Monday, March 8, 2010

Leonardo's X-ray Vision

Leonardo's working diaries reveal a great draughtsman and reporter above everything else. As a bastard son, he was not allowed classic training, so his defective skills in Latin saved him from a commitment to the scientific doctrines of antiquity. He had to lean on his own observations. It did produce visible results, because he knew how to draw. The whole unexplored world opened up in front of Leonardo, and he was not content with the surface only. He was interested in all – the dead and the living.

There was so much to explore that he never had enough time finish anything. Only the next generation could develop his ideas. It came to grips with the essence of blood circulation, gravity, distribution of light, energy, and many other things over the next 500 years.

No-one else has become equally famous as a painter with as few works as Leonardo. Mona Lisa and the Holy Communion – not much else.

Ids: Leonardo