All language subtitles for Leonardo da Vinci S01E01 The Disciple of Experience

Announcer: Major funding

for "Leonardo da Vinci"
was provided by

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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,

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Thank you.

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Man: Ladies and gentlemen,

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Man as Leonardo:
A good painter must depict

two principal things...

namely, the person,

and the intentions
of their mind.

The first is easy,
the second difficult.

Man: The modernity of Leonardo
is that he understands

that knowledge and imagination
are intimately related.

Man as Leonardo: 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?

Man: 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:

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Man: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
These indeed are miracles.

In so small a space,
the universe can be reproduced

and rearranged
in its whole expanse.

Narrator: 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:

Narrator: 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 contadina, a peasant woman.

Narrator: 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.

Narrator: Because
he was born out of wedlock,

Leonardo was limited in
what education he could receive

and, eventually, which
professions he could pursue.

Woman: 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.

Narrator: In time,
Leonardo would regard

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

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Nicholl: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Woman: 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.

Narrator:
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:

Del Toro: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Man: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Nicholl: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Man: 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.

Narrator: 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:

Narrator: 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.

Man: 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.

Gopnik: 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.

Man: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Narrator: In the summer of 1473,

Leonardo made a small,
high-angle drawing

of the Arno River Valley.

Bramly, speaking French:

Borgo, speaking Italian:

King: 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.

Narrator: 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.

King: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Isaacson: 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.

Man as Leonardo: The art
of perspective is such

that it makes what is flat
appear in relief

and what is in relief
appear flat.

Verdon: 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.

Narrator: 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."

Man: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: 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:

Gopnik: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Narrator: In a playful reference
to Ginevra's name,

Leonardo surrounded her
with juniper branches,

ginepro in Italian.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

Bambach: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Nicholl: 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.

Narrator: 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:

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Man: 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.

Kemp: 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.

Narrator: 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 batlike wings.

For Leonardo,

building the machines
often seemed beside the point.

Galluzzi: 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.

Narrator: In March of 1481,
an order of Augustinian friars

hired Leonardo
to paint a massive altarpiece

for the Monastery
of San Donato a Scopeto

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.

Verdon: 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.

Narrator:
For the dozens of figures

who would populate his painting,

Leonardo sat in the piazzas
of Florence

quietly observing and sketching.

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Narrator: 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 underdrawing 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:

Verdon: 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:

Verdon: 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:

Narrator: 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."

Gopnik: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Isaacson: 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...

Man as Leonardo: Dimmi. Dimmi.
Dimmi se mai fu fatto cosa...

Isaacson: "Tell me. Tell me.

Tell me if anything
ever gets done."

Bramly, speaking French:

Narrator: "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.

Isaacson: 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.

Narrator: The delegation likely
traveled on horseback,

first climbing
the Apennine 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.

King: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Verdon: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
Most illustrious Lord,

I shall endeavor to explain
myself to Your Excellency,

showing Your Lordship
my secrets.

Narrator: Leonardo dictated
a letter addressed to the duke

proclaiming his skill
as an engineer

and enumerating his ideas
for military devices.

Man as Leonardo: 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:

Narrator: 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.

Verdon: 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.

Narrator: After a disagreement
with the monks over money,

Leonardo and his partners
withheld the painting.

Their dispute would go
unresolved for decades.

Bambach: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Kemp: 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.

Isaacson: 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:

Narrator: 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 fabrica," my factory,

Leonardo would paint portraits,
draw futuristic machines,

and make meticulous observations
in dozens of notebooks.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

Nicholl: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
What light and shadow are?

What outlines are seen in trees?

What rules should be given
to boys learning to paint?

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

Man as Leonardo: Why the sun
appears larger when setting

than at noon
when it is nearer to us?

Nicholl: and indeed
the interrogative mode

is quite often present
in the notebooks.

Man as Leonardo:

Nicholl: Why is that happening?

Man as Leonardo:

Nicholl: How does it happen?

Man as Leonardo:

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

Man as Leonardo:

Nicholl: He's posing questions
and looking for answers.

Man as Leonardo:

Del Toro: The beauty
of what he does is that

he is carrying
a catalog of notions

that are organized almost
like a stream of consciousness.

Man as Leonardo:

Del Toro: 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.

Man as Leonardo: Define first

what is meant
by height and depth,

also how the elements
are situated...

Narrator: 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:

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo: Remember
that your flying machine

must imitate the bat

because the web,

being connected
to the structure,

gives strength to the wings.

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo: A man
with large enough wings

duly connected might overcome
the resistance of the air

and succeed in conquering it
and rising above it.

Man: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Del Toro: 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.

Galluzzi: 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.

Woman: 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?"

Man as Leonardo:
Giacomo came to live with me

on the Feast of
Saint Mary Magdalene, 1490.

Narrator: 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.

Nicholl: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: "Thief..."
Man as Leonardo: Ladro...

Narrator: "liar..."
Man as Leonardo: bugiardo...

Narrator: "obstinate..."
Man as Leonardo: ostinato...

Narrator: "greedy"...
Man as Leonardo: ghiotto.

Narrator: Leonardo wrote
in the margin.

Nicholl: 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.

Man as Leonardo: Salai,
I want to rest, so no more wars.

No more war. I surrender.

Zimmerman: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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:

Narrator: 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.

Kemp: 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.

King: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Bambach: 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.

Verdon: 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.

Narrator: 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.

King: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
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."

Narrator: 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:

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Galluzzi: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: 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:

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: Leonardo drew
muscles, bones, and organs

and experimented
with different techniques...

cross sections and transparency.

Speaking Italian:

Narrator:
Now he obtained a skull

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

Kemp: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
What sneezing is,

what yawning is,

sweating,

fatigue,

hunger,

sleepiness,

thirst,

lust.

Narrator: Aristotle had believed
that sensory impressions

converged in a brain cavity,

where they were processed,
interpreted, and stored.

He called it
the Sensus Communis.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: 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:

Narrator: Leonardo saw
proportion in the natural world

as evidence of nature's
matchless gift for design.

Using male models,
he began a meticulous study.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Narrator: 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."

Rossellini: 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.

Narrator: "Just as the human
body yields a circular outline,

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

wrote Vitruvius.

Borgo, speaking Italian:

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
The space from the mouth

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

Isaacson: He does all sorts
of measurements...

Man as Leonardo: in equal...

Isaacson: from the forehead
to the nose...

Man as Leonardo: of the mouth...

Isaacson: 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.

Man as Leonardo: 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:

Del Toro: 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."

Man as Leonardo: Caterina came
on the 16th day of July 1493.

Bramly, speaking French:

Narrator: 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:

Narrator: One year later,
on a page of his notebook,

he recorded the costs
of burying her.

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Narrator: 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.

Narrator: Rather than cast
the massive statue

in the tried and tested way,
divided into pieces,

Leonardo planned to create
one giant mold.

Man as Leonardo:
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.

Narrator: 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.

King: 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.

Narrator: 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.

King: 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:

Narrator: 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."

King: 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.

Narrator: Leonardo began
exploring how the disciples,

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

wring their hands,
and distort their faces.

Man as Leonardo: 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.

Kemp: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Man as Leonardo:
Filippo, Simone,

Matteo, Tome, Jacopo maggiore...

Narrator: He made sketches
in chalk and used a brush

to paint outlines
directly atop the plaster.

Man as Leonardo: Pietro,

Andrea, Bartolomeo.

Marshall: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Bambach: 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.

Narrator: 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 lapis 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.

Kemp: 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."

Verdon: 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.

Kemp: 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:

King: 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.

Narrator: 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."

Bambach: 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.

Narrator: 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:

Narrator:
Il Moro fled to Innsbruck.

The French took Milan
without a fight.

Bramly, speaking French:

Narrator: 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.

Bambach: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Announcer: 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.

Announcer: Can looking back
push us forward?

Man: 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?

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Timothy Verdon:
Normally it's something

that an artist cannot capture.

And yet Leonardo does.

Announcer: Next time...

Adam Gopnik: The first stirrings

of the Scientific Revolution
was just being felt.

Charles Nicholl:
He was always interested.

He was always wanting to know.

Carmen Bambach: We really do see

all of Leonardo's
scientific knowledge

in the painting.

Martin Kemp: He's taken
this straightforward subject

and turned it
into something wonderful.

Announcer: Don't miss

the conclusion
of "Leonardo da Vinci."

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Leonardo da Vinci,

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