The enigmatic genius of the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci - what do we know about him? Great painter, who wrote so many world masterpieces, why didn't he finish so many works? The drawings by Leonardo da Vinci known to us convey both the beauty of the world and man, as well as creepy, ugly scenes from life.
He owns not only paintings, but also a variety of inventions, several centuries ahead of their time. The life of this man has always been shrouded in mystery, his achievements are simply amazing. Leonardo da Vinci is not just a man, but a superman living in another dimension.
Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.
We will focus on his most amazing riddle - the portrait of Mona Lisa or the "La Gioconda" (Louvre).
This picture, which has been argued for more than one century, and every researcher tries to find in this picture new riddle to unravel it. The portrait carries in itself not just a specific reality, but is a generalization of the universal, spirituality. Is not mysterious woman, this is a mysterious being ”(Leonardo. M. Batkin).
The painting belongs to the beginning of the 16th century. This is a portrait of the wife of a merchant from Florence, Francesco del Giocondo.
The most famous is the riddle of the Gioconda's smile. The skill of genius here has reached such heights that the expression on Mona Lisa's face remains elusive, with different points- it is always different. Someone considered this effect sinister, someone spiritualized, hypnotic. This effect is called sfumato (very subtle transitions from light to shadow) - realism and volume are as if the picture is painted with many strokes.
And yet, it is not! The paint layer is very thin, and the strokes are not visible at all. Researchers have long been trying to understand this style of writing using the fluorescent method. A barely perceptible haze blends the lines, making Gioconda almost alive. It begins to seem that now the lips will open and she will utter a word.
The first description of the painting given by Vasari is contradictory, who wrote that Leonardo da Vinci worked on it for four years and did not finish it, but immediately reports that the portrait reproduces all the smallest details that the subtlety of painting can convey. With a great deal of confidence, we can say that in the image of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci portrayed not simple woman, and the Mother of God.
Researchers are inclined to conclude that one half of the Gioconda's face is John the Baptist, the profile of the second half belongs to Jesus Christ.
The left hand lies motionless, in the language of Leonardo “If the figures do not make gestures that the members of the body express representation human soul, then these figures are twice dead.” The right hand looks more “believable”. All this confirms that in the image of Mona Lisa the artist combined a living and a dead image.
We know that he encrypted many of his works, for example, using the “mirror” writing technique. Thus, the letters LV or L2 were found in the right pupil of the Mona Lisa. Perhaps these are initials, or perhaps a code - after all, in the Middle Ages, letters could replace numbers.
According to the researcher Karla Glory, behind the silhouette of the Mona Lisa on the canvas master of genius the brushes of Leonardo da Vinci depict the picturesque surroundings of the town of Bobbio, which is located in northern Italy. This conclusion was made following a report by the head of the Italian National Committee for the Protection of cultural monuments Silvano Vincheti - journalist, writer and discoverer of the tomb of Michelangelo da Caravaggio.
The publicist said that he had seen the inscriptions of letters and numbers on Leonardo's priceless canvas. It was about the number "72", which is under the arch of the bridge, viewed from left hand from the Mona Lisa. Vincheti himself believes that this is a reference to the mystical theories of Leonardo da Vinci.
Glori Karla believes that the mark "72" indicates the year 1472, when the Trebbia River, which emerged during the flood, demolished and destroyed the dilapidated bridge. Later, the Visconti family, who dominated those parts at that time, built a new bridge. Everything, except for the image of the bridge, is that magnificent landscape that could be seen from the terraces and windows of the local medieval castle.
The town of Bobbio was famous for the fact that nearby is the grandiose monastic ensemble of San Colombano (San Colombano), which became the prototype of the scene for romantic story Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose.
Carla Glory also suggested that his model was not the wife of a wealthy citizen, Lisa del Giocondo, but the daughter of the Duke of Milan, Bianca Giovanna Sforza. The place depicted on the canvas is not the central part of Italy, as previously assumed. The father of the proposed model, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a renowned patron of the arts.
The historian Glory suggests that the painter and naturalist stayed with him both in Milan and in remote Bobbio. There was a famous library in those days, which fell under the domineering beginning of the Milanese rulers. Skeptical researchers argue that the inscriptions of numbers, letters, discovered by Vincheti in the pupils of Mona Lisa's eyes, are nothing more than cracks that appeared there from time to time.
However, this is not necessarily the case. An example of this amazing story study of the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, which is located in Mexico.
Leonardo da Vinci's scariest puzzle
Combining the qualities of a scientist and a clairvoyant, in his old age Leonardo made strange drawing- "The end of the world", which was then not understood. Today it terrifies us: it is the outline of a huge mushroom growing out of the blown up city...
Some scientists and researchers are sure that some of Leonardo's puzzles have already been solved, for example:
- “An ominous feathered race will rush through the air; they will attack men and beasts and feed on them with a great cry.” It is believed that here we are talking about airplanes, helicopters, rockets.
- “People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other.” Well, of course, it's a phone, a mobile connection.
- "Sea water will rise to high peaks mountains, to the heavens and again fall on the dwellings of people. It will be seen how the largest trees of the forests will be carried by the fury of the wind from east to west.
There is an opinion that this prophecy is connected with global warming.
It is impossible to list all the works of Leonardo. But even this small part is enough to get an idea of this universal genius, which cannot be compared with anyone who lived in his time.
Leonardo da Vinci.
He was born, as we know, in 1452 and died in 1519.The father of the future genius, Piero of Vinci, a wealthy notary and landowner, was famous person in Florence, but mother Katerina is a simple peasant girl, a fleeting whim of an influential lord.From the age of 4-5, a boy was brought up with his father and stepmother, while his own mother, as was customary, was hurried to give out with a dowry to a peasant.
A handsome boy, distinguished at the same time by his extraordinary mind and affable character, immediately became a universal darling and favorite in his father's house. This was partly facilitated by the fact that Leonardo's first two stepmothers were childless. Piero's third wife, Margherita, entered the home of Leonardo's father when her famous stepson was already 24 years old. From his third wife, Senor Piero had nine sons and two daughters, but none of them shone "neither intellect nor sword."
In 1466, at the age of 14, Leonardo da Vinci entered the workshop of Verrocchio as an apprentice. Surprisingly: 20 years old, he was already proclaimed a master. Leonardo took on many subjects, but, having begun to study them, he soon abandoned them. It can be said that most of all he learned from himself. He did not bypass his attention to music, having perfectly mastered the game on the lyre.
Contemporaries recall that he "divinely sang his improvisations." Once he even made a special-shaped lute himself, giving it the appearance of a horse's head and richly decorating it with silver. Playing on it, he so surpassed all the musicians who gathered at the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza that he "charmed" him for life.
Leonardo, it seems, was not the child of his parents, was he not a Florentine and Italian, and was he an earthly person? This super genius of the beginning Italian Renaissance so strange that it causes scientists not just amazement, but almost awe, mixed with confusion.Even general review its capabilities plunges researchers into shock: well, a person cannot, even if he has at least seven spans in his forehead, be immediately a brilliant engineer, artist, sculptor, inventor, mechanic, chemist, philologist, scientist, seer, one of the best singers of his time, swimmer , creator musical instruments, cantata, equestrian, swordsman, architect, fashion designer, etc.His external data are also striking: Leonardo was tall, slender and so beautiful in face that he was called an “angel”, while being superhumanly strong ( right hand- being left-handed! - could crush a horseshoe).
At the same time, his mentality seems infinitely far away not only from the level of consciousness of his contemporaries, but also from the human in general. Leonardo, for example, was in complete control of his feelings, showing little or no emotion ordinary people, always maintained a surprisingly even mood. Moreover, he was distinguished by some strange coldness of insensibility. He did not love and did not hate, but understood, therefore, not only seemed, but was also indifferent to good and evil in human sense, to the ugly and the beautiful, which he studied with equal interest as something given, external. Finally, according to contemporaries, Leonardo was bisexual. Today it is difficult to judge exactly why he first "studied" the science of love with the Florentine ladies, who were sick of this handsome and clever woman, and then focused on homosexual relationships. There is a denunciation document in which it is da Vinci who is accused of homosexuality, which was then prohibited. Anonymous accuses him and three other men of active sodomy of one Jacopo Saltarelli, 17, the jeweler's brother.
They were all threatened with punishment - death at the stake. The first meeting took place on April 9, 1476. It yielded nothing: the court demanded evidence, declared witnesses; they were not. The trial was rescheduled for July 7. A new investigation - and this time a final acquittal. Nevertheless, when Leonardo became a master, he surrounded himself with written, gifted handsome men, whom he took as students. Freud believes that his love for them was purely platonic, but this idea seems indisputable not to everyone.
Was he human? The abilities and abilities of Leonardo were undoubtedly supernatural. For example, in da Vinci's Diaries there are sketches of birds in flight, for which at least slow-motion footage was required! He led very strange diary, referring to himself in it as “you”, giving orders and orders to himself as a servant or slave: “order to show you ...”, “you must show in your essay ...”, “order to make two travel bags. ..” One gets the impression that two personalities lived in da Vinci: one - known to everyone, friendly, not without some human weaknesses, and the other - incredibly strange, secretive, unknown to anyone, who commanded him and controlled his actions.
In addition, da Vinci had the ability to foresee the future, which, perhaps, even surpassed the prophetic gift of Nostradamus. His famous "Prophecies" (originally a series of notes made in Milan in 1494) paint terrifying pictures of the future, many of which have either already been our past or are now our present. Judge for yourself: "People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other" - we are talking about the phone, of course. “People will walk and not move; they will speak to those who are not, they will hear those who do not speak” - television, tape recording, sound reproduction. “People ... will be their own person instantly scatter around different parts of the world without moving from a place” - transmission of a television image. "You will see yourself falling from great heights without any harm to you" - obviously skydiving. “Countless lives will be destroyed, and countless holes will be made in the earth” - here, most likely, the seer is talking about craters from air bombs and shells that really killed countless lives. Leonardo even foresaw travel into space: "And many land and water animals will rise between the stars ..." - the launch of living beings into space. “Many will be those from whom their little children will be taken away, who will be skinned and quartered in the cruelest way!” - transparent reference to children whose body parts are used in the organ bank.
Leonardo practiced special psychotechnical exercises, dating back to the esoteric practices of the Pythagoreans and ... modern neurolinguistics, in order to sharpen his perception of the world, improve memory and develop imagination. He seemed to know the evolutionary keys to the secrets of the human psyche, which is still far from being realized and in modern man. So, one of the secrets of Leonardo da Vinci was a special sleep formula: he slept for 15 minutes every 4 hours, thus reducing his daily sleep from 8 to 1.5 hours. Thanks to this, the genius immediately saved 75% of his sleep time, which actually lengthened his life from 70 to 100 years! In the esoteric tradition, similar techniques have been known since time immemorial, but they have always been considered so secret that, like other psycho- and mnemonic techniques, they have never been made public.
Da Vinci's inventions and discoveries cover all areas of knowledge (there are more than 50 of them!), completely anticipating the main directions of development modern civilization. Let's talk about just a few of them. In 1499, Leonardo, for a meeting in Milan of the French king Louis XII, designed a wooden mechanical lion, which, after taking a few steps, plowed open its chest and showed the insides "filled with lilies." The scientist is the inventor of the spacesuit, submarine, steamer, flippers. He has a manuscript that shows the possibility of immersion on great depth without a spacesuit thanks to the use of a special gas mixture (the secret of which he deliberately destroyed). To invent it, it was necessary to have a good understanding of the biochemical processes of the human body, which were completely unknown at that time! It was he who first proposed installing batteries of firearms on armored ships (he gave the idea of an armadillo!), He invented a helicopter, a bicycle, a glider, a parachute, a tank, a machine gun, poison gases, a smoke screen for troops, a magnifying glass (100 years before Galileo!). Da Vinci invented the textile machine looms, machines for making needles, powerful cranes, systems for draining swamps through pipes, arched bridges. He created designs for gates, levers and propellers designed to lift enormous weights, mechanisms that did not exist in his time. It is amazing that Leonardo describes these machines and mechanisms in detail, although they could not be made at that time due to the fact that they did not know ball bearings then (but Leonardo himself knew this - the corresponding drawing was preserved). Sometimes it seems that da Vinci just wanted learn as much as possible about this world by collecting information. What did he do with her? Why did he need her in such a form and in such quantity? He left no answer to this question.
In a strange way, even Leonardo's painting seems less and less important with time. Let's not talk about his masterpieces, known to the whole world, let's just say about one amazing drawing stored in Windsor, depicting some kind of unearthly creature. The facial features of this creature are damaged by time, but one can guess their striking beauty. In this drawing, huge and very widely spaced eyes attract attention. This is not an artist's mistake, but a conscious calculation: it is these eyes that make a paralyzing impression.
The Royal Library of Turin houses the famous self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci - "Portrait of himself in old age". It is undated, but experts believe it was written around 1512. This is a very strange portrait: not only the viewer in different angles perceives the expression and facial features of Leonardo in completely different ways, but photographs taken even with a slight camera deviation show different person, who is either melancholy, or arrogant, or wise, or simply indecisive, or appears as a decrepit old man, exhausted by life, etc.
To most people, a genius is known as the creator of immortal artistic masterpieces. But him closest friend Fra Pietrodella Novellara remarks: “Mathematical studies have so far removed him from painting that the mere sight of a brush infuriates him.”
And he was also an excellent magician (contemporaries spoke more frankly - a magician). Leonardo could call a multicolored flame from a boiling liquid by pouring wine into it; easily turned white wine into red; with one blow he broke a cane, the ends of which were placed on two glasses, without breaking either of them; applied a little of his saliva to the end of the pen - and the inscription on the paper became black. The miracles that Leonardo showed so impressed his contemporaries that he was seriously suspected of serving "black magic". In addition, strange, dubious moral personalities were constantly near the genius, like Tomaso Giovanni Masini, known under the pseudonym Zoroaster de Peretola, a mechanic, jeweler and at the same time an adherent of the secret sciences.
Until his death, da Vinci was extremely active, traveled a lot. So, from 1513 to 1519, he alternately lived in Rome, Pavia, Bologna, France, where he died, according to legend, on May 2, 1519, in the arms of King Francis I, asking for forgiveness from God and people that “he did not do everything for art.” what I could do."
Leonardo da Vinci is considered to be one of the geniuses of the Italian Renaissance, which is not remotely true. He is unique: neither before him nor after in history there was such a person, a genius in everything! Who was he?
This is what it consists the greatest mystery. Some modern researchers consider Leonardo a messenger of alien civilizations, others - a time traveler from a distant future, others - a resident of a parallel, more developed world than ours. It seems that the last assumption is the most plausible: da Vinci knew too well worldly affairs and the future that awaits humanity, with which he himself was little concerned ...
For a moment Leonardo hovered over the dark green canopy of the forest. But - only for a moment. A warm wind blew it, and the Great Bird soared, saddling air flow. Leonardo looked for the kite, but it disappeared as if it were a spirit and now soared, devoid of weight, through all the spheres to the source of perpetual motion. Leonardo tried to direct the flight of the car so as to land somewhere in the fields, beyond the forest.
A warm stream drew him up and suddenly, as if mocking, disappeared. Trying not to move his wings, Leonardo glided through the wind for several seconds. But here new impulse threw him back and he fell...
Slapped to the ground.
arrogant.
"I came home to die."
And it seemed to him that he was standing in front of a bronze statue that guards the entrance to the cathedral of his memory. This is the three-headed demiurge. The faces of his father, Toscanelli, Ginevra look at him; but it is Ginevra who speaks the words that will set him free from the world, the words recorded by Luke: "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine."
"No, Ginevra, I can't leave you. I love you. I haven't finished my work, my..."
The father's face frowns.
Leonardo lost.
The trees whirled beneath him, dancing as if uprooted from their roots. Again, the natural course of time was disrupted. Leonardo saw familiar faces; saw stones lying like diamonds in the black rough earth; tattered cirrus clouds behind which the sun shines; shrub on a mountain slope; plants with long leaves pierced by a clear thin web of veins.
Time stretched - and shrunk.
And the darkness behind his closed eyelids turned into twilight.
"Maybe I'm dead."
Nunc dimittis…
However, in the cozy darkness, Leonardo was able to take refuge in his cathedral of memory, a temple with many domes and chambers, not yet filled. He was safe in the recesses of his soul; and he ran from the portal to the tower, from the nave to the chapel, through clear, familiar memories, following the kite.
Thus, Leonardo appeared.
A long time ago.
As in a dream.
Part two
MATERIA
One managed to fall, the other to rise,
But the beam of dishonorable eyes was just as direct,
And in it their muzzles began to change.
Dante Alighieri
A savage is one who saves himself.
Leonardo da Vinci
Chapter 9
MEMENTO MORI
I die every day.
petrarch,
letter to Philippa de Cabassoles
Like the sun in a mirror, two-faced spirit
From the depths of her eyes flickers,
And the appearance is each time a different one of the two.
Dante Alighieri
Even after three weeks, the headaches did not stop.
Falling on the forest, Leonardo broke several ribs and received a concussion. He flew between the thick purple trunks of cypresses, tearing to shreds, like a rag, the wings, wood and belts of the Great Bird. His face was already turning black when Lorenzo's servants found him. He came to himself in his father's house; however, Lorenzo insisted that he be transferred to the Villa Carreggi, where he could be treated by the doctors of Pico della Mirandola. With the exception of Lorenzo's personal dentist, who, after soaking a sponge in opium, the juice of black nightshade and henbane, removed his broken tooth while Leonardo slept and dreamed of a fall, other doctors did nothing but change his bandages, put leeches, and even concocted his horoscope .
But in Carreggi, Leonardo cemented his relationship with Lorenzo. He, Sandro and Lorenzo swore to be brothers to each other - an innocent deceit, for the First Citizen believed no one but Giuliano and his mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni.
They also said that he trusted Simonetta.
Leonardo made several more important acquaintances at court, including making friends with Mirandola himself, who had considerable influence on the Medici family. To his surprise, Leonardo discovered that he and the son of the personal physician Cosimo de' Medici had a lot in common. Both of them secretly dissected corpses in the studios of Antonio Pollaiolo and Luca Signorelli, who were thought to ravage graves for their artistic and educational needs; and Leonardo was shocked to learn that Mirandola was also, in a way, a student of Toscanelli.
Nevertheless, Leonardo breathed more than freely when the plague finally receded and they were able to return to Florence. He was hailed as a hero because Lorenzo publicly announced from the balcony of the Palazzo Vecchio that the Vinci artist had indeed flown through the sky like a bird. But there were rumors among the educated that Leonardo actually fell from the sky, like Icarus, whom he was said to resemble very much in arrogance. He received an anonymous note that clearly reflected this point of view: "Victus honor" - "Honor to the vanquished."
Leonardo did not accept any of the countless invitations to balls, masquerades, parties. He was taken over by the fever of work. He filled three volumes with sketches and mirror recordings. Niccolo brought him food, and Andrea Verrocchio several times a day he went upstairs to look at his now famous student.
Well, haven't you had enough of your flying cars yet? he asked Leonardo one evening in the twilight.
The students downstairs were already having dinner, and Niccolò was hastily clearing a place on the table so that Andrea could place the two bowls of boiled meat he had brought. Leonardo's studio was, as always, in disarray, but the old flying machine, the insects pinned to the boards, the dissected mice and birds, the sketches of the wings, rudders, and valves for the Great Bird, were gone, replaced by new drawings, new mechanisms for testing the wing (for now the wings must were to remain motionless) and big models toy flying turntables that have been known since 1300. He experimented with Archimedean screws and studied the geometry of children's spinning tops to understand how the flywheel worked. In Leonardo's imagination, a propeller-driven machine was drawn. However, he could not help but think about the unnaturalness of such a mechanism, for the air is fluid, like water. And nature, the prototype of everything created by man, did not create rotational motion.
Leonardo pulled a toy spinner by the string, and a small four-bladed propeller screwed into the air, as if breaking all the laws of nature.
No, Andrea, I have not lost interest in this most sublime invention of mine. Gorgeous listened to my thoughts and believes that my next car will stay in the air.
Verrocchio's eyes followed the red pinwheel, which flew off to a pile of books.
And Lorenzo promised to pay you for these... experiments?
Such an invention could revolutionize the art of war! Leonardo didn't give up. - I experimented with arquebuses and sketched out a drawing of a giant ballista, a crossbow, which no one else could imagine, and came up with a cannon with rows of barrels, which ...
Of course, of course, - said Verrocchio. “But, I must tell you, it is unwise to trust Lorenzo's fleeting rapture.
Probably the First Citizen has an interest in military equipment not fleeting!
And that's why he ignored your earlier memorandum in which you developed the same ideas?
That was before, and that is now, - said Leonardo. - If Florence has to fight, Lorenzo will use my inventions. He himself told me.
Of course, Andrea nodded. And, after a pause, he said: - Stop fooling around, Leonardo. You are an artist, and an artist must paint pictures. Why don't you want to work on those orders that I offer you? You've turned down a lot of good customers already. You don't have any money, bad reputation available. You haven't even finished Our Lady of Madonna Simonetta.
I will have more than enough money when the world sees my flying machine soaring in the sky.
It's a miracle you survived, Leonardo. Do you want to look in the mirror? You almost broke your back. And you want to do it all over again? Or will only death stop you? - Verrocchio shook his head, as if annoyed at his own intemperance, and said softly: - You seem to need a firm hand. This is my fault. There was no way I could have let you do all this in the first place. Andrea waved his hand towards the Leonard mechanisms. “But your honor was at stake, and Lorenzo promised me that he would take care of you. He was completely fascinated by you.
Then the world in Italy will come to an end, - said Leonardo.
Well, that's too strong a word, said Andrea, but it will be difficult to turn all this to the benefit of Florence.
