Evidence of Leonardo's Systematic Design Process for Palaces and Canals in Romorantin

100 Landrus

Chapter 7 Evidence of Leonardo’s Systematic Design Process for Palaces and Canals in Romorantin

Matthew Landrus Leonardo’s Systematic Design Process for Romorantin University of Oxford, Faculty of History and Wolfson College

In early January 1517, Leonardo worked quickly to develop plans for an urban renewal of Romorantin for Francis I of France. For this last major architectural commission, Leonardo had hundreds of architectural and canal studies, as well as the assistance of Francesco Melzi, who measured streets and studied the region. For this project Leonardo could also reference his treatise on sculpture, painting, and architecture, although this is now lost.1 Francis I told Benve- nuto Cellini that Leonardo was a “man of some knowledge of Latin and Greek literature,” a qualification Francis likely considered important for the architect of a project that would identify Romorantin with the grandeur of ancient Rome.2 But the last time Leonardo addressed urban planning on such a com- prehensive scale was in Milan during the late 1480s. He had worked as an architect for several patrons thereafter, though there is no evidence after the mid-1490s of a continuation of his initial interest in developing a palace that was part of a two-level city over a network of canals. Having lived in Rome be- tween September 1513 and late 1516, he was influenced by the Colosseum; its three stories of exterior arcades may be recognized as part of the unusual Ro- marantin palace façade design, as illustrated on Windsor RL 12292 v (Fig. 7.1). For Leonardo, the grandeur of both structures was important.3 While in Mi- lan for seventeen years, from 1483 to 1499, he studied at length optimal urban planning and the means by which the Sforza court considered Milan the new

1 Cellini acquired a copy of this treatise on “Sculpture, Painting and Architecture” in 1542 and thereafter lent it to Sebastiano Serlio. He noted that it was “secondo il mirabile ingegno del detto Leonardo … sopra le tre grandi arti, scultura, pittura et architettura.” Benvenuto Cellini, “Discorso dell’architettura,” in Jacopo Morelli, I codici manoscritti della Libreria Naniana (Venice: Antonio Zatta, 1776), 155. See also Carlo Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter, Commentary by Carlo Pedretti, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), 1:67, 2:395. 2 Cellini, “Discorso dell’ architettura …,” 158; Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci, The Royal Palace at Romorantin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 117. 3 This form of arcaded façade would influence the 1519–20 construction by Francis I of two stories of arcades along a new wing of the castle at Blois. See Jean Guillaume, “Leonardo and

figure 7.1 Leonardo da Vinci, Bird’s-eye view of a palace on an island of a river with a detail and superimposed diagrams and notes by the author (ca. 1508–11), Windsor, RL 12292 v

Athens. Instrumental in that consideration, as Leonardo was likely well aware, had been Francesco Filarete’s (Antonio Averlino, ca. 1400–69) Libro architetto- nico (ca. 1464) and its Neoplatonic discourse on the economic, social, and edu- cational virtues of the ideal city of “Sforzinda” (Fig. 7.2). Three tiers of arched openings are features of the Sforza Castle, which Filarete helped to rebuild in the 1450s and early 1460s. While studying Romorantin in 1517, Leonardo possi- bly thought of this and of Sforzinda, along with his earlier designs for a com- prehensive canal system to help rid Milan of epidemics of the plague. Neoplatonic influences and proportional consistencies are visible in drawings on seven folios (figs. 7.1, 7.3–8) that have been associated with Leonardo’s Ro- morantin project, though this association of folios is based primarily on

Architecture,” in Leonardo da Vinci: Engineer and Architect, ed. Paolo Galluzzi (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), 282.