the eye, which is the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding may most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature. [bell ringing] this is the countryside seen 500 years ago

by a child who was destined to become one of the unique figures in the history of western civilization. what he began to learn in this italian countryside outside vinci was to know how to see. his genius gave him the ability to see clearly what others could only see mistily, transforming his life and influencing ours as well. as painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist, he searched the whole nature of creation, always beginning with what he could see. leonardo da vinci was the natural son of piero da vinci and a handsome peasant girl named caterina. leonardo's character as a man suggests that he had a happy childhood. throughout his life, he was sensitive, generous, and gentle. the story is told of him buying up little songbirds

in the marketplace of florence so that he could free them from their cages. he was a vegetarian because the slaughter of animals disgusted him. once passing a butcher shop hung with carcasses, he called out, "truly man is king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. we live by the death of others. we are burial places." we know that leonardo was strikingly handsome and possessed of great physical strength. his disposition towards others was modest, his manner cheerful. the painter biographer vasari writes of him, "leonardo was in all things so highly favored by nature that everything he did bore an impression of harmony, truthfulness, and grace. no other man could ever equal him." but for all these seemingly sociable qualities, leonardo was an enigmatic and solitary person. "when you're all alone," he wrote, "you are all your own."

he was restless and unpredictable, a man of endless curiosity. magical powers were attributed to him by some who were baffled by the versatility of his mind and the broad range of his understanding. in one of his notebooks, leonardo comments, "the best thing in the soul is wisdom. nothing can be compared to it." leonardo's own search for wisdom began with what he could see. let us begin there, too, today, 500 years later. [dog barking] the tuscan landscape has changed little in 500 years. it still possesses a strange kind of beauty when it's shrouded in morning mist. the smell of the earth is the same,

of things growing, things dead. the olive trees still spread their silver-green shade, and the ripe olives are still picked in the same manner they were so long ago. a young boy of today would see the color here as leonardo did, looking at the spreading landscape as it stretched before him. but leonardo desired to see more... see things more closely. a simple grape leaf is a complex system of veins. leonardo's early preoccupation was with the natural world. it was an interest that never left him. the complexity of the simple things of nature fascinated him. leonardo approached natural phenomena by asking questions. how is a thing put together?

well, he solved that question by observing carefully and then by making an accurate drawing of what he saw. to be able to draw something accurately was not only a means of understanding it, but also of making it clearer to other people. we today who have been brought up from our childhood on illustrated books on every subject, from popular mechanics to sophisticated medical journals, owe much to leonardo da vinci, who so fervently believed that to be able to see was to be able to know. it may have all begun with those flowers he saw in tuscany, and perhaps it did. in one of leonardo's notebooks, he says, "the mind of a painter should be like a mirror. you cannot be a good master unless you have a universal power of representing by your art all the varieties of the forms which nature produces." this is the da vinci house as it exists today.

and it was through these narrow windows that the young leonardo saw the world outside. natives of vinci will tell you that this very tree was flourishing already 500 years ago, and that leonardo himself may have played beneath its branches. though perhaps it is best with stories of this kind to keep in mind the italian expression, "se non è vero, ben trovato"-- "it may not be true, but it makes a good story." leonardo was left-handed, and his drawings can be recognized by the fact that the cross-hatching is always from left to right, but he had a curious habit of writing backwards with his left hand, and nearly all his writing has come down to us to be read from right to left in mirror script. one would have expected leonardo to have followed his father's profession and become a notary. but as a boy he displayed such a remarkable ability for drawing

that his father could not deny him the opportunity of becoming an artist. so at the age of 15, leonardo's father took him to the city of florence some 25 miles away. leonardo drew this landscape five years after leaving vinci. his feeling for the hill country can be see in it. it was the first italian landscape ever created, for before this time, landscapes had been merely background. his new conception was eventually to alter the whole nature of italian painting. it was just such a scene as this that leonardo was leaving behind him when he was taken to the big city of florence. this is florence as it is today. 500 years ago it was a lively mercantile center. the city had already emerged from the gloom of feudalism, and it was now alive with confidence and enthusiasm.

it was not only a center for the arts but a center for worldwide trade. modern banking originated here, and the greatest banking house was owned by the medici family, who ruled the city. the great dome of the cathedral in florence, the duomo. is crowned with a golden sphere, and leonardo was among those who helped to create it. the famous bell tower, the campanile, was in existence 150 years before leonardo's birth. and the bronze doors of the adjoining baptistery were finished by lorenzo ghiberti in 1452, the year of leonardo's birth.

michelangelo called these doors depicting scenes from the bible "the gates of paradise." nowadays people come flocking to the city to see these wonderful creations of the past. leonardo's father apprenticed him to andrea verrocchio, whose workshop was the most important in florence. here on via dell'acqua, "water street," leonardo's career as an artist was to begin. his master, verrocchio, was a famous craftsman-- a painter, a sculptor, a goldsmith. his workshop was not merely an artist's studio, for he and his apprentices could fashion anything that required skill of hand.

at the uffizi, the great museum in florence, is verrocchio's painting the baptism of christ, more famous now for leonardo's contribution to it than verrocchio's. the angel on the left is the work of leonardo, an otherworldly creature that verrocchio never painted and never could have painted. by comparison, verrocchio's work is stylized in the florentine academic manner. the angel has an earthy quality. he looks like a boy. he has a rather vague stare looking blankly into space, away from the baptism itself. but leonardo's angel, loosely and freely rendered, is totally absorbed in watching the baptism and is a deeply moved witness. this kneeling angel, with its slight turn of the body, reveals for the first time one of the basic principles of leonardo's composition-- building a figure by means of several interlocking movements,

a kind of twisting motion. it is almost as if we see him in three dimensions. the piazza della signoria has always been the heart of florence with its great sculptured figures, many of which were created in leonardo's time. leonardo walked this square as a young man of fashion who loved wearing flamboyant clothes and wore them well. at first people only recognized him as being verrocchio's apprentice, but it was not long before they came to know him as leonardo.

the most famous of the statues here, of course, is michelangelo's david. leonardo served on the committee that placed the great statue in the square. the original is now in the academy of art, placed there in order to protect it from air pollution and mindless vandals. here is another painting in the uffizi that shows the unmistakable stamp of leonardo's early work-- the annunciation-- a large panel seven feet long and three feet high painted on a poplar board, as was the custom of the time. the most appealing feature of the painting is the messenger of god, the winged angel. vasari writes that verrocchio stopped painting when he saw the evidence of his young apprentice's ability, but that story is not true. it is more probable that verrocchio decided

to concentrate still more on sculpture, which he preferred to painting, after realizing the great talent of the young leonardo. among the sculpture of verrocchio that exists in florence today is a most charming work in the courtyard of the palazzo vecchio, the city hall. the little boy with a dolphin is one of the most famous statues in florence. verrocchio's bronze of david is displayed at the bargello museum, and some believe that leonardo may have been the model for david. that might be true, but leonardo was older than this youthful figure. it is interesting to note david's smile, because some of leonardo's most famous drawings and paintings are remarkable for the manner

in which leonardo has rendered their smiles. one is compelled to think of the inner thoughts of these people, which is one of the principal aims of leonardo's art-- to capture what he called "the motion of the mind." in the benois madonna and the portrait of cecilia gallerani, the slight, haunting smile can be seen. and of course in the mona lisa and the john the baptist. the influence of verrocchio on leonardo is very powerful, but as leonardo himself wrote, "the disciple who does not surpass his master fails his master." between 1476 and 1477, leonardo left verrocchio's workshop. he notes on one of his drawings in 1478 that he has begun work on two paintings of the virgin mary.

the one that has come down to us hangs today in the hermitage in leningrad. this painting is known as the benois madonna, and although it is unfinished, like so much of leonardo's work, the 26-year-old master created a touching and original version of an eternal theme. the infant christ stretches up his hand for the flower offered him by the youthful madonna, and the three hands form the center of the composition as they come together. this portrait of ginevra de'benci, which was done during this period, is a superb example of leonardo's art of expression. this treasure is exhibited today at the national gallery of art in washington, whose director is j. carter brown. brown: america has its own leonardo da vinci. the only one in this country, the only one in this hemisphere, the only one in this world which is painted on both sides-- it really makes two pictures in one.

it's a picture of ginevra de'benci, daughter of one of the richest families in florence, adherents of the medici, with whom she was well acquainted, so that in a sense, here in the national gallery, she has come home among many friends. she is depicted by leonardo in perhaps the world's first psychological portrait. it is very rare anywhere in the history of art to find a portrait of someone who is sad. why so sad? we know that she was childless. we know that her husband had financial difficulties. we know that she was in the hands of doctors, just about the time this portrait was painted. but there may be another reason, because we have documentary evidence that the dashing venetian ambassador had found inroads into ginevra's heart.

the picture is also a crossroads in the history of art, because leonardo is building on that marvelous tradition of 15th-century florentine painting in which the problem of representing three dimensions in two was solved with great vigor and great three-dimensional plasticity, and yet leonardo typically, with his scientific mind, is going at the problem in a new way. since the middle ages, we have in painter's handbooks the basic concept, which was somehow to capture a spiritual eminence that was of not reality in our sense and construct a symbol for it in paint. and to do that, the painter was instructed to lay down a ground and then build up the highlights on top of it,

which is an additive kind of process. philosophically leonardo turned it around. he assumed the object is there. his problem was to depict it. and the way he attacked this problem was to show where the light wasn't, where the shadows were. in his notebooks we have diagrams showing how light defines form by not being there at all. and that's what makes the beautiful modeling in this picture, that almost uncanny way in which no brushstrokes show, no thick highlights are laid on. the whole surface of the cheek and under the neck reflect light from around the ambience and seem breathed on in a way which was to become, as leonardo worked these theories out further and further over the course of his whole development, his great hallmark, and a dominant influence in western painting.

on the back, the florentine drawing, the marvelous skill of hand, which was in the florentine tradition, is exemplified magnificently. but something else as well, because there's a symbol there. the juniper is the same word in italian almost as the word for ginevra. it's also a symbol of chastity. on the legend are the words, in lati "beauty adorns virtue." what that virtue may have cost ginevra has been made immortal in paint. gielgud: for nearly a year just before he left florence, leonardo worked on an altarpiece for a convent. it was the largest commission to be given to him during those early years. but leonardo was never to finish this work, the adoration of the magi. more than 60 people as well as 60 animals are included in the composition.

the architectural conception was wonderfully designed to include so many figures without overcrowding. all the figures, both human and animal, are caught in attitudes of awe, repose, or vivid action. the painting was almost completed when leonardo abruptly stopped work on it and left florence to live in milan in 1482. why did he never finish his commission? the final task needed in a painting of this kind is to lay in the colors, but this he did not seem to wish to do, fearing perhaps that his technical skill would fail to match the idea that his intellect had conceived. this would seem to have been one of his recurring doubts. even unfinished, the adoration remains one of the great works of the quattrocento. it influenced the direction of all italian painting, pointing the way to the classical style of the 17th century and even anticipating some of the impressionists of the 19th century.

raphael was profoundly moved when he saw it, and the influence of its composition on the young painter can be seen years later when raphael painted the school of athens, a painting in which, incidentally, leonardo was supposed to have been the model for plato. raphael copied leonardo again when he drew leda and the swan after leonardo's painting. the leonardo painting has vanished, but we know what it must have looked like from the raphael drawing and from a copy of it made by bugiardini which is in the borghese gallery in rome. in leonardo's drawing of leda's head, we see immediately the twisting motion of the hair, that twisting motion he so loved to portray. even though leonardo was to return to florence, he never attempted to finish the adoration. at the age of 30, he set out for milan.

we know that leonardo sent a letter to the duke of milan, ludovico sforza, also know as "il moro" because of his swarthy complexion. the duke presided over the liveliest court in europe. his province of lombardy was then, as it still is today, the wealthiest province in italy. to gain his new position at court, leonardo recommended himself primarily as a military engineer. "i can supply," leonardo wrote, "an infinite number of engines of attack and defense." of the ten paragraphs in his letter, it is only in the last one that leonardo informs the duke, "that i can do as well as any other man as a painter." he also offers to undertake the creation of an equestrian statue to the duke's father, francesco sforza. to be out of favor at the court of lorenzo de' medici was the worst misfortune that could befall a florentine artist, and leonardo was not a court favorite. his interest in the natural sciences was puzzling to the court.

this drawing probably suggests something of his mental conflict. it is a sketch for the adoration, but in the corner there is a design for a hydrometer, a device for measuring the amount of moisture in the air. one would think that scientific instruments and nude drawings could have little in common, but in leonardo's mind they existed side by side. there was little understanding at the florentine court for this kind of scientific curiosity in a man of the arts, but leonardo continued to pursue his own line of development. milan was a new world to leonardo, and he went there filled with confidence, hoping to be able to do there many of the things that he could not do in florence. he was to remain in the north for the next 17 years. the sforza castle was an armed fortress as difficult to capture as it was to defend, yet inside those thick walls, leonardo enjoyed the company

of some of the leading artists and scientists of the day, for it was, despite its grim appearance, a hospitable and lively place. leonardo began his work in milan with the virgin of the rocks. two versions of this work exist. this one, the first, is in the louvre in paris. the painting is based on an apocryphal legend of the middle ages showing the holy family returning from their flight into egypt and meeting with the infant john the baptist. the figure of saint john is seen kneeling in prayer as he looks towards the infant jesus, who is sitting beside an angel. the angel gazes out towards one as one looks at the picture, his finger pointing to saint john to guide us to the prophetic figure who can explain the mission of the christ child. ten years later, leonardo returned to this theme because the original painting, an altarpiece, had been taken away from its owners, the brotherhood of the immaculate conception.

and this later version is now at the national gallery in london, but there are only slight differences between the two. the conception is the same-- the triangular composition unaltered, the essential beauty of the creation intact. and it is fascinating to compare the two versions.

"to bathe a thing in light," leonardo wrote, "is to merge it with the infinite." he realized that light did not exist without its opposite, shade. leonardo's subtle shading of face and form is known as sfumato. it is one of the most distinctive qualities of his drawings and paintings. he captured the very air that stands between the eye and the object it perceives. his rendering of the delicate shadows he saw, his concern with light and shade, influenced many of the artists of his own time

and of times to come-- giorgione, titian, caravaggio, and through caravaggio, rembrandt. two other paintings of this period have come down to us-- the portrait of cecilia gallerani, the mistress of the duke, and the portrait of a musician. the painting of cecilia gallerani is known as the lady with the ermine. the ermine was one of il moro's symbols, so that the portrait becomes a representation of the love of the duke for this woman who was so close to him before his marriage to beatrice d'este. the animal she holds, so lithe and feminine a creature, could almost rival her own delicate beauty and the splendid hand that caresses the creature.

the portrait of the musician was painted soon afterwards. the figure is not finished, but the beautiful head, and in particular the eyes, hold one's attention as one looks at the picture. it's almost as if one had picked out a stranger with a glance, as we've all done sometimes, and found it difficult to cut off the silent communication that only the eyes convey. "music is the shape and form of the invisible," leonardo said. he was a musician himself. and the background theme you can now hear is based on a composition by leonardo-- a melody of 18 notes found recently in one of his notebooks. [music playing] as military engineer to the duke, leonardo was tireless in his duties.

he suggested to the duke the construction of various weapons and devices that are astonishingly modern in their conception. a human-powered tank, 23 feet high... a multi-barreled cannon, permitting one line of barrels to be loaded while another was being fired. he designed fortresses, towers crowned with domes, inside, mighty double staircases. leonardo never devised his military inventions to boast of them as instruments of conquest. rather, he characterized them as means of preserving man's most precious possession, liberty, and he referred to warfare as a beastly madness. this is an escapement mechanism. it transforms rotary motion into linear motion. it is even today the basis of the way most clocks work,

and it was one of the results of leonardo's increasing fascination with mechanics. ludovico sforza, a man of his time and bject to its violence and ruthlessness, was nonetheless an astute and conscientious ruler. leonardo provided a fertile source of ideas for the duke. many of leonardo's drawings relate to water power because that was the principal source of energy in that region. we find designs for the building of sluices and canals and a movable bridge... paddlewheels for water transportation... pulleys for mechanical leverage to circumvent the inherent limits of man's physical strength. he discovered laws of light refraction. he noted that an image passing through one globe of water, representing the eye, would appear upside down. yet the same image passed through a second globe

would again be inverted and appear right side up. [seagulls calling] among the most celebrated of leonardo's scientific investigations was to ascertain the nature of flight and to envisage the possibility of human flight. over a period of 30 years, he produced scores of drawings and thousands of words on the subject. he designed a parachute and an air screw, which we now call a helicopter. leonardo began by observing winged creatures and doing drawings of them. then he set about trying to give man similar wings. but the experiments did not succeed, for man did not have enough muscle power to take himself and his wings off the ground

and keep in the air. it would take 400 years to solve the problem of powered flight. nevertheless, some of leonardo's basic discoveries in aerodynamics can be seen in the most advanced jet aircraft of today-- the streamlining wings, for instance... the use of flaps to reduce airspeed. little wonder that the principal airport in rome is named after him, or that his work will forever be linked with man's desire to fly. "the flight of the great bird will fill the universe with wonder," leonardo wrote. so it has.

the ingenuity of this little device, which leonardo designed for a clock mechanism, is a typical illustration of his ability to provide simple solutions to complicated problems. there are 40 of leonardo's notebooks mentioned in literary sources. 31 of them have survived. the others were probably taken apart and scattered in single sheets, some of which exist in collections such as those of the ambrosiana library in milan and the royal collection at windsor castle in england. it was leonardo's intention to expand these notebooks into organized treatises to communicate knowledge in a uniquely bold form. he puts upon himself, the artist, the perceptive viewer, the burden of translating what he sees into a science of painting. accurate drawings can communicate, in leonardo's words, "to all generations of the world, not depending on the accuracy of the various languages."

thus to render the forms and laws of nature became the sole aim of leonardo's art. this was not, as some believe, a division of interest between art and science. rather, it was a logical extension of leonardo's thoughts. it was not that leonardo was torn between his interest in art and his interest in science. he saw them coming together to serve the purpose of knowledge, in which art will be the queen of the sciences. for 12 of the 17 years that leonardo spent in milan he was occupied intermittently with the creation of the equestrian statue of francesco sforza, ludovico's father-- a staggering conception. the horse alone was to measure 22 feet from head to foot, and nothing of such a size had ever been cast in bronze before. a clay model of the horse was completed and displayed to the public, and all who came to see it were filled with admiration. leonardo wanted to cast his colossus in one piece.

even the drawings of the casting frames are enormously impressive, but he had several plans about how to do the casting. one of these plans would have meant casting the horse upside down, digging a hole some 25 feet deep and pouring molten bronze from various ovens into the mold. he also considered casting the horse on its side, and this would have reduced the size of the casting pit but would have increased the problem of getting an even distribution of the liquid bronze. it would have taken 200,000 pounds of bronze to cast the horse, but this metal was used to cast cannon instead. leonardo was always a great lover of horses. he was familiar with classic dressage, the elegant exercises that are achieved by humane and careful training. and it is known that he visited the stables of count sanseverino to observe and sketch the horses there.

these drawings were later to influence the composition of the great mural the battle of anghiari. this particular horse was eventually cast by leonardo into an exquisite small bronze now known as the budapest horse. leonardo was as concerned for the city of milan as the duke himself. when the great plagues of the 1480s killed more than 50,000 milanese, the fastidious leonardo was revolted by the filthy streets, the hovels, that contributed to the spread of disease.

he therefore designed a model city in which the sun would be allowed to reach into every corner and cleansing waters would carry away waste and provide canals. this building, for instance, is of particular interest because of its staircase, which is designed so that persons would be able to go up and down it without even seeing one another. the castle at chambord in france, although it was built after leonardo's death, has a similar feature based on leonardo's designs and displaying a similar effect of twisting motion. but plans for model cities did not seem to have much appeal for the great landowners of milan, and it is doubtful whether his beautiful city was ever seriously considered by anyone but leonardo himself. the duke of milan married a remarkable young woman, beatrice d'este. she was 15 at the time of her marriage to il moro. when she died at the early age of 22 in giving birth to a stillborn child, the duke was plunged in grief,

and the story is told of his spending three days and nights mourning for her in the church of santa maria delle grazie. ludovico had chosen this dominican church as the court church and as the mausoleum for his family. leonardo was given the commission to paint the last supper for the refectory of the church. this is one of the most famous and unifying christian symbols ever created. it is impossible to think of the last supper without thinking of leonardo's painting of it. it has become a religious object in itself. technically, however, the work was a failure. the fresco technique, which required the quick application of paint to wet plaster, was unsuited to leonardo's working methods. in order to try to work at this own pace, leonardo developed a new technique for his wall painting,

a sort of oil tempera applied to the stone on a base compounded of pitch and mastic. but the pigment would not hold to the base, and consequently the painting quickly began to decay. we are told that leonardo would sit for hours before the huge mural deep in thought and then suddenly climb up the scaffolding and add a few brushstrok. he spent four years working on the painting, but it seemed that he could not bear to anticipate the disappointment he might experience if the completed work should fail his expectations. the refectory is a long, narrow room, and the last supper covers the north wall. the painting is 28 1/2 by 15 feet, and its figures, larger than life, command the room so nobly that the room itself almost appears to be an extension of the painting. although some 50 years later vasari tells us that the once magnificent work is nothing but a muddle of blots, the famous painting has somehow stubbornly continued to exist.

during the second world war, the bombings of milan virtually demolished the refectory, but the last supper, protected by sandbags, miraculously survived. the same dominican order of monks still occupies the monastery. one of the older guardians of the refectory, who has been watching over the last supper for 26 years, confided to a visitor, "it seems to me to come alive, and i've seen the people in the painting change over the years." the characters in the painting were based on real people that leonardo had seen and sketched. the two faces that caused him most difficulty were those of judas and of christ, and at one point he was doubtful that he could even complete the head of christ. as it is, he left it unfinished.

more than a century later, rembrandt, who never saw the original, drew it from copies. although leonardo only left behind him a handful of masterpieces, their influence has made itself felt all over the world. taking models from real life was a characteristic of leonardo, and his notebooks are filled with a variety of faces-- some beautiful and some grotesque. when leonardo applied his artistic genius to his scientific observations, the results were meticulously accurate. his anatomical studies, for example, are still used even in medical schools today. many of these drawings are now in the royal library collection at windsor castle. dr. kenneth keel, who is an authority on these anatomical drawings, commented on them.

keel: leonardo's anatomical explorations really are comparable to those of columbus, in the sense that leonardo explored the microcosm that is this small world of the body at the very same time as columbus was exploring the greater world, the macrocosm, and the oceans of the world. and he described the human body as a marvelous creation. as a matter of fact, he called it a temple of beauty, and the beauty for him consisted of its mechanics and the way it worked. when leonardo was in florence at the hospital of santa maria nuova, he did his dissections there, and one day he was sitting on the bed of an old man who said he was more than 100 years old, and whilst leonardo was talking to him, the old man suddenly died. leonardo writes, "and i did a dissection on this man

to find out why he had such a peaceful, sweet death." and the results of this dissection formed something like 10 or 15 anatomical plates which we have here in windsor. and in the case of the old man, he thought he'd died of old age, which of course i think he had a right to do at the age of 100 or more, but, in fact, here was an example of cirrhosis of the liver and arteriosclerosis. and here you will see how leonardo drew his viscera, and these are the viscera of the old man, and you see what a very large spleen he has, which is too large, and the liver is very small. but even more important than that, perhaps, is the fact that the two main arteries, or the main artery of the abdomen, the aorta, is giving off branches which are very curly, very tortuous. leonardo found that these arteries were blocked,

and he said-- and describes atheroma with narrowing of the arteries, and he attributed, in fact, old age to blocking off of the arteries, thickening, as he says, like the rind of an orange which thickens up so much that there's no pulp left, and with no pulp in the artery, there's no nourishment can get to the tissues, and so the tissues die. and that is, he says, why old people's skin gets tough and hard and why they feel the cold so much and why eventually they die. gielgud: in 1499, the duke of milan's political ambitions ended in failure, and his power over milan came to an end. il moro was deposed and spent his last days as a prisoner of king louis xii in a french castle. on the walls of the prison in which he was confined was found the inscription "in felix sum"-- "i am wretched." with il moro taken captive and milan occupied by french troops,

leonardo returned to florence and was warmly received there as a celebrated master. [bells ringing] in 1500 he began work on the saint anne with the virgin and child, one of the great works of his later years. the preliminary drawing, the cartoon, hangs in the national gallery in london, while the painting of saint anne with virgin and child is in the louvre. it is interesting to note that in the london cartoon the christ child is reaching out to bless saint john the baptist, whereas in the louvre painting, christ is reaching out to touch a lamb, the sacrificial symbol. the virgin mary holds the child back as if to restrain christ from embracing the ordeal of the passion.

"she is older than the rocks among which she sits. she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave, the animalism of greece, the lust of rome, the mysticism of the middle ages." centuries after her creation, walter pater thus rhapsodized the mona lisa. "she's a mysterious creature, this woman, who gazes at us with such withdrawn intensity-- benign, amused, perhaps a little sly. my she not break her frozen silence and even speak and move?" her pose, known so well to us from innumerable reproductions, is distinctively leonardo's-- the body on one axis, the head on another,

as though she had only just turned towards the painter and to the generations of those who will come to look at her. unlike most of the other portraits of the time, the mona lisa is simply dressed, devoid of ornament. and the most distinctive feature, of course, is that wonderful smile. it is said that leonardo employed musicians to play while she was sitting to him, light, humorous music to coax thatmile from her. the millions of people who've seen her at the louvre have been fascinated by her mystery. artists have copied her by the hundreds of thousands, cults have developed to worship her. the most important commission leonardo received during the astonishingly productive four years which he spent in florence was from the city fathers who asked him to decorate one of the walls of a big hall in the palazzo vecchio, the city hall.

the subject was to be the victory of the florentines over the milanese at the battle of anghiari. leonardo's description of the kind of effects he was trying to make speaks for itself-- "and make one man shielding his terrified eyes with one hand, the palm toward the enemy, while the other rests on the ground to support his half-raised body. others must be represented in the agonies of death, grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes, with their fists clenched against their bodies and their legs contorted." alas, none of the original work remains to be seen. leonardo attempted to dry the painting with the heat from fire pots, and the upper half of the work lost its true colors while the lower half simply melted away. however, the battle of anghiari is not lost to us entirely. copies of the painting and some of the preliminary sketches for it have come down to us. from copies made at the time, rubens created a work

reminiscent of leonardo's conception. and so did rustici, the sculptor with whom leonardo lived for a time during his stay in florence. in 1513 leonardo went to rome, but the three following years were the most tragic of his life. michelangelo was at the peak of his success. the ceiling of the sistine chapel was his masterpiece. raphael's work was equally celebrated, and bramante the architect was working on the completion of saint peter's cathedral. but there were no commissions at the vatican for leonardo. leo x, a medici pope, chose to ignore him as a man who never completed anything, as a man who thinks of the end of the project before he even begins it. one is tempted to see this period in leonardo's life in terms of the only painting of his, an early one, which hangs in the vatican, the saint jerome.

in this picture the saint is alone and agonized, as leonardo must have been. in one of his notebooks, leonardo writes, "tell me if anything was ever done," as if to justify his many uncompleted works. and in a note to himself, he says, "why do you suffer so?" two events of great significance happened at this time. first, leonardo began his painting of saint john the baptist, his last great work. almost invariably the word "enigmatic" is applied to it, for one can see in it so many of the qualities of leonardo's finest paintings-- the finger pointing to heaven as the ultimate explanation of man's destiny; the graceful body twisted for dimension; and the knowing, mysterious smile.

the second event was leonardo's meeting with the gallant young king of france, francis i, who was already one of his greatest admirers. in 1516, leonardo accepted the king's invitation to move to france and into his service. he crossed the alps into france and brought with him the mona lisa, the saint anne, and the saint john the baptist, all of which are now possessions of the louvre. he also brought his treasured notebooks. for the last three years of his life, leonardo lived here at the chateau du clos, an honored guest of the king of france. leonardo now turned entirely to studies of nature. in his last years, he was fascinated by the power of invisible forces. "the force of the wind can only be seen as it bends the trees above or sweeps the dust below. but the wind itself is never seen.

the water churns and swirls and dashes waves against the shore, but the force that moves the water is only seen by its effect upon the water. it is not the movement of the wind itself, but the movement of things carried by it which alone is visible in the air," leonardo noted. if he could not see elemental forces, he could see the effects of elemental forces, searching for and seeing, as no man before him had ever seen, the invisible. leonardo saw the world ending in a deluge and swirling floods and thunderstorms.

the water which had given birth to life was destined to destroy it. in that sense, the violence of the end of the world must still be part of the order d beauty and harmony of the universe. leonardo wrote, "necessity is the guardian of nature." and the earth's final days, he believed, would be a part of nature's necessity, since all things created are bound to be destroyed. one of the saddest and most pvocative notes that leonardo has left us is this-- "i thought i was learning to live. i was only learning to die." and yet for a man who could envisage the end of the world as part of the harmony and beauty of nature, this cannot be interpreted as a bitter observation. to learn how to die, after all, is something we must all do, second in importance only to learning how to live.

all the same, to leave this earth, to give up the sights and sounds of this life for the unknown, must never be a tragic surrender to those who have loved this earth as greatly as leonardo did. on the second of may, 1519, leonardo died in this room at the chateau du clos when he was 67 years old. in the city hall at amboise there is a sentimental painting depicting the moment of his death in the arms of the king, but in fact, francis was not in amboise at the time, though we are told that the young king burst into tears on receiving the news of leonardo's death. [bell tolling] the chapel in the castle grounds is said to mark the site of his grave. it is believed that leonardo never touched a paintbrush again during these last years of his life,

but here in the beautiful french countryside close to the river loire, he continued working and studying until the end. his faithful student, francesco melzi, who was present at the deathbed, wrote to leonardo's family after the great artist's death, "it is not in the power of nature to produce another such man."

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