page_title: The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci / Background
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Denier, Andrej I.: Die russische Dichterin Zinaida Gippius in Begleitung des Kunsthistorikers und Balettkritikers A. Volynskij
context_page_description: The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci is the second novel by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, first published in 1900 by Mir Bozhy magazine, then released as a separate edition 1901. The novel constitutes the second part of the Christ and Antichrist trilogy, started by the writer's debut novel The Death of the Gods.
context_section_description: Merezhkovsky started working upon the second novel right after the first one, The Death of Gods, was finished, submerging himself in studying the history of Renaissance. By this time he had the vision of the trilogy as a whole. In 1896 with Zinaida Gippius (and accompanied by Severny Vestnik editor Akim Volynsky) he made a journey to Europe visiting places where Leonardo da Vinci had stayed while accompanying Francis I of France. 
  The plans of publishing the novel in Severny Vestnik had to be discarded after Volynsky whose advances had been rejected by Gippius, started to take revenge upon her husband, expelling him from Severny Vestnik and making sure all the major literary journals would shut the door on him. 
  Volynsky went so far as to publish under his own name some papers on Leonardo, written and compiled by his adversary, who then accused him of theft and plagiarism. For three years the second novel remained unpublished. It finally appeared in Autumn 1900 under the title "Renaissance", in Mir Bozhy (God's World), the editor of which, Anna Davydova, Merezhkovsky was on friendly terms with.
caption: Gippius and Volynsky in the early 1890s
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