How was Leonardo di Vinci involved with Politics?

Answer 1

A few of his designs were used for war machines.

Also, a number of his patrons were nobles and members of governments

Answer 2

Here's what Leonardo had to say about politics.

All communities obey and are led by their magnates, and these magnates ally themselves with the lords and subjugate them in two ways: either by consanguinity, or by fortune; by consanguinity, when their children are, as it were, hostages, and a security and pledge of their suspected fidelity; by property, when you make each of these build a house or two inside your city which may yield some revenue and he shall have...; 10 towns, five thousand houses with thirty thousand inhabitants, and you will disperse this great congregation of people which stand like goats one behind the other, filling every place with fetid smells and sowing seeds of pestilence and death;

And the city will gain beauty worthy of its name and to you it will be useful by its revenues, and the eternal fame of its aggrandizement.

[Footnote: These notes were possibly written in preparation for a letter. The meaning is obscure.]


To preserve Nature’s chiefest boon, that is freedom, I can find means of offence and defence, when it is assailed by ambitious tyrants, and first I will speak of the situation of the walls, and also I shall show how communities can maintain their good and just Lords.

Taken from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.

Leonardo's work was certainly affected by politics.

Da Vinci was a creature of the Renaissance. From his humble beginnings he yearned to be part of the court life, to share in the sophistication and richness of the people at the top of the social ladder of his times. And he achieved this, but the ongoing political intrigues - assassinations, wars and social upheaval of the times - demanded that he always stay one step ahead of trouble and always search for new ways to use his talents to stay in the magic circle of court life. He was always working for patrons that were important in the court or the church and so it was his talent and extraordinary imagination that always remained as his connection to this life. Some of his greatest works were made in this context.

For example The Last Supper, Sforza Horse, Cartography for Cesare Borgia.

Answer 3

I think he wasn,t involved with politics

Answer 4

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