Leonardo Da Vinci had gone to Milan

We may be fairly certain that the reason why the monks of San Donato stopped payment for the Adoration is that Leonardo had gone to Milan. Apparently they continued to hope that he would return and finish it, because it was fifteen years before they called in Filippino to paint another picture--the Adoration, now also in the Uffizi --to take its place. We have no evidence of the exact date when Leonardo went to Milan, but the Anonimo Gaddiano says that he went in his thirtieth year--that is in 1482 --and this is confirmed by the fact that his first documented commission there dates from 1483. Why did he go there? The Anonimo says, and Vasari repeats, that he was sent by Lorenzo the Magnificent to present the Duke Ludovico il Moro with a silver lyre in the form of a horse's head, on which he was an exquisite performer. Since we can no longer hear the music which Leonardo produced from the lyre, we are inclined to assume that it was less important than his drawings and pictures, but to his contemporaries it may have seemed the reverse. Socially a young virtuoso musician is sure of a more enthusiastic welcome than a talented painter, and it is easy to understand why Ludovico received Leonardo as a musician rather than as a painter. It is less easy to know why Lorenzo the Magnificent, that connoisseur of fine discrimination, allowed him to leave Florence, especially as he had been a patron of his master Verrocchio. It is possible that when Leonardo left Florence his renown as a painter was not so great that Lorenzo would have made efforts to keep him. In the same year he had allowed older and more distinguished painters to go to Rome. But it is surprising that later, when Leonardo's real greatness was established, Lorenzo made no effort to bring him back to Florence. And this, I think, can only be due to the lack of sympathy which existed between Leonardo and the Medicean circle.

He was essentially a scientist and mathematician; the Mediceans were of course Platonists of an almost religious ardour. Non mi legga chi non e matematico. These words of Leonardo's are rightly placed on the first page of Richter's anthology. Mathematicae non sunt verae scientiae. This is the first of Pico della Mirandola's famous theses, approved by the Florentine Platonists. Besides this Platonism, and developing out of its mystic tendencies, were the doctrines of Savonarola, with which Leonardo was equally out of sympathy-which were in fact the object of his expressed contempt. 1 By contrast, Milan was predominantly Aristotelian, which at this date still meant encyclopedic. At the court of Ludovico there were ingenious men in plenty, doctors, scientists, tacticians, mathematicians, military engineers, men of fact and experience, who could feed Leonardo's insatiable craving for information. It is understandable therefore that as Leonardo's scientific bias grew with his development as a painter, Lorenzo felt no inclination to recall him, nor Leonardo to return; and unless he could be sure of employment by the Medici there were many reasons why a young artist should be anxious to leave Florence. Competition was very severe, and conditions of life were continually being made difficult by war, plague and taxation which prevented the public bodies, who were the chief patrons, from fulfilling their contracts. In fact, all Florentine artists preferred working for Kings or Popes, and left Florence as soon as they had a chance of doing so. For Leonardo, the luxurious and elaborate life of the Sforza court must have had a particular attraction. We know from all accounts that he was an exquisite, careful in dress, reserved and mysterious in manner. Such a character did not fit him for the Forum life of Florence, with its open workshops, hard sarcastic criticism and those terrible practical jokes which figure so largely in contemporary lives of the Florentine artists. Moreover, Ludovico Sforza was an admirable patron. The very fact that his patronage lacked the creative element which distinguished Lorenzo de' Medici, made him more suitable to Leonardo, who could hardly have been persuaded to paint the graceful allegories of Politian. The variety of the work, which as a man of ingenuity about the court he was called upon to perform--the founding of cannon, the supervision of pageants, the installation of central heating--appealed to his curiosity and his love of technical experiment. For all these reasons it is easy to understand why he never attempted to leave Milan until the fall of Ludovico Sforza compelled him to do so. Yet we may regret a prosperity which kept him so long absent from the bracing air of his native country. Even Donatello admitted that his spirit began to rust when away from the keen, critical atmosphere of Florence; and the court life of Milan may have brought out a certain effeminacy sometimes perceptible in Leonardo's art and wholly destructive of the work of his disciples.