Dark Arts & Da Vinci: The Alchemical Secret That Nearly Broke Leonardo

 

Dark Arts & Da Vinci: The Alchemical Secret That Nearly Broke Leonardo

Date: 1491–1494

Story:
Fascinated by alchemy and optics, Leonardo worked with the obscure alchemist Bernardino di Bosco, who claimed to possess a method for transmuting mercury into gold. Behind Ludovico Sforza’s back, Leonardo provided sketches of furnaces and crucibles in exchange for insights.
The pair experimented beneath the Santa Maria convent, where strange smells and light flashes disturbed monks. When the Duke learned of it, he was furious—fearing Leonardo was engaged in forbidden arts, even necromancy.
Bernardino was arrested, tortured, and accused of heresy. Leonardo narrowly escaped prosecution but was forced to swear off all alchemical activity by the archbishop of Milan.
However, notebooks from this time show strange coded diagrams—possible alchemical recipes disguised as art studies. Even late in life, Leonardo scribbled formulas for "a luminous essence trapped in glass.”
Was he chasing gold—or something more divine? Either way, it nearly cost him everything.

Key Characters:

Leonardo da Vinci

Bernardino di Bosco

Archbishop of Milan

Ludovico Sforza

Reference:

Leonardo and the Occult Arts by Philip Ball

Milanese ecclesiastical court records

Leonardo’s Codex Arundel