Reviews of Fortune is a River

Reviews

Reviewed by Charles T. Wood

If, as Machiavelli claims in The Prince, fortune is indeed a river, then Roger Masters must dwell on its banks. Given the centuries scholars have devoted to exploring even the darkest recesses of Renaissance history, one would have thought that, factually speaking, little more new information could come to light, and especially about the lives of two of early modern Europe's more memorable figures, Leonardo and Machiavelli. But Masters has discovered something genuinely new: that in the early years of the sixteenth century these two men worked closely together in a Florentine effort to divert the Arno River so that, at a minimum, Florence's ancient rival Pisa would be denied access to the Mediterranean. At his most expansive, Leonardo even hoped that this diversion would make the Arno fully navigable all the way from Florence to the sea.

Because these efforts ended in failure, and because both Machiavelli and Leonardo were also the most secretive of men, it is not surprising that this project has hitherto failed to attract much attention. Masters shows, however, that it had long been a dream of Leonardo's and, indeed, that the mountainous backgrounds of some of his most familiar paintings were in all likelihood based on sketches--in effect, contour maps--that he had made of places through which the diverted Arno would have to flow, and hence also places where the greatest amount of work would have to be done. Like so many of Leonardo's other projects this one would undoubtedly have remained unrealised except for the fact that in October 1502 the governing Ten of the Florentine Republic dispatched their Second Chancellor Niccolò Machiavelli on a diplomatic mission to Cesare Borgia, in whose court Leonardo da Vinci was then serving as "architect and general engineer." The date and circumstances of their first encounter remain unknown, but because Machiavelli's office made him responsible both for the republic's diplomacy and for its military defense, it becomes easy to understand why he should so readily have responded to a scheme that promised to deny river access to the Pisa that Florence was even then besieging.

Actual collaboration began in 1503. Leonardo joined the Pisan siege in June, and by late July as "hydraulic engineer" he was advocating the Arno's diversion, an undertaking he found to be increasingly justified by the implications of Amerigo Vespucci's newly available reports about the true significance of Columbus's discoveries. The Florentine Signoria gave approval to the diversion in August 1504, but it never devoted more than a fraction of the resources to it that Leonardo had calculated would be needed. The result was that even though Machiavelli wrote to the Ten on War on October 3 that "the situation could be remedied with 'seven or eight days' of careful work," subsequent storms and disastrous flooding led to a decision to drop the project. Soon thereafter the besieging Florentine army was disbanded, and while the Pisan war was to last for another five years, Masters is surely right in concluding: "The dream of Leonardo and Niccolò went unfulfilled."

One of the more appealing features of this book is its sense of balance. Masters recognizes, for example, that the attempt to divert the Arno is no more than a fascinating footnote to a larger story that has long been generally known. Yet it is precisely because he recognizes this reality that he is able to make something more of what he has discovered. That is, whereas most historians would have been content to make the Arno diversion project the whole of their story, Masters devotes no more than two of his eleven chapters to it. In the others--five preceding and four following--he asks a a different and, ultimately, a much more central question: what Leonardo and Machiavelli had been like before their collaboration on the Arno, and hence what impact that joint effort had had on their subsequent views and careers. Placed in that context, this relatively minor incident takes on unexpected interest, for Masters's reflective comments make it clear that neither man emerged unscathed from the experience.

Previous to the diversion project, for example, Leonardo had been a man whose genius had more often found expression in art than in engineering, difficult though he found it actually to complete his artistic works. Afterwards, however, as his move to the court and pay of Francis I makes clear, he entered increasingly into a world in which art became much less central to his fame or sense of being. What counted, rather, was his ability to envisage, and sometimes even to create, military weapons and/or defences that were likely to prove effective against all enemies of the sovereign in whose service he found himself momentarily engaged. For him, then, the attempt to divert the Arno led to a much more focused career, one in which art's loss became science's gain--or at least science as it has been dreamed about ever since by those who have studied Leonardo's Notebooks.

For Machiavelli, however, failure on the Arno had a more complex outcome, for though it led to no immediate change in career, something that came only with the fall of the Florentine Republic, Masters is able to suggerst the extent to which what he there learned is closely related to some of his most famous propositions as a reluctantly retired politician unexpectedly become political theorist. This is not to say that Masters is arguing that the key to a proper understanding of Leonardo and Machiavelli lies solely in grasping the nature of their previously unrecognized collaboration. Rather, what makes this book appealing is that it makes no such claim. Masters is content to present in modestly popular form the reflections of a scholar who knows a good story when he sees it and who has the good sense to recognize what that story can teach us about matters of much more lasting concern.

About the author:: Roger D. Masters is a Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. His earlier works include The Nature of Politics and Beyond Relativism: Science and Human Values.

About the reviewer:: Charles T. Wood is a Daniel Webster Professor of History, emeritus, also at Dartmouth College.

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"Providing a remarkable window on the birth of the modern age, thismeticulous study examines the little-known collaboration of Leonardo daVinci and Niccolò Machiavelli. The two worked together in Florencebetween 1503 and 1506, where Machiavelli, the Florentine republic'ssecond chancellor, enlisted Leoanrdo -- then military architect andengineer to warlord Cesare Borgia -- in a grandiose scheme to redirect the Arno River's course and make Florence a seaport. Machiavelli'sstrategic goal was to deprive Florence's bitter rival Pisa of water from the Arno, which flowed through that city. Beyond this, Leonardo envisioned a transformation of the Arno valley into an irrigated flood-control system that would generate wealth and security for Tuscany. Leonardo and Machiavelli also collaborated on the renovatio of a fortress and other military projects, yet most of their joint projects --including the ill-conceived scheme to divert the Arno -- were failures. Nevertheless, through parallel biographies of his two famed protagonists, Masters, a Dartmouth professor of government, presents architect-inventor Leonardo as a visionary who sought a rational society based on science, while Machiavelli is defended here for his realistic worldview that stressed the inevitability of selfishness and conflict. This surprising dual protrait is beautifully illustrated with Leonardo's architectural and engineering drawings, urban-planning sketches and maps."

Review in Booklist (5/1/98) is also nice, including: "Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli, two giants of Italian history of the early modern period, led fascinating lives, which Masters fully chronicles in vivid detail....In chronicling their ill-fated joint venture, Masters takes the reader on a delicious and enlightening excursion back to the resonant times in the history of European thought and culture."