9781422277645

Apprenticeship During the fifteenth century, all craftsmen— whether painters, goldsmiths, sculptors, or architects—were strictly controlled by guilds that established their conditions of employment. In fact, painters were classed as manual workers and did not qualify for a guild of their own. They came under the Guild of Apothecaries and Doctors because it was from the apothecaries that they bought their paints. This guild also controlled the activities of physicians, surgeons, herbalists, distillers, undertakers, booksellers, and silk merchants. In 1466, when he was fourteen years old, Leonardo was sent to work for Andrea di Verrocchio, an artist with a workshop in Florence.

Leonardo’s teacher, Andrea di Verrocchio.

Verrocchio was a man of all-around ability. Like Leonardo, he had no advantages of birth, wealth, or book learning. He was a skilled craftsman, a goldsmith, a sculptor, and a painter. By working with him, Leonardo improved at these skills and as an inventor of machines. Both Verrocchio and Leonardo were eager to explore the unknown. Verrocchio was probably impressed by the story Ser Piero told of how he had asked Leonardo to make a painting on a shield, a round piece of wood that he wanted to give to a peasant on his estate. Leonardo took the piece of wood to his workroom where, Vasari related, he kept, “lizards, newts, maggots, snakes, butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other animals of that kind.” Based on these, Leonardo “composed a horrible and terrible monster.” When it was finished, Leonardo sent for his father. “When Ser Piero knocked at the door,” wrote Vasari, “Leonardo opened it and told him to wait a little, and, returning to his room put the round panel in the light on his easel, and having arranged the window to make the light dim, he called his father in. Ser Piero taken unaware, started back, not thinking of the round piece of wood, or that the face which

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