A Bolt from the Blue

There is in man who desires to sustain himself amid the air by the beating of wings…

– Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus

Imet Leonardo the next morning at the appointed hour outside the iron gates leading to Il Moro’s private quarters. Uncertain what to expect, I had dressed in the simplest of my mother’s gowns and carried my apprentice’s tunic draped over one arm. The Master noted this last with an approving nod as he greeted me.

“You appear much restored,” he observed, taking me in with a quick glance from head to foot. “Is Signor Luigi’s salve performing its usual miracle upon your wound?”

“I am almost healed,” I assured him… and, quite surprisingly, I realized I spoke of my heart and not simply of my flesh.

For, sometime in the night, as I tossed restlessly upon my pallet, I had found within myself an acceptance of my fate. Though I might shed more tears in the days to come, regretting all I had lost, I would also rejoice in what I had found in the Master’s workshop. While I had known fear and sorrow and pain, I had also found adventure and love and true friendship. None of this would have been mine had I not ventured from my room and set off on my grand journey so many months ago.

Leonardo seemed to understand what I had meant, for I saw answering warmth in his gaze. With a gallant gesture, he escorted me past Il Moro’s guard and led me down a familiar passage to the duke’s private chapel. I made my genuflections and then gazed about me with a sigh.

Not many days ago, that same chapel had been little more than four walls covered in flaking plaster, cobwebs and grime clinging to its corners. Constantin had still been alive, and Tito had yet to succumb to treachery and murder… and I was still the boy apprentice Dino. But now, new layers of plaster had been smoothed over the walls and long since dried; the background for the various scenes had been stenciled on in black dust and drawn over in red ink; and perhaps half of the fresco had already been finished, the soft colors of the tempera glowing beneath a row of oil lamps hanging from the beam above.

And now it was I-Delfina, and not Dino-who stood here alongside Leonardo, with Tito and Constantin only memories.

The Master gave me no time to linger on those doleful thoughts, however, for he began an eager explanation of the work that had already been done. I listened intently, aware this might be the last of his lectures I ever heard. Much of the background work, I knew, had been completed by Paolo and Davide, who could cleverly match the Master’s style and so had been charged with the fresco’s lesser details. The main figures had been painted by Leonardo, though I wondered in some amazement when he’d found the time. And then, with an inner smile, I guessed that he had likely stayed up all the previous night, gripped by one of those furies of creativity that so often held him captive for hours at a time.

I recognized the scene directly before us, for it was the one that I had found faintly shocking when I’d first perused the Master’s sketches. But, seeing the idea brought almost fully to life, I began to understand Leonardo’s intent.

This particular scene from the missing years of Christ’s young adulthood was, as Leonardo envisioned it, a time of great learning. Surely he had been a voracious scholar, familiarizing himself with the teachings of many lands and many cultures. And thus it was one of these exotic lands that the Master depicted.

Just as in the sketch I’d seen, the painting’s background illustrated a land of blazing sun and bright colors. The buildings and temples were portrayed with exotic detail, from the rows of jewellike tiles painted around every window and door, to the golden domes atop many of the taller edifices.

With a smile, I noted that among the flurry of palm trees and grasses that dotted the landscape, tigers lurked and monkeys scampered. Parrots adorned in feathers of green and red dangled from a dozen tree branches, their curved beaks opened to emit what would have been a deafening chorus had they been real and not plaster. I even spotted a thick serpent curled upon a rock, its upper body stretching almost as tall as the humans nearby who appeared not to notice its menacing presence.

But, delightful as the scene was at first glance, it had far deeper purpose.

I had studied with the Master long enough to understand his theories of composition. I knew he aligned every painted boulder, every tree, every minor figure, so that the arrangement formed lines that drew the viewer’s eye inexorably to the painting’s central subject. But had he simply scattered the rocks and parrots and temples heedlessly about this particular scene, every eye still would have been drawn to the painted figure that sat in silent contemplation, unaware of the splendid distractions about him.