The Hammock Papers: Wonder.

09 March 2015

Wonder.

Leonardo, Sketch for Crossbow, 1490

Leonardo da Vinci is best known as the painter of the immortal masterpieces, The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. But he was also a genius inventor, architect, physicist, geologist, civil engineer, military engineer, botanist, anatomist, mapmaker and musician. Inside the Mind of Leonardo is a visually dazzling two-part special that offers the viewer unparalleled exclusive access to da Vinci's revolutionary ideas and inventions, as he secretly recorded them in the famous Codex Atlanticus.

While just 21 paintings by da Vinci are in existence, 6,000 pages within his private journals have survived. This extraordinary treasure trove of sketches, designs and written passages embodies da Vinci's florid imagination, unbridled curiosity, keen insight, driving ambition and passionate obsessions with the natural world, engineering and innovation. A cherished and priceless cache from one of history's most talented artists and perceptive thinkers, the Codex Atlanticus represents da Vinci's deep, wildly varied and stunningly brilliant stream of consciousness.

The film also intriguingly reveals that the remarkably creative fruits of da Vinci's mind, based on his ground-breaking scientific investigations, often led to observations and conclusions that challenged or contradicted the Church's prevailing orthodoxy.

Directed by Julian Jones, Inside the Mind of Leonardo brings the wonder of da Vinci's cryptic Codex to life through breathtaking 3D photography and animated graphics, complimented by spectacular location videography, revealing and astute commentary from scholars and experts and a virtuoso performance from acclaimed actor Peter Capaldi as the enigmatic da Vinci himself.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL