Will Durant---Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci one development 1452 to 1482 the most fascinating figure of the Renaissance was born on April 15 1452 near the village of Vinci some 60 miles from Florence his mother was a peasant girl Catarina who had not bothered to marry his father her seducer Piero Dantonio was a Florentine attorney of some means in the year of Leonardo's birth piero married a woman of his own rank Caterina had to be content with a peasant husband she yielded her pretty love child to Piero and his wife leonardo was brought up in semi aristocratic comfort without maternal love perhaps in that early environment he acquired his taste for fine clothing and his aversion to women he went to a neighborhood school took fondly to mathematics music and drawing and delighted his father by his singing and his playing of the lute in order to draw well he studied all things in nature with curiosity patience and care science and art so remarkably United in his mind had their one origin detailed observation when he was turning 15 his father took him to Verrocchio's studio in Florence and persuaded that versatile artists to accept him as an apprentice all the educated world knows Missouri's story of how Leonardo painted the angel at the left and Verrocchio's baptism of Christ and how the master was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the figure that he gave up painting and devoted himself to sculpture probably this abdication is a post mortem legend Rocio made several pictures after the baptism perhaps in these apprentice days Leonardo painted the Annunciation in the Louvre with it's awkward angel and it startled maid he could hardly have learned grace from burro Keo meanwhile ser Piero prospered bought several properties moved his family to Florence in 1469 and married four wives in turn ii was only ten years older than leonardo when the third presented Piero with a child Leonardo eased the congestion by going to live with Pirozhki Oh in that year 1472 he was admitted to membership in the company of Saint Luke this guild composed chiefly of apothecaries physicians and artists had its headquarters in the hospital of santa maria nova presumably Leonardo found there some opportunities to study internal as well as external anatomy perhaps in those years he or was it he painted the gaunt anatomical Saint Jerome ascribed to him in the Vatican Gallery and it was probably he who toured 1474 painted the colourful and immature Annunciation of the U feet see a week before his 24th birthday Leonardo and three other youths were summoned before a committee of the Florentine scenery to answer a charge of having had homosexual relations the result of this summons is unknown On June 7th 1476 the accusation was repeated the committee imprisoned Leonardo briefly released him and dismissed the charge as unproved unquestionably he was a homosexual as soon as he could afford to have his own studio he gathered handsome young men about him he took some of them with him on his migrations from city to city he referred to one or another of them in his manuscripts as a mantis emo or carisi MO most beloved dearest what his intimate relations with these youths were we do not know some passages in his notes suggest a distaste for sexual congress in any form Leonardo might reasonably doubt why he and a few others had been singled out for public accusation when homosexuality was so widespread in the Italy of the time he never forgave florence for the indignity of his arrest apparently he took the matter more seriously than the city did a year after the accusation he was invited and agreed to accept a studio in the Medici gardens and in 1478 the scenery itself asked him to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of st. Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio for some reason he did not carry out the assignment Gillan diode took it over filippino lippi completed it nevertheless the senior a soon gave him and Botticelli another Commission to paint we cannot say to the life full-length portraits of two men hanged for the conspiracy of the Pazzi against Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici Leonardo with his half morbid interest in human deformity and suffering may have felt some fascination in the gruesome task but indeed he was interested in everything all postures and actions of the human body all expressions of the face and young and old all the organs and movements of animals and plants from the waving of wheat in the field to the flight of birds in the air all the cyclical erosion and elevation of mountains all the currents and Eddie's of water and wind the moods of the weather the shades of the atmosphere and the inexhaustible kaleidoscope of the sky all these seemed endlessly wonderful to him repetition never dulled for him their marvel and mystery he filled thousands of pages with observations concerning them and drawings of their myriad forms when the monks of San scopetta asked him to paint a picture for their Chapel in 1481 he made so many sketches for so many features and forms of it but he lost himself in the details and never finished the adoration of the Magi nevertheless it is one of his greatest paintings the plan from which he developed it was drawn on a strictly geometrical pattern of perspective with the whole space divided into diminishing squares the mathematician in Leonardo always competed often cooperated with the artist but the artist was already developed the Virgin had the pose and features that she would keep in Leonardo's work to the end the Magi were drawn with the remarkable understanding for a youth of character and expression in old men and the philosopher at the left was literally a brown study of half skeptical meditation as if the painter had so soon come to view the Christian story with the spirit unwillingly incredulous and still devout and around these figures half a hundred others gathered as if every kind of man and woman had hurried to this crib seeking hungrily the meaning of life and some light of the world and finding the answer in the stream of births the unfinished masterpiece almost erased by time hangs in the Uffizi of Florence but it was Filipino who executed the painting accepted by the scope a teeny Brotherhood to begin to conceive to richly to lose himself in experimenting with details to see beyond his subject a boundless perspective of human animal plant and architectural forms of rocks and mountains streams and clouds and trees in a mystic chiaroscuro light to be absorbed in the philosophy of the picture rather than in its technical accomplishment to leave to others the lesser task of colouring the figures so drawn and placed for revealing significance to turn in despair after long labor of mind and body from the imperfection with which the hand and the materials had embodied the dream this was to be Leonardo's character and fate with a few exceptions to the end - in Milan 1482 - 1499 there was nothing hesitant no sense yet of the merciless brevity of time only youths limitless ambitions fed by burgeoning powers in the letter that Leonardo now $0.30 in 1482 to Lodovico regent of milan he had had enough of Florence the desire to see new places and faces mounted in his blood he had heard that Ludovico wanted a military engineer an architect a sculptor a painter well he would offer himself as all these in one and so he wrote his famous letter most illustrious Lord having now sufficiently seen and considered the proofs of all those who count themselves masters and inventors of instruments of war and finding that their invention and use of the said instruments does not differ in any respect from those in common practice I am emboldened without prejudice to anyone else to put myself in communication with your excellency in order to acquaint you with my secrets thereafter offering myself at your pleasure effectually to demonstrate at any convenient time all those matters which are in part briefly recorded below one I have plans for bridges very light and strong and suitable for carrying very easily - when a place is besieged I know how to cut off water from the trenches and how to construct an infinite number of scaling ladders and other instruments for I have plans for making cannon very convenient and easy of transport with which to hurl small stones in the manner almost of hail five and if it should happen that the engagement is at sea I have plans for constructing many engines most suitable for attack or defense and ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon and powder and smoke six also I have ways of arriving at a certain fixed spot by caverns and secret winding passages made without any noise even though it may be necessary to pass underneath trenches or a river seven also I can make covered cars safe and unassailable which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with artillery and there is no company of men-at-arms so great as not to be broken by it and behind these the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed and without any opposition eight also if need shall arise I can make cannon mortars and light ordnance a very beautiful and useful shapes quite different from those in common use 9 where it is not possible to employ cannon I can supply catapults Mangan ELLs traps and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use in short as the variety of circumstances shall necessitate I can supply an infinite number of different engines of attack and defense 10 in time of peace I believe that I can give you as complete satisfaction as anyone else in architecture in the construction of buildings both public and private and in conducting water from one place to another also I can execute sculpture and bronze marble or clay and also painting in which my work will stand comparison with that of anyone else whoever he may be moreover I would undertake the work of the bronze horse which Shaolin do with immortal glory and eternal honour the auspicious memory of the prince your father and of the illustrious house of sport sir and if any of the aforesaid things should seem impossible or impractical to anyone I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your Park or in whatever place shall please your excellency to whom I commend myself with all possible humility we do not know how Lodovico replied but we that Leonardo reached Milan in 1482 or 1483 and soon made his way into the heart of the more one story has it that Lorenzo is a diplomatic bonbon had sent him to Lodovico to deliver a handsome loot another that he won a musical contest there and was retained not for any of the powers that he had claimed with all possible humility but for the music of his voice the charm of his conversation the soft sweet tone of the lyre that his own hands had fashioned in the form of a horse's head Lodovico seems to have accepted him not at his own valuation but as a brilliant youth who even though he might be less of an architect than Bramante and to an experience to be entrusted with military engineering might plan court masks and city pageants decorate dresses for wife or mistress or princess paint murals and portraits and perhaps construct canals to improve the irrigation of the lombard plain it offends us to learn that the myriad minded man had to spend irrecoverable time making curious girdles for Ludovico's pretty bride fayette reach a day's pay conceiving costumes for jousts and festivals organizing pageants or decorating stables but a Renaissance artist was expected to do all these things between Madonna's Bramante to shared in this court Lurie and who knows but the woman in Leonardo delighted in designing dresses and jewelry and the accomplished equestrian in him enjoyed painting swift forces on stable walls he adorned the ballroom of the Costello for the marriage of bayit Ricci built a special bathroom for her raised in the garden a pretty pavilion for her summer joy and painted other rooms kamini for Palace celebrations he made portraits of Lodovico by a tree Jay and their children of load of eCos mistresses chichi Lea gala Ronnie and Lucrezia traveli these paintings are lost unless labelled Faramir of the Louvre is Lucrezia Vasari speaks of the family portraits as marvelous and the picture of Lucrezia inspired a poet to a fervent eulogy of the lady's beauty and the artists skill perhaps chichi leah was Leonardo's model for the virgin of the rocks-- the painting was contracted for in 1483 by the unfortunate of the conception as the central part of an altarpiece for the church of san francesco the original was later bought by Francis the first and is in the Louvre standing before it we note the softly maternal face that Leonardo would use a dozen times in later works an angel recalling one in Verrocchio's baptism of Christ to infants exquisitely drawn and the background of jutting overhanging rocks that only Leonardo could have conceived as Mary's habitat the colors have been darkened by time but possibly the artist intended a Darkling effect and suffused his pictures with a hazy atmosphere that Italy calls sfumato smoked this is one of Leonardo's greatest pictures surpassed only by the Last Supper Mona Lisa and the Virgin Child in st. Anne the Last Supper and Mona Lisa are the world's most famous paintings hour after hour day after day year after year pilgrims enter the refectory that holds Leonardo's most ambitious work in that simple rectangular building the Dominican friars who were attached to Ludovico's favorite church Santa Maria delle grazie a took their meals soon after the artists arrived in Milan Lodovico asked him to represent the Last Supper on the farthest wall of this refectory for three years from 1495 to 1498 on and off leonardo labored or dallied at the task while Duke and friars fretted over his incalculable delays the prior if we may believe bazaar II complained to Lodovico of Leonardo's apparent sloth and wondered why he would sometimes sit before the wall for hours without painting a stroke Leonardo had no trouble explaining to the Duke who had some trouble explaining to the prior that an artists most important work lies in conception rather than in execution and as bizarre II put it men of genius do most when they work least there were in this case said Leonardo to Lodovico to special difficulties to conceive features worthy of the Son of God and to picture a man as heartless as Judas perhaps he slyly suggested he might use the too frequently seen face of the prior as a model for Iscariot Leonardo hunted throughout Milan for heads and faces that might serve him in representing the Apostles from a hundred such quarries he chose the features that were melted in the mintage of his art into those astonishingly individualized heads that make the wonder of the dying masterpiece sometimes he would rush from the streets or his studio to the refectory at a stroke or two to the picture and depart the subject was superb but from a painter's point of view it was pitted with hazards it had to confine itself to male figures and a modest table in a simple room there could be only the dimmest landscape or Vista no grace of women might serve as foil to the strength of the men no vivid action could be brought in to set the figures into motion and convey the sense of life Leonardo let in a glimpse of landscape through the three windows behind Christ as a substitute for action he portrayed the gathering at the tense moment Christ has prophesied that one of the Apostles will betray him and each is asking in fear or horror or amazement is it I the institution of the Eucharist might have been chosen but that would have frozen all thirteen phases into an immobile and stereotyped solemnity here on the contrary there is more than violent physical action there is a searching and revelation of spirit never again so profoundly as an artist revealed in one picture so many souls for the apostles Leonardo made numberless preliminary sketches some of these for James the greater Philip Judas are drawings of such finesse and powers only Rembrandt and Michelangelo have matched when he tried to conceive the features of Christ Leonardo found that the apostles had exhausted his inspiration according to LaMotte so writing in 1557 Leonardo's old friend Zin Ali advised him to leave the face of Christ unfinished saying of a truth that would be impossible to imagine faces lovelier or gentler than those of James the greater or James the less except your misfortune then and leave your Christ incomplete for otherwise when compared with the apostles he would not be their Savior or their master Leonardo took the advice he or a pupil made a famous sketch now in the Brera gallery for the head of christ but it pictured an effeminate sadness and resignation rather than the heroic resolve that calmly entered Gethsemane perhaps Leonardo lacked the reverent piety that had it been added to his sensitivity his depth and his skill might have brought the picture nearer to perfection because he was a thinker as well as an artist Leonardo shunned fresco painting as an enemy to thought such painting on wet and freshly laid plaster had to be done rapidly before the plaster dried Leonardo preferred to paint on a dry wall with tempera colors mixed in a gelatinous substance for this method allowed him to ponder and experiment but these colors did not adhere firmly to the surface and even in Leonardo's lifetime but with the usual dampness of the refectory and its occasional flooding in heavy rains the paint began to flake and fall when Vasari saw the picture in 1536 it was already blurred when the matzah saw it 60 years after its completion it was already ruined beyond repair the friars later helped decay by cutting a door through the legs of the Apostles into the kitchen this in 1656 the engraving by which the painting has been reproduced throughout the world was taken not from the spoiled original but from an imperfect copy made by one of Leonardo's pupils Marco dojo no today we can study only the composition and the general outlines hardly the shades or subtleties but whatever were the defects of the work when Leonardo left it some realized at once that it was the greatest painting that Renaissance art had yet produced meanwhile in 1483 Leonardo had undertaken the work completely different and still more difficult Lodovico had long wished to commemorate his father Francesco Sforza with an equestrian statue that would bear comparison with Donatello's got a mulatto at Padua and Verrocchio's Colleoni in Venice Leonardo's ambition was stirred he set himself to studying the anatomy action and nature of the horse and soon drew a hundred sketches of the animal nearly all of snorting vivacity soon he was absorbed in making up master model when some citizens of Piacenza asked him to recommend an artist to design and cast bronze doors for their Cathedral he wrote characteristically in reply there is no one who is capable except laying out of the Florentine who was making the bronze horse of the Duke Francesco and you need take no count of him for he has worked that will last his whole lifetime and I fear that it is so great an undertaking that he will never finish it Ludovico at times thought so too and asked Lorenzo for other artists to come and complete the task in 1489 Lorenzo like Leonardo could not think of anybody better than Leonardo himself at last in 1493 the plaster model was finished all that remained was to cast it in bronze in November the model was set up publicly under an arch to adorn the wedding procession of Ludovico's niece Bianca Maria men marveled at its size and splendor horse and rider rose to 26 feet poets wrote sonnets in its praise no one doubted that when cast it would surpass in power and life the masterpieces of Donatello and Verrocchio's but it was never cast apparently Lodovico could not spare funds for the fifty tons of bronze required the model was left in the open while Leonardo busied himself with art and boys with science and experiments with mechanisms and manuscripts when the French captured Milan in 1499 their bowmen made a target of the plaster Cavallo and broke off many pieces of it Louis the 12th and 1501 expressed a desire to cart it off to France as a trophy we do not hear of it again the great fiasco unnerved and exhausted Leonardo for a time and may have disturbed his relations with the Duke normally Lodovico paid his Appel as well a cardinal was surprised to learn that Leonardo received two thousand ducats or $25,000 a year in addition to many gifts and privileges the artists lived like an aristocrat he had several apprentices servants pages horses engaged musicians dressed in silks and furs embroidered gloves and fancy leather boots although he produced works beyond price he seemed at times to dally with his assignments or to interrupt them for his private researches and compositions in science philosophy and art in 1497 tired of such delays Lodovico invited Perugino to come and decorate some rooms in the Costello Perugino could not come and Leonardo took over the assignment but the incident left hurt feelings on both sides about this time Lodovico straightened in his finances by diplomatic and military expenses fell behind in paying Leonardo's salary leonardo paid his own costs for almost two years and then sent the Duke a gentle reminder in 1498 Lodovico excused himself graciously in the year later gave Leonardo a vineyard as a source of revenue by that time Ludovico's political edifice was falling about him the French captured Milan Lodovico fled and Leonardo found himself uncomfortably free he moved to Mantua in December of 1499 and there made a remarkable drawing of Isabella d'Este II she let her husband give it away as the first stage of its journey to the Louvre and Leonardo not relishing such generosity passed on to Venice he marveled at its proud beauty but found its rich colors and gothic Byzantine ornaments too bright for his Florentine taste he turned his steps back to the city of his youth three Florence 1502 1501 and 1503 to 1506 he was 48 when he tried to take up again the chords of life that he had snapped some 17 years before he had changed Florence had to but divergently she had become in his absence a half Democratic half Puritan Republic he was accustomed to do Co rule and to sort the aristocratic luxuries and ways Florentines always critical looked askance at his silks and Velvets his gracious manners and his retinue of curly-headed youth Michelangelo twenty-two years his junior presented the good looks that so contrasted with his own broken nose and wondered in his poverty where Leonardo found the funds to maintain so rich a life Leonardo had salvaged some 600 ducats from his Milan days now he refused any commissions even from the imperious Marchesa of Mantua and when he worked it was with his wanted leisure leanness the survived Friars had engaged filippino lippi to paint an altarpiece for their church of the annunciation Ardo casually expressed his desire to do a similar work Filipino courteously surrendered the assignment to the man then generally considered to be the greatest painter in Europe the survives brought Leonardo and his household to live at the monastery and paid their expenses for what seemed a very long time then one day in 1501 he unveiled the cartoon for his proposed picture of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and the infant Saint John it not only filled every artist with wonders as Vasari but when it was set up men and women young and old flocked for two days to see it as if in festival time and they marveled exceedingly we do not know if this was the full-size drawing that is now a treasured possession of the Royal Academy of Arts in Burlington house London probably it was though French authorities like to believe that it was the first form of the quite different picture in the Louvre the smile of tender pride that softens and brightens the face of the Virgin in the cartoon is one of Leonardo's miracles beside it the smile of Mona Lisa is earthly and cynical nevertheless though this is among the greatest of Renaissance drawings it is unsuccessful there is something ungainly and in poor taste in seating the Virgin unstable e across the widespread legs of her mother Leonardo apparently neglected to transform this sketch into a picture for the survives they had to turn back to Li P and then to perigee know for their altarpiece but soon afterward perhaps from a variant of the Burlington cartoon Leonardo painted the Virgin Saint Anne and the infant Jesus of the Louvre this is a technical triumph from Anne's die damned head to Mary's feet scandalously naked but divinely fair the triangular composition that had failed in the cartoon here came to full success the foreheads of Anne Mary the child and the lamb make one rich line the child and his grandmother are intent on Mary and the incomparable draperies of the women fill out the divergent space the characteristics fool motto of Leonardo's brush has softened all outlines as shadows softened them in life the lay on our desk smile on Mary in the cartoon but on an in the painting set a fashion that would continue in Leonardo's followers for half a century from the mystic ecstasy of these tenderer vocations Leonardo passed by an almost incredible transition to serve Caesar Borgia as military engineer this June 1502 Borja was beginning his third campaign in the Romagna he wanted a man who could make topographical maps build and equip fortresses bridge or divert streams and invent weapons of offense and defense perhaps he had heard of the ideas that Leonardo had expressed or drawn for new engines of war there was for example his sketch for an armored car or tank whose wheels were to be moved by soldiers within its walls these cars Leonardo had written take the place of elephants one may tilt with them one may hold bellows in them to terrify the horses of the enemy when they put Carbineers in them to break up every company or said Leonardo you can put terrible scythes on the flanks of a chariot and two still more lethal revolving scythes on a forward projecting shaft these would mow down men like a field of grain or you can make the wheels of the chariot turn a mechanism that will swing deadly flails at four ends you can attack a fort by placing your soldiers under some protective covering and you can repel the seizures by throwing down upon them bottles of poison gas Leonardo had planned a book of how to drive back armies by the fury of floods caused by releasing waters and a book of how to inundate armies by closing the outlets of waters flowing through valleys he had designed devices for mechanically discharging a succession of arrows from a revolving platform for raising cannon upon a carriage for toppling over the crowded ladders of a besieging force attempting to scale the walls Borja put most of these contraptions aside is impracticable he tried one or two in the siege of Chery in 1503 nevertheless he issued the following patent of authority in August 15 - to all our lieutenants cast Islands captains condottieri officials soldiers and subjects we constrain and command that the bearer our most excellent and well beloved servant architect and engineer and chief leonardo vinci whom we have appointed to inspect strongholds and fortresses and our dominions to the end that according to their need and his counsel we may be enabled to provide for their necessities to Accord a passage absolutely free from any toll or tax a friendly welcome both for himself and his company freedom to see examine and take measurements precisely as he may wish and for this purpose assistance in men as many as he may desire and all possible aid in favour it is our will that in the execution of any works in our dominions every engineer will be bound to confer with him and follow his advice leonardo wrote much but rarely about himself we should have relished his opinion of Borja and might have putted illuminating ly beside that of the envoy whom florence was sending to caesar at this time niccolò machiavelli but all that we know is that leonardo visited Imola by Enza Forli Ravenna Rimini Pizarro Rubino Perugia Siena and other cities that he was in Senegal iya when Caesar snared and strangled therefore treasonable captains and that he presented Caesar with six extensive maps of central Italy showing the direction of the streams the nature and contours of the terrain the distances between rivers mountains fortresses and towns then suddenly he learned that Caesar was almost dead in Rome the caesarian empire was collapsing and an enemy of the Borgias was mounting the papal throne once more Leonardo his new world of action fading before him turned back to Florence in April 1503 in October of that year Pietro solareenie head of the Florentine government proposed to Leonardo and Michelangelo that each should paint a mural in the new Hall of the 500 in the Palazzo Vecchio both men accepted strict contracts were drawn up and the artists retired to separate studios to design their guiding cartoons each was to picture some triumphs of Florentine arms Angelo an action in the war with Pisa Leonardo the victory of Florence over Milan at Anghiari the alert citizens followed the progress of the work as a contest of gladiators argument rose excitedly on the rival merits and styles and some observers thought that any definite superiority of one picture over the other would decide whether later painters would follow Leonardo's bent toward delicate and subtle representation of feeling or Michelangelo's penchant for mighty muscles in demonic force perhaps it was at this time for the incident has no date that the younger artists let his dislike of Leonardo come to play grant insult one day some Florentines in the Piazza Santa Trinita were discussing a passage in the Divine Comedy seeing Leonardo past they stopped him and asked for his interpretation at that moment Michelangelo appeared who was known to have studied Dante zealously here is Michelangelo said Leonardo he will explain the verses thinking that Leonardo was making fun of him the unhappy Titan broke out in violent scorn explained them yourself you who made the model of a horse to be cast in bronze and could not cast it and left it unfinished to your shame and these Milanese capons thought you could do it Leonardo we are told flushed deeply but made no reply Michelangelo marched off fuming Leonardo prepared his cartoon carefully he visited the scene of the engagement at dhayn ghay re-read reports of it made innumerable sketches of horses and men in the passion of battle or the agony of death now as seldom in Milan he found an opportunity to put movement into his art he took full advantage of it and depicted such a fury of mortal conflict that Florence almost shuddered at the sight no one had supposed that this most refined of Florentine artists could conceive or pictures such a vision of patriotic homicide perhaps Leonardo used here his experience in Cesar Borges campaign the horrors that he may then have witnessed could be expressed in his drawing and exorcised from his mind by February of 1505 he had finished his cartoon and began to paint its central picture the battle of the standard in the sala de Jing quit gentle but now again he who had studied physics and chemistry and had not yet learned the fate of his Last Supper made a tragic mistake experimenting with encaustic techniques he thought to fix the colors into the stucco wall by heat from a brazier on the floor the room was damp the winter was cold the heat did not reach high enough the stucco failed to absorb the paint the upper colors began to run and no frenzied effort availed to halt the ruin meanwhile financial difficulties arose the scenery was paying Leonardo 15 florins or about one hundred and eighty eight dollars per month hardly to be compared with the 160 or so that flowed of eco had assigned him in Milan when a tactless official offered the month's payment in koppers leonardo rejected them he abandoned the enterprise in shame and despair only moderately consoled by the fact that Michelangelo after completing his cartoon made no painting from it at all but accepted the call from pope julius ii to come and work in rome the great competition was a sorry mess that left florence ill-disposed toward the two greatest artists in her history on and off during the years 1503 to 1506 Leonardo painted the portrait of Mona Lisa that his Madonna Elisabetta third wife of Francesco del Giocondo who in 1512 was to be a member of the scenery presumably a child of Francesco buried in 1499 was one of elisabetta's children and this loss may have helped to mold the serious features behind logic ondas smile but leonardo should call her back to his studio so many times during those three years that he should spend upon her portrait all the secrets and nuances of his art modeling her softly with light and shade framing her in a fanciful vista of trees and waters mountains and sky clothing her and raiment of velvet and satin woven into folds whose every wrinkle is a masterpiece studying with passionate care the subtle muscles that form and move the mouth bringing musicians to play for her and to evoke upon her features the disillusioned tenderness of a mother remembering a departed child these are Inklings of the spirit in which he came to this engaging merger of painting and philosophy a thousand interruptions a hundred distracting interests the simultaneous struggle with the Anghiari design left unbroken the unity of his conception the unwanted pertinacity of his zeal this then is the face that launched a thousand dreams upon a sea of ink not an unusually lovely face shorter nose would have launched more reams and many alas in oil or marble as in any courage EO would by comparison make Lisa only moderately fair it is her smile that has made her fortune through the centuries a nascent twinkle in her eyes and amused and checked up curving of her lips what is she smiling at the efforts of the musicians to entertain her the leisurely diligence of an artist who paints her through a thousand days and never makes an end or is it not just Mona Lisa smiling but woman all woman saying to all men poor impassioned lovers the nature blindly commanding continuance burns your nerves with an absurd hunger for our flesh softens your brains with a quite unreasonable idealization of our charms lift you to lyrics that subside with consummation and all that you may be precipitated into parentage could anything be more ridiculous but we too are snared we women pay a heavier price than you for your infatuation and yet sweet fools it is pleasant to be desired and life is redeemed when we are loved or was it only the smile of Leonardo himself that leaves a war of the inverted spirit that could hardly recall the tender touch of a woman's hand and could believe in no other destiny for love or genius than obscene decomposition and a little fame flickering out in man's forgetfulness when at last the sittings ended leonardo kept the picture claiming that this most finished of all portraits was still incomplete perhaps the husband did not like the prospect of having his wife curl up her lips at him and his guests hour after hour from his walls many years later francis the first bought it for four thousand crowns or fifty thousand dollars and framed it in his palace at Fontainebleau today after time and restorations have blurred its subtleties it hangs in the majestic salon carré a of the Louvre daily amused by thousand worshipers and waiting for time to a face and confirm Mona Lisa's smile for in Milan and Rome 15:06 to 1516 contemplating such a picture and reckoning how many hours of thought must have guided so many minutes of the brush we revise our judgment of Leonardo's seeming sloth and perceive again that his work embodied the meditations of numberless inactive days as when an author on an evenings stroll or lying Sleepless in the night molds the next day's chapter page or verse or rolls on the minds tongue some savory adjective or bewitching phrase and in those same five years of Florence that saw the Virgin child and Saint Han in all its forms and Mona Lisa and the ferocious cartoon and melting battle Leonardo found time to paint other pictures like the lovely portrait of Ginevra da Vinci now in Vienna and the lost youthful Christ that at last he yielded to the unfortunate Martinez of Mantua in 1504 but her agent sent her a revealing note Leonardo grows very impatient of painting and spends most of his time on geometry perhaps in those outwardly idle hours Leonardo was burying the artist in the scientist the Appel E's in the Faust however science brought no fees and though he was living simply now he must have mourned the passing of those days when he had been the artist Prince of Milan when charles da hua's viceroy of milan for Louis the 12th invited him to return Leonardo asked solder Eenie might he be excused for a few months from his commitments to Florence so dharini complained that Leonardo had not yet earned the money paid him for the Battle of Anghiari Leonardo raised the unearned sum and brought it to so torini who refused it finally in 1506 solareenie anxious to keep the goodwill of the French King let Leonardo go on condition that he returned to Florence after three months or pay a penalty of one hundred and fifty ducats he went and though he revisited Florence in 1507 1509 and 1511 he remained in the employ of Amboise and Louie in Milan till 1513 so Dharini protested but Louie overruled him with the gracious courtesy of confident strength to make matters quite clear Louie and 1507 appointed Leonardo Pantera at Anjaneya ordinaire painter and engineer in ordinary to the king of France it was no sign a cure Leonardo earned his keep we hear of him again decorating palaces designing or building canals preparing pageants painting pictures planning an equestrian monument of marshal tribute Co and collaborating in anatomical studies with Marcantonio della Torre probably during the second stay at Milan he painted two pictures that came from the lower levels of his genius the Saint John of the Louvre has the rounded contours of a woman and such flowing curls and delicate features his might have graced a Magdalene Leda and the Swan in a private collection in Rome has a face and fleshly softness recalling the st. John and the Bacchus formerly ascribed to Leonardo but it is most likely a copy from a lost painting or cartoon by the master his fame would have gained at these pictures died at birth in 1512 the French were chased out of Milan and Ludovico's son Maximilian began a brief reign leonardo stayed a while writing illegible notes on science and art form the law and burned with fires set by the Swiss but in 1513 hearing that Leo the temps had been chosen Pope he thought there might be in Medici in Rome a place even for an artist of 61 years and he set out with four of his pupils at Florence Leo's brother Giuliano de Medici attached Leonardo to his retinue and assigned him a monthly stipend of thirty-three duckets or about four hundred twelve dollars arrived in Rome Leonardo was welcomed by the art-loving Pope who gave him rooms in the belvedere palace presumably Leonardo met certainly he influenced Raphael and Sodoma Leo may have given him a commission for a picture for Vasari tells how surprised the Pope was to find Leonardo mixing varnish before doing any painting this man Leo is reported to have said will never do anything for he begins to think of the last stage before the first in truth Leonardo had now ceased to be a painter science more and more absorbed him he studied Anatomy at the hospital worked on problems of light and wrote many pages on geometry he amused his leisure by constructing a mechanical lizard with beard horns and wings which he made to flutter by an injection of Quicksilver Leo lost interest in him but meanwhile Francis the first a royal lover of art had succeeded Louis the 12th in October 1515 he recaptured Milan apparently he invited Leonardo to join him there early in 1516 Leonardo bad farewell to Italy and accompanied Francis to France 5 the man what sort of man was this prince of art there are several alleged portraits of him but none before 50 Vasari speaks with unusual fervor of the never adequately praised beauty of his body and the splendor of his appearance which was extremely beautiful and made every sorrowful soul serene but bizarre II spoke from hearsay and we have no representation of this godlike stage even in the delayed Leonardo wore a long beard carefully perfumed and curled a portrait of Leonardo by himself in the Royal Library at Windsor shows a broad and benign face with long flowing hair and a vast white beard a magnificent painting in the Uffizi gallery by an unknown artist pictures him with a strong face searching eyes white hair and beard and soft black hat the noble figure of Plato and Raphael's School of Athens from 1509 has by tradition and some scholars been called a portrait of Leonardo a self-portrait in chalk in the Turin gallery shows him bald to the mid pate wrinkled in forehead cheeks and nose and almost lost in hair he seems to have grown old before his time and died at 67 despite a careful vegetarian regimen while Michelangelo who scorned hygiene and entertained one ailment after another reached 89 he dressed in luxurious clothing while Nickel Angelo lived in his boots yep Leonardo in his prime was known for his strength bending a horseshoe with his hands he was an expert fencer and skilled in riding and managing horses which he loved as the noblest and fairest of animals apparently he drew painted and wrote with his left hand this rather than a desire to be illegible made him write from right to left we have suggested that his homosexuality was not innate but grew out of the unpleasant relation of a burdened stepmother with a bastard stepson his need for receiving and returning affection found satisfaction with the handsome youths whom he later collected he drew women much less frequently than men he acknowledged their beauty but seems to have shared Socrates's preference for boys in all the jungle of his manuscripts there is no word of love or tenderness for women yet he understood well many phases of woman's nature no one has surpassed him in representing virginal delicacy motherly solicitude or feminine subtlety it may be that his sensitiveness his secretive anagrams and codes his double locking of his studio at night had a root in his consciousness of abnormality as well as in his fear of being charged with heresy he was not anxious to be read by the many the truth of things he wrote is a supreme food for fine intelligences but not for wandering widths his sexual inversion may have influenced other elements of his character he was the soul of gentle kindness to his friends he protested against killing animals would not allow anyone to hurt any living thing he bought caged birds to free them in other aspects he seemed morally insensitive he was apparently fascinated by the problem of designing instruments of war he appears to have felt no strong resentment against the French for condemning to a dungeon the Lodovico who for 16 years had maintained him handsomely in Milan he went off without visible qualms to serve a Borgia whom Florence feared as a threat to her Liberty like every artist every author and every homosexual he was unusually self-conscious sensitive and vain say to suraíh solo to Surrey to toe - oh you wrote if you are alone you are all your own with the companion you are half yourself so you squander yourself according to the indiscretion of your company he could shine in company as a musician or a conversationalist but he liked rather to isolate himself in rapt concentration on his tasks the chief gift of nature he said never having starved his liberty his virtues were the better side of his faults his aversion to sexual behavior may have left him free to spend his blood upon his work his painful sensitivity opened up to him a thousand facets of reality unseen by the common eye he would follow through a dozen streets or all day long some unusual face and then in his studio draw it as well as if he had brought the model with him his mind leapt at peculiarities strange forms actions ideas the Nile he wrote has discharged more water into the sea than is at present contained in all the waters of the earth consequently all the sea and the rivers have passed through the mouth of the Nile an infinite number of times by a kindred bent he indulged himself in queer pranks so one day he hid the cleaned gut of a ram in a room and when his friends had gathered there he inflated the gut by a bellows in an adjoining chamber until the swelling skin crowded his guests against the walls he recorded in his notebooks a variety of second-class fables and jokes his curiosity his inversion his sensitivity his passion for perfection all entered into his most fatal defect the inability or unwillingness to complete what he had begun perhaps he entered upon each work of art with a view to solve a technical problem of composition color or design and lost interest in the work when the solution had been found art he said lies in conceiving and designing not in the actual execution this was labor for lesser minds or he pictured to himself some subtleties significance or perfection that his patient and at last impatient hand could not realize and he abandoned the effort in despair as in the case of the face of Christ he passed too quickly from one task or subject to another he was interested in too many things he lacked a unifying purpose a dominating idea this universal man was a medley of brilliant he was possessed of and by too many abilities to harness them to one goal in the end he mourned I have wasted my hours he wrote 5000 pages but never completed one book quantitatively he was more an author than an artist he speaks of having composed 120 manuscripts 50 remain they are written from right to left in a half oriental script that almost lends color to the legend that at one time he traveled in the Near East served the Egyptian Sultan and embraced the faith his grammar is poor his spelling is individualistic his reading was buried in desultory he had a little library of 37 volumes the bible ESOP diogenes laërtius Ovid Livy Pliny the Elder Dante Petrarch Poggio Bela fo Pacino polcie the travels of Mandeville and treatises on mathematics cosmography anatomy medicine agriculture palmistry and the art of war he remarked that the knowledge of past times and of geography adorns and nourishes the intellect but his many anachronism show only a scattering acquaintance with history he aspired to be a good writer made several attempts at eloquence as in his repeated descriptions of a flood and wrote vivid accounts of a tempest and a battle he clearly intended to publish some of his writings and often began to put his notes into order for this purpose so far as we know he published nothing during his lifetime but he must have allowed some friends to see selected manuscripts for there are references to his writings in Flavio Biondo jerome Cardin and Shalini he wrote equally well on science and art and divided his time almost evenly between them the most substantial of his manuscripts is the tratado de l'épée Torah or treatise on painting first published in 1651 despite devoted modern editing it is still a loose aggregation of fragments in poor array and often repetitious Leonardo anticipates those who argue that painting can be learned only by painting he thinks a sound knowledge of theory helps and he laughs off his critics as being like those whom Demetrius declared that he took no more account of the wind that came from their mouths than of that which they expelled from their lower parts his basic precept is that the student of art should study nature rather than copy the works of other artists see to it Oh painter that when you go into the fields you give your attention to the various objects looking carefully in turn first at one object then at another making a bundle of different things selected among those of less value of course the painter must study anatomy perspective modeling by light and shade boundaries sharply defined make a picture seem wooden always make the figure so that the bosom is not turned in the same direction as the head here is one secret of the grace in Leonardo's own compositions finally he urges make figures with such action as may suffice to show what the figure has in mind did he forget to do this with Mona Lisa or did he exaggerate our ability to read the soul in the eyes and the lips Leonardo the man appears more clearly and variously in his drawings than in his paintings or his notes their number is legion one manuscript alone the code each a Atlantico in Milan has 1700 many are hasty sketches many are such masterpieces that we must rank Leonardo is the ablest subtlest profoundest draftsman of the renaissance there is nothing in the drawings of Michelangelo or Rembrandt that can match the amazing Virgin Christ and Saint Anne in Burlington house Leonardo used silver point charcoal red chalk or pen and ink to draw almost every phase of physical many of spiritual life a hundred putti or bambini spread their fat and dimpled legs in his sketches a hundred youths half Greek and profile half woman in soul a hundred pretty maidens of demure and tender mean hair waving in the wind athletes proud of their muscles and warriors breathing battle or gleaming with armor and arms Saints from the soft beauty of sebastian to the Haggard skin of Jerome gentle Madonna's seeing the world redeemed in their babes complex drawings of costumes for masquerades and studies of shawls and scarves and laces and robes caressing the head or the neck curling on the arm or falling shoulder or knee and folds that catch the light invite the touch and seem more real than the garments on our flesh all these forms sing the zest and marvel of life but scattered among them are horrible grotesque sand caricatures deformed heads leering imbeciles bestial faces crippled bodies shrews contorted with fury a Medusa with snakes for hair men desiccated and corrugated with age women in the last stages of decay this was another side of reality and Leonardo's impartial universal I caught it fixed it put it down resolutely on his sheets as if to look ugly evils squarely in the face he kept these horrors out of his paintings which owed some loyalty to Beauty but he had to find room for them in his philosophy perhaps nature pleased him more than man did for nature was neutral and could not be accused of evil as malice everything in her was forgivable to an unbiased eye so Leonardo drew many landscapes and scolded Botticelli for ignoring them he followed the tendrils of flowers faithfully with his pen he hardly painted a picture without giving it added magic and depth by a background of trees streams rocks mountains clouds and sea he almost banished architectural forms from his art so that he might leave more room for nature to enter and absorb the painted individual or group into the reconciling totality of things sometimes Leonardo tried his hand at architectural design but with chastening unsuccess there are architectural fantasies among his drawings quaint and half Syrian he liked domes and made a pretty sketch for a kind of st. Sofia that flowed of eco might build in Milan it never rose from the ground Lodovico sent him to pavía to help redesign the cathedral there but Leonardo found the mathematicians and anatomist Sir Pavia more interesting than the Cathedral he mourned the noise filth and narrow congestion of Italian towns studied Town Planning and submitted to Lodovico a sketch for a city of two levels on the lower level would move all commercial traffic and loads for the service and convenience of the common people the upper level would be a roadway 20 braccia some 40 feet wide upheld by colonnaded arcade and not to be used by vehicles but solely for the convenience of the gentle folk spiral staircases would occasionally connect the two levels and every here and there a fountain would cool and cleanse the air Lodovico had no funds for such an upheaval and the Milanese aristocracy remained on the earth six the inventor it is hard for us to realize that to Ludovico as to Caesar Borgia Leonardo was primarily an engineer even the pageant's that he planned for the Duke of Milan included ingenious automata every day says Vasari he made models and designs for the removal of mountains with ease and to pierce them to pass from one place to another and by means of levers cranes and winches to raise and draw heavy weights he devised methods for cleaning harbors and for raising water from great depths he developed a machine for cutting threads in screws he worked along correct lines towards a waterwheel he devised frictionless roller bearing band brakes he designed the first machine gun and mortars with cog years to elevate their range a multiple belt drive three-speed transmission gears an adjustable monkey wrench a machine for rolling metal a movable bed for a printing press the self-locking worm gear for raising a ladder he had a plan for underwater navigation but refused to explain it he revived the idea of hero of Alexandria for a steam engine and showed how steam pressure in a gun could propel an iron bolt 1200 yards he invented a device for winding and evenly distributing yarn on a revolving spindle and scissors that would open and close with one movement of the hand often he let his fancy boom use him as when he suggested inflated skis for walking on water or a water mill that would simultaneously play several musical instruments he described a parachute if a man have a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up and it be 12 cubits across and 12 in depth he will be able to throw himself down from any great height without sustaining any injury through half his life he pondered the problem of human flight like Tolstoy he envied the birds as a species in many ways superior to man he studied in detail the operation of their wings and Tails the mechanics of their rising gliding turning and descending his sharp I noted these movements with passionate curiosity and his Swift pencil drew and recorded them he observed how birds avail themselves of air currents and pressures he planned the conquest of the air you will make an anatomy of the wings of a bird together with the muscles of the breasts which move these wings and you will do the same for a man in order to show the possibility of a man sustaining himself in the air by the beating of wings the rising of birds without beating their wings is not produced by anything other than their circular movement amid the currents of the wind your bird should have no other model than the bat because its membranes serve as a means of binding together the framework of the wings a bird is an instrument working according to mechanical law this instrument it is within the power of man to reproduce with all its movements but not with the corresponding degree of strength he made several drawings of a screw mechanism by which a man through the action of his feet might cause wings to beat fast enough to raise him into the air in a brief essay Sewell Volo on flight he described a flying machine made by him with strong starched linen leather joints and thongs of raw silk he called this the bird and wrote detailed instructions for flying it if this instrument made with a screw be turned swiftly the said screw will make its spiral in the air and it will rise high make trial of the machine over the water so that if you fall you do not do yourself any harm the great bird will take its first flight filling the whole world with amazement and all records with its fame and it will bring eternal glory to the nest where it was born did he actually try to fly a note in the code each a Atlantico says tomorrow morning on the second day of January 14 96 I will make the thong in the attempt we do not know what this means fancy Oh Cardinal father of Jerome Cardin the physicist from 1501 215 76 told his son that Leonardo himself had essayed flight some have thought that when Antonio one of Leonardo's aides broke his leg in 1510 it was in trying to fly one of Leonardo's machines we do not know Leonardo was on the wrong tack human flight came not by imitating the bird except in gliding but by applying the internal combustion engine to a propeller that could beat the air not downward but backward forward speed made possible upward flight but the noblest distinction of man is his passion for knowledge shocked by the wars and crimes of mankind disheartened by the selfishness of ability and the perpetuity of poverty saddened by the superstitions and credulity zhh with which the nations and generations killed the brevity and indignities of life we feel our race in some part redeemed when we see that it can hold a soaring dream in its mind and heart for 3,000 years from the legend of Daedalus and Icarus through the baffled groping of Leonardo and a thousand others to the glorious and tragic victory of our time 7 the scientist side by side with his drawings sometimes on the same page sometimes scrawled across a sketch of a man or a woman a landscape or a machine are the notes in which this insatiable mind puzzled over the laws and operations of nature perhaps the scientists grew out of the artist Leonardo's painting compelled him to study Anatomy the laws of proportion and perspective the composition and reflection of light the chemistry of pigments and oils from these researches he was drawn to a more intimate investigation of structure and function in plants and animals and from these inquiries he rose to a philosophical conception of universal and invariable natural law often the artist peered out again in the scientist the scientific drawing might be itself a thing of beauty or terminate in a graceful arabesque like most scientists of his time Leonardo tended to identify scientific method with experience rather than experiment remember he councils himself when dis coursing about water - adieu first experience and then reason since any man's experience can be no more than a microscopic fragment of reality Leonardo supplemented his with reading which can be experienced by proxy he studied carefully but critically the writings of Albert of Saxony gained a partial acquaintance with the ideas of Roger Bacon Albertus Magnus and Nicolas of Cuza and learned much from association with Luca Pacioli Marcantonio dilatory and other professors in the university of pavia but he tested everything with his own experience who ever refers to authorities and disputing ideas works with his memory rather than his reason he was the least occult of the thinker's of his age he rejected alchemy and astrology and hoped for a time when all astrologers will be castrated he tried his hand at almost every science he took enthusiastically to mathematics as the purest form of reasoning he felt a certain beauty in geometrical figures and drew some on the same page with a study for the Last Supper he expressed vigorously one of the fundamental principles of science there is no certainty where one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those that are based upon them and he proudly echoed Plato let no man who is not a mathematician read the elements of my work he was fascinated by astronomy he proposed to make glasses in order to see the moon large but apparently he did not make them he writes the Sun does not move the earth is not in the center of the circle of the Sun nor in the center of the universe the moon has every month the winter in the summer he discusses acutely the causes of spots on the moon and combats on that matter the views of Albert of Saxony taking a lead from the same Albert he argues that since every heavy substance presses downward and cannot be upheld perpetually the whole earth must become spherical and will ultimately be covered with water he noticed on high elevations the fossil shells of marine animals and concluded that the waters had that once reached those altitudes boccaccio had suggested this about 1338 in his fellow koko he rejected the notion of a universal flood and described to the earth and antiquity that would have shocked the orthodoxy of his time he assigned to the accumulations brought down by the POE adoration of two hundred thousand years he made a map of Italy as he imagined it to have been in an early theological era the Sahara Desert he thought had once been covered with saltwater mountains have been formed through erosion by rain the bottom of the sea is continually rising with the detritus of all the streams that flow into it very great rivers flow underground and the movement of life-giving water in the body of the earth corresponds to the movement of the blood in the body of man Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not by human wickedness but by slow geological action probably the subsidence of their soil into the Dead Sea Leonardo followed avidly the advances made in physics by Jean Buridan and Albert of Saxony in the 14th century he wrote a hundred pages on motion and weight and hundreds more on heath acoustics optics color hydraulics and magnetism mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences for by its means one comes to the fruit of mathematics in useful work he delighted in pulleys cranes and levers and saw no end to what they could lift or move but he laughed at seekers for perpetual motion forced with material movement and weight with percussion are the four accidental powers in which all the works of mortals have their being and their end despite these lines he was not a materialist on the contrary he defined for says a spiritual capacity spiritual because the life in it is invisible and without body impalpable because the body in which it is produced is increased neither in size nor in weight he studied the transmission of found and reduced its medium to waves of air when the string of a lute is struck it conveys a movement to a similar string of the same tone on another lute as one may convince oneself by placing a straw on the string similar to the one struck he had his own notion of a telephone if you caused your ship to stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the other extremity to your ear you will hear ships at a great distance from you can also do the same by placing the head of the tube upon the ground and you will then hear anyone passing at a distance but sight and light interested in more than sound he marveled at the eye who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe and he wondered even more at the power of the mind to recall an image long past he gave an excellent description of the means by which spectacles compensate for the weakening of the muscles of the eyes he explained the operation of the eye by the principle of the camera obscura in the camera and in the eye the image is inverted because of the pyramidal crossing of the light rays that come from the object into the camera or the eye he analyzed the refraction of sunlight in the rainbow like leon battista alberti he had a good notion of complementary colors for centuries before the definitive work of michel chevreul he planned began and left countless notes for a treatise on water the movements of water captivated his eye and mind he studied placid and turbulent streams springs and falls bubbles and foam torrents and cloud bursts and the simultaneous fury of wind and rain without water he wrote repeating fail e's after 20 100 years nothing can exist among us he anticipated Pascal's fundamental principle of hydrostatics that the pressure exerted upon a fluid is transmitted by it he noted that the liquids in communicating vessels keep the same level inheriting the Lon's tradition of hydraulic engineering he designed and built canals suggested ways of conducting navigable canals under or over the rivers that cross them and proposed to free Florence from her need of Pisa as a port by analysing the Arno from Florence to the sea Leonardo was not a utopian dreamer but he planned his studies and works as if he had a dozen lives to live armed with the great text of Theophrastus on plants he turned his alert mind to Natural History he examined the system on which leaves are arranged about their stalks and formulated its laws he observed that the rings in a cross-section of a tree trunk record the years of its growth by their number and the moisture of the year by their width he seems to have shared several delusions of his time as to the power of certain animals to heal some human diseases by their presence or their touch he atoned for this uncharacteristic lapse into superstition by investigating the anatomy of the horse with the thoroughness to which recorded history had no precedent he prepared a special treatise on the subject but it was lost in the French occupation of Milan he almost inaugurated modern comparative anatomy by studying the limbs of men and animals in juxtaposition he set aside the superannuated authority of Galen and worked with actual bodies the anatomy of man he described not only in words but in drawings that excelled anything yet done in that field he planned a book on the subject and left four at hundreds of illustrations and notes he claimed to have dissected more than 30 human cadavers and his countless drawings of the fetus the heart lungs skeleton musculature viscera eye skull and brain and the principal organs in woman support his claim he was the first to give in remarkable drawings and notes a scientific representation of the uterus and he described accurately the three membranes enclosing the fetus he was the first to delineate the cavity of the bone that supports the cheek now known as the antrum of Highmore he poured wax into the valves of the heart of a dead bull to get an exact impression of the chambers he was the first to characterize the moderator band or Catina of the right ventricle he was fascinated by the network of blood vessels he divined the circulation of the blood but did not quite grasp its mechanism the heart he wrote is much stronger than the other muscles the blood that returns when the heart opens is not the same as that which closes the valves he traced the blood vessels nerves and muscles of the body with fair accuracy he attributed old age to arteriosclerosis and this to lack of exercise he began a volume they figure alumina on the proper proportions of the human figure as an aid to artists and some of his ideas were incorporated in his friend Patchouli's treatise de Divina proporciona he analyzed the physical life of man from birth to decay and then planned a survey of mental life oh that it may please God to let me also expound the psychology of the habits of man in such fashion as I am describing his body was Leonardo a great scientist alexander von humboldt considered him the greatest physicist of the 15th century and William hunter ranked him as the greatest anatomist of his epoch he was not as original as Humboldt supposed many of his ideas in physics had come down to him from Jamboree da Albert of Saxony and other predecessors he was capable of egregious errors as when he wrote that no surface of water that borders upon the air will ever be lower than that of the sea but such slips are remarkably few in so vast a production of notes on almost everything on the earth or in the sky his theoretical mechanics were those of a highly intelligent amateur he lacked training instruments in time that he achieved so much in science despite these handicaps and his labors in art is among the miracles of a miraculous age from his studies in so many fields Leonardo rose at times to philosophy Oh marvellous necessity thou with supreme reason constrain us all effects to be the direct result of their causes and by a supreme and irrevocable law every natural action obeys Lee by the shortest possible process this has all the proud ring of 19th century science and suggests that Leonardo had shed some theology bizarre E in the first edition of his life of the artist wrote that he was of so heretical a cast of mind that he conformed to no religion whatever accounting it perchance better to be a philosopher than a Christian but bizarre II omitted this passage in later editions like many Christians of the time Leonardo took a fling now and then at the clergy he called them Pharisees accused them of deceiving the simple with bogus miracles and smiled at the false coin of celestial promissory notes which they exchanged for the coinage of this world and one good friday he wrote today all the world is in mourning because one man died in the Orient he seems to have thought that dead Saints were incapable of hearing the prayers addressed to them I could wish that I had such power of language as should avail me to censure those who would extol the worship of men above that of the son those who have wished to worship men as gods have made a very grave error he took more liberties with Christian iconography than any other Renaissance artist he suppressed halos but the Virgin across her mother's knee and made the infant Jesus try to piss tried the symbolic lamb he saw mind in matter and believed in a spiritual soul but apparently thought that the soul could act only through matter and only in harmony with invariable laws he wrote that the soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body but he added that death destroys memory as well as life and without the body the soul can neither act nor feel he addressed the deity with humility and fervour in some passages but at other times he identified God with nature natural law and necessity a mystic pantheism was his religion until his final years ate in France 1516 to 1519 arrived in France Leonardo 64 and ill was established with his faithful companion Francesco melts e24 in a pretty house at clew between the town and Chateau of Amboise on the Loire then the frequent residence of the king his contract with Francis the first designated him as painter engineer and architect of the king and state mechanician at an annual salary of 700 crowns or $8,750 Francis was generous and appreciated genius even in its decline he enjoyed conversation with Leonardo and affirmed reported shalini that never had any man come into the world who knew so much as Leonardo and that not only in sculpture painting and architecture for in addition he was a great philosopher Leonardo's anatomical drawings amazed the physicians of the French Court for a time he labored manfully to earn his salary he arranged masks and pageants for royal displays worked on plans to bind the lawar and be sewn with canals and to drain the marshes of Salone and may have shared in designing parts of the lawar chateau some evidence links his name with the jewel loveliness of sham war probably he did little painting after 1517 for in that year he suffered a parallel stroke that immobilized his right side he painted with his left hand but needed both hands for careful work he was now a wrinkled wreck of the youth whose repute for beauty of body and face came down to VA's re across half a century his once proud self-confidence faded his serenity of spirit yielded to the pains of decay his love of life gave place to religious hope he made a simple will but he asked for all the services of the church at his funeral once he had written as a day well spent makes it sweet to sleep so a life well used makes it sweet to die Vasari tells a touching story of how leonardo died on May 2nd 1519 in the arms of the king but apparently Francis was elsewhere at the time the body was buried in the cloister of the Collegiate Church of San Florin town in Amboise melt SI wrote to Leonardo's brothers informing them of the event and added it would be impossible for me to express the anguish that I have suffered from this death and while my body holds together I shall live in perpetual unhappiness and for good reason the loss of such a man is mourned by all for it is not in the power of nature to create another may Almighty God rest his soul forever how shall we rank him although which of us commands the variety of knowledge and skills required to judge so multiple a man the fascination of his polymorphous mind lures us into exaggerating his actual achievement for he was more fertile in conception than in execution he was not the great scientist or engineer or painter or sculptor or a thinker of his time he was merely the man who was all of these together and in each field rivaled the best there must have been men in the medical schools who knew more of Anatomy than he the most notable works of engineering in the territory of Milan had been accomplished before Leonardo Cain both Raphael and Titian then left a more impressive total of fine paintings than has survived from Leonardo's brush nickel Angelo was a greater sculptor Machiavelli and Guichard Eenie were profound her minds and yet Leonardo's studies of the horse were probably the best work done in the anatomy of that age Lodovico and Caesar Borgia chose him from all Italy as their engineer nothing in the paintings of Raphael or Titian or Michaelangelo equals the last supper no painter is matched Leonardo in subtlety of nuance were in the delicate portrayal of feeling and thought and pensive tenderness no statue of the time was so highly rated as Leonardo's plaster sport sir no drawing has ever surpassed the Virgin Child in saint anne and nothing in renaissance philosophy soared above Leonardo's conception of natural law he was not the man of the Renaissance for he was too gentle introverted and refined to typify an age so violent and powerful in action and speech he was not quite the universal man since the qualities of statesman or administrator found no place in his variety but with all his limitations and incompletions he was the fullest man of the Renaissance perhaps of all time contemplating his achievement we marvel at the distance that man has come from his origins and renew our faith in the possibilities of mankind

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Keywords: Leonardo Da Vinci (Visual Artist), Will Durant

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Length: 78min 58sec (4738 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2015