The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,141
someone called Giovanni Fontana, a medicus and magician from Venice. Fontana’s thoughts make sense to me. If we could get our hands on the materials, we might be able to build the apparatus.”
“Images appearing on a wall like magic?” Johann gave a laugh. “That would be so much better than the same old lectures day in, day out. Just imagine if we made pictures appear on the wall of Saint Mary’s Chapel while old Spangel drones on. Wouldn’t that be a laugh?”
“So—you will help me?” asked Valentin.
Johann winked at him. “Matter of honor among fellow students.”
He didn’t tell Valentin that he’d already read numerous manuscripts by da Vinci—probably more than were good for him. He had never seen any of the great thinker’s notes about this device before, but he knew that there was much of Leonardo da Vinci he hadn’t read. Deep down inside, Johann could feel the old fever waking up: the urge to explore, to dig deeper than all the dusty scholars before him. The motto of the uncanny old Signore Barbarese came to his mind.
Aude sapere. Dare to know.
The man may have been a devil worshipper, but the motto held true for Johann, too. And what was so bad about those words? They ought to have been written above the gates of Heidelberg University. But in the few months he’d been here, Johann had realized that even at Heidelberg, only long-established truths were rehashed—nothing new was being discussed, and original thoughts and ideas were frowned upon.
For the first time in days, Johann felt like a human being again. There was the prospect of seeing Margarethe once more, and Valentin had invited him to build this magical apparatus with him. Maybe love and science could be united after all.
The laterna magica helped Johann pass the time until he could see Margarethe again. Every night following their sparse supper, he and Valentin would sit up together in their room and study da Vinci’s notes. They also borrowed a book by Giovanni Fontana from the library; it was entitled Bellicorum Instrumentorum Liber and was about war machines just like those Leonardo da Vinci had drawn up for the duke of Milan. One image showed a fire-spitting witch with wings—evidently a puppet that moved along tracks, designed to frighten off enemies; another showed in more detail the strange laterna da Vinci had described.
“We need a box that can hold a source of light,” said Valentin as he pointed at one of the sketches. “The light is intensified by the mirror and pours out through a hole. If we then place a painted glass plate in front of the hole, the picture appears enlarged on a wall.”
“Hmm. We can build the box ourselves,” said Johann. “But where do we get the mirror? Something like that is expensive.”
“Perhaps Rector Gallus could help us,” suggested Valentin. “The old fellow thinks highly of you, and he’s got friends up at the castle. They have mirrors there. And I’m sure he’ll know someone who can make one of those glass plates for us. It doesn’t need to be big. Can you ask him?”
Johann gave a shrug and grinned. “You’re right—he seems to like me. But does that mean he’ll give me a mirror?”
“Ask him, at least,” said Valentin.
Jodocus Gallus had become a kind of mentor to Johann. The rector was much more approachable now than during their first encounter, and several times already he had let Johann have books that other students weren’t permitted to borrow. And he asked the stern Magister Partschneider about Johann regularly.
“I can try,” said Johann. “But I’d have to tell him something about our doings.”
“Just tell him you want to study the sun without spoiling your eyesight,” suggested Valentin. “Old Gengen was talking about it in his lecture on astronomy, remember? He uses a camera obscura for his studies, and that’s similar to what we’re trying to build.”
Johann nodded. The camera obscura had been around since the time of Aristotle. If light fell through a tiny hole in a box, an image of the world in front of the box appeared on the inside, but upside down. The camera was accepted at universities as a teaching aid. Astronomers used it so they didn’t have to look directly at the sun.
“It might just work,” said Johann reluctantly. “That leaves only the painted glass plates. I think getting glass won’t be a problem—I’ve got some savings, and perhaps Gallus will lend me the rest. But who’s going to paint the images? If