Leonardo’s job application

Around 1482, the thirty-year-old Leonardo left Florence for Milan, hoping to work for its ruler, Ludovico Sforza. He drafted a letter, a kind of job application, that still survives.

It reads like the pitch of a military engineer. In ten numbered points he claimed he could build light, portable bridges, drain moats, make cannons that hurl small stones “like a hailstorm”, dig secret tunnels, design armoured carts and build ships that could withstand gunfire.

Only near the end did he mention, almost in passing, that in peacetime he could also design buildings, carry water from one place to another, and make sculptures in marble, bronze and clay. In painting, he added, he could do as well as anyone else, whoever he might be.

He got the job. In Milan he staged court pageants, studied anatomy and waterways, and painted The Last Supper. Most of the war machines stayed on paper. Leonardo sold what the buyer needed, and then did what he loved.