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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
In the early 1480s, leonardo watched, no doubt enviously, as some of his successful contemporaries left Florence for major opportunities elsewhere. Botticelli and Ghirlandaio had gone to Rome to work in the Sistine Chapel. Verrocchio was then planning to move to Venice, having won, in 1480, the prestigious competition for the design of the monument for the great condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni. He died there in 1488, some years before the completion and installation of his magnificent equestrian statue. Having sought a papal project for many years, the Pollaiuoli were finally asked in 1484 to create a tomb for Pope Sixtus IV; they immediately relocated to Rome, where they died in the 1490s.
Apparently, Leonardo, too, wished to leave. By then, he had learned some bitter truths about Florence and human nature that Vasari, decades later, would explain:
all persons of spirit will not stay content with being equal, much less inferior, to those whom they see to be men like themselves, although they may recognize them as masters – nay, it forces them very often to desire their own advancement so eagerly, that, if they are not kindly or wise by nature, they turn out evil-speakers, ungrateful, and unthankful for benefits. It is true, indeed, that when a man has learnt there [in Florence] as much as suffices him, and desires to become rich, take his departure from that place and find a sale abroad for the excellence of his works and for the repute conferred on him by that city, as the doctors do with the fame derived from their studies. For Florence treats her craftsmen as time treats its own works, which, when perfected, it destroys and consumes little by little.
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