The Bastard
“You are bastard born and will amount to nothing!”
The door slammed in his face. Turning to face the inevitable, he set his youthful, round eyes upon the world. As if seeing it for the first time. Off towards the west side of the small Italian town, the sun set the town in hues of fire, lighting the way towards his next adventure. You will amount to nothing, so he set off to do everything.
Under a thousand twinkling stars and with the large moon in the sky lighting the way with a comfortable and reassuring glow, he traveled away from his uncle’s residence. Even in the dark, he could see the pinnacle of the Church of Santa Croce that would provide him sanctuary. Upon arriving, he entered through the doors that were always unlocked to allow priests in and out. A shaft of moonlight poured in through the aisle stained glass windows and painted the nave and pews with stories of the Savior. Nestling into one of the pews, he stared at an annunciation scene. Tomorrow would be a new day.
The next couple of days allowed time to meandered around town. He pilfered for binders of paper and utensils, so he could pursue his passion—art. Throughout the day, he filled his time sweet talking the lay ministry and bartering off sketches for food. His time out in town was spent studying the casual passersby, artisans, the poor, and the middle class. He noticed the little things: the way in which light bounced off mirrored objects, how light and shadow played a part in the way something was perceived.
It had been four days since his family cast him out. His curiosities led him to a rolling grassy hill where he could easily gaze upon the entirety of his city. Sitting on the spongy grass, he began to draw his small, insignificant town in Tuscany. While he drew, he noticed how everything changed from this new perspective. He realized how the buildings seemed impeccably smaller the farther away he was. Whilst looking off into the distance, to where the Florence, art central, surely resonated. Gazing off into the horizon, he began to notice how everything hazed and blended into one another. He continued to draw, noting these details from his reality.
The night ended with him returning to the church once again. However, instead of the acolytes disregarding his entering, one about his age came up to him with a candle in one hand and a scroll in the other. The acolyte handed it to him with a quizzical expression. He reached for the paper, mimicking the acolytes’ expression. Upon scrutinization, he noticed the scroll was addressed to him, he turned the scroll around and on the other side was his father’s seal.
It was a reoccurring disposition that he would leave his uncle and grandparents’ manor and where he would either return later or have someone fetch him to bring him home. Many fights ended this way.
“Grazie” he mumbled to the acolyte, dismissing him.
“Son,
It has been apparent from a young age that you might amount to something in the arts. I cannot give you a future, but with this guidance, I assume you can figure something out. Go to Florence, seek out Verrocchio. He is expecting you and will mentor you with an artistic apprenticeship.”
Dumbfounded, he quickly sat in a pew, rereading the letter. Slowly, he began to ponder his future. He always knew he was an outcast within his family. His brothers and sisters were only half his blood—he was the bastard child. He was not and could not be associated with them. The artist, the outcast.
His thoughts blurred the past, his present circumstances, and his aspirations for the future. That night images came to him: memories of the past overlapping with the imagined. A foggy image of a woman and child in a farmhouse, a child being ripped away from the bosom of a brown haired, brown eyed peasant woman who had nothing to give except her love; overlapping with the love and death of a step mother—despite birthright. Currently, an adolescent unsure of his future. His goals: to be great and to one day go from the nameless to the distinguished.
***
Unsure whether he should take the apprenticeship, it took only a matter of watching other artisans do their craft with joyous smiles upon their face for him to decide. He was able to secure a horse by the end of the hour. The man who sold him the horse informed him it would be a day and a night before he would reach Florence. Setting the horse up with his very few possessions, he ventured off to meet his future.
Florence was definitely a new adventure. It was larger than his town, with passerbys discussing the politics of the powerful Medici family, news about thinkers, artisans, artists, and humanitarians.
He traveled through the plaza, past merchants, the rich and poor alike. As the evening turned to dusk, he finally found his way to the workshop of the great Verrocchio. And as if the man had been waiting for the youth all day, he exclaimed from his doorway: “Let’s get to work.”
Every day there was something new to learn. Every day he worked twice as hard. Every day he remembered his past which propelled him further into his studies.
You are a bastard. You will amount to nothing. You are nothing.
Dreams and omens haunted him. You are nothing. There is a cave. Inside the cave is a monster. The cave is curiosity. The monster is you.
Despite these vicious thoughts and dreams, learning and working changed the youth. In Verrocchio’s workshop he did not only learn and attribute to drawing, painting, sculpting, and modeling but he learned a well-rounded amount of humanities including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather, mechanics, and even carpentry. Although there were days he would argue with his mentor on the importance of these other teachings, for he was to be a great artist, not a great carpenter, he overcame these frustrations and transpired to be a well-rounded man.
With the increasing amount of work he gained, he began to overcome his flashbacks of a faceless, blurred mother, and overcame the death of the one mother that began to love him before her untimely death. He overcame his past when Verrocchio allowed him to attribute to his paintings, and when rumor spread that his master would not pick up a paintbrush again, for the apprentice had succeeded the master.
His thoughts and ideas did not stop with the mastery of art and techniques. He began journaling. Everything he learned he wrote down. Every thought he had, he wrote it down. He wrote to the aspiring artist and humanitarian on painting, the human figure, lighting, perspective, anatomy, geography, astronomy, architecture, inventing and experimenting, and philosophy. He knew he was ahead of his time. He was a dreamer, a man born from nothing turning the impossible into probable. If not now, then for the future.
From the nameless to the distinguished, from a bastard to a Renaissance man—he is Leonardo da Vinci.
#historicalfiction #leonardo #leonardodavinci #davinci #fiction #art #arthistory #history