Leonardo, Study of Violets, 1485
He’s titanic, god-size, this painter-sculptor-draftsman-architect-inventor-writer who was also a self-taught physicist, botanist, zoologist, musician, moral philosopher and ballistics expert.
But he’s also human, our size. He was a chronic procrastinator; he was bad at languages; he was a left-hander who wrote in a quirky, backward script. He was one of Western culture’s sublime geeks.
He seems to have lived in a state of perpetual brainstorming, as if life were a theoretical proposition to be tested daily.
Did he ever power down, take a vacation? Maybe, but his version of kicking back was our version of doing extra homework. His observational curiosity was unsleeping, and he carried notebooks everywhere. Anything that crossed his eye, from bugs to battlements, was worth dwelling on, sketching, writing about, thinking about, figuring out.
CONNECT
But he’s also human, our size. He was a chronic procrastinator; he was bad at languages; he was a left-hander who wrote in a quirky, backward script. He was one of Western culture’s sublime geeks.
He seems to have lived in a state of perpetual brainstorming, as if life were a theoretical proposition to be tested daily.
Did he ever power down, take a vacation? Maybe, but his version of kicking back was our version of doing extra homework. His observational curiosity was unsleeping, and he carried notebooks everywhere. Anything that crossed his eye, from bugs to battlements, was worth dwelling on, sketching, writing about, thinking about, figuring out.
CONNECT
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