Today I was reading a Cracked article (don't judge me) that claimed that Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci once worked together on a plan to divert the River Arno away from Pisa. Did this really happen? I can't find much to corroborate the story online.
If not, is there any evidence that Machiavelli and da Vinci knew each other personally, as every work of fiction on the period can't seem to resist suggesting?
Roger Masters writes a book on the subject entitled Fortune is a River. It deals with these two men planning to divert the Arno and use a system of canals to link the otherwise landlocked Florence with the sea. The cracked article seems to give them a bit of a nefarious purpose, but it seems that at least this one author gives them the benefit of the doubt in believing that they did it for commerce and some military reasons.
Masters, Roger D. Fortune Is a River. 1998
Cracked article (don't judge me)
Are their articles really that unrealistic? Because I've been reading and quoting their facts for years...
I read about it in Serge Bramley's bio of Da Vinci. If I remember correctly, Leonard came up with the idea, but wasnt involved in the actual building of the canal. The build was cancelled halfway through. Can't find book, thats all I got...
Edit: Found the book. It's Serge Bramly's Leonardo, the artist and the man, 1988. According to his research, Leonardo had been thinking about this canal already during his time in Milan, almost 20 years earlier, for irrigation to farmers and to free landlocked Florence from dependency on Pisa. It looks like he might have introduced the idea to Machiavelli, who then sold it to the city fathers, but after the initial discussions his namne is gone from all documents. He might have been consulted later on, but never in charge of the actual attempt of building it.