Copyright

HarperCollins Children’s Books an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins in 1999

Text copyright © Alex Parsons 1999

Illustrations copyright © George Hollingworth 1999

Cover illustration copyright © Martin Chatterton 1999

The Alex Parsons and George Hollingworth assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrators of the work.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780006945901

Ebook Edition © February ISBN: 9780008191436

Version: 2016-02-24

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Message to Readers

The Verrocchio Workshop, Florence, 1470

Florence, 1471

Florence, 1472

Florence, Winter 1475

Florence, 1476

Florence, January 1477

Florence, Spring 1477

Florence, Winter 1478

Florence, 30th December 1479

Florence, Spring 1480

Florence, 1481

Florence, 1482

Milan, 1483

Milan, April 1483

Milan, 1485

Milan, 1488

Milan, 1489

Milan, 1490

Milan, April 1490

Milan, 1491

Milan, 1492

Milan, December, 1493

Milan, November, 1494

Milan, 1495

Milan, January, 1496

Milan, Spring, 1497

Milan, January, 1498

Milan, Winter, 1499

Milan, October, 1499

Venice, December, 1499

Florence, 24th April, 1500

Florence, 1501

Florence, December 1501

Rome, 1502

Imola (near Bologna), 1503

Pisa, March 1503

Florence, October 1503

Florence, November 1503

Florence, 1504

Florence, June 1505

Florence, August 1505

Florence, December 1505

Milan, May 1506

Milan, June 1506

Florence, 1508

Milan, 1508

Florence, September 1508

Florence, 1509

Milan, 1510

Milan, 1511

Milan, June 1512

Rome, December 1513

Rome, 1513

Rome, 1514

Rome, 1515

Rome, March 1516

Château de Cloux, Amboise, Northern France, April 1516

Amboise, October 1517

Amboise, May 2, 1519

Publisher’s Addendum

About the Publisher

Message to Readers

Luigi Cannelloni’s story of life among the Colourful Set in Renaissance Italy has been sniffed at by art historians ever since his tatty notebook was discovered in an antique terracotta pot used as an umbrella stand at Leonardo’s, an aptly named Italian restaurant somewhere in London.

Professor Spottafake, an eminent art historian, had the cheek to question the possibility of an early 16th century Italian manuscript turning up in a late 20th century pasta joint. After a few glasses of Chianti, he dismissed the ‘Diary’ as the drunken ramblings of someone waiting too long for an order of Spaghetti Bolognese.

But it takes an expert in more than art history to tell the difference between age spots and gravy stains, and this is where one of Leonardo’s regular customers, Alex Parsons, comes in.

Thanks to Ms Parsons, we can all now enjoy the authentic flavour of 16th century Italy, and dine out on delicious, mouth-watering tales of flaking frescos, power-crazy popes, pushy patrons and that genius who was Leonardo da Vinci.

The Verrocchio Workshop, Florence, 1470

Mamma mia! The work, the backbreaking work! My friend Paolo got himself apprenticed to a baker. The hours! The heat! The flour! The customers! It was a terrible warning. Me? When a job was advertised in an artists’ workshop, I pictured an easy life.

“Luigi Cannelloni,” I said to myself (because that is my name), “what a cushy number! All you’re gonna have to do is waft around looking arty, clean a few paintbrushes, help the gorgeous models off with their clothes, serve wine and cakes to the customers and sweep the place up a bit when they’ve all gone home.” How wrong can you be?

Signore Verrocchio, The Master, is my boss. He is actually the most important artist working in Florence. The trouble with him is that there isn’t any commission* he’ll turn down – he’ll work for anyone.

If one of the Medici family (they’re the ruling family of Florence, so you don’t mess with them) take it into their heads to order a sculpture of a full-sized man on a horse, “No problema!” says The Master. “I’ll send the boy to pick up ten tons of bronze.”

If they want their ceilings painted with God and all his angels, “No problema! I’ll send the boy round to put up the scaffolding.”

If they want a marble statue for their uncle’s tomb, “No problema! I’ll send the boy up to the quarry to hack out half a mountain and run home with it on his back.”

We have lots of artists in this workshop, but only one genius. Even The Master admits to this. The genius’s name is Leonardo da Vinci.

He’s quite different from the other artists here. I mean obviously they can all draw and stuff like that, and they can all paint, but when Leonardo paints or draws someone, you get the feeling the figure is alive, as if the skin is warm to the touch and that you know who they are.

Take the other day. The Master’s been working on this painting of the Baptism of Christ and he wanted the figure of an angel in there, so not being particularly good at painting angels, he asked Leonardo to paint one in.

Bravissimo! Leonardo’s painting was like a real angel – so beautiful that it made the other figures look very flat and ordinary.

Surprise, surprise! The Master has announced that he will be concentrating on the sculpture side of the business, and is leaving the painted works to other artists in the group. I wonder why?

Florence, 1471

Florence is a very interesting place to live. We have our own currency*, the gold Florin, which is valid the world over, or so I am told. We have our own rulers, the powerful Medici family who made their fortune out of banking and inventing accountancy. As a result they have their own palazzo**, which is built four-square around a courtyard. The outside has only ten windows, is rather forbidding, and looks like a military fortress.

Now why would a family with money coming out of their orecchie * live in such a place? Well, this is probably why they are the richest and most powerful family in these parts. They built it this way so that we poor humble citizens wouldn’t pass by every day and hate them for being rich.

But I have been inside, delivering sculptures and paintings, and I can tell you, their wealth is knee-buckling.

Florence, 1472

The young Leonardo is not just a painter of pretty faces. He wants to know how everything works and then make it work better. Take the dome of Florence Cathedral, for example. The workshop has a commission to sculpt a golden sphere to fit right on top of the cathedral dome.

Instead of spending time sculpting in the workshop, Leonardo is poring over the plans of the cathedral with the architect Brunelleschi. He’s made hundreds of drawings of the cranes being used to hoist up the stones. His sketchbooks are full of gears, axles, rollers and pivots. I think he’d rather be an engineer than an artist.

Leonardo also spends a lot of time gazing at a fresco* in the Church of Santa Maria Novella. All the painters in our Workshop have an opinion about this painting of The Trinity. The artist, Masaccio, drew the vaulted ceiling in the background using mathematics, not guesswork like the rest of us. It’s spooky because it makes everything look so real.

This may well be the way art is going. Artists today are talking about being real and using real models and all that kind of stuff. It’s the fashion to sniff at the artists of the past and put them down as primitive decorators. I can sniff with the best of them.

Florence, Winter 1475

Leonardo and I went out for a drink after work the other day and I got to know our resident genius a bit better. He was born in Anchiano, a little village near Vinci. His mother, whom he has never met (to speak to, I mean), was a peasant girl called Caterina. His papa is Piero da Vinci, a successful lawyer who works here in Florence. Obviously Papa da Vinci is a bit of a ladies’ man as Leonardo’s already had four step-mothers, all of them lavishing love and attention on him, so he’s a bit of a Momma’s boy four times over.

Leonardo’s a very charming bloke, no doubt about it. Easy to talk to, and generous too. And he certainly stands out from the crowd. Everyone else wanders around town in long beige robes, but not Leonardo. He wears short velvet doublets* and bright blue tights, a very colourful chap. He doesn’t seem to have much interest in girls, which is a bit odd. I found myself mentioning my wife Giulia rather a lot and banging my tankard about in a manly way.

Florence, 1476

Have I got a problem! Leonardo is leaving The Master’s workshop and has asked me to go with him to work as his assistant.

Now, I could stay here at this painting and sculpture factory for the rest of my life: the hours are long, the people nice but dull, the boss a bit moody, the work hard, but it’s regular pay.

Or I could put my life in the hands of this eccentric genius, who will either amount to nothing or become the most famous painter in the world. And if he does, my diary will become a world-beating bestseller the minute someone sorts out printing.

Hmmm. And Leonardo does hang out with a rather colourful bunch of people. What will my friends think? Oh well, you only live once!

Let me tell you something about rivalry. You wouldn’t believe the flouncing that goes on when the Colourful Set meet up at the marketplace.

“Hey guys!” I am tempted to say. “Who do you think you are? And as for your patrons*, they may not know art when they see it, but they know what they like.”

Florence, January 1477

I will say this for my new master, Leonardo. He does know his paints. He knows how to grind up rocks and stones and mud to make his colours. He knows how to prepare a canvas, or a panel of wood, or a plaster wall. He knows how to cast bronze and to make armatures*. He knows his geometry and his chemistry. In fact there’s very little he doesn’t know.

And I’ll tell you something else about him. He starts a million jobs and FINISHES NONE OF THEM! I can see this may well drive me mad.

He’s very keen on oil paint at the moment. This is a method of mixing paints with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and nut oil so that pictures dry in the shade. Normally, you see, we put them out in the sun to dry, which can often make the wooden panels split.

Though I say it myself, I am very good at mixing paint. But it is not an easy job. For blue, I have to pound up lapis lazuli (it comes in lumps of precious blue stone). For red I squeeze roots of the madder plant and grind up the mineral vermilion. For yellow I use the urine of Indian cows fed on mango leaves, and I’ve heard some colourmen (that’s the official name for my profession) make a brown using ground-up Egyptian mummies. But not me.

Leonardo says my oil paint makes skin tones luminous and hair like silk, and gives him total control over light and shade, plus you don’t see the brush strokes. So I dash about like a mad thing, pounding rocks, mixing oils, burning charcoal, making glue and stirring varnish. And what’s he doing? Helping with all the mad activity that he’s started? No, he’s gazing into the middle distance looking for inspiration. Inspiration! What use is inspiration when the glue pot’s boiling over?

Florence, Spring 1477

The models are a bit of a pain in the posteriore. Leonardo gets all kinds of people to pose for him, and I thought I’d be having a happy time draping beautiful girls in skimpy bits of silk. But, needless to say, most of his models are beautiful young men with curly hair. And between ourselves, they’re a stroppy lot.

But that’s not the worst part. He’s also taken to filling the studio with toothless old peasants. He gets them to come in and sit about having a laugh. When I’ve pushed the last old crank out of the door, he gets out his sketchbook and draws frantically from memory. I don’t know why he bothers. How many altarpieces or portraits of important people have you seen with a gaggle of grinning peasants in the foreground? None. Art patrons don’t want to see the rough side of life. They just want painters to make them look good in portraits and paint the usual religious paintings to make them feel holy.

There is a bit of a change in the air. When Florence’s artistic set gather round for a bit of a natter, the talk is not of how many metres of mural they can knock out in a month, but how they can bring real emotion and feeling into their pictures.

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