The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoughts on Art and Life, by Leonardo da Vinci

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Title: Thoughts on Art and Life

Author: Leonardo da Vinci

Translator: Maurice Baring

Release Date: September 4, 2009 [EBook #29904]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOUGHTS ON ART AND LIFE ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE HUMANISTS' LIBRARY

Edited by Lewis Einstein

I

LEONARDO DA VINCI

THOUGHTS

ON ART AND LIFE

THOUGHTS

ON

ART AND LIFE

BY

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Translated

by

MAURICE BARING

Boston

The Merrymount Press

1906

Copyright, 1906, by D. B. Updike

A TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ix
I. Thoughts on Life 3
II. Thoughts on Art 59
III. Thoughts on Science 141
IV. Bibliographical Note 193
V. Table of References 194

{ix}

INTRODUCTION

* *
*

The long obscurity of the Dark Ages lifted over Italy, awakening to a
national though a divided consciousness. Already two distinct
tendencies were apparent. The practical and rational, on the one hand,
was soon to be outwardly reflected in the burgher-life of Florence and
the Lombard cities, while at Rome it had even then created the civil
organization of the curia. The novella was its literary triumph. In
art it expressed itself simply, directly and with vigour. Opposed to
this was the other great undercurrent in Italian life, mystical,
religious and speculative, which had run through the nation from the
earliest times, and received fresh volume from mediaeval Christianity,
encouraging ecstatic mysticism to drive to frenzy the population of its
mountain cities. Umbrian painting is inspired by it, and the glowing
words of Jacopone da Todi expressed in poetry the same religious
fervour which the life of Florence and Perugia bore witness to in
action.

Italy developed out of the relation and conflict of these two forces
the rational with the mystical. Their later union in the greater men
was to {x} f