Yet, as Franceso de’ Melzi opened one door of Leonardo’s life another door closed. He received word that his beloved uncle Francesco had died at Vinci and that he had become the heir to his uncle’s property. No sooner had this news been delivered when Leonardo was notified that Giuliano, a son of Piero, and now a lawyer in his own right, was contesting the will. All the frustrations of his life in Florence now rose to an angry pitch and he set out once again for Florence to fight for his own rights.
Wisely, Leonardo had armed himself with letters from his new, influential patrons and even one from King Louis himself recommending, “... we request that you will cause this dispute to be settled in the best and briefest delivery of justice....” In August of that same year—1507—Charles d’Amboise added his personal letter suggesting that the king could not spare Leonardo too long from the court at Milan.
It was with the title of Painter and Engineer to the King of France that Leonardo rode back to Florence to await the outcome of the judges in his case. He went to stay with a sculptor friend, Giovanni Rustici, a man of thirty-five and also an ex-student of Verrochio. They lived in a house lent to Rustici by a wealthy scholar and patron named Piero Martelli.
Leonardo soon found that he and Rustici had much in common. Rustici, too, collected the odds and ends of his journeys into the country. Flying about the house were a tame eagle and a raven, while, at dinner, a pet porcupine begged for food. Rustici, however, was a believer in alchemy and magic. To practice these arts the young man devoted one room to the strange mixtures which bubbled over flames as he attempted to change base metals into gold, or to call upon the spirits to predict the future.
Leonardo settled into the life of the house very quickly and even helped his friend on an important sculpture commission. This was a group composition of St. John between the Pharisee and the Levite for over the doors of the baptistry. He also started to gather together his scattered notes on all the subjects that he had written about, going through them making corrections and erasing the repetitions. Possibly Leonardo was considering the publication of all his material for he wrote, “Begun at Florence in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22nd day of March, 1508. This will be a collection without order, made up of many sheets which I have copied here, hoping afterwards to arrange them in order in their proper places according to the subjects of which they treat....” This “collection without order” of almost forty years extended into practically all branches of human knowledge, founded on years of observation and experiment. Indeed, it was the magnificent effort of one extraordinary mind to push back the curtains of ignorance in order to let the light of natural truth shine through to mankind.