Leonardo's Apprentice: You're Fired!

Apprentices! Whod have them? he thought lazy good for nothings! Hed been looking for years for someone who had it, someone who could trump the others, who might just be worth bringing on and taking on. Hed encouraged them to compete, given them hard technical tasks, to see who could be the best artist, whose powers of observation were good enough; who could really give their work the truth it would need to stand for something the master might have done. One by one theyd fallen at the hurdles, squabbling, backbiting, preening themselves on his fame, a talentless bunch of sugar-coated frauds, none of them real artists.

He was tired of it all, but work still kept coming in and someone need to do it; and that wretched woman with the smirk on her face whod been hanging around the workshop for far too long now, but which he just couldnt get to the end of, needed finishing.

One last challenge, he thought, a grand paint-off, and if they failed theyd have to go: A picture of Christ, the Saviour of the World, Salvator Mundi, one hand raised in blessing, the other holding a solid crystal orb, he announced. Whod have the guts to paint the face of God? Who could master that tricky detail of the orb?

You have two weeks. Get painting!

Two weeks later and the results were displayed around the studio.

A bunch of amateurs in a tent couldve done better, he muttered to himself as he considered the apprentices work: everything flat, no real modelling, the paint stamped on with a fist. One picture he singled out particularly the competition had been blind, so he didnt know whose it was at first to show up just how bad they all were.

I hope to God Our Saviour doesnt look like that! The face of a pimp! And the hands, one is larger than the other and those fingers look like trays of sausages. The hair has something, I suppose, but its still drab, wispy, colourless. Theres no touch of life in any of it!

He bent forward to scrutinize the picture further, stroking his long beard.

This hand holding the orb, it doesnt seem to be attached to anything. Its just floating there!

He was getting old; his eyesight wasnt what it had been, but he had a pair of thick lenses hed devised to perch on the bridge of his nose through which everything seemed so much larger.

And that technical test I asked you to do, the crystal orb; anyone with the tiniest powers of observation would know that what can be seen through a solid object of crystal or glass will look distorted, enlarged or reduced, but youve painted the palm and sleeve as if there were nothing at all between them and the eye. Observation and truth are fundamental! If you cant understand that, youre not worthy to be my apprentice.

Irritable now, he picked up a palette and began furiously mixing flesh tones. Then he applied himself to the other hand, the one raised in blessing, and with only a few of his brush strokes it became skin and muscle; there were bones in its structure. Blood seemed to pump through it. The rest of the painting, and all the other efforts hung about the workshop were put to shame.

Who did this?

One lad, whose name he could never remember, stepped forward, cap in hand, hooded brown eyes unable to meet the masters. Blushing and grinning simultaneously.

Youre fired! Pack up this crap and get out.

A month or so later he heard of a painting, a Real Leonardo he was told, that had been sold in the market for some undisclosed, but he was led to believe, considerable sum by a young man whod subsequently scarpered to Venice, or Rome or somewhere. A picture of Christ, Salvator Mundi. He couldnt entirely deny his authorship, the right hand after all, and here he smiled to himself and shook his head.

That lad, hes no Leonardo, but he knows how to sell one.