The King and Leonardo in Amboise
Royal Château Amboise
Nobles vied with each other to be invited to the royal court in Amboise. With no room for them in the Château, they built their own to be near, which is why there are so many in this area. The aristocracy spent fortunes and waited months on end to meet François, yet here was Leonardo, a man of low birth with daily access to the King. When he arrived in Amboise, mainly, but not exclusively, because of his painting The Last Supper in Milan Leonardo was famous. So many longed for a glimpse of him, he became a tourist attraction. He still is. So many turned up outside the gates of Clos Luce wanting to meet him he had to restrict visits to Open Days so that he and Melzi could get Leonardo’s thirty years of Notebooks into some semblance of order. No mean feat. So sure was Leonardo of his legacy he kept every scrap of paper which had his writing or drawing on it. Of the Leonardo Notebook in The British Library, Leonardo wrote: This is to be a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place, according to the subjects of which they treat. The manuscript, in medieval Italian, is in Leonardo's characteristic left handed mirror writing, right to left.
Leonardo’s Studio, Château du Clos Lucé
Post by Pamela
Leonardo da Vinci: The Amboise Connection
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