Notebooks (46 page)
Authors: Leonardo da Vinci,Irma Anne Richter,Thereza Wells
Tags: #History, #Fiction, #General, #European, #Art, #Renaissance, #Leonardo;, #Leonardo, #da Vinci;, #1452-1519, #Individual artists, #Art Monographs, #Drawing By Individual Artists, #Notebooks; sketchbooks; etc, #Individual Artist, #History - Renaissance, #Renaissance art, #Individual Painters - Renaissance, #Drawing & drawings, #Drawing, #Techniques - Drawing, #Individual Artists - General, #Individual artists; art monographs, #Art & Art Instruction, #Techniques
It seems to me that coarse men of bad habits and little power of reason do not deserve so fine an instrument or so great a variety of mechanism as those endowed with ideas and great reasoning power, but merely a sack where food is received and whence it passes. For in truth they cannot be reckoned otherwise than as a passage for food, because it does not seem to me that they have anything in common with the human race except voice and shape. And all else is far below the level of beasts.
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III. LIFE OF THE SPIRIT37
And thou, man, who in this work of mine dost look upon the wonderful works of nature, if thou judgest it to be a criminal thing to destroy it, reflect how much more criminal it is to take the life of man; and if this external form appears to thee marvellously constructed, remember that it is as nothing compared with the soul that dwells in that structure; and in truth, whatever this may be, it is a thing divine. Leave it then to dwell in its work at its good pleasure, and let not thy rage and malice destroy such a life—for in truth he who values it not does not deserve it.
For we part from the body with extreme reluctance, and I indeed believe that its grief and lamentation are not without cause.
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The potencies are four: memory and intellect, appetite and concupiscence. The two first are of the reason, the others of the senses.
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The man who does not restrain wantonness, allies himself with beasts. It is easier to contend with evil at the beginning than at the end. You can have no greater and no smaller dominion than that over yourself.
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Ask advice of him who governs himself well.
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If you governed your body by the rules of virtue you would have no desire in this world.
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Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, you will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
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Where there is most feeling there is the greatest martyrdom.
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The highest happiness becomes the cause of unhappiness, and the fullness of wisdom the cause of folly.
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The part always has a tendency to unite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.
The soul’s desire is to remain with its body, because without the organic instruments of that body it can neither act nor feel.
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The soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body, but acts in the body like the wind which causes the sound of the organ, where if a pipe is spoiled, the wind would cease to produce a good result.
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Whoever would see how the soul dwells within its body let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation, for if this is without order and confused the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul.
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Cornelius Celsus*
The highest good is wisdom, the chief evil is suffering of the body. Seeing that we are made up of two things, that is soul and body, of which the first is the better and the body is the inferior, wisdom belongs to the better part; and the chief evil belongs to the worse part and is the worst. The best thing in the soul is wisdom, and even so the worst thing in the body is pain. Therefore just as bodily pain is the chief evil, so wisdom is the chief good of the soul, that is of the wise man; and nothing else can be compared to it.*
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Good men by nature wish to know.*
I know that many will call this useless work . . . men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind. For so much more worthy as the soul is than the body, so much more noble are the possessions of the soul than those of the body. And often, when I see one of these men take this work in his hand, I wonder that he does not put it to his nose, like a monkey, or ask me if it is something good to eat.
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If on delight your mind should feed.
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Pray hold me not in scorn! I am not poor!
Poor rather is the man who desires many things.
Where shall I take my place? Where in a little time from hence you shall know.
Do you answer for yourself! From henceforth in a little time. . . .
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Thou, O God, dost sell unto us all good things at the price of labour.*
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You do ill if you praise and worse still if you reprove, in a matter you do not understand.
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It is bad if you praise, and worse if you blame matters that you do not understand.
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To speak well of a base man is much the same as to speak ill of a good man.
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Envy wounds with false accusations, that is by detraction.
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Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
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Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
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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.
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The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
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He who does not punish evil commends it to be done. Justice requires power, insight, and will; and it resembles the queen-bee.
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And many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude.
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Pharisees—that is to say holy friars.
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The rest of the definition of the soul I leave to the imagination of the friars, those fathers of the people who by inspiration know all secrets. I leave alone the sacred books, for they are supreme truth.
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The lie is so vile, that even if it were speaking well of godly things it would take off something of God’s grace; and truth is so excellent that if it praises but small things, they become noble.
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness. And truth is so excellent in itself, that, even if it dwells on humble and lowly matter, it rises infinitely above the uncertainties and lies about high and lofty matters. Because in our minds, even if lying should be the fifth element, the truth about things will remain nevertheless the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits.
But you who live on dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so exalted.
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Conversation between the spirit and the intellect
A spirit finding again the brain whence it had departed, uttered with a loud voice these words:
O blessed and happy spirit, whence hast thou departed? Well have I known man and he is much against my liking! He is a receptacle of villainy; a perfect heap of the utmost ingratitude combined with every vice. But why do I fatigue myself using vain words? In him every form of sin is to be found. And if there should be found among men any that possess any good, they will not be treated differently from myself by other men; in fact I have come to the conclusion that it is bad if they are hostile, and worse if they are friendly.
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IV. ON GOVERNMENT58
When besieged by ambitious tyrants I find a means of offence and defence in order to preserve the chief gift of nature, which is liberty; and first I would speak of the position of the walls, and then of how the various peoples can maintain their good and just lords.
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Leonardo’s advice to the duke of Milan
All communities obey and are led by their magnates, and those magnates ally themselves with and are constrained by their lords in two ways, either by blood relationship or by a tie of property; blood relationship when their sons, like hostages, are a surety and a pledge against any suspicion of their faith; the tie of property when you let each of them build one or two houses within your city, from which he may draw some revenue; and he may also draw revenue from ten cities of five thousand houses with thirty thousand habitations; and you will disperse so great a concourse of people who, herding together like goats one upon the back of another filling every part with their stench, sow the seeds of pestilence and death. And the city will be of a beauty equal to its name, and useful to you for its revenues and the perpetual fame of its growth.
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VII
LEONARDO’S WAY THROUGH LIFE
Notes on Leonardo’s activities during the course of his life are arranged in chronological sequence below and include reflections, drafts of letters, references to friends, books, and journeys. In order to complete the picture and fill out the background to these disconnected notes, the dates of historical events and of occurrences that affected him personally, though not mentioned by him, have been added, using contemporary documents and Vasari’s account.
I. FIRST FLORENTINE PERIOD (c
. 1464/9 - 1482/3)
15 April 1452. Birth of Leonardo at Vinci, on the western slope of Mount Albano, near Empoli. The birth was recorded by his grandfather Antonio: ‘On Saturday at three o’clock at night on April 15 a grandson of mine was born, son of my son Piero. He was named Lionardo. The priest Piero of Bartolomeo da Vinci baptized him. . . .’ Here follow the names of ten witnesses of his baptism. He was born out of wedlock to a farmer’s daughter called Caterina, and his parents were parted after his birth. His mother was married to Accattabriga di Piero del Vacca of Vinci in 1453. His father, Ser Piero, married Albiera di Giovanni Amadoni in the same year that Leonardo was born. He sprang from a Florentine family, who owned a house at Vinci, and like his forefathers became a successful notary in Florence. Ser Piero was married four times and had nine sons and two daughters, all born after Leonardo had reached the age of 24. He had from the first acknowledged Leonardo as his son and brought him up in his house.
In the following note Leonardo recalled a dream from his infancy.
Writing about the kite seems to be my destiny since among the first recollections of my infancy it seemed to me that as I was in my cradle a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail and struck me several times with its tail inside my lips.*
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Vasari describes a boy who grew up among the vineyards of the Tuscan countryside, making intimate observations of nature. He relates that Leonardo painted a dragon on the shield of one of his father’s peasants and for this purpose carried into a room of his own lizards great and small, crickets, serpents, butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other animals, from which, variously put together, he composed a great and ugly creature. He grew up into a youth of shining promise, gifted in many directions. Besides developing his own style of drawing, he modelled heads of smiling women and children in clay which showed the hand of a master. He studied music, sang well, and played the lute.
In 1469 his father became notary of the Signoria in Florence and rented a house on the Piazza S. Firenze, not far from the Palazzo Vecchio. On arrival in Florence Leonardo became an apprentice in the studio of Andrea Verrocchio.
In 1471 Verrocchio’s workshop participated with others in the decorations for the festivities staged to welcome Galeazzo Maria Sforza, duke of Milan.
In 1472 Leonardo’s name was inscribed as a member of the Florentine guild, ‘Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci, dipintore’.
The first dated note in Leonardo’s hand is written on a landscape drawing in pen and ink, now in the Uffizi.
5 August 1473, the day of Santa Maria della Neve.
Among the pupils and associates in Verrocchio’s workshop were Domenico Ghirlandaio, Botticini, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, and the sculptor Agnolo di Polo.
In April 1476 he was living in Verrocchio’s house, as indicated by a judicial warrant of that date, which accused him and three other young Florentines of sodomy. The accusations were made anonymously and dismissed on the condition that they be brought up again on further evidence. In his distress Leonardo had addressed a petition to Bernardo di Simone Cortigiani, an influential head of the Florentine guilds.
You know as I have told you before, that I am without any of my friends.
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