![]() ![]() The best evidence of Leonardo’s treatise on the military arts is in the Codex Atlanticus, and the present exhibition has offered the first opportunity for the public to view these drawings as a group. Ludovico actively and indirectly encouraged Leonardo, who was part of the general plan to make Milan the “Athens of Italy.” For seventeen years, both men shared this humanist interest, along with that of military engineering. It was during Leonardo’s first ten years in Milan, that he began to develop the most diverse projects of his career, including an active studio with apprentices, painting commissions, a massive equestrian monument, architectural plans for the rebuilding of Milan, stage sets, a model for the crossing tower (tiburio) of Milan Cathedral, designs for festivals, and treatises on subjects such as painting, anatomy (Windsor Anatomical manuscripts), statics, mechanics (Manuscript Madrid I), and military engineering. ![]() This could have been part of his lost treatise on painting and human movement that Luca Pacioli saw in 1496. Around 1490, Ludovico supposedly asked Leonardo to write a paragone, a comparison of the arts (according to Giovan Paolo Lomazzo in 1584, Pedretti 1977, pp. In 1490, Ludovico sent Leonardo to Pavia with fellow artist-engineer, Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501), in order to direct structural repairs to the Cathedral. By 1489, he was in charge of several projects for the court, including a bronze equestrian monument in honor of Ludovico’s father, Francesco Sforza. Although he was busy with the Virgin of the Rocks commission early in 1483, he also sought the patronage of the Sforza Court for engineering, sculpting, and painting projects. What precipitated Leonardo’s fascination with warfare, and an interest in writing a De re militari treatise (concerning military matters) was his move to Milan in the early 1480s. I will build catapults, mangonels, trebuchets and other instruments of admirable efficiency not in general use” (Codex Atlanticus folio 1082r). His latter comment recalls his draft proposal to Ludovico Sforza, lord of Milan, that, “I will make cannon, mortars and light ordinance of beautiful and useful forms that are out of common use…. He is in these cases the literary scholar and engineer, part of a humanist tradition of intellectual omini pratici (practical or skilled men). In the latter case he introduces his intentions as a military engineer. With the former comment, he describes the composition of a battle scene in his Treatise on Painting. Leonardo is known for his description of warfare as a bestial madness (pazzia bestialissima, Codex Urbinas folio 59v), though he also stated that, “for the maintenance of the principle gift of nature, namely liberty, I will find the way to offend and defend while being besieged by ambitious tyrants” (Manuscript B folio 100r).
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