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Leonardo Starting Work
By peace | September 21, 2010
Leonardo Asked To Paint The Nativity
Leonardo worked as Verrochio’s assistant for about 5 more years until, around 1477, he set out on his own. He was about 25. It must have taken courage for him to leave the security of an employer who gave him work, board and lodging.
At first, Leonardo struggled to earn a living. Florence was a city of artists, competing against each other for work. In the 1470s there were at least 30 painters’ workshops, all seeking work from the city’s wealthy citizens and the church. Leonardo discovered that finding a patron (employer) was no easy task, but it was vital if he wanted to survive as an artist. A patron was a person or an institution that paid an artist to create a work of art. The system of patronage reached a high point in Renaissance Italy. The country’s leading families, such as the Medici family of Florence, had grown rich through banking and trade. They saw it as their duty to commission artists to create great works of art for churches to educate people about Christianity. They also wanted beautiful sculptures and paintings for their own palaces. An artist relied entirely on his patrons for work and money, so it was his patrons who decided on his subjects and even influenced his manner of working.
Leonardo might have hoped to be patronized by Lorenzo de Medici (1449-92), the head of the city’s most powerful family, but Lorenzo gave all his commissions to other artists. Many artists in Florence belonged to the city’s painters’ guild, the Compagnia di San Luca (the Company of St Luke). Artists had to join the guild if they wanted to open their own workshops in the city. St Luke is the patron saint of artists because, according to legend, he was a painter himself and may have painted portraits of Jesus and Mary.
Leonardo had many patrons during his career. There were times when he got on well with a patron, but at other times he found the system frustrating. Leonardo faced personal difficulties too. In 1475 his father, Ser Piero, had remarried, following the death of his second wife, Francesca. In 1476, his new wife, Margherita, had borne him a son, named Antonio. This boy was Ser Piero’s first legitimate child. Because Antonio was a ‘proper’ son, not only could he follow Ser Piero into a legal career but he could also inherit his wealth. Perhaps it was this that spurred Leonardo to work for himself, knowing that he would always have to earn his own living.
10 January 1478, was a big day for Leonardo. Leonardo’s luck changed –His workshop received its first commission for a painting. He was asked to paint an altarpiece showing the Nativity, or birth of Jesus, for the Chapel (small building used for praying) of San Bernardo in Florence. An altarpeice was an important religious painting designed to fit behind a church altar. The largest churches had several altarpieces, painted by leading artists of the day. At a time when most people could not read, paintings in churches were vital for telling Bible stories. He took on an apprentice, a teenager named Paolo da Firenze. Despite being paid in advance for the painting, Leonardo never finished it. Maybe he lost interest or was unhappy with the quality of his work. Whatever the reason, this reveals an important side of Leonardo’s character: time and again throughout his life, he left work unfinished. He was offered more work, but again he gave up part way through.
The word “dispero” in Italian is for “I despair”. Leonardo scribbled the word in a notebook. He perhaps felt forgotten by the city’s major patrons, the Medicis.
In 1480 he started a picture of St Jerome but never completed it. However, what Leonardo did paint was remarkable, and people began to take note of him as an artist.
Approaching 30, Leonardo was certainly at a crossroads in his life. In the autumn of 1481, he closed his workshop in Florence and prepared to leave for Milan. The city, and the glittering court of Ludovico Sforza, promised a new start.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Links
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo’s Early Life
Leonardo’s Education
Leonardo’s Turning Point
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