In his preoccupation with geometry, Leonardo had apparently done little about the commission which the Servite monks had given him. He finally yielded to their complaints, however, and commenced to draw the preliminary study for the subject, which was “St. Anne with the Virgin and Child.” Again his knowledge of geometry is most apparent in the finely constructed composition, every gesture of which is as plotted as a geometric exercise. In April of 1501, the drawing was finished; it caused an immediate sensation throughout Florence. For two days the public was allowed to pass in front of it.
But now a change was taking place in Leonardo. He was no longer content with simply painting. His highly original researches for pictures had slowly grown to the point where the research was more important than painting. In a sense the scientist had taken the brush from the artist. In two letters from Isabella d’Este’s emissary in Florence we learn, “He is entirely wrapped up in geometry and has no patience for painting.” This excerpt from a letter dated April 8, 1501, was followed six days later by another which said in part, “In brief, his mathematical experiments have made painting so distasteful to him that he cannot even bear to take up a brush.”
A few months after the completion of the St. Anne drawing, Leonardo received a letter signed by Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois. Leonardo frowned and thought back to his last days in Milan. When King Louis XII of France had entered the city, he had summoned the painter of the “Last Supper” to an audience. The king had been generous in his praise and had tried to persuade Leonardo to remain. At that same audience had also been Cesare Borgia, an ally of the French. Leonardo remembered the man now—the dark hair and eyes, the black, arched eyebrows, and the face marked by some old disease. He was a powerful-chested, thin-hipped man who had originally been made a cardinal by his father, Pope Alexander VI. But the attractions of secular power soon persuaded him to abandon this title. With the enthusiastic help of his father, Borgia had fought, murdered, and deceived his way to a formidable position of authority in these last years. Leonardo, in the seclusion of the monastery, had lately heard that Borgia’s army had even been at the gates of Florence.