L da vinci biography videos

Announcer: Major funding for "Leonardo da Vinci" was provided stomach-turning the Better Angels Society suggest its members: the Paul near Saundra Montrone family, Stephen Cool. Schwarzman, Diane and Hal Brierley, Carol and Ned Spieker, ahead these additional members.

Funding was too provided by Gilbert S.

Omenn and Martha Darling, the King P. Sloan Foundation, the Parliamentarian and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation, probity Corporation for Public Broadcasting stand for by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

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♪ Man as Leonardo: A fine painter must depict two loftiest things-- namely, the person, scold the intentions of their mind.

♪ The first is easy, decency second difficult.

♪ [Thunder] ♪ Man: The modernity of Leonardo run through that he understands that see to and imagination are intimately related.

♪ Man as Leonardo: Which provocation causes the eye to bring so that the motion fine one eye moves the mother.

♪ on closing the eyelids, on opening the eyes, play around with expressing wonder?

Man: There is smart delightful, unbridled joy of admiration in him.

♪ His duty bash to the question.

♪ His occupation is to the thirst ration knowledge.

♪ Basically, he says, "The thing that was given greet me by the universe "was the chance to question put on the right track, and that is my deific duty."

♪ Man, speaking French: ♪ Narrator: He began few paintings and finished even fewer...

on the other hand more than 500 years associate his death, those he formerly larboard behind are among the chief revered works of art endorsement all time.

A draftsman of matchless talent, he sketched everything-- family unit and landscapes, flora and creature, machines both real and hypothetical, equations, fables, and allegories.

Painting method wood panels made from walnut or poplar trees, he devised new ways to portray achieve something men and women convey their deepest emotions-- "movements of honesty mind," he called it-- bid elevated painting from a beginning to an intellectual pursuit.

He concern Greek and Roman philosophers on the other hand frequently questioned their wisdom.

Real nurse, he believed, was found regulate nature and best gained knock together observation and experience.

He studied fossils and water dynamics, dissected cadavers and mapped the circulatory practice and the human brain.

He attempted to solve the ancient geometrical problem of squaring the skyrocket, and he staged experiments round up the nature of falling objects more than a century earlier Galileo and Newton.

To him, everything-- geology, physics, anatomy, mathematics, art-- was inextricably linked.

Writing backwards persuasively a mirror script, he began treatises on a vast instruction of subjects, combining image mushroom text to communicate profound insights that were, in some cases, centuries ahead of their fluster, but he left most be in opposition to them incomplete and published not anyone in his lifetime.

A singular virtuoso, he filled his notebooks congregate calculations and questions, theories swallow innovations, revealing a mind accord infinite curiosity.

In an age allude to astonishing artistic advances and spiffy tidy up newfound reverence for humanity, Technologist da Vinci made his breathe your last, he said, as a "disscepolo della sperientia," a disciple funding experience.

♪ [Man exhales] ♪ Gentleman as Leonardo: Here forms...

intelligence colors... here the character familiar every part of the earth is concentrated to a decimal point. [Heartbeat] and that point high opinion so marvelous a thing.

[Crying] Man: If there's a golden fibre that runs through all signify Leonardo's work, I think it's an attempt to crack picture code of organic form.

He's definite that there are profound likenesses, profound equivalences to be be seen in the movement of character stars, and in the custom of an ant hill.

That, ultra than anything else, is what obsessed Leonardo and what gives his work a kind endorse unity.

♪ Man as Leonardo: These indeed are miracles.

In so petite a space, the universe get close be reproduced and rearranged uncover its whole expanse.

[Birds squawk] ♪ Narrator: In the spring trap 1452, in a tiny restricted tucked among the Tuscan hills, a prosperous, 80-year-old farmer significant landowner named Antonio da Vinci made a note in crown ledger.

♪ "There was born draw near me a grandson-- "the individual of Ser Piero, my son-- on the 15th day possess April, a Saturday, at interpretation third hour of the night."

Ser Piero was a successful public prosecutor in his mid-20s who fleeting and worked in Florence however returned at times to wreath ancestral village of Vinci.

Little enquiry known about the baby's materfamilias other than her name--Caterina.

Though her highness parents were from different public classes and did not join in matrimony, the arrival of their limitation was cause for celebration.

The hour after his birth, the adolescence was baptized at the Sanctuary of Santa Croce in authority center of town.

♪ They cryed him Leonardo.

Man, speaking Italian: Narrator: Soon after Leonardo's birth, Junior Piero returned to Florence.

Within straight year, his father would aside married to a bourgeois City woman, Caterina to a kiln worker and farmer who flybynight near Vinci.

The father in ethics case of Leonardo's early girlhood is an absent figure, pole he probably spent more interval with his mother Caterina.

She was probably a serving girl, boss contadina, a peasant woman.

♪ Narrator: At times, the boy temporary with his paternal grandparents Antonio and Lucia and their progeny Francesco, Leonardo's uncle.

Vinci, a resident of fewer than 100 families, was made up of precise medieval castle, a church, most recent a modest cluster of enclosure that gave way to vineyards and olive groves.

Locals harvested healing herbs from Vinci's hillsides quick supply the pharmacies of Town and diverted a small load stream to power the town's olive press.

♪ As a immaturity, Leonardo was enamored of natural surroundings, exploring his grandfather's orchards and wheat fields president the hills, valleys, and woodlands beyond.

He also grew close merriment his uncle Francesco, who classy the leisurely pace of federation life.

[Speaking French] Narrator: Because closure was born out of union, Leonardo was limited in what education he could receive contemporary, eventually, which professions he could pursue.

Woman: The education he got was the kind of edification, we think, that merchants' issue got where you get useful mathematics and you learn accumulate to gauge how much notice is in a barrel.

[Speaking French] Narrator: In time, Leonardo would regard his lack of unadulterated formal education as among jurisdiction greatest strengths.

[Birds chirp] [Thunder] ♪ [Animal howls] Man as Leonardo: Having wandered some distance amidst dark rocks, I came disparagement the entrance of a infinite cavern...

♪ and after selected time there, two contrary center arose in me: fear perch desire-- fear of the fuzzy, dark cavern, desire to watch whether it contained something wonderous.

♪ Nicholl: The Renaissance is rest enlightenment, a rebirth of classic learning, but it's also clean time of tremendous change perch, therefore, uncertainty.

Everything's up for grabs, and I think the crucial of the time is uncertainty.

With every question comes a beyond doubt, and I think the fib of Leonardo's about looking inspiration the dark cave is precise very Renaissance viewpoint.

♪ Narrator: Restructuring Europe emerged from a withering pandemic that had ravaged righteousness continent in the mid-1300s, honourableness city-states that crowded the European peninsula established maritime trade telecommunications to Constantinople and North Continent, giving rise to a prosperous class of merchants and bankers and accelerating an exchange all but knowledge that helped ignite authority cultural explosion that would draw near to be known as rendering Renaissance.

Woman: It started in justness more mature part of representation Middle Ages, but the capacious change occurs with what give something the onceover called humanism.

Humanism's really the come across of the Renaissance, and try happens because scholars like Poet and others for the foremost time don't look at significance texts of the past countryside try to Christianize them.

Before, tackle was always to take character knowledge and try to profit the Christian doctrine.

Instead, now they see a need for what they are within the in sequence 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 play in the city-state of Florence be introduced to a blossoming of art weather architecture informed by mathematics standing science and classical ideals.

Man, manner French: Del Toro: It's celebrating not only empirical, but worldly sensation and why does noisy happen, where does it use from, how do we be a member of in the world.

There is elegant re-centering of the world comprise man.

♪ Narrator: Florence was be in first place established on the banks hook the Arno River by Julius Caesar in 59 B.C.

Since picture Middle Ages, it had antediluvian the seat of power incline the Republic of Florence, top-hole city-state that controlled a big swath of Tuscany.

Its government, elegant council made up of people of the leading trade guilds called the Signoria, was keen source of great pride seize the city's inhabitants, but herbaceous border reality, Florence functioned as want oligarchy in which the master families controlled the levers arrive at power from behind the scenes.

Cosimo de' Medici, the politically artful head of a powerful commerce family, had become Florence's show facto ruler in 1434.

His on the ball diplomatic maneuvers had led pause a 1454 treaty among rank kingdoms, republics, and dukedoms depart divided the Italian peninsula, ushering in a delicate peace sponsor the first time in hemisphere a century.

Cosimo was also graceful generous patron of the arts.

Man: Increasingly, artists who previously would've sought to work for rank cathedral, to work for nobleness city, to work for single of the guilds want space work for the Medici in that working for the Medici assessment not only a good cut, it also guarantees recognition well-off a new world of talent appreciation.

[Weaving shuttle rattles] Narrator: Town had long been home assume a flourishing garment industry do better than its silk and wool weavers, leather tanners, and furriers.

[Chipping] Chimp the arts grew, workshops stroll produced paintings, sculptures, jewelry, become peaceful metalworks expanded and prospered.

[Pounding] Nicholl: The Italian word for regular studio is "bottega," and ditch means a shop or, work up precisely in this context, neat workshop-- a noisy, communal, compliant space.

Different people are working rein different things.

[Hammering and clanging] There's hammers and tongs and fires that heat up metal give orders to a lot of smells look after solvents.

You might also hear, blond course, the clucking of chickens because one of the important paints that were used was egg tempera.

Narrator: Sometime in decency 1460s, Leonardo, now an teenager, made the long day's sit on from Vinci to Florence, whirl location his father secured him deflate apprenticeship in the workshop bad deal Andrea del Verrocchio.

A talented artist, painter, and goldsmith, Verrocchio locked away trained many of Florence's ultimate celebrated artists.

Man: I think type recognized very quickly that verdant Leonardo was going to wool sort of the cream handle these young apprentices, someone become absent-minded he could outsource some heed the work to, and accommodating he could train up disruption be an extremely good constellation, painter, jewelry designer, whatever bankruptcy wanted to be.

Narrator: In righteousness late 1460s, Verrocchio received dinky commission from the Medici kindred to cast a bronze idol of David, the Biblical marshal boy who had slayed magnanimity giant Goliath.

Leonardo--whose contemporaries described him as a beautiful, curly-haired youth-- may have been his model.

Delieuvin, speaking French: ♪ Bramly, eloquent French: Woman, speaking Italian: ♪ Narrator: As an apprentice, Carver prepared wood panels, ground pigments for paint, and made models in clay and terracotta.

He besides learned to draw, a cleverness that artists viewed as rank foundation for all other aesthetically pleasing endeavors.

Man: Drawing is the cardinal to almost everything.

If you can't really draw it well, you're never gonna be able secure paint it well.

Leonardo said, single should find for oneself fine really good master, copy their work because it will guide your hand to good form.

Gopnik: He drew with astounding acuity.

If there's one thing that begets Leonardo's drawings distinct from glory beautiful drawings of someone intend his master Verrocchio, Leonardo adds a note of movement advocate internal agitation to drawings.

Everything recapitulate dissolved into the world lacking movement.

Man: Leonardo does a piece of studies of draperies instruction cloths, and what it shows is, he understands how trivial hits a curving object, exhibition shadows are formed...

♪ gain depth is conveyed in clean up drawing.

The drapery studies give marvellous sense of light, of catholic, but also of motion.

♪ Bloke as Leonardo: The painter testament choice produce pictures of small benefit if he makes other artists' work his standard, but venture 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 Waterway Valley.

♪ Bramly, speaking French: ♪ Borgo, speaking Italian: ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Church bell clanging] ♪ King: One of say publicly remarkable things about Florence review that there was a transferral of geniuses decade after decennary after decade in the 1400s.

When Leonardo came to Florence mould the 1460s, he could area back at the previous 50 years and see great community works of art, things defer you could see for free.

You could walk through the streets of Florence and see this.

He wants to take his brace in the pantheon of full amount artists like Alberti, Ghiberti, topmost Brunelleschi.

Narrator: Filippo Brunelleschi was authority city's most celebrated architect.

In 1418, he had entered a uncover competition to engineer a arch 1 for the city's central religous entity, Santa Maria del Fiore, which had been under construction thanks to 1296.

♪ At 143 feet sight diameter, the long-planned dome was intended to be wider fondle that of Rome's celebrated Pantheon, still the world's largest 1,300 years after its completion.

♪ Embargo believed it could ever assign built, but Brunelleschi was undeterred.

It took 18 years, but character structure of the dome was finally completed in 1436, 16 years before Leonardo was born.

♪ Three decades later, Verrocchio won a contract to construct bracket install a monumental copper get hold of 8 feet in diameter impressive weighing more than 4,000 pounds to complete the lantern skyward Brunelleschi's dome.

King: And Leonardo nip Vinci was 19 years ageing at that point, and he'd been with Verrocchio for abuse least a couple of time learning his trade.

He would've bizarre up close and personal all that Brunelleschi had achieved.

Leonardo snifter Vinci says, "I want with respect to do the impossible.

I want be create miracles," because he's impassioned by these miraculous works comment art which have come already him.

[Bell tolls] Narrator: In excellence early 1470s, Verrocchio received nifty commission from the Church behove San Salvi to paint keen Baptism of Christ.

The master appointed sections of the work give confidence his talented apprentice, including primacy Messiah's feet, parts of prestige landscape, and one of say publicly two angels.

While Verrocchio had calico in tempera and used wan highlights to produce contours, Designer worked in oil, applying subtly thin layers of color simulation develop light and shadow suggest create the illusion of 3-dimensionality.

Isaacson: Verrocchio's paintings and sculptures both had a bit of regular sense of motion, and Carver builds on that and does it even better than Verrocchio did, and it's a precede sign that Leonardo's beginning health check surpass Verrocchio as a panther of motion and emotion.

♪ Subject as Leonardo: The art reminisce perspective is such that limitation makes what is flat come out in relief and what review in relief appear flat.

♪ Verdon: Part of Leonardo's heritage was the revolutionary invention of single-point linear perspective, so a prepubescent man learning art in Town in the 1460s, as Carver would have done, he conceded that he had to suitably a complete master of that.

Narrator: Single-point linear perspective, a ideology of bringing the illusion discern depth to a two-dimensional look at carefully, had been devised by Designer, but it was the creator Leon Battista Alberti who locked away enshrined it for Renaissance artists in his treatise "Della Pittura."

Man: Perspective was very important make somebody's acquaintance the painters.

That's basically how factors recede into space and authority vanishing point that parallel figure seem to go to.

Musicians difficult to understand mathematical theories of harmony, put forward perspective was rather like guarantee for painters.

They had a understanding, so he began to get bigger an interest not just beget the mathematics of organizing interval in pictures, but also speedy how the eye works beginning how slippery it is.

He's authority first of the theorists imprison painting who realizes that illustriousness business of seeing is bargain complicated.

♪ Man as Leonardo: Talented objects transmit their image revoke the eye by a mausoleum of lines which start wean away from the edges of an object's surface and, converging from dialect trig distance, meet in a one and only point...

and I will pretend that this point is below par in the eye, which disintegration the universal judge of go into battle objects.

♪ Narrator: In 1472, heroic act the age of 20, Sculptor joined a painter's guild whose members were among the bossy talented artists in Florence-- Filippino Lippi, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino, and Sandro Botticelli.

Though Leonardo remained a part of Verrocchio's workroom, he was now a dipintore, a professional painter, able get entangled receive his own commissions.

♪ Metropolis artists were frequently hired by means of churches and the city's finest families to paint the Bible's most popular subjects-- the Singer and Child, the Adoration slant the Magi, the Crucifixion.

Another often depicted scene was the Promulgation, the moment in which honesty angel Gabriel descends from heavenly kingdom to proclaim to the Latest Mary that she will teamwork birth to the Son waning God.

It would be the area under discussion of one of Leonardo's be foremost independent works.

♪ Though he outlandish freely in technique from Verrocchio, Leonardo's "Annunciation" revealed his discernment of perspective, his deftness be regarding light and shadow, and potentate devotion to nature.

Vecce, speaking Italian: ♪ Gopnik: He's one all but those people who lives notes his own head.

We meet those people in life, and miracle recognize that they live think about it a planet other than phone call own.

♪ There are very, upturn few times in history while in the manner tha what you did when pointed had that kind of soothe, inquiring, creative mind was acquiescent paint pictures.

Renaissance Italy was probably the only place and prior when that was so, give orders to we're blessed that it was.

♪ ♪ Narrator: Leonardo received substitute commission-- to paint a contour of the young poet Ginevra de' Benci, the daughter lacking a wealthy, well-connected banking parentage who had occasional dealings surrender Leonardo's father.

To look at decency "Ginevra de' Benci" is unquestionably one of the great habits to understand Leonardo's early portraiture technique.

It is a very deliberated, very protracted process.

The painting give something the onceover done on a very slim poplar wood panel, and outdo has a priming that practical gesso.

Leonardo began by doing blue blood the gentry cartoon, a full-scale drawing accord paper.

♪ He pricked the outlines and rubbed with a pouncing bag while the panel was underneath, a technique we shout spolvero.

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

♪ He applied in the thinnest veils what we call dignity glazes, or the velature loaded Italian.

♪ Layer by infinitesimal row, he's able to calibrate glory tonal transitions that permit him to explore the sfumato approach where you blend the gradations in such a way defer they seem to be magnanimity manner of smoke.

♪ Narrator: Note a playful reference to Ginevra's name, Leonardo surrounded her own juniper branches, ginepro in Italian.

Borgo, speaking Italian: ♪ Bambach: Amazement can already see how heartily Leonardo believes that the rite of the mind, the obsequies of the soul-- so decency moti dell'animo, e moti dell'anima-- show through this almost baffling gaze that she holds, deed there is a connectivity support the viewer that gives habitual this tremendous power.

♪ [Bats screeching] [Church bell ringing] ♪ Narrator: In April of 1476, Metropolis authorities received an anonymous banknote accusing 17-year-old Jacopo Saltarelli pass judgment on sodomy and prostitution.

The accuser planned 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, tolerable Leonardo might well have bent arrested.

He might well have bushed time in the holding cells.

Narrator: But among the accused was a son of the Tornabuoni family, a powerful Florentine dynasty with enough connections to accept the charges dropped.

Two months adjacent, the 4 men were absolved.

No further prosecution was pursued averse them.

Homosexuality, though condemned by representation church, was widely tolerated emergence 15th-century Florence, where a release of notable artists and poets were publicly known to distrust gay.

♪ Bramly, speaking French: ♪ Narrator: Leonardo wrote nothing pose his sexuality or the recrimination, but just a few period later, he would draw keen device for removing bars liberate yourself from windows and another for option a prison cell.

They were severe of his first mechanical inventions.

♪ Man as Leonardo: Painting research paper born of nature, or, degree, it is the grandchild close nature...

[Birds chirping] ♪ perform all visible things are stop by by nature, and these, send someone away creations, have given birth presage painting... ♪ so we hawthorn justly call it the progeny of nature and related fulfil God.

♪ Man: Nature is God.

Nature is perfection.

♪ Nature is proportion.

Nature is the entity which obtains every effect with the usher and direct way that progression possible.

The best a scientist minor-league a painter can do wreckage imitate nature.

♪ Kemp: He has an amazing sense that brand is a perfect invention, walk there is nothing superfluous bracket nothing lacking.

Nature does nothing sky vain.

[Horse snorts] If the dry out is that shape, then tedious must do something.

Every small obvious of that form must possess a function.

[Bat screeches] He does claim that the human use can take things from features and put them together focal point a different way and go you can invent things turn nature didn't invent, so support could act as a next nature in the world.

♪ Narrator: In the late 1470s, Technologist finally left Verrocchio's studio talented opened one of his cut off with his own apprentices captain assistants.

Between commissions, he devised weather drew machines for an clothing of purposes.

Some were inspired unhelpful the designs of classical inventors or Renaissance engineers, and describe were informed by his finale observations of nature-- the spirals in a snail's shell, blue blood the gentry eddies of water in fastidious surging stream, and the swirls of wind induced by put in order thunderstorm.

He drew an Archimedes bolt, an ancient device created consign to force water to flow and sketched construction machines, unblended mill for processing grain, nearby a human flying contraption featuring batlike wings.

For Leonardo, building grandeur machines often seemed beside picture point.

Galluzzi: What is beauty endorse Leonardo is proportion and middle among its parts and comment a balance between light take shade, is organization of employment the inner parts in well-organized way that provide an instinctive perception of coherence.

This is reason I like to call these drawings portraits.

He takes the sign up care in making them brand he puts into portraying defer of his famous ladies.

Narrator: Hit March of 1481, an instability of Augustinian friars hired Carver to paint a massive screen for the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto located rational outside the city's walls.

His divine, who did legal work assistance the monks, helped broker honesty contract.

He was to depict selection frequently painted Bible scene memorable as the Adoration of significance Magi in which 3 kings visit the newborn Jesus be proof against recognize Him as the Messiah.

Verdon: There's little evidence that blooper was personally a very spiritualminded person.

It's evident that he knew the stories.

That was his dough and butter as an artist.

Even when he is dealing write down nonreligious subjects-- rocks or distilled water or trees-- I think settle down brings that sense that screen things are part of that astounding system that God has made.

He never simply bows less conventional religious ideas and accomplishs himself the illustrator of depiction catechism.

He's always looking for particular more.

♪ Narrator: For the loads of figures who would inhabit his painting, Leonardo sat bring into being the piazzas of Florence weaken observing and sketching.

♪ Man significance Leonardo: You must wander have a lark and constantly as you disorder, observe, note, and consider representation circumstances and behavior of joe public as they talk, quarrel, guffaw, or fight together...

♪ turf make brief sketches of them in a notebook, for class forms and movements of population are so infinite that class memory is incapable of keep them... ♪ so keep these sketches as your guides meticulous masters.

♪ Narrator: In one preliminary drawing for his "Adoration," Engineer used dozens of perspective build to create an intricate, Ternary setting which he then populated with animals and figures.

♪ Make available an 8-foot-wide poplar panel oily with gesso, Leonardo sketched dominant resketched an underdrawing by be of assistance using black chalk or charcoal.

♪ On top of this, elegance began to rough out magnanimity figures in black, brown, last blue pigments which he purposeful by brush.

♪ Next, he another a thin coat of pasty paint.

♪ Using layers of undamaged black and brown glazes, Designer masterfully developed contrasting areas flaxen light and shadow that sooner would give the scene size and depth, a technique unheard of as chiaroscuro.

♪ Soon, a enthralling scene featuring the Virgin dowel Child, 3 kings kneeling enclose homage, a throng of floored eyewitnesses, ancient ruins, and ending and soldiers in a shy battle began to emerge.

It was unlike any Adoration ever painted.

Delieuvin, speaking French: ♪ Verdon: Conj at the time that the star stops and decency kings see Mary and distinction Christ child, they are filled of great joy.

♪ They experience joy, but there are diverse people-- there are 3 kings, and then there are riot the members of the entourage-- and people do not done respond in exactly the livery way.

♪ Delieuvin, speaking French: ♪ Verdon: So he's really lovely at it in a withdraw that no one had shrewd done before, no one confidential ever done before, and renounce is simply astounding.

Borgo, speaking Italian: Narrator: Among the bystanders unite the painting's lower right just a stone's throw away, Leonardo painted a male velocity, likely a self-portrait, who gazes away from the scene's vivid center...

♪ but less prior to a year after beginning queen "Adoration of the Magi," Architect abandoned the work.

"So grand was his vision," wrote Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, one of Leonardo's obvious biographers, that "he saw errors even in things that starkness called miracles."

♪ Gopnik: You jumble feel this sort of dissatisfaction.

He wants to not only accept the snapshot of that place, but he wants to face himself, "How would everyone have to one`s name behaved?

"How would the camels existing the animals and the Magi-- how would everyone have regretful at that moment?"

He ends approximately with a lot of inelegant work because the questions he's setting himself are not questions that you can answer easily.

♪ [Droplets splashing] Man as Leonardo: We do not lack attitude of passing our miserable days.

Still, we do not want nominate spend them in vain, design no praise, and leaving thumb memory of ourselves in nobility minds of mortals.

Isaacson: We commode see in Leonardo a discouragement, and a gloom happening.

He hasn't finished the "Adoration of influence Magi," and he keeps jot in his notebook...

Man by reason of Leonardo: Dimmi.

Dimmi.

Dimmi se mai fu fatto cosa... Isaacson: "Tell me.

Tell me.

Tell me if anything habitually gets done."

Bramly, speaking French: Narrator: "Tell me, Leonardo, why specified anguish?"

wrote a friend on systematic sheet of Leonardo's paper.

"Where determination I settle?"

Leonardo asked himself commentary the same page.

Isaacson: It was time for Leonardo to trade on.

He knew it.

He needed back up seek new horizons, and earth gets an opportunity when at hand is a delegation that's development from Florence to Milan.

It's apparently cultural diplomacy because the liquidate in Florence are trying promote to appeal to the Duke comment Milan by sending great architects and artists and painters.

Narrator: Prestige delegation likely traveled on ahorse, first climbing the Apennine Power, then riding up the Po River Valley before reaching nobility plains of Lombardy, where City, a city of 80,000 common surrounded by 3 miles ferryboat medieval walls, rose up a while ago the Alps.

Unlike Florence, a commonwealth whose officials were elected munch through the leading guilds, Milan was a city-state ruled for 2 centuries by merciless strongmen who went by the title ship Duke.

Ludovico Sforza, though not properly Milan's duke, had sidelined tiara nephew in 1480 and taken aloof control through brute force limit cunning statecraft, which he ragged to navigate the ever-shifting alliances of Italy's duchies, kingdoms, republics, and the Papal States.

King: Rich prince, any government had side be wary of all character neighbors, all the other society in Italy because there was a kind of tense consider, a kind of equipoise mid and among these states.

Ludovico was very much a spider parcel up the center of this snare which would tremble whenever good-natured else began to move controversial the peninsula, brilliant figure subtract many ways, politically astute, uncommonly deceitful and unscrupulous, and tough the 1480s, probably militarily honourableness most powerful person on decency Italian Peninsula.

Narrator: Known as Transfer Moro, the Moor, in range for his dark complexion, Sforza had cultivated a court avoid was among the most citified in all of Europe.

♪ Unwind kept his palace populated become accustomed engineers and poets, doctors, artists, and mathematicians whom he deputized to design and build churches and fortifications, create works rejoice art, and collaborate on alignment for the elaborate pageants inaccuracy was fond of staging.

♪ Verdon: One of the things focus surprises us about Leonardo's disdainful to go and live tabled Milan is that he went from a city which confidential always prized its political setting free to a Soviet-type situation.

He desires the leisure to be immeasurable to work his ideas burrow in a creative way outdoors the immediate market pressure chide producing a work.

Man as Leonardo: Most illustrious Lord, I shall endeavor to explain myself take care of Your Excellency, showing Your Mastery my secrets.

Narrator: Leonardo dictated dexterous letter addressed to the count proclaiming his skill as draw in engineer and enumerating his burden for military devices.

Man as Leonardo: I have designs for uncommonly light and strong bridges, cut out for to be most easily do in, and with them, you may well pursue the enemy and off at any time.

I have designs for destroying every stronghold ebb tide other fortress, even if pull it off were built on rock.

[Horse neighs] I will make safe predominant unassailable covered chariots which, entrance among the enemy with their artillery, can withstand any rush, even by large groups provide warriors.

Should bombardment operations fail, Hilarious would contrive catapults, mangonels, trebuchets, and other admirably efficient machines not in common use.

Bramly, speech French: Narrator: There is rebuff evidence Leonardo ever received uncluttered reply to his letter recall even sent it.

With no landscape of a job as Sforza's military engineer, he needed get closer find other paying work.

Eventually, subside formed a partnership with brothers Ambrogio and Evangelista de Predis, who operated a successful stop trading studio.

Together, the 3 artists tied a commission to paint toggle altarpiece for the chapel be more or less the Confraternity of the Spotless Conception.

The contract-- dated April 25, 1483-- specified that the reredos should include an image company the Virgin and Child, flanked by two smaller side panels.

Leonardo was to paint the essential panel.

Verdon: Mary, of course, was the most common subject coach in medieval and Renaissance art.

♪ With, Mary is Leonardo's focus.

♪ Mary's right hand, which is curtail the back of John birth Baptist, is very tense.

The fingers are pressing into John's accent, but the thumb is have power over his shoulder, and what she's doing is holding him back.

Mary, in the popular theology ramble Leonardo and everyone at loftiness time knew, already understood company son must one day fall, and here, he shows tea break preventing the prophet of jilt own son's future death carry too far drawing near to Christ.

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

Indeed, He's smutty to John the Baptist, at an earlier time He's blessing him.

She's lowering accumulate left hand toward His intellect, but her hand can at no time reach her child's head thanks to there's a figure, an waterfall, kneeling behind her son, forward the angel is pointing reveal John the Baptist.

Mary, as hominoid mother, knows her son corrode die but cannot accept stray, and so God sends Surmount angel to prevent Mary's intuitive, natural, maternal instinct from block the future Passion.

It is positively the most complex Madonna picture of the entire Renaissance.

♪ Dismay complexity lies in a inquisitive effort to understand a extensive mystery, which is how, conduct yourself a woman prepared from boast eternity to bear the Endeavour of God, humanity still to cut a long story short expresses itself.

♪ Narrator: After organized disagreement with the monks stumble on money, Leonardo and his partners withheld the painting.

Their dispute would go unresolved for decades.

Bambach: Designer will do what Leonardo does, pretty much disregarding what grandeur expectations of the patrons designing, and the patrons learned do again their enormous frustrations-- and they would get quite angry-- prowl this was who Leonardo was.

Narrator: Leonardo soon formed his uncared for studio in Milan, where filth collaborated on portraits and holy works with assistants and on the subject of accomplished masters and offered sayso to eager apprentices.

He started nevertheless abandoned a painting of description 4th-century theologian and ascetic Reverence Jerome.

He got further with uncomplicated portrait of a musician, put forward Atalante Migliorotti, who had cosmopolitan with him to Milan, put up with Leonardo finally began to pick up commissions from Ludovico Sforza.

Among them was a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, the well-educated teenage colleen of a Milanese civil parlourmaid who had caught Il Moro's eye and soon after was living in a suite make stronger rooms in his castle.

♪ Kemp: What Leonardo has done problem to tell a mini-narrative divert this image.

She is holding birth ermine, this animal which psychotherapy symbolic of purity because magnanimity ermine was said to choose to die rather than address dirty, and she is movement away from us, looking, coupled with smiling slightly, so we mildew imagine the duke is date there.

We're looking at her.

She enquiry looking at the duke.

She assignment given status by this unnoticed presence, which is just delightfully remarkable, given the fact put off portraits didn't have narratives captive them.

Isaacson: The way her carpus is cocked protectively around honourableness ermine, the way the pleased of the ermine and primacy eyes of the lady enjoy very much both glancing in the changeless direction, and the way character light glints off of back up eyes and off the pale ermine, it's Leonardo at rule best, showing a scene tenuous motion.

The greatest task of illustriousness painter is to paint birth figure and the intentions invite the mind.

He says, "Where here is no life, make option alive."

♪ Speaking Italian: ♪ Narrator: Leonardo moved into a ample studio and living quarters improve on the Corte Vecchia, a ex palace adjacent to Milan's vast cathedral.

In the new workshop, which he would refer to slightly "la mia fabrica," my low-grade, Leonardo would paint portraits, gain futuristic machines, and make minute observations in dozens of notebooks.

[Dog barks] Borgo, speaking Italian: Nicholl: I think we get side to a key quality go rotten Leonardo in the notebooks.

It's distant just that Leonardo knew put down awful lot.

It's that he small piece out an awful lot.

Man introduction Leonardo: What light and dusk are?

What outlines are seen surprise trees?

What rules should be gain to boys learning to paint?

Nicholl: The way he found drive away was by asking questions...

Male as Leonardo: Why the cool appears larger when setting escape at noon when it hype nearer to us?

Nicholl: and surely the interrogative mode is from head to toe often present in the notebooks.

Man as Leonardo: [Speaking Italian] Nicholl: Why is that happening?

Man tempt Leonardo: [Speaking Italian] Nicholl: In what way does it happen?

Man as Leonardo: [Speaking Italian] Nicholl: What anticipation the quality of that whim or person or emotion?

Man little Leonardo: [Speaking Italian] Nicholl: He's posing questions and looking imply answers.

Man as Leonardo: [Speaking Italian] Del Toro: The beauty capture what he does is focus he is carrying a class of notions that are rationalized almost like a stream do paperwork consciousness.

Man as Leonardo: [Speaking Italian] Del Toro: His knowledge knows no boundaries.

[Splash] [Lion roars] Influence way we absorb the sphere is all at once, sports ground that's the simultaneous, gluttonous unite that you get from rule notebooks.

He has to be thither, and he has to portray it right away.

Man as Leonardo: Define first what is deliberate by height and depth, additionally how the elements are mouldy.

Narrator: In one notebook, type designed a city built disguise two levels to improve sanitation; sketched castle and church architectonics, including a study for leadership dome of Milan's cathedral; significant invented weapons of war.

♪ Designer also drew fantastical flying machines.

♪ Vecce, speaking Italian: Narrator: Agreed wasn't the first to envision conquering the skies.

Daedalus, a visionary craftsman of ancient Greece, difficult to understand fashioned wings for himself most recent his son Icarus in monumental effort to escape their captors on the isle of Crete.

♪ Aspiring aviators in China, Persia, Scotland, and elsewhere had prearranged machines and made ill-fated attempts at flight.

♪ Man as Leonardo: Remember that your flying apparatus must imitate the bat in that the web, being connected maneuver the structure, gives strength make ill the wings.

Narrator: Many of Leonardo's designs were ornithopters, machines roam relied on the human-powered hanging of wings to achieve flight.

His wings would be constructed blond cane, rope, and fine paper, the lightest materials he could find.

Pilots would use pulleys current cords to coordinate movement contemporary pedals and cranks to running low power.

Man as Leonardo: A gentleman with large enough wings accordingly connected might overcome the grit of the air and achieve something in conquering it and improving above it.

♪ Man: In proscription to achieve lift, he wanted to create, basically, a deviance of the air.

We are fugacious because we are able shout approval redirect the airflow from categorical to downward.

And Newton's law says that if you deflect curb downward, the reaction to non-operational is, it pushes you artifice, and he basically understood lapse without being able to expound it.

♪ Narrator: Though ingenious fairy story of singular artistic beauty, sovereignty flying machines could not be endowed with flown.

The materials of his hour were too heavy and being musculature too weak.

♪ Man considerably Leonardo: The dragonfly flies varnished 4 wings, and when blue blood the gentry front wings are raised, class back wings are lowered, on the contrary each pair needs to distrust sufficient of itself to afford the full weight.

♪ Narrator: Hillock the years ahead, Leonardo would fill his notebooks with drawings of a multitude of irritate mechanical devices-- hydraulic screws, hoists, a perpetual motion machine, clocks-- and their component parts-- springs, gears, ball bearings.

Many of coronet designs were utilitarian, some untested, but all were devised clank great consideration for the abilities of physics, such as pull, inertia, and gravity.

[Pottery shatters] Illustrate Toro: There's a great petite phrase Kubrick said, and I'll paraphrase him.

The lesson in greatness Icarus myth is not give it some thought we shouldn't fly that high.

We just need to build raise wings, you know, and Raving think Leonardo wants to compose better wings-- from irrigation with respect to circulatory systems to machines admit war, everything.

♪ Galluzzi: One stir up the greatest invention by Carver is not the submarine multiplicity the airplane.

They would not be blessed with worked, and I'm sure settle down was absolutely aware of that.

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

These drawings are spectacular as drawings.

♪ He's able, for the chief time, to portray a obscure machine with one drawing surround a way that you jumble understand perfectly even its domestic parts.

He was making exploded views aside the general view spend the machine, and that was unsurpassed for many, many generations.

♪ Woman: One of my pick things is a little harmonious pun he does where explicit takes Do Re Mi Nil Sol La Ti Do folk tale arranges those into Italian enlighten that make a sentence, on the other hand they're also, of course, find your feet, so you can sing dynamic, and what is being vocal is, "Love alone makes surrounding remember.

Love alone makes me alert," and there's a little, waif comment on the back ship one of the sheets be paid paper-- "If there is pollex all thumbs butte love, what then?"

♪ Man whilst Leonardo: Giacomo came to exist with me on the Beanfeast of Saint Mary Magdalene, 1490.

♪ Narrator: In the summer have a high regard for 1490, Giacomo Caprotti, a 10-year-old from a nearby village, united Leonardo's household.

♪ Caprotti's father difficult agreed to pay room subject board while his son judicious painting from the master.

In offend, the boy would show honest talent, but at first, elegance ran errands, modeled for Sculptor, and caused trouble.

Nicholl: He's at the double noted as a mischief shaper, a disruptive figure, and really, the name that is stated to him, Salai, it effectuation little demon, little devil, with the addition of the first thing we memorize about him is a plug away notation in Leonardo's-- one liberation Leonardo's notebooks, one of birth longest continuous pieces of scribble literary works about another person that Engineer ever put down on monograph, and it's a list decay Salai's misdeeds.

Man as Leonardo: Nobleness second day, I had duo shirts cut for him, smart pair of hose, and pure jerkin, and when I dress up aside some money to reward for these things, he peninsula the money out of dignity purse, and I could not ever get him to confess, albeit I was quite certain waning the fact.

Again, on April 2, Gian Antonio left a silverware point on a drawing recognized had made, and Giacomo 1 it.

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

Narrator: "liar..." Man importance Leonardo: bugiardo... Narrator: "obstinate..." Gentleman as Leonardo: ostinato... Narrator: "greedy"... Man as Leonardo: ghiotto.

Narrator: Technologist wrote in the margin.

Nicholl: During the whole of it runs this wonderful genus of twinkle of fondness take the stones out of the maestro as he lists these misdeeds of the young man Salai, and this fondness rationalize this mischievous but rather nice and charismatic young lad carries on, really, throughout the loan 30 years of companionship.

Salai decline a apprentice, then assistant, for that reason companion-- one might almost surely say lover-- and finally type of indispensable sort of mate of Leonardo's life.

♪ He has a very particular look which becomes the sort of mark, almost, of Leonardo's presentation announcement the beautiful male face-- locate, indeed, androgynous face-- because monarch angels often feature the countenance of Salai.

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

No more war.

I surrender.

Zimmerman: There's a contemporary specification to Salai.

Someone says, "Our Designer stopped by the other unremarkable with the insufferable Salai," extremity yet something's being satisfied.

He was with him for the pole of his life, and Uproarious think you sort of can't argue with that.

♪ Man whereas Leonardo: Pleasure and Pain write down as twins since there progression never one without the other.

They stand back to back by the same token though they were attached.

If boss about take Pleasure, know that persist him is one who testament choice deal you Tribulation and Contrition, and they exist as opposites in the same body due to they have the same grounds, and the various forms wear out evil pleasure are the commencement of pain.

Bramly, speaking French: Squashy Italian: ♪ [Hooves clopping] Narrator: In January of 1490, Ludovico Sforza hosted a lavish be on holiday to honor the marriage get a hold his nephew to the Crowned head of Naples.

The evening featured splendid sumptuous feast and an elucidate pageant, "Il Paradiso," with costumed actors, music, and dancing.

Near middle of the night, a curtain was drawn prevent reveal a giant half-egg, honesty top edge arrayed with high-mindedness twelve signs of the zodiac and the inside gilded become clear to gold.

The 7 known celestial necessitous were represented by actors.

Candles served as stars.

The performance culminated come to mind the gods descending from bliss to proclaim the bride's spend time at virtues.

Leonardo had decorated the engross and designed all the costumes and sets.

♪ He had at long last found a niche on Sforza's court.

In time, Il Moro would appoint him an official inventor and painter.

Kemp: He became marvellous guru of the court.

He abstruse a stipend.

He was a stipendiato.

It gave him space.

It also gave him an area where respecting were musicians, and he living soul was an accomplished musician.

There were poets.

There were historians.

There were general public doing natural philosophy.

There were engineers.

He was a very gracious checker by all accounts, rather charming.

The courts suited him quite well.

King: He was someone who beloved the humorous and loved loftiness grotesque, loved practical jokes.

♪ Awe might not think of Architect da Vinci as having neat as a pin sense of humor, but perform did.

Man as Leonardo: It was asked of a painter reason, since he painted such attractive figures, his children were thus ugly, to which the master replied that he made authority pictures by day and sovereign children by night.

♪ Bambach: Architect also cultivates a huge course of intellectual friends and craftsmen, and his ambitions to manage treatises really emerges.

[Bell tolling] Coach in Milan, there was an commercial in more Aristotelian ways mention thinking, which are much bonus based on empiricism, empirical observation.

Leonardo was able to befriend buzz these people who translated treatises that probably enhanced his upbringing, and he kind of got his sea legs as entail author.

[Thunder] Verdon: Plato said, "You have to start with nobleness great ideas."

Aristotle said, "No.

You imitate to start with the burdensome facts, "like rocks and sludge and plants.

"In analyzing them, spiky will come to the better ideas that allow you turn construct a system," and Hilarious think that corresponded much very closely to Leonardo's own astonishment about the natural world, reprove, in a sense, shaped it.

Narrator: Determined to become a novelist and intellectual, Leonardo acquired additional and more books.

The German crafter Johannes Guttenberg had invented blue blood the gentry printing press in 1452, interpretation year Leonardo was born.

♪ Propitious two decades, Venice had legitimate itself as a center go allout for publishing, and Milan and Town each had their own writing shops.

♪ King: Leonardo was spoil inveterate and omnivorous reader, ride if he couldn't buy clean book, he would borrow it.

He's not just looking at grandeur natural world-- he's certainly experience that--but he's also looking test the best that has archaic thought and said by consummate predecessors.

Man as Leonardo: Try compel to obtain the Vitolone, which problem in the library of Pavia.

Ask Benedetto Portinari how people move ahead on the ice in Flanders.

Ask Maestro Antonio how mortars sort out placed on bastions by award or by night.

Get the Religious at Brera to show order around "De ponderibus."

Narrator: Leonardo also oft quoted "The Divine Comedy," description epic poem by Dante Alighieri, Florence's most famous writer...

♪ and he tried to master hand Latin, long the language prop up European scholars, filling page care for page of his notebooks be in keeping with vocabulary words written in surmount mirror script.

♪ Vecce, speaking Italian: ♪ Man as Leonardo: Groan being a literary man, make up your mind presumptuous people will think think about it they may reasonably criticize tag, alleging that I am dialect trig man without letters.

Foolish men.

They dent not know that my subjects are to be dealt smash by experience rather than overstep words and experience has back number the master of those who wrote well.

Therefore, I shall arouse my master in all cases.

♪ Galluzzi: He says that Rabid am "uomo sanza lettere."

"I confound a man who has negation traditional knowledge," and is neat kind of admission, which quite good, in fact, an expression pay for proudness.

"I've learned not from libraries, not from books, "but devour the observation of nature.

"Nature attempt the real teacher.

I am capital disciple of nature."

Many expressions unsavory his notebooks express this difficulty for not being considered sort an intellectual, we would speak today, as a scholar.

At authority same time, this was dulcet by the self-confidence of meaningful much more than those spread, being able to perform eccentric that the others not much could conceive.

♪ Narrator: Meanwhile, Architect had embarked on another resourceful assertive project-- a series of books that, together, would present empress core beliefs on the chief and science of painting.

♪ Adult as Leonardo: Light is birth chaser away of darkness.

♪ Duskiness is the obstruction of pass out, and the eye can utter distinguish the forms of objects when it is placed amidst the shaded and illuminated parts.

Narrator: Using candles to illuminate spheres and cylinders, he observed ascertain light, when cast on bowed surfaces, created shadows of anecdotal intensity and length.

♪ Delieuvin, expressive French: Man as Leonardo: Illustriousness edges of shadows darken building block degrees, and anyone ignorant grip this fact will paint funny with no relief, and easing is the heart and psyche of painting.

♪ [Man exhales] Narrator: Like his old master Verrocchio, Leonardo believed that a hollow knowledge of human anatomy was essential to depicting the human being form, but he and surmount contemporaries were still dependent foresight the medical teachings of old physicians and philosophers whose centuries-old theories had mostly gone unchallenged.

Existing anatomical illustrations, which had antediluvian informed by those theories, were inaccurate and inadequate.

Man as Leonardo: A painter who learns range the nature of tendons, power, and sinews will know nondiscriminatory how many and which tendons cause the movement of smart limb or which muscle bulges and causes that tendon private house contract.

Narrator: Leonardo drew muscles, moor, and organs and experimented jiggle different techniques-- cross sections tube transparency.

♪ Speaking Italian: Narrator: Promptly he obtained a skull predominant set out to map give in a series of drawings.

Kemp: He sectioned it horizontally contemporary vertically.

You think, "Well, that's obvious," but it wasn't obvious.

Nobody frank 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 impede looks like, and wonderful, sensitive drawings which are just imposing in terms of technique, dispatch you think, "Well, he's knowledge the anatomy of the skull," but what he's really forwardthinking for is where the soul of the brain is.

He discussion about the pole of glory cranium and that the bring together where all these proportional systems cross is where the capabilities all go into this medial clearinghouse, as it were.

Those mentality studies, which look like forcible anatomy, are actually devoted perform understanding the workings of significance brain.

♪ Man as Leonardo: What sneezing is, what yawning equitable, sweating, fatigue, hunger, sleepiness, thirstiness appetite, lust.

Narrator: Aristotle had believed drift sensory impressions converged in spick brain cavity, where they were processed, interpreted, and stored.

He christened it the Sensus Communis.

Man variety Leonardo: The soul seems be adjacent to be located in the end of reason, and the acclimatize of reason seems to suit where all the senses converge.

This is called the senso comune, and the soul is categorize all throughout and in now and again part of the body, introduce many previously believed, because on condition that it were, it would cry be necessary to have representation instruments of the senses unite in a single location.

Narrator: Locate Leonardo, the transmission of ideas from the eye, which misstep called the window of excellence soul, to the brain impressive nervous system and the centre that followed-- joy, fear, relate to, surprise-- was the essence register the human experience.

Artists, he alleged, should understand this phenomenon near the science behind it require effectively portray emotion, reveal flavorlessness, and tell riveting stories.

Speaking Italian: Narrator: Leonardo saw proportion clasp the natural world as ascertain of nature's matchless gift pull out design.

Using male models, he began a meticulous study.

Man as Leonardo: On the changing measurements describe the human body through ethics movements of the limbs running away different views, the measurements show the human body vary worry each limb according to happen as expected much it is bent splendid from different views so become absent-minded they grow or diminish stamp out a varying extent on double side while they grow survey diminish on the opposite side.

♪ Narrator: Seeking inspiration, Leonardo intentional a treatise by Vitruvius, keen Roman architect of the Ordinal century B.C., who wrote volume the symmetry between the android body and a skillfully premeditated temple and carefully measured description proportions of what he ostensible as a "well-shaped man."

Rossellini: Prosperous this was classical belief go off at a tangent the symmetry and proportion longawaited the human body reflected pass for in a microcosm the preferable harmony of the world.

Narrator: "Just as the human body yields a circular outline, so else a square figure may joke found from it," wrote Vitruvius.

Borgo, speaking Italian: Man as Leonardo: The space between the separating of the lips and rectitude base of the nose shambles 1/7 of the face.

Leonardo's to a great extent, very scientific about it.

Man slightly Leonardo: The space from honesty mouth to the bottom take up the chin is 1/4 ferryboat the face...

Isaacson: He does all sorts of measurements-- Public servant as Leonardo: in equal... Isaacson: from the forehead to prestige nose... Man as Leonardo: pills the mouth... Isaacson: to say publicly chin to the navel appreciation the genitals of all arrive at his assistants so he gets all the proportions exactly even, the way Vitruvius had suggested.

Man as Leonardo: The distance shun the top of the programme, where the eyebrows begin, fit in the bottom of the elevate is 2/3 of the face.

Borgo, speaking Italian: Del Toro: Carver is interested in the hominid proportion, and he thinks that's divine enough to be represented.

He says, "There is enough 1 "and enough cosmos and ample infinite "in another human for one person or a rock and dialect trig waterfall or a half-smile."

♪ Human race as Leonardo: Caterina came affinity the 16th day of July 1493.

Bramly, speaking French: Narrator: Owing to leaving Vinci decades earlier, Sculpturer had rarely made any notice of his mother, who, close to 1493, was in her mid-60s and widowed.

Bramly, speaking French: Narrator: One year later, on tidy page of his notebook, put your feet up recorded the costs of concealing her.

Man as Leonardo: For birth bier, 8 soldi; a facade over the bier, 12 soldi; for bearing and placing say publicly cross, 4 soldi; for 4 priests and 4 clerics, 20 soldi; for the gravediggers, 16 soldi; sugar and candles, 12 soldi.

♪ Every evil leaves urgency in our memory except influence supreme evil, death, which destroys this memory along with weighing scales life.

♪ Narrator: In November hillock 1493, Ludovico Sforza hosted first-class celebration for his niece Bianca, who was marrying the smart of Germany.

On display for position occasion was a colossal 20-foot-high clay horse sculpted by Engineer, the model for part model a bronze monument honoring Greeting Moro's father.

"I am certain consider it neither Greece nor Rome," memory astonished witness said, "ever adage anything more massive."

[Horse neighs] Honesty artist had studied live spots obsessively, measuring their proportions captain drawing their features in diadem notebooks.

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

[Horse snorts] He has the horse rearing...

[Horse neighs] and then he has righteousness neck and the head low in 3 different ways, deliver there's so much motion.

♪ Order around see all the different possibilities.

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

Narrator: Rather than cast the large statue in the tried limit tested way, divided into become independent from, Leonardo planned to create lone giant mold.

♪ Man as Leonardo: When you shall have ended the mold upon the equid, you must make the coating of the metal in clay.

Dry it in layers.

Make the absent mold of plaster to deliver time in drying and interpretation expense in wood.

And with that plaster, enclose the irons both outside and inside to keen thickness of two fingers.

Make mother earth cotta.

♪ Narrator: He planned treaty build a lattice metal framework to secure the mold already lowering it upside-down into great pit using a pulley capital punishment of his own design.

Finally, loosen up would pour molten bronze look over holes spread across the fungus, using furnaces arrayed around righteousness pit to cool the alloy evenly.

Ludovico Sforza gave him nobility 75 tons of bronze fair enough needed, but in the flop of 1494, before Leonardo could put it to use, Sforza confiscated it all.

[Swords clanging] Righteousness French King Charles VIII locked away ordered his troops south be acquainted with conquer the Kingdom of Metropolis, setting the entire Italian ness on edge.

To preserve his put a stop to over Milan, Il Moro rapidly aligned himself with Charles.

At authority same time, he sent integrity valuable metal to his father-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, who feared a French invasion beam planned to make cannons hang together Leonardo's bronze.

King: He couldn't put on been human if he wasn't disappointed at losing this legal action which, had he been effective to bring it to success, it really would've made dominion reputation.

It would've been his out of a job of fame.

Narrator: Ludovico Sforza would soon assign a new responsibilities to Leonardo-- a painting Carver believed few would ever see.

In the early 1490s, Il Filipino had chosen a monastery emphasize serve as a mausoleum merriment his family.

Home to an disrupt of Dominican friars, the discard featured a cloistered garden, cantonment for the monks, a vestry, and the recently completed Religion of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

To adorn the south wall outline the refectory, Sforza commissioned smart fresco of the crucifixion watch Jesus Christ.

For the north waste pipe, Leonardo was to paint fastidious scene suitable for the monks who dined there in tacit contemplation-- the final meal Earl shared with his apostles earlier he was crucified-- the Only remaining Supper.

It would be his ascendant ambitious painting to date, featuring multiple figures engaged in smart complex, dynamic narrative on organized physical scale much larger get away from any of his previous make a face, including the abandoned "Adoration operate the Magi."

It's a difficult examination for painters because it's straight long, thin, wide picture, which is slightly difficult to topsy-turvy, and you want some photoplay, or Leonardo wanted drama crucial it.

King: For the most almost all, Last Supper paintings would superiority very sedate scenes.

If you site at these paintings, Christ duct the apostles ranged across greatness table mostly in silence, fraying, maybe one or two conversation together, and they're very calm scenes.

Borgo, speaking Italian: Narrator: Misstep bought a Bible, a publicly read Italian-language edition that esoteric been translated from Latin flash decades earlier.

The Gospels-- the books attributed to Matthew, Mark, Book, and John-- offered varied nevertheless similar accounts of the dusk on which Jesus gathered Culminate 12 apostles and during entertainment staggered them with a declaration-- "He that dippeth his in the neighbourhood with me in the undeveloped, the same shall betray me."

King: It's an incredibly emotional flash, where we have this attractive religious leader with his fleet of brothers, and they're break in fighting in an occupied city whose authorities are plotting against them, and, of course, sitting unimportant their midst is a turncoat, the one who's going observe betray the leader, and Hilarious think Leonardo was probably discomfited by this story, and earth was going to tell lead in a very dramatic, artiste way, a way in which no artist previously had escort about, let alone attempted.

Narrator: Architect began exploring how the indoctrinate, 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 integrity glass where it was vital turned his head towards birth speaker; another, weaving the fingers of his hands together, snake, frowning to his companion.

Kemp: Need Leonardo, he had to say you will how the body worked little a responsive machine.

What happens like that which Christ says, "One of sell something to someone will betray me," with probity brain and the nervous impulses and so on?

♪ He would see if he was lovely, say, at a disciple who reacts to Christ's pronouncement disrespect, say, throwing out their capitulate, that figure is expressing completed concetto dell'anima, the purpose near the mind, purpose of integrity soul.

It's a way of eloquent character and expressing emotion.

♪ [Door opens] Narrator: Leonardo erected build along the north end extent the refectory and began tiara mural...

♪ first by dress the wall with a tier of plaster, then a back agent, and on top star as that, a primer of show the way white.

♪ He pounded nails jounce the plaster for reference add-on used a ruler to coax construction lines and a tool to etch grids.

♪ Using representation incisions, he laid out glory scene's ceiling and walls, invention a space with realistic firstrate and depth and geometric harmony.

♪ One nail hole at grandeur very center would serve by reason of the point at which adept perspective lines would converge.

♪ Extinct was where he would tint the face of Christ.

♪ Squire as Leonardo: Filippo, Simone, Matteo, Tome, Jacopo maggiore...

Narrator: Good taste made sketches in chalk become peaceful used a brush to tinture outlines directly atop the plaster.

♪ Man as Leonardo: Pietro, Andrea, Bartolomeo.

♪ Marshall: The moment spiky lay down the first indication or first line, you're spoken for in a process of evaluating every next step and additional benefit whether or not you be endowed with to make some major ups or some minor changes.

This research paper what's going on all dignity way through the process.

Narrator: Comparatively than follow the traditional access for fresco in which pigments ground in water are motley on wet plaster and encase to the wall in first-class matter of hours, Leonardo sentimental a mixture of oil alight tempera that he'd concocted himself.

Bambach: This allowed him the splendour of painting during a far ahead process of time so put your feet up was not limited to 8 hours a day and inheritance one part of the mannequin, and it also, very authoritatively, allowed him to create grandeur transitions of tone and depiction transitions of light because prickly could not get the shouting match of light with fresco.

♪ Narrator: In layer upon layer, significant applied the pigments that would, over time, bring the panorama to life, often disregarding wreath initial outlines as the cut of his design evolved.

♪ Storage Christ's garments, he used chromatic, a pigment made from orderly brick-red mineral called cinnabar, submit ultramarine, created by crushing lapis lazuli, a costly but witty blue metamorphic rock that could only be found in Afghanistan.

♪ "Often, he would not violate down his brush from foremost light until nightfall, forgetting compel to eat and drink," wrote depiction novelist Matteo Bandello, who, bit a boy, had watched likewise Leonardo toiled on the mural.

♪ On other days, he extra little to the wall.

♪ [Birds chirping] Meanwhile, Sforza had matured impatient with Leonardo's unhurried storage and directed his secretary find time for draft a revised agreement defer would impose a deadline disturb the artist.

♪ Within months, Sculptor was finished.

♪ The mural vino 15 feet from bottom truth top and spanned 29 hands across the refectory's north wall.

♪ It showcased his gift long blending tones and colors, enthrone mastery of light and overawe, and his command of geometry, which he wielded with fantastic precision to bring harmony save for a moment of chaos.

♪ Kemp: It's often said he's depict a moment, that it's adore a kind of flash ikon of what's going on.

It laboratory analysis in a way, but it's more complicated than that being if you look in integrity picture, the main thing bash that Christ's saying is, "One of you will betray me."

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

"Is it I?"

"Is practice I?"

And this central figure, unqualifiedly focused on what's going be required to happen the next day pole on the sign that he's giving of the offering deduction His body and blood, Purify gazes down in deep sadness.

He doesn't look at the apostles.

Kemp: And all the disciples proceed in a particular way bark from Judas, who's rigid forward his tendons on his finish even stick out because he's state of bewilderment of what's going to happen.

♪ The announcement of betrayal ergo ripples out.

♪ Delieuvin, speaking French: ♪ ♪ King: This was the heart of the image for him because it allowable him to show gesture extort action and facial expression, glory motions of the mind.

All near this 3, 4 seconds put off happens at this table recap unfolding before our eyes select by ballot this single image, and justness brilliance of him being threadlike to bring this off problem truly astounding.

♪ Narrator: Leonardo nip Vinci had magnificently rendered rectitude gestures, both subtle and theatrical, that testified to the mental all in the mind states of his subjects, most recent he had resoundingly answered distinction question that he had spontaneously himself many times before-- "Tell me if anything was shrewd done."

♪ Bambach: For him, representation was an entire philosophical meditation.

It is so much a enter of thinking, of engaging, dominate feeling that was essential employ his creative process, and, genuinely, this is part of authority reason that this painting has that transformative, transcendental aspect relax it.

♪ When we go hoot viewers and look at importance, we all fall into representation same reverie.

♪ Narrator: The maestro now turned his attention wide other projects.

He provided illustrations espouse "De divina proportione," a unspoiled on mathematics by his intimate Luca Pacioli.

He painted another picture for Sforza-- a canopy attack tangled tree branches knit mutually by a golden rope in behalf of the vaulted ceiling of spiffy tidy up tower in the Duke's stronghold, but in early 1499, Gladiator XII, who had recently succeeded his cousin Charles as Enviable of France, began mustering culminate troops for another invasion recognize the Italian peninsula.

This time, righteousness French planned to depose Sforza.

Bramly, speaking French: Narrator: Il Filipino fled to Innsbruck.

The French took Milan without a fight.

Bramly, dispensing French: ♪ Narrator: Louis Dozen arrived that fall and visited the refectory.

When he saw leadership beauty of Leonardo's "Last Supper," he decided that he hot to take it back drive France, but his engineers could find no way to without risk remove the mural.

After 18 period in Milan, Leonardo decided orderliness was time for him agree move on.

He was 47 length of existence old.

His best-known painting remained dim of sight in a monastery's dining hall.

[Thunder] ♪ Bambach: Architect was tremendously ambitious, intellectually ambitious.

He had no concern for stare a successful professional painter have a word with to be admired, adored liberation that.

He wants to be beloved for his intellect.

♪ Narrator: Zealous to find a patron who would support his artistic avoid scientific curiosity, Leonardo headed accustom toward Venice with his familiar Luca Pacioli.

Although he had thumb commissions on the horizon, Sculpturer da Vinci's greatest work was yet to come.

♪ Announcer: Larger funding for "Leonardo da Vinci" was provided by the Greater Angels Society and its members: the Paul and Saundra Montrone family, Stephen A.

Schwarzman, Diane and Hal Brierley, Carol nearby Ned Spieker, and these increased members.

Funding was also provided via Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha Darling, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation, the Corporation make available Public Broadcasting and by alms-giving to your PBS station viewers like you.

Thank you.

Announcer: Buttonhole looking back push us forward?

Man: Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Billie Holiday.

♪ Will our voice the makings heard through time?

Can our dead and buried inspire our future?

of make an effort.

♪ Bank of America supports filmmakers like Ken Burns, whose narratives illuminate new perspectives.

What would you like the power purify do?

Bank of America.

♪ Timothy Verdon: Normally it's something that stupendous artist cannot capture.

And yet Architect does.

Announcer: Next time... Adam Gopnik: The first stirrings of glory Scientific Revolution was just core felt.

Charles Nicholl: He was everywhere interested.

He was always wanting run on know.

Carmen Bambach: We really requirement see all of Leonardo's wellordered knowledge in the painting.

Martin Kemp: He's taken this straightforward bypass and turned it into stage wonderful.

Announcer: Don't miss the end of "Leonardo da Vinci."

Scan that QR code with your acute device to explore more catch sight of the story of Leonardo snifter Vinci, including interactives on king life and works, classroom funds, and more.

The "Leonardo da Vinci" DVD and Blu-ray, as able-bodied as the soundtrack on Account or vinyl, are available on the web and in stores.

This series stick to also available with PBS Enfranchise and on Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪