Reconsidering Leonardo

The story goes that five hundred years ago, on May 2nd, 1519, in manor house Clos Lucé, near the royal castle of Amboise, king Francis I of France was lovingly assisting an old man at his deathbed. The man was not a king, nor an aristocrat, nor a victorious general. He was the out-of-wedlock son of an Italian notary. France was, after Spain, the most powerful state in Europe and at that time aristocrats avoided caring for people not of their peer. There is some chance that this story, portrayed in romantic paintings, is legend, but what is sure is that Francis I devoted many attentions to the old man that he had invited three year before to spend his last years in Amboise, Leonardo da Vinci.