well-worn shirt, without a jerkin or even a cloak, the child looked and smelled like a peasant. She watched his mother depart and the child stare, with tears streaming down his young face, but he said nothing.
“You are to come with me,” she ordered the boy. He followed her from the back of the cookhouse and into the manor. He stared at the large kitchen, where boys and young women rushed about to the cook’s command.
“You’re to sit there. Until someone comes for you,” she pointed into a corner. She held a huge wooden spoon and he prayed the woman would not hit him with it.
The boy nodded and sat.
“You have a name?” a young male servant, assigned to carry slop to the pigs outside, asked.
“Get back to work,” the cook yelled, cuffing the servant boy’s ear, “Don’t bother with a bastard!”
“I may be a bastard,” the boy replied, “But I also have a name.”
“Cheeky, are you?” the cook tapped her wooden spoon between her hands, “And what is your name, bastard?”
“Leonardo,” the child responded, “I am Leonardo.”
The kitchen staff froze as the door to the hallway opened and the mistress of the house entered. “Where is he? I heard from the groom he had arrived when I came back from riding. Well, where is the lad?”
“He is here, mum, and has no respect for his elders.”
A beautiful young woman, dressed in the finest clothes, even in riding clothes, he had ever seen, better than the ones of the women in the village or at Mass, approached. “Are you – Leonardo?” she asked, bending down to his level.
The boy felt fear – did she note his much-mended shirt? Did it have dirt on it? His mother and uncle always admonished him to be cleaner. His bare feet, which he knew were dirty – would they offend her? Would he be in trouble for responding to the cook’s mocking of his bastardy?
“I am Albiera,” the woman smiled at Leonardo, and looked up at the cook, “I will take Leonardo now, Luchia, thank you.”
The cook grunted and curtseyed.
Albiera held her hand out to Leonardo, “Come, come with me,” she smiled. Leonardo jumped up and grabbed her hand, “I am to be your new mother,” she told him as they went into the main hallway, “The cobbler will be making you some shoes – but let us go see your father. Later, I will show you my sketchbook…”
“I like to draw at my uncle’s house,” Leonardo beamed up at his new mother, “With a stick and the dirt – I pretend I capture the sky and sun. I also like to – I enjoy to –“he stammered, blushing, and stared at his bare feet, suddenly shy.
His new mother smiled down at her new son, “You like to – please finish, Leonardo. We finish what we speak in this house.”
“Make things – form things – out of the dirt.”
“That is called sculpting, Leonardo. My – how wondrous!” she squeezed his hand and they entered the room where his father stood by the fire and greeted his only son, the bastard get of a dalliance between a peasant girl and him, much younger and foolish.
The five-year-old boy, named Leonardo from the village of Vinci, had found his first muse – and great kindness – in his father’s home, from his stepmother. She would die a few short years later, but not after his father became aware of his son’s interests and activities and later, as a teenager, apprenticed Leonardo to Andrea Verrocchio so that he might perfect his skill and develop his talent. His peasant mother had grabbed opportunity for her own mobility, but had given her son freedom to seek his own destiny; his stepmother had encouraged and loved him; and his father had allowed and enabled his dream.
Many miles, many masterpieces, adventures, and years later, his foster son, Giacomo, closed the notebook of Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood and placed it back into the packet. He had known some, but not all. “That is why he showed me kindness as a young peasant boy, drawing sheep on a rock,” he smiled. He gazed at the lushness of the green vineyard and arose, taking the packet into the simple home he resided in. He entered his small studio and lifted a chest, laying it carefully inside.
“I will see you soon, Leonardo,” he murmured, closing the chest. He turned to his easel to prepare to paint and felt the vineyards calling for him, to walk between the nature and sunshine of his childhood – similar to Leonardo’s childhood with his uncle and peasant mother. “I will return later,” he spoke softly and returned to the sunlight of his life, an artist, but also free to be whom he chose to be.
THE END
Author’s Note:
Leonardo da Vinci did indeed foster a little peasant boy from Oreno. He had seen the lad making a charcoal drawing of sheep on a stone. Fascinated and perhaps reminded of his stepmother’s kindness and father’s apprenticeship to an artist launched his own art career. Leonardo himself came from half peasant stock through his birth mother and was known for helping artists improve their craft, but this young boy spoke to him – not only as a possible model, but also as a possible individual to tutor to learn art. The boy, named Giacomo Caprotti, became a spoiled brat for many years to his foster father, who overindulged him. Rich clothing, rich food, travels, and being given everything resulted in a boy who lied, cheated, stole, and caused his own foster father to rename him” Salaino” and “Salai,” both which mean, simply, “devil.” As years passed, Salai learned to paint under his foster parent’s tutorage and his best- known work is entitled, Monna Vanna, painted in 1515. It was to be a nude version of the Mona Lisa. Monna Vanna is very similar to the da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but shows an average, but competent painter, of the era he lived in. Giacomo became his foster father’s trusted companion for twenty-six years and traveled with him, working as his assistant. Widely traveled in the courts of Europe as Leonardo’s main assistant, in 1518, Salai left Leonardo in the Court of Francois II in France. He returned to Milan to work in Leonardo's vineyard, previously worked by Salai's birth father. The same vineyard would become his inheritance upon Leonardo’s death in 1519. The notebooks of da Vinci are famous for documenting his thought processes, interests, and personal beliefs; they are autobiographical at times, but not of his childhood. This story, based on actual historical events, was entirely of my creation. I sought redemption for Giacomo, which ended in real life rather strange historically: after inheriting the vineyards his birth father worked in and eventually, he married. Salai he died from a dual in 1524. We remember him today as “Andrea Salai” and the presumed model of many of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings of St. John the Baptist and Bacchus. Ironically, at the time of Giacomo’s death, he owned the Mona Lisa and in his will, assessed at 505 lire, considered very expensive for a small panel portrait of its day!
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