(April 15, 1452 to May 2, 1519)
The guise of a genius
WHY ARE
some people ticklish? How does it feel to walk on water? Would a fly sound
different, if it had honey on its wings?
These and a million other questions constantly buzzed around the brain of one
of the world’s greatest creative geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci.
His 1519
gravestone in France
reads: “First painter, engineer and architect of the King.” But in reality,
Leonardo packed much more into his life. You’ve probably heard of him as the
artist behind the‘Mona Lisa’, the
most famous painting in the world, known for its model’s mysterious smile. It’s
the pride of the Louvre museum in Paris.
Was Mona Lisa the real Lisa La Gioconda, a banker’s wife? Was she trying not to
laugh at the comedians Leonardo hired to keep her from getting bored while he
did her portrait? Nobody knows for sure. But we do know that the artist held on
to the portrait all his life.
Leonardo
is equally famous for his wall painting of ‘The
Last Supper’ in the Italian city of Milan,
depicting Christ and his 13 disciples, which took him three years to complete.
The 1497 masterpiece still attracts long and winding queues of tourists at the Church of della Grazia, which houses it. Each face
looks human enough to touch, each shadow is scientifically placed.
The work
has missed destruction by inches time and again. During the French Revolution,
Napoleon’s soldiers threw stones at it. A bomb landed close by during World War
II. But 500 years of grime has now been removed, inch by inch, in a recent
restoration project that took 20 years. Aren’t we lucky it’s still real for us?
If
Leonardo hadn’t been an artist, he would have excelled at other skills ~ as a
city planner, an architect, an engineer, an inventor, a botanist, an
astronomer, even a physician. How come? Because his ever-curious mind darted to
and fro in his detailed notebooks, which include 5,000 pages of drawings. These
take in flying machines, still on display at Milan’s scientific museum, named after
Leonardo. Are there other surprises on these pages? Sure. Sketches of the first
cars, bicycles, machine guns, tanks, and even moveable bridges. Wasn’t he
amazing?
Very
little is known about Leonardo’s childhood, except that he was born in the
Italian town of Anchiano
in 1452. His father was a lawyer, his mother an unschooled peasant. As a
teenager, he was sent to learn painting from Andrea del Verrocchio. Leonardo,
who drew angelic faces better than anyone else, so stunned his master that
Andrea is said to have thrown down his own brushes and sworn never to paint
again.
Neighbours
thought Leonardo strange because of his undying curiosity. He dissected corpses
from prison executions or from shelters for the homeless to study the human
body, though this was banned by the Catholic church. They thought he was
influenced by the devil because he wrote left-handed! Leonardo puzzled them
further by writing his notes backwards, to keep them private. Wasn’t he cool?
Leonardo
was a handsome man with a carefully curled beard, who wore short, rose-coloured
robes ~ unlike the long ones others donned. He hated to have paint stains on
his fingers and was always clean, in an age when other people didn’t bathe
much.
While
painting, he often forgot to eat for over a day. When he did, he’d have his
favourite, a vegetable and macaroni soup called minestrone. And guess what? He
was a vegetarian, aeons before it became fashionable!
Leonardo
loved animals and often bought birds in the market. Did he cage them at home?
No, he set them free, so that he could study their flight. The thought of
flying kept him in high spirits (this was years before the Wright brothers), so
did his drawings for a submarine.
While he
worked for the royal courts in Italy
and France,
Leonardo was popular at parties, where he’d rattle off riddles on the spur of
the moment. He rode horses, sang well, and even invented his own musical
instruments. Once, he brought a strange guest to a party, which made others
scream in fright. They imagined it was a dragon, but it was just a large
lizard!
Since he
never married, Leonardo once adopted a peasant boy for 26 years. He nicknamed
the lad, who even stole from his patron, Salai (devil). Whenever Leonardo moved
between courts, all he took with him were his notebooks, the ‘Mona Lisa,’ and Salai. Now, isn’t that
called travelling light?
Like
many of us, Leonardo hated to wake up early. When he had to, he came up with a
water-operated alarm clock. Another creation of the wonder man?
Though
Leonardo was an awesome sculptor too, most of his work was shattered to
smithereens by invading armies. Imagine what we’ve been deprived of! He enjoyed
experimenting with new ways of painting. He even started on a fresco or wall
painting by an untried method he’d read about. To his horror, soon his colours
melted into one another. He hadn’t read the fine print: Don’t try this on walls!
When
Leonardo died in 1519 near Amboise in France, his last patron ~ the king of France ~ was
shattered. The master’s pupil Francesco da Melzo, who was with the 67-year-old
genius when he died, wrote to Leonardo’s half-brothers: “It is a hurt to anyone to lose such a man,
for nature cannot again produce his like.”
The
world hasn’t seen another one-man wonder like Leonardo da Vinci since. Isn’t
that incredible?
