Leonardo da Vinci. March 21, 2019

Copyright © 2019                               John F. Oyler 

March 21, 2019

Leonardo da Vinci

Last month’s selection for our Book Club was Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci. After spending most of the month reading the book, we went to the Carnegie Science Center to see the new da Vinci exhibition there, before meeting to review the book.

Leonardo was certainly a remarkable human being, possessing a wide variety of characteristics that combined to produce a bona fide genius. Indeed, it is easy to agree with observers who consider him to be the greatest mind in history.

He was the prototype polymath, possessing a curiosity about everything he saw or experienced His powers of observation were matched only by Sherlock Holmes. He was completely uninhibited when it came to creativity, rivaling Rube Goldberg at his zaniest. He was a master mechanic, understanding in detail the workings of pulleys and gearing.

Of course, his greatest accomplishments and long-lasting contributions to our cultural heritage were as a painter. The “Mona Lisa” is acknowledged as the most famous painting ever produced. “The Last Supper” is nearly as popular, showing up seventh on one list of favorite paintings. His stature is based on fifteen paintings; in contrast, the Wikipedia listing of van Gogh’s works of art has 913 entries.

Leonardo’s modest list of paintings can be explained by his wide variety of other interests and by the fact that he was a perfectionist. Nothing he painted was ever good enough for him to declare it finished. The “Mona Lisa” was begun in 1503; he was still putting finishing touches on it when he died sixteen years later. Another story has him sitting for hours staring at “The Last Supper” before adding one brush stroke, then packing up and leaving.

Much of his painting success came from his mastery of optics and his understanding how our eyes perceive a scene. He understood perspective perfectly and knew how to modify it to take advantage of the stereoptic capability of our vision. He is credited with being the first painter to master lighting and shading and suggest a three-dimensional effect in his work.

His perfectionism led to procrastination, generating understandable frustration in his patrons. Those of us who cherish his artwork wish he had produced more paintings, but perhaps more productivity would have negated quality. Nonetheless, even a cursory look at the never completed “The Adoration of the Magi” generates the feeling that it would have been his most famous work had he deigned to finish it.

Leonardo believed he could not properly paint the human body without understanding human anatomy, so he dissected dozens of cadavers. The record of these dissections in his notebooks (codices) is a remarkable medical textbook; one, unfortunately, that was never published. His sketches are a perfect example of the synergy of curiosity, observation, and graphic skills.

Similarly he became an expert in geology and a pioneer in palaeontologyso he could depict landscapes properly. Only a perfectionist would pair Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile with the exotic scene in the background. The same might be said about his fascination with hydrology, although his mastery of that technology was suspect.

The exhibit at the Science Museum is outstanding, informative as well as entertaining. I particularly liked the section on simple machines – pulleys, rack gears, worm gears, gear and pinion sets, holdbacks, cams, etc. It would be easy for the unsophisticated viewer to infer that Leonardo had invented these devices. In reality, he had sketched them professionally in his notebooks as components of systems he was conceiving.

In addition to all of his other talents da Vinci was a master producer of theatrical productions, extravaganzas that noblemen and clergy put on to impress the populous. Leonardo was a combination of producer, director, and set designer. He successfully designed a variety of impressive machines, including a mechanical lion. He was indeed a master mechanic.

The so-called “war machines” he designed were not as impressive and, fortunately, none of them were ever built. Perhaps the most absurd was a frame around a pair of horses driving four rotating curved swords. His alleged design of the first tank is also a stretch; it is a random idea wishing it could be upgraded to a concept. I am much more impressed with Archimedes’ military engineering concepts eighteen centuries earlier.

I am also lukewarm about his aeronautical technology. The fact that he studied birds in flight and concluded a man could never generate enough energy to fly is impressive. I also liked his design of a hang glider; it might actually have worked. It would be four hundred years until Langley and the Wright Brothers figured out how to achieve heavier-than-air flight using internal combustion engines.

What have we missed? It does appear that Leonardo was highly accomplished in architecture and urban planning. His notebooks are full of sketches of architectural masterpieces, none of which were ever built. His concept of the “Ideal City” featuring wide streets at different levels and underground canals serving as sewers is certainly prescient for its time.

Howard Alex commented on the fortunate coincidence that da Vinci lived in a geographical region and time when a homosexual not only could survive, but could prosper. In most venues and at most times in history (including today) his involvement with young boys would not be tolerated. Interestingly, the list of the world’s ten greatest geniuses that I found includes four who never married nor had children – da Vinci, Plato, Newton, and Tesla. Too bad their genes were not passed on.

Had he only contributed his fifteen paintings to our cultural heritage, Leonardo da Vinci would be remembered as a great man. The survival of his notebooks (26,000 pages!) provides a testament to his accomplishments in a dozen other areas, a legacy that may never be equaled.