Identifier: leonardodavincia01mn (find matches)
Title: Leonardo da Vinci, artist, thinker and man of science
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Müntz, Eugène, 1845-1902
Subjects: Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519
Publisher: London : W. Heinemann New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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court sculptors of Milan, and that the emblem of fertilisation had already been adopted by Borso d'Este, the uncle of Beatrice, it is a fact that Lodovico affected such extravagant logogriphs, as if to challenge our powers of penetration. Everything leads us to suppose that the Milanese prince exhibited this taste for subtlety in his attitude towards science also. If our 1 This miniature is reproduced in M. F. Delabordes Expedition de Charles VIII. en Italie. I20 LEONARDO DA VINCI premises are well-founded he should have encouraged astrology, alchemy, chiromancy, in short, every science tinged with mystery, or laying claim to some special secret or discovery of its own. When, in 1483, Leonardo came to seek his fortune at Lodovicos court, that prince had been governing Milan for four years. His subjects had therefore had time to gain some idea of his character and tastes. Leonardo, who is sure to have gathered such information as he could concerning his new master, seems to have been quite aware
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the crucifixion, BY MONTORFANO. (Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.) of the dukes weakness for the occult sciences. This, at any rate, was the string he played upon in Lodovico by the aid of a programme bewildering in its variety. He proceeded to celebrate the virtues of his new patron in a series of allegories, more than usually abstruse, in which he represented him now wearing spectacles and standing between Envy and Justice, the 1 He never formed any important resolution without consulting his favouriteastrologer, Ambrogio da Rosate. He had also in his service the Jewish astrologer,Leone Giudeo, and the astrologer, Calcerando. (Uzielli, Leonardo da Vinci e tre gentildonne milanesi, pp. 6, 41. See also the Archivio storico lombardo, 1874, p. 486.) LEONARDOS RELATIONS WITH IL MORO latter painted black (an allusion to II Moros dark complexion again); now as Fortune, or as victor over Poverty, covering with a corner ofhis ducal mantle a youth pursued by the hideous hag, and

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