Leonardo Da Vinci - Introduction

Head of a bearded man (so-called Self-portrait, c. 1510/1515)

Introduction

More than a century before Galileo, one man succeeded in overcoming the age-old distinction between the contem­plative and active life, between science and craft, through a unique synthesis of scientific investigation and artistic expres­sion. For his work in which he employed physical experimentation, mathematics and reason, he has been called the first modern engi­neer. He anticipated many inventions which would be realised only much later, such as the airplane, the submarine, the parachute, the armoured car. But the fact that he broke entirely with the medieval Aristotelian tradition and started a new quantitative and experi­mental approach to a new science of matter is what makes him the forerunner of early modern scientists like Galileo, Francis Bacon, William Harvey, Nicolaus Copernicus and Isaac Newton.^* This man was Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo's lifetime was a period of great cultural turmoil, marked by such notable events as the introduction of the printing press (1455), the discovery of America (1492) and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation ( 1517). The Renaissance, which means a "rebirth" of ancient Greek and Roman culture, marked the de­cline of the Middle Ages and laid the foundations of modern times.

* Even though there is no direct connection between Leonardo and these early modern scientists, because none of his writings were published before 1651, there is nevertheless no doubt that Leonardo's widespread fame as an artist and engineer had a strong influence on many scientifically and philosophically-oriented thinkers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) at least was raised in the same intellectual climate of central and northern Renaissance Italy.

The humanists were originally university teachers of rhetoric, grammar, poetry and history, but came to include educated laymen, civil servants and merchants. To the humanists, the ideal individual was one equipped with intellectual and practical skills, and viewed as the conscious mover of his own fate. To them, the aim of life was success and fulfilment in the world, not beyond it. This new image of man as an active individual striving rationally towards worldly success began to replace the medieval world-view which was cen­tred around religion and conceived of man's earthly existence as a mere preparation and test for the promised life after death.

Simultaneously, the Aristotelian scholars who constituted the scientific community during the Middle Ages began a critical reflec­tion on their traditional approach to science. Aristotelian science was based on daily-life experience and common sense and operated in a closed world — the earth as its centre — about which every­thing to be known had already been expounded by the great phi-

* The first scientific academy, the Academia Secretorum Naturae, was founded in Italy by the natural philosopher Giambattista della Porta in 1560. The final institutionalisa­tion of modern science is generally attributed to the foundation of the Royal Society in England in 1662, and to the Academie des Sciences in France in 1669.

The modern image of man originated in Renaissance philosophy and particular influ­ence can be found in the works of humanists like Petrarch (De Remedius Utriusque Fortunae, 1366), Leon Battista Alberti (Della Famiglia, — On the Family — 1444), and Pico della Mirandola (De Dignitate Hominis, — On the Dignity of Man — 1486). The final dominance of this utilitarian image of man oriented around worldly success can be found in Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.

The secular nation-states of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France, England and Spain replaced Papal and feudal power.

The third movement contributing to the cultural change from the Middle Ages to modern times involved the Renaissance artists and craftsmen who were originally manual workers like painters (white-washers), masons and blacksmiths. Usually they lacked any formal education and had to rely exclusively on the knowledge transmitted orally through their guilds, and on their own experience and skill. Engaged in solving practical problems of construction and decor, they began to apply mathematics and experimentation as in­dispensable tools for their work. They found that the artist's freedom to create was limited by nature's own rules, and hence saw that a thorough knowledge of the hidden structure of reality was a neces­sary condition for any artificial recreation by the artist.

Leonardo da Vinci belonged to this third group. He received only a very basic formal education and was thirty years old when he finally learned Latin, a necessary tool since most books of these days were written in Latin. Yet his broad interest in scientific mat­ters makes him an outstanding exception among the craftsmen and painters of his time. Leonardo transcended all traditional bound­aries between science and art, and in the process raised both fields to new heights.