"The birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci is the house museum in which the famous Italian inventor, artist and scientist of the same name was born on 15 April 1452; it is located in Anchiano, a hamlet of Vinci, a municipality in the metropolitan city of Florence.
Location
A few kilometers away from the village of the town, the house where he was born is located in a hamlet north of the municipality of Vinci called Anchiano. It is located on the slopes of Montalbano about 200 meters above sea level, and is defined by the streams of Balenaia and Quercete, which in Leonardo's time fed the various mills scattered throughout the area.
Already from the first Florentine cadastre of 1427, in Anchiano there is news of nine buildings, with small and large plots of cultivated land.
There have been countless debates about Leonardo's actual birthplace, however, after years of research, it has been established with certainty that the actual place is in Anchiano. Ser Tomme, in a paper document, described his property:
«A small farm located in the municipality of Vinci, a place called Anchiano with a worker's chase and Infrantoio and cholombaia without courtyard pigeons and vegetable gardens and worked lands and olive groves, vineyards and wooded fruit trees and boiled between its words and chonfini belonging to said small farm which held Inpegno set lodovico di sel duccio from saminiato ..."
(Ser Tomme di Marco di Tommaso da Isola, 1470)
This description coincides with the words of ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo's father:
«A farm with an almost ruined worker's chasa, and a chasetta started by an innkeeper, and with worked lands and fruited and wooded olive trees and all its belongings, located in the community of Sancta lucia in the paternal municipality of Vinci, bordering on Florence, a place called Anchiano ... »
(Ser Piero Da Vinci, 1495)
History and description
In 1452, the year of birth of Leonardo da Vinci, in the locality of Anchiano there were already several buildings, one of which was the same house where he was born. The house was owned by ser Tomme di Marco di Tommaso da Isola, a notary, just like Leonardo's father.
Then the entire building was divided into two distinct parts, built in different periods. The oldest part was used by the farm worker, while the other was the owner's part. Although recently built, this last part was joined to the other forming a single agglomeration. In 1952, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of Leonardo's birth, the restoration brought to light the parts of the house also described in archival sources.
The house is made up of three large rooms: an entrance hall with a fifteenth-century fireplace decorated with a coat of arms carved on the pediment, a bedroom and a room used for various services. In the 1952 restoration it was not possible to reconstruct the various arrangements and readjustments of the raised floors, therefore it was decided to bring to light only the master walls, while at the same time giving a correct physiognomy of the original structure.
Already from 1449, in the basement of the structure, there are news of an oil mill, managed by Leonardo's paternal ancestor, Antonio Da Vinci, who in that year was able to compile an inscription in the interest of the owner of the land and of other interested parties private lease and sharing in the profits of the mill. The house also has a large courtyard surrounded by centuries-old olive trees from which it is possible to have a panoramic view of the Montalbano hill, the Val di Nievole, the lower valley of the Arno, the Pisan and Lucca mountains and even the hills facing the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The da Vinci family had no possessions in the town of Anchiano. Ser Tomme di Marco di Tommaso da Isola in 1479 donated his properties (including the house) to the Convent of the Friars of the Servi di Maria in Florence in exchange for an annuity, giving Ser Piero da Vinci the opportunity to buy it three years later. It was only then that the facade was adorned with the large stone family crest, still present. In the 1952 restoration, the coat of arms was placed in the internal room for conservation reasons, leaving a copy outside.
Over the years the house passed on to the descendants of ser Piero da Vinci, until in 1624 Guglielmo da Vinci, nephew of Guglielmo's carnal brother of Leonardo, a friar in the convent of S. Lucia in Florence, left his assets to the aforementioned structure . In 1629 the house passed through an exchange to the assets of the grand ducal crown of Tuscany and from this in 1645 to Count Francesco Antonio da Bagnano, whose descendants, the Masetti da Bagnano, kept it until 1932, when it was sold to Count Giovanni Rasini di Castel Campo who bought the structure to use it for the restoration and for Leonardo's collective memory. The count donated the building to the municipality of Vinci on 10 October 1950.
Restoration
Before the building was donated to the municipality of Vinci, a precise description and evaluation of the property was made contained in the 1949 "Estimate appraisal" drawn up by the surveyor Guido Bigi for on behalf of Count Giovanni Rasini. In the expert report, the house was described as being in good general condition, but in a poor state of maintenance following the damage caused by the Second World War. The description mentions the worn floors, the thick walls with old plaster, the discolored interior walls and the very old fixtures, some without glass. Between the two parts of the building, the farmhouse was certainly in the best state of conservation, especially as regards the roof itself which had only a few openings caused by war actions. Both for the distance from the main inhabited centers and for the cost of the entire renovation work, it was not considered a residential house.
Copy of the da Vinci family coat of arms
The restorations were carried out by the Monuments Superintendence of Florence under the guidance of the architect Giulio Ulisse Arata, a member of the National Honors Committee.
More than a real restoration, Arata's project involved rebuilding the house following a precise style, which referred to the old rural house. Due to lack of time and funding, the architect's project was drastically reduced. In the works of the fifties the house took the form of a simple parallelepiped covered "hut" and without plaster, the upper floor was demolished and the fixtures were restored respecting the rustic style, visible above all from the walls that remained rough. The inauguration of the restoration dates back to 15 April 1952 with the presence of the President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi, the President of the Council Alcide De Gasperi, the President of the National Committee Achille Marazza, the Presidents of the two Chambers, the Director General of UNESCO Jaime Torres -Bodet and many other Italian and foreign personalities.
The interventions carried out in the eighties, on the other hand, aimed at consolidating the attics of the first two rooms, at the construction of the bathrooms and at the arrangement of the surrounding external part.
On June 22, 2012 the house was reopened to the public after a restoration that added the current museum layout.
Exhibition itinerary
Exhibition hall of the birth house
The exhibition itinerary of the entire structure is divided into two parts.
In the first there is the birthplace itself, where inside there is an audio-visual narration of Leonardo's life. Thanks to numerous drawings depicting the Arno Valley, the Marshes of Fucecchio, Vinci and Montalbano, the relationship he had with the territory is underlined, from which he took many inspirations for his greatest works. There is also a life-size hologram that gives voice to a now old and tired Leonardo who from his last home in Amboise, France, looks back to the past to narrate the acquaintances, studies, events that linked him to these lands .
In the second one, however, there is the farmhouse with a section dedicated to the Last Supper, of which a high-definition reproduction on a 1:2 scale is exhibited, with the possibility of activating further historical, artistic thematic itineraries and those dedicated to restoration.
Compared to other Leonardian museums, the experience of the Anchiano residence has an above all historical approach and is based on memories connected to the place.
Inside the birth house there is a register containing the signatures of the visitors.
In 2000, Tara Gandhi, entering the museum house, took off her shoes in order to touch barefoot, according to her statement, the stones that had witnessed the birth of the Genius to collect the energies they emanated.
The Green Road
The route that connects the village of Vinci to Leonardo's birthplace takes the name of "Strada Verde". Marked as "excursion itinerary n. 14”, is the same one that in the 19th century was known as the Via Botanica, about 2 km long. The itinerary has remained almost unchanged, including olive groves and vineyards that are concentrated along the climb towards Anchiano. In the middle of the same, via a detour, it is possible to reach the fifteenth-century weir, used for the flow of water that fed the Mulino della Doccia in Vinci, which Leonardo depicts in a drawing from around 1504.
Gustavo Uzielli and Telemaco Signorini mention it in their trip to Vinci:
«The via Botanica is always the most beautiful as you go forward and the vestiges of an artificial symmetry diminish»
(Gustavo Uzielli, Telemaco Signorini, 1872)
The road was also traveled by Giuseppe Garibaldi during his stay with Count Masetti in 1867.
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