Leonardo da Vinci
It was on April 15, 1452, that Leonardo was born in the town of Vinci, Republic of Florence, in what is now in Italy, the illegitimate son of a notary and a barmaid. It is from his birthplace that he is known as Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo seemed to master every subject to which he turned his attention: he was a painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer, wrote poetry and stories: the prototype Renaissance man!
His Last Supper (1495-97) and Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, 1503-06) are among the most popular paintings from the Renaissance. He and his rival Michelangelo did great service to the medical arts by accurate paintings of dissections, which were only occasionally allowed by the Church. Yet, his artistry appeared to be an afterthought, as he frequently left his works unfinished, and only about fifteen of his paintings survive. His notebooks reveal that he was centuries ahead of his time in mechanics and physic, fortifications, bridges, weapons, and river diversions to flood the enemy, which aided Italian city-states in their many wars.
Leonardo was an early evolutionist regarding fossils. Through his careful observations he noted that “if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers — as we see them now in our time.” Leonardo reasoned that what is now dry land, where these aquatic fossils were found, must once have been covered by seawater.
He was for a short time accused of homosexuality: there is no evidence Leonardo had any sexual interest in women. As he wrote in his notebooks, “The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.”
And what of his religion? It is significant that at the end of his life he felt he had much spiritual negligence to atone for. His first biographer, Giorgio Vasari, wrote in 1550:
"Finally, …feeling himself near to death, [he] asked to have himself diligently informed of the teaching of the Catholic faith, and of the good way and holy Christian religion; and then, with many moans, he confessed and was penitent; and … was pleased to take devoutly the most holy Sacrament, out of his bed. The King, who was wont often and lovingly to visit him, then came into the room; wherefore he, out of reverence … showed withal how much he had offended God and mankind in not having worked at his art as he should have done."
There was much skepticism in Renaissance Italy at the time, and Leonardo was an intellectual genius, not just an artistic genius. While there was great intellectual freedom during the Italian Renaissance, there were limits as long as the Dominicans, the “Hounds of the Lord,” were active. This semblance of a deathbed conversion, by so critical a thinker and so great a genius as Leonardo, who would have nothing to lose by professing piety all his life, can only mean that during his prime years he was a secret freethinker.
Leonardo died quietly on the 2 of May, 1519, a few weeks following his 67th birthday.
“as a well-spent day gives, joy in sleepso a well-spent life brings, joy in dying”
“He who can copy can do.”
“If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.”
“Блаженни са тези, които отварят ушите си за думите на мъртвите: трябва да се четат хубавите книги и да се вземат под внимание.”
“Wisdom is the daughter of experience”
“The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.”
“The draperies that clothe figures must show that they are inhabited by these figures, enveloping them neatly to show the posture and motion of such figures, and avoiding the confusion of many folds, especially over the prominent parts, so that these may be evident”
“How may paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus, the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress.”
“Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.”
“A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves.”
“Los je ucenik onaj, koji je ne nadmasi svog ucitelja.”
“Priroda nikada ne krši svoje zakone.”
“Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.”
“Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.”
“To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses – ribelli ad essi sensi – such as the existence of God or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention. And in fact it happens that whenever reason is wanting men to cry out against one another, which does not happen with certainties. For this reason we shall say that where the cry of controversy is heard, there is no true science, because the truth has one single end and when this is published, argument is destroyed for ever.”
“La semplicità è la sofisticazione finale.”
“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”
“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.”
“The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams, than the imagination awake.”
“He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.”
“He is a poor pupil who does not go beyond his master.”
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“A well-spent day brings happy sleep”
“Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?”
“Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“All our knowledge hast its origins in our perceptions … In nature there is no effect without a cause … Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments … Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass.”
“Quando ouvimos os sinos, ouvimos aquilo que já trazemos em nós mesmos como modelo. Sou da opinião que não se deverá desprezar aquele que olhar atentamente para as manchas da parede, para os carvões sobre a grelha, para as nuvens, ou para a correnteza da água, descobrindo, assim, coisas maravilhosas. O génio do pintor há-de se apossar de todas essas coisas para criar composições diversas: luta de homens e de animais, paisagens, monstros, demónios e outras coisas fantásticas. Tudo, enfim, servirá para engrandecer o artista.”
“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”
“I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils”
“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself...the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. ...And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. So we must stretch ourselves to the very limits of human possibility. Anything less is a sin against both God and man.”
“Nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist, arsenic, sublimate, realgar, tartar, orpiment, verdegris.”
“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
“Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error, in promising itself such results from experience as are not caused by our experiments. For having given a beginning, what follows from it must necessarily be a natural development of such a beginning, unless it has been subject to a contrary influence, while, if it is affected by any contrary influence, the result which ought to follow from the aforesaid beginning, will be found to partake of this contrary influence in a greater or lesser degree in proportion as the said influence is more or less powerful than the aforesaid beginning.”
“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”
“The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance”
“An average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.”
“And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.”
“He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.”
“Time stays long enough for those who use it.”
“The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”
“The organ of perception acts more readily than judgment.”
“My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”
“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.”
“We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.”
“Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.”
“life without love, is no life at all”
“The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain”
“Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose”