Amboise, France: Five hundred years after the death of Italian master painter Leonardo da Vinci, the Loire Valley town where he spent his last three years will host top-level festivities celebrating his life.
The Renaissance genius died in the French town of Amboise in 1519, at the age of 67. And France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italian President Sergio Mattarella are travelling here on Thursday to mark the anniversary.
Leonardo was 64 when he was invited to France by the young Francis I, at a time when rivals Michelangelo and Raphael were rising stars on the Italian peninsula.
And with his own commissions drying up, it came as a great relief and no small vindication for the Tuscan artist, who received a handsome stipend as the “first painter, engineer and architect of the king”.
He brought with him three of his favourite paintings: the Mona Lisa, the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, and Saint John the Baptist — all of which today hang in the Louvre museum in Paris.
The joint celebrations come after months of mounting diplomatic tensions between Paris and Rome over the hardline policies of Italy’s populist government and its support for France’s anti-government “yellow vest” protesters.
The anniversary also has raised tensions over the works of Leonardo that are owned by France after Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the Mona Lisa should be brought home to Rome. He has since brushed the comment off as a joke.
Known as the “Sun King of the 16th century”, Francis I was widely seen as bringing the Italian Renaissance to France, extending his patronage to both artisans and architects.
Arriving in 1516, Leonardo was installed at the Clos Luce, a sumptuous manor house just a stone’s throw from the royal chateau in Amboise where the king had spent part of his childhood.
At the time, Francis I was barely 23, and his ambitious mother Louise of Savoy “knew that Leonardo would be the man who would allow her son to flourish,” Catherine Simon Marion, managing director of the Clos Luce, said
“As for the young king, he was fascinated by (Leonardo’s) knowledge of anatomy, botany, spirituality. He came to see him almost every day, calling him ‘my father’,” she said.
“Leonardo gave him a kind of apprenticeship in knowledge.”
An underground tunnel was dug through the soft limestone between the Clos Luce and Amboise’s chateau to facilitate these frequent visits.
During his three years in the riverside town, Leonardo organised lavish parties for the court. — AFP
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