Tommaso Masini

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Memorial plaque for Tommaso Masini in Via di Peretola, Florence

Tommaso Masini (* 1462 or around 1466 in Peretola , today a district of Florence ; † 1520 in Rome ), actually Tommaso di Giovanni Masini da Peretola , also known as Zoroastro da Peretola , was an Italian metallurgist , alchemist and ' magician ', friend and collaborator of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).

Life

Study of a horse statue, Codex Madrid I , Leonardo da Vinci, dated 1490–1499
Design of a flying machine, Leonardo da Vinci, 1505

Masini was born in the Tuscan village of Peretola near Florence, the son of a gardener, although he is said to have been the illegitimate son of the Florentine scholar and diplomat Bernardo Ruccellai (1449-1514). Presumably he met Leonardo da Vinci, with whom he was to have an almost lifelong friendship, before 1482. So he accompanied Leonardo to the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan as an alchemist, mechanic and paint mixer.

Leonardo did not call him Zoroastro, but Maestro Tommaso (Master Tommaso) in his notebooks . The nickname Zoroastro (Zarathustra) had something disreputable, since Zarathustra was considered the inventor of magic in medieval tradition. According to Scipione Ammirato , he received the name Zoroastro through his alchemical studies in his youth. This epithet was also Chialabastro or Alabastro verballhornt what Masini hated how Ammirato described.

It is believed that Tommaso Masini produced the oil paints for da Vinci's mural “ The Last Supper ” in the refectory of the Dominican church of Santa Maria delle Grazie . Masini was involved in the preparation of the bronze casting in Leonardo's project, the erection of an equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza . The equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza was supposed to be the largest bronze statue of the time, but could not be realized.

A metal alloy described by da Vinci may also go back to Masini . The low-friction material was a hard copper-tin alloy (SnCu 3 ) surrounded by a soft copper-tin alloy.

Back in Florence in 1505 Masini supported Leonardo in his work on the mural “ The Battle of Anghiari ” in the Palazzo Vecchio and produced the colors for the artist. Leonardo left his work unfinished when he returned to Milan in May 1506. The painting was lost when Giorgio Vasari started a new wall decoration in 1563.

In those years Tommaso Masini carried out flight tests with an aircraft designed by Leonardo da Vinci. The attempts at Monte Ceceri near Fiesole , in the north-east of Florence, failed and Leonardo noted in his manuscript " Codex about bird flight " that Masini broke a leg or a few ribs.

After Leonardo's death in 1519, only sparse traces of Masini can be found. In the last years of his life he was one of the entourage of the cleric and poet Giovanni Ruccellai (1475-1525) in Rome and died there in 1520. He was buried in the church of Sant'Agata dei Goti .

literature

  • Licia Brescia, Luca Tomio: Tommaso di Giovanni Masini da Peretola detto Zoroastro. Documenti, fonti e ipotesi per la biografia del priscus magus allievo di Leonardo da Vinci , in Raccolta Vinciana, Volume 28, 1999, pp. 63-77.
  • Charles Nicholl : Leonardo da Vinci - The biography . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006. ISBN 978-3-10-052405-8 .
  • Meinrad Maria Grewenig: Leonardo da Vinci - artist, inventor, scientist . Historical Museum of the Palatinate, Speyer 1995.
  • Liana Bortolon: The life, times and art of Leonardo . Crescent Books, New York 1965.
  • Woldemar von Seidlitz: Leonardo da Vinci - the turning point of the Renaissance . Volume 2, Julius Bard, Berlin 1909.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Nicholl, p. 187
  2. ↑ According to GND 12864155X geb. at 1466 (accessed August 22, 2020). Brescia, Tomio, Raccolta Vinciana 1999 also give birth dates around 1462 or 1466.
  3. ↑ a b Seidlitz, p. 176
  4. ^ Dietrich Seybold: Leonardo da Vinci in the Orient. History of a European Myth . Böhlau, Cologne 2011, p. 337. (He quotes Brescia, Tomio: Tommaso di Giovanni Masini da Peretola detto Zoroastro . Raccolta Vinciana 1999)
  5. ↑ Nicholl, p. 362; 670
  6. ↑ Nicholl, p. 189
  7. ↑ Grewenich, p. 169
  8. ↑ Bortolon, p. 62
  9. ↑ Seidlitz, p. 234
personal data
SURNAME Masini, Tommaso
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Masini da Peretola, Tommaso di Giovanni; Masini, Tommaso di Giovanni; Masini da Peretola, Tommaso; Zoroastro da Peretola
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian metallurgist, alchemist, Leonardo da Vinci collaborator
DATE OF BIRTH 1462 or 1466
PLACE OF BIRTH Peretola , now a district of Florence
DATE OF DEATH 1520
Place of death Rome