He was a stipendiato.

It gave him space. It
also gave him an area

where there were musicians,

and he himself was an
accomplished musician.

There were poets. There were historians.

There were people
doing natural philosophy.

There were engineers.

He was a very gracious
man by all accounts,

rather charming.

The courts suited him quite well.

He was someone who
loved the humorous

and loved the grotesque,
loved practical jokes.

We might not think of Leonardo da Vinci

as having a sense of humor, but he did.

It was asked of a painter why,

since he painted such beautiful figures,

his children were so ugly,
to which the painter replied

that he made his pictures by
day and his children by night.

Leonardo also cultivates a huge network

of intellectual friends and craftsmen,

and his ambitions to write
treatises really emerges.

In Milan, there was an interest

in more aristotelian ways of thinking,

which are much more
based on empiricism,

empirical observation.

Leonardo was able to
befriend all these people

who translated treatises

that probably enhanced his education,

and he kind of got his
sea legs as an author.

Plato said,

"you have to start with the great ideas."

Aristotle said, "no. You have
to start with the hard facts",

"like rocks and dirt and plants.

"In analyzing them, you
will come to the larger ideas

that allow you to construct a system,"

and I think that corresponded
much more closely

to Leonardo's own curiosity
about the natural world,

and, in a sense, shaped it.

Determined to become
a writer and intellectual,

Leonardo acquired
more and more books.

The German craftsman
Johannes guttenberg

had invented the printing press in 1452,

the year Leonardo was born.

Within two decades,
venice had established itself

as a center for publishing,

and Milan and Florence
each had their own print shops.

Leonardo was an inveterate
and omnivorous reader,

and if he couldn't buy a
book, he would borrow it.

He's not just looking at the natural world

he's certainly doing that...
but he's also looking at the best

that has been thought and
said by his predecessors.

Try to obtain the vitolone,

which is in the library of pavia.

Ask benedetto portinari

how people go on the ice in flanders.

Ask maestro Antonio how
mortars are placed on bastions

by day or by night.

Get the friar at brera to
show you "de ponderibus."

Leonardo also frequently quoted

"the divine comedy," the epic poem

by Dante alighieri, Florence's
most famous writer...

And he tried to master Latin,

long the language of European scholars,

filling page after page of his notebooks

with vocabulary words
written in his mirror script.

Vecce, speaking Italian:

Not being a literary man,

certain presumptuous people will think

that they may reasonably criticize me,

alleging that I am a man without letters.

Foolish men.

They do not know that my subjects

are to be dealt with by experience

rather than by words and experience

has been the master
of those who wrote well.

Therefore, I shall cite
my master in all cases.

He says that I am "uomo sanza lettere."

"I am a man who has
no traditional knowledge,"

and is a kind of admission,

which is, in fact, an
expression of proudness.

"I've learned not from
libraries, not from books,

"but from the observation of nature.

"Nature is the real teacher.

I am a disciple of nature."

Many expressions in his notebooks

express this frustration
for not being considered

as an intellectual, we would
say today, as a scholar.

At the same time, this was tempered

by the self-confidence
of knowing much more

than those people, being
able to perform things

that the others not even could conceive.

Meanwhile, Leonardo had embarked

on another ambitious
project... a series of books

that, together, would
present his core beliefs

on the art and science of painting.

Light is the chaser away of darkness.

Shade is the obstruction of light,

and the eye can best
distinguish the forms of objects

when it is placed between the
shaded and illuminated parts.

Using candles to illuminate spheres

and cylinders, he observed how light,

when cast on curved surfaces,

created shadows of
varying intensity and length.

Delieuvin, speaking French:

The edges of shadows
darken by degrees,

and anyone ignorant of this fact

will paint things with no relief,

and relief is the heart
and soul of painting.

Like his old master verrocchio,

Leonardo believed that a deep
knowledge of human anatomy

was essential to
depicting the human form,

but he and his contemporaries
were still dependent

on the medical teachings
of ancient physicians

and philosophers whose
centuries-old theories

had mostly gone unchallenged.

Existing anatomical illustrations,

which had been
informed by those theories,

were inaccurate and inadequate.

A painter who learns about the nature

of tendons, muscles, and
sinews will know just how many

and which tendons cause
the movement of a limb

or which muscle bulges and
causes that tendon to contract.

Leonardo drew muscles,
bones, and organs

and experimented
with different techniques

cross sections and transparency.

Speaking Italian:

Now he obtained a skull

and set out to map it
in a series of drawings.

He sectioned it horizontally and vertically.

You think, "well, that's obvious,"

but it wasn't obvious.

Nobody did that.

There were no anatomical
drawings in earlier books

with sections of the skull,
and he's looking at the skull

empirically for its
features, what it looks like,

and wonderful, delicate drawings

which are just awesome
in terms of technique,

and you think, "well, he's
doing the anatomy of the skull,"

but what he's really looking for

is where the center of the brain is.

He talks about the pole of the cranium

and that the point where all
these proportional systems cross

is where the senses all go

into this central
clearinghouse, as it were.

Those skull studies, which
look like descriptive anatomy,

are actually devoted to understanding

the workings of the brain.

What sneezing is, what
yawning is, sweating,

fatigue, hunger, sleepiness, thirst, lust.

Aristotle had believed
that sensory impressions

converged in a brain cavity,

where they were processed,
interpreted, and stored.

He called it the sensus communis.

The soul seems to be located

in the site of reason,

and the site of reason seems to be

where all the senses converge.

This is called the senso comune,

and the soul is not all throughout

and in every part of the body,
as many previously believed,

because if it were, it would
not be necessary to have

the instruments of the senses
converge in a single location.

To Leonardo, the
transmission of information

from the eye, which he
called the window of the soul,

to the brain and nervous system
and the reaction that followed

joy, fear, concern, surprise

was the essence of
the human experience.

Artists, he believed, should
understand this phenomenon

and the science behind it
to effectively portray emotion,

reveal character, and tell riveting stories.

Speaking Italian:

Leonardo saw proportion
in the natural world

as evidence of nature's
matchless gift for design.

Using male models, he
began a meticulous study.

On the changing
measurements of the human body

through the movements of
the limbs from different views,

the measurements of the
human body vary in each limb

according to how much it is
bent and from different views

so that they grow or diminish
to a varying extent on one side

while they grow or diminish
on the opposite side.

Seeking inspiration,
Leonardo studied a treatise

by vitruvius, a Roman
architect of the 1st century b.C.,

who wrote about the symmetry
between the human body

and a skillfully designed temple

and carefully measured the
proportions of what he described

as a "well-shaped man."

And this was classical belief

that the symmetry and
proportion of the human body

reflected as in a microcosm
the greater Harmony of the world.

"Just as the human body
yields a circular outline,

so too a square figure
may be found from it,"

wrote vitruvius.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

The space between the parting of the lips

and the base of the
nose is 1/7 of the face.

Leonardo's very, very scientific about it.

The space from the mouth

to the bottom of the
chin is 1/4 of the face...

He does all sorts of
measurements... in equal...

From the forehead to
the nose... Of the mouth...

To the chin to the navel

to the genitals of all of his assistants

so he gets all the
proportions exactly right,

the way vitruvius had suggested.

The distance from the top of the nose,

where the eyebrows begin,
to the bottom of the chin

is 2/3 of the face.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

Leonardo is interested
in the human proportion,

and he thinks that's divine
enough to be represented.

He says, "there is enough poetry"

"and enough cosmos and enough infinite

"in another human being
or a rock and a waterfall

or a half-smile."

Caterina came on the
16th day of July 1493.

Bramly, speaking French:

Since leaving vinci decades earlier,

Leonardo had rarely made
any note of his mother,

who, by 1493, was in
her mid-60s and widowed.

Bramly, speaking French:

One year later, on a
page of his notebook,

he recorded the costs of burying her.

For the bier, 8 soldi;

a pall over the bier, 12 soldi;

for bearing and placing the cross, 4 soldi;

for 4 priests and 4 clerics, 20 soldi;

for the gravediggers, 16 soldi;

sugar and candles, 12 soldi.

Every evil leaves pain in our memory

except the supreme evil, death,

which destroys this
memory along with our life.

In November of 1493,

ludovico sforza hosted a celebration

for his niece Bianca, who was
marrying the king of Germany.

On display for the occasion
was a colossal 20-foot-high

Clay horse sculpted by Leonardo,

the model for part of a bronze monument

honoring il moro's father.

"I am certain that neither
Greece nor Rome,"

one astonished witness said,

"ever saw anything more massive."

The artist had studied
live horses obsessively,

measuring their proportions
and drawing their features

in his notebooks.

I think he was better at horses
than anyone has ever been.

He has the horse rearing...

And then he has the
neck and the head turned

in 3 different ways, and
there's so much motion.

You see all the different possibilities.

You see how accurate
he is with all of them, too.

Rather than cast the massive statue

in the tried and tested
way, divided into pieces,

Leonardo planned to
create one giant mold.

When you shall have made
the mold upon the horse,

you must make the
thickness of the metal in Clay.

Dry it in layers.

Make the outside mold of plaster

to save time in drying
and the expense in wood.

And with this plaster, enclose the irons

both outside and inside to
a thickness of two fingers.

Make terra cotta.

He planned to build a lattice metal frame

to secure the mold before
lowering it upside-down

into a pit using a pulley
machine of his own design.

Finally, he would pour
molten bronze through holes

spread across the mold,
using furnaces arrayed

around the pit to cool the metal evenly.

Ludovico sforza gave him the
75 tons of bronze he needed,

but in the fall of 1494,

before Leonardo could put it to use,

sforza confiscated it all.

The French king Charles viii
had ordered his troops south

to conquer the kingdom of Naples,

setting the entire Italian
peninsula on edge.

To preserve his control over Milan,

il moro quickly aligned
himself with Charles.

At the same time, he
sent the valuable metal

to his father-in-law, the Duke of ferrara,

who feared a French invasion

and planned to make cannons
with Leonardo's bronze.

He couldn't have been
human if he wasn't disappointed

at losing this commission

which, had he been
able to bring it to fruition,

it really would've made his reputation.

It would've been his work of fame.

Ludovico sforza would soon assign

a new project to Leonardo

a painting Leonardo
believed few would ever see.

In the early 1490s, il moro
had chosen a monastery

to serve as a mausoleum for his family.

Home to an order of Dominican friars,

the site featured a cloistered garden,

quarters for the monks,

a sacristy, and the recently completed

church of Santa Maria delle grazie.

To adorn the south wall of the refectory,

sforza commissioned a fresco
of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

For the north end, Leonardo
was to paint a scene

suitable for the monks who
dined there in silent contemplation

the final meal Christ
shared with his apostles

before he was crucified... the last supper.

It would be his most
ambitious painting to date,

featuring multiple figures
engaged in a complex,

dynamic narrative on a
physical scale much larger

than any of his previous works,

including the abandoned
"adoration of the magi."

It's a difficult subject for painters

because it's a long, thin, wide picture,

which is slightly difficult to organize,

and you want some drama,
or Leonardo wanted drama in it.

For the most part, last supper paintings

would be very sedate scenes.

If you look at these paintings,
Christ and the apostles

ranged across the
table mostly in silence,

eating, maybe one
or two talking together,

and they're very placid scenes.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

He bought a Bible,

a widely read Italian-language edition

that had been translated
from Latin two decades earlier.

The gospels

the books attributed to
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

offered varied but similar
accounts of the evening

on which Jesus gathered his 12 apostles

and during dinner staggered
them with a declaration

"he that dippeth his
hand with me in the dish,

the same shall betray me."

It's an incredibly emotional moment,

where we have this
charismatic religious leader

with his band of brothers,

and they're meeting in an occupied city

whose authorities are
plotting against them,

and, of course, sitting
in their midst is a traitor,

the one who's going to betray the leader,

and I think Leonardo
was probably electrified

by this story, and he was going to tell it

in a very dramatic, theatrical way,

a way in which no artist
previously had thought about,

let alone attempted.

Leonardo began
exploring how the disciples,

roiled by Christ's words,
would twist their limbs,

wring their hands, and distort their faces.

One who was drinking
and has left the glass

where it was and turned
his head towards the speaker;

another, weaving the
fingers of his hands together,

turns, frowning to his companion.

For Leonardo, he had to understand

how the body worked
as a responsive machine.

What happens when Christ
says, "one of you will betray me,"

with the brain and the
nervous impulses and so on?

He would see if he was
looking, say, at a disciple

who reacts to Christ's pronouncement

by, say, throwing out their arms,

that figure is expressing
il concetto Dell'anima,

the purpose of the
mind, purpose of the soul.

It's a way of expressing character

and expressing emotion.

Leonardo erected
scaffolding along the north end

of the refectory and began his mural...

First by coating the wall
with a layer of plaster,

then a binding agent,

and on top of that, a primer of lead white.

He pounded nails into
the plaster for reference

and used a ruler to
draw construction lines

and a stylus to etch grids.

Using the incisions,

he laid out the scene's ceiling and walls,

constructing a space with
realistic scale and depth

and geometric Harmony.

One nail hole at the very
center would serve as the point

at which all perspective
lines would converge.

It was where he would
paint the face of Christ.

Filippo, Simone, Matteo,
Tome, jacopo maggiore...

He made sketches in
chalk and used a brush

to paint outlines directly atop the plaster.

Pietro, Andrea, bartolomeo.

The moment you lay down the first Mark

or first line, you're engaged in a process

of evaluating every next step
and understanding whether or not

you have to make some major
changes or some minor changes.

This is what's going on all
the way through the process.

Rather than follow
the traditional technique

for fresco in which pigments
ground in water are painted

on wet plaster and bind to
the wall in a matter of hours,

Leonardo used a
mixture of oil and tempera

that he'd concocted himself.

This allowed him the luxury of painting

during a long process of
time so he was not limited

to 8 hours a day and
just one part of the design,

and it also, very importantly,
allowed him to create

the transitions of tone
and the transitions of light

because you could not get
the effect of light with fresco.

In layer upon layer,
he applied the pigments

that would, over time,
bring the scene to life,

often disregarding his initial outlines

as the contours of his design evolved.

For Christ's garments,
he used vermillion,

a pigment made from a
brick-red mineral called cinnabar,

and ultramarine, created
by crushing lap is lazuli,

a costly but brilliant
blue metamorphic rock

that could only be found in Afghanistan.

"Often, he would not put
down his brush from first light

until nightfall, forgetting to eat and drink,"

wrote the novelist Matteo bandello,

who, as a boy, had watched
as Leonardo toiled on the mural.

On other days, he added little to the wall.

Meanwhile, sforza had grown impatient

with Leonardo's unhurried pace

and directed his secretary
to draft a revised agreement

that would impose a
deadline on the artist.

Within months, Leonardo was finished.

The mural Rose 15
feet from bottom to top

and spanned 29 feet across
the refectory's north wall.

It showcased his gift for
blending tones and colors,

his mastery of light and shadow,
and his command of geometry,

which he wielded with great precision

to bring Harmony to a moment of chaos.

It's often said he's portraying a moment,

that it's like a kind of flash
photograph of what's going on.

It is in a way, but it's
more complicated than that

because if you look in
the picture, the main thing

is that Christ's saying is,
"one of you will betray me."

And they're all saying,
"is it I?" "Is it I?" "Is it I?"

And this central figure,

totally focused on what's
going to happen the next day

and on the sign that
he's giving of the offering

of his body and blood, he
gazes down in deep sadness.

He doesn't look at the apostles.

And all the disciples
react in a particular way

apart from Judas, who's rigid
and his tendons on his neck

stick out because he's aware
of what's going to happen.

The announcement of
betrayal then ripples out.

Delieuvin, speaking French:

This was the heart of the painting for him

because it allowed him
to show gesture and action

and facial expression,
the motions of the mind.

All of this 3, 4 seconds
that happens at this table

is unfolding before our
eyes in this single image,

and the brilliance of him
being able to bring this off

is truly astounding.

Leonardo da Vinci had
magnificently rendered

the gestures, both subtle
and dramatic, that testified

to the psychological
states of his subjects,

and he had resoundingly
answered the question

that he had asked
himself many times before

"tell me if anything was ever done."

For him, painting

was an entire philosophical meditation.

It is so much a process
of thinking, of engaging,

of feeling that was essential
in his creative process,

and, really, this is part of
the reason that this painting

has that transformative,
transcendental aspect to it.

When we go as viewers and look at it,

we all fall into the same reverie.

The artist now turned his
attention to other projects.

He provided illustrations
for "de divina proportione,"

a book on mathematics
by his friend Luca pacioli.

He painted another mural for sforza

a canopy of tangled tree
branches knit together

by a golden rope for the
vaulted ceiling of a tower

in the Duke's castle, but in early 1499,

Louis xii, who had recently
succeeded his cousin Charles

as king of France, began
mustering his troops

for another invasion
of the Italian peninsula.

This time, the French
planned to depose sforza.

Bramly, speaking French:

Il moro fled to innsbruck.

The French took Milan without a fight.

Bramly, speaking French:

Louis xii arrived that fall

and visited the refectory.

When he saw the beauty
of Leonardo's "last supper,"

he decided that he wanted
to take it back to France,

but his engineers could find no
way to safely remove the mural.

After 18 years in Milan,

Leonardo decided it was
time for him to move on.

He was 47 years old.

His best-known painting
remained out of sight

in a monastery's dining hall.

Leonardo was tremendously ambitious,

intellectually ambitious.

He had no concern for being

a successful professional painter

and to be admired, adored for that.

He wants to be admired for his intellect.

Eager to find a patron who would support

his artistic and scientific curiosity,

Leonardo headed east toward venice

with his friend Luca pacioli.

Although he had no
commissions on the horizon,

Leonardo da Vinci's
greatest work was yet to come.

Major funding

for "Leonardo da Vinci" was provided by

the better angels
society and its members:

The Paul and saundra montrone family,

Stephen a. Schwarzman,

Diane and hal brierley,
Carol and ned spieker,

and these additional members.

Funding was also provided
by Gilbert s. Omenn

and Martha darling,

the Alfred p. Sloan foundation,

the Robert and Mercedes
eichholz foundation,

the corporation for public broadcasting

and by contributions to your pbs station

from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Can looking back push us forward?

Ladies and gentlemen,
miss Billie Holiday.

Will our voice be heard through time?

Can our past inspire our future?

Act of concern...

Bank of america supports
filmmakers like Ken burns,

whose narratives
illuminate new perspectives.

What would you like the power to do?

Bank of america.

Normally it's something

that an artist cannot capture.

And yet Leonardo does.

Next time... The first stirrings

of the scientific revolution
was just being felt.

He was always interested.

He was always wanting to know.

We really do see

all of Leonardo's scientific knowledge

in the painting.

He's taken this straightforward subject

and turned it into something wonderful.

Don't miss the conclusion
of "Leonardo da Vinci."

Scan this qr code with your smart device

to explore more of the
story of Leonardo da Vinci,

including interactives
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classroom materials, and more.

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Vinci" DVD and blu-ray,

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This series is also
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