In the early 1480s, leonardo watched, no doubt enviously, as some of his successful contemporaries left Florence for major opportunities elsewhere. Botticelli and Ghirlandaio had gone to Rome to work in the Sistine Chapel. Verrocchio was then planning to move to Venice, having won, in 1480, the prestigious competition for the design of the monument for the great condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni. He died there in 1488, some years before the completion and installation of his magnificent equestrian statue. Having sought a papal project for many years, the Pollaiuoli were finally asked in 1484 to create a tomb for Pope Sixtus IV; they immediately relocated to Rome, where they died in the 1490s.

Apparently, Leonardo, too, wished to leave. By then, he had learned some bitter truths about Florence and human nature that Vasari, decades later, would explain: