It is said that the father of
Leonardo da Vinci, Ser Piero da Vinci, at his villa, was besought as a favour, by a peasant of his, who had made a
buckler
with his own hands out of a fig-tree that he had cut down on the farm,
to have it painted for him in Florence, which he did,
since the countryman was very skilful at catching birds and fishing, and
Ser Piero made much use of him in these pursuits.
Buckler front and back
Thereupon, having had it taken to
Florence, without saying a word to
Leonardo as to whose it was, Ser Piero asked him to paint something upon it.
Leonardo, having one day taken this buckler in his hands, and seeing it
twisted, badly made, and clumsy, straightened it by the fire, and,
having given it to a turner, from the rude and clumsy thing that it was,
caused it to be made smooth and even.
And afterwards, having given it a coat of
gesso,
and having prepared it in his own way, he began to think what he could
paint upon it, that might be able to terrify all who should come upon
it, producing the same effect as once did the head of
Medusa.
For this purpose, then, Leonardo carried to a room of his own into
which no one entered save himself alone, lizards great and small,
crickets, serpents, butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other strange
kinds of suchlike animals (some of these animals he dissected), out of
the number of which, variously put together, he formed a great ugly
creature, most horrible and terrifying, which emitted a poisonous breath
and turned the air to flame; and he made it coming out of a dark and
jagged rock, belching forth venom from its open throat, fire from its
eyes, and smoke from its nostrils, in so strange a fashion that it
appeared altogether a monstrous and horrible thing; and so long did he
labour over making it, that the stench of the dead animals in that room
was past bearing, but Leonardo did not notice it, so great was the love
that he bore towards art.
Medusa's Head, a Flemish painter, ca. 1600
The work being finished, although it was no longer asked for
either by the countryman or by his father, Leonardo told the latter that
he might send for the buckler at his convenience, since, for his part,
it was finished. Ser Piero having therefore gone one morning to the room
for the buckler, and having knocked at the door, Leonardo opened to
him, telling him to wait a little; and, having gone back into the room,
he adjusted the buckler in a good light on the easel, and put to the
window, in order to make a soft light, and then he bade him come in to
see it. Ser Piero, at the first glance, taken by surprise, gave a sudden
start, not thinking that that was the buckler, nor merely painted the
form that he saw upon it, and, falling back a step, Leonardo checked
him, saying, "This work serves the end for which it was made; take it,
then, and carry it away, since this is the effect that it was meant to
produce."
This thing appeared to Ser Piero nothing short of a miracle, and he
praised very greatly the ingenious idea of Leonardo; and then, having
privately bought from a peddler another buckler, painted with a heart
transfixed by an arrow, he presented it to the countryman, who remained
obliged to him for as long as he lived. Afterwards, Ser Piero sold the
buckler of Leonardo secretly to some merchants in Florence, for a
hundred ducats; and in a short time it came into the hands of the
Duke of Milan, having been sold to him by the said merchants for three hundred ducats.
