Read Online Leonardo Da Vinci by Kathleen Krull - Free Book Online

Leonardo to see patterns not always there. In his most famous drawing, the anatomically correct Vitruvian Man, he showed how the human body could be both a square and a circle. These shapes, he theorized, formed the basis of everything in the world. In this case, his theory was incorrect—another example of his seeing too much interconnection.
    Sadly, he never gained mastery over mathematics, especially algebra. He even occasionally made basic mistakes in his arithmetic. He’d add up a list of numbers in his notebooks—and come up with the wrong total.
    But in whatever he was investigating, Leonardo accepted nothing at face value. His theories were based on observation, documentation, and proof: “There is nothing more deceptive than to rely on your own opinion, without any other proof.”
    In the thousands upon thousands of pages in the notebooks, he was thinking like a scientist.

CHAPTER TEN
    “I Have Wasted My Hours”
    FROM 1500, WHEN Leonardo turned orty-eight, until just before his death in 1519, he was essentially homeless. Without even a country to ground him, he lived at times from day to day. A steady, sympathetic patron was once again proving elusive.
    Traveling about with his small household made up of Salai and Luca Pacioli, he tried, within his limited means, to act the part of a refined aristocrat. He had the best horses. His servants were always well dressed, and he himself wore brocade and other fine fabrics.
    In his trunks were precious cargo, forty books and his secret notebooks, except when he thought he might be in personal danger. Then he would leave them in a monastery, with someone he knew, for safe-keeping.
    At least one observer noticed that he had grown “weary of the paintbrush.” He often turned commissions over to his assistants. The reason to accept art commissions was to finance his experiments. He spent his days observing, measuring, dissecting, questioning, weighing, and analyzing—and cataloging it all in his notebooks.
    In Florence, after the overthrow of the pleasure-loving, free-thinking Medici in 1494, the most powerful person was a teacher of religion named Girolamo Savonarola. In 1496, he staged a mass burning of what he considered immoral books and works of art. Luckily, only a few trusted friends knew about Leonardo’s notebooks, or even of his interest in science. But many of his friends, labeled decadent, suffered under Savonarola.
    For a while Leonardo designed weapons and fortresses for the most notorious of Italian war-lords, Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna. Duke Borgia was out to conquer all the city-states of Italy, murdering anyone who stood in his way. Many historians have noted the irony here: Leonardo, who despised war and called it “ bestialissima pazzia”— beastly madness—working for such brutal bosses. But this was the highest-status work available to him. He couldn’t afford to turn it down, and he was genuinely interested in devising anything mechanical. In this case, the job gave him the liberty to explore libraries and meet intellectuals all over Italy. He became friends with Niccolò Machiavelli, the important Italian political writer and statesman.
    Wherever he traveled, he drew gorgeous maps, depicting geography with more detail and accuracy than any previous cartographers. But after nine months, Borgia’s atrocities may have proved too upsetting to Leonardo, who quit his post.
    In 1504, he was invited to depict a Florentine battle victory for the city’s town hall. His archrival, the twenty-nine-year-old Michelangelo, was invited to paint another battle scene at the same time on another wall in the same room.
    The two geniuses had never gotten along. Michelangelo showed no interest in science, which to Leonardo meant his art was inferior. Michelangelo had once publicly insulted the older artist for his habit of leaving things unfinished. Leonardo, for possibly the first time in his life, had no instant come-back. He just blushed.
    Leonardo put