What would Leonardo do?
In 2012 I convened a semester-long, rolling, symposium titled “After the Deluge: Reimagining Leonardo’s Legacy.” Based on the fact that many U VA faculty members, across Grounds, incorporated the topic of water into their research, the theme of water helped focus the symposium. We began with a session titled “Fluidity,” then followed it with “The Rising,” “The Contaminated,” and “The Disappearing,” (the latter three from a taxonomy suggested by Seth McDowell who was inspired by Hieronymous Bosch’s Deliverance from the Deluge). The presentations, and the robust discussions following each, focused on commonalities of the creative process as it unfolded across disciplines, were inspiring. They led to an A-School Monograph of the same title, published in 2014.
After completing the symposium series and summarizing it in the subsequent monograph, I began to read more about Leonardo Da Vinci. Walter Isaacson’s encyclopedic Leonardo Da Vinci had just been published, and I learned much more about Da Vinci’s life story, his festival designs, and the sweep of his creativity. I also read The Science of Leonardo, by Fritjof Capra, a fascinating, more focused study of Leonardo’s contributions to science and his methods of study. In Flow, author Philip Ball devoted a chapter to “The Man Who Loved Fluids, Leonardo’s Legacy.”
May 2nd of this year, 2019, marks the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, and festivals of recognition are being planned around the world. It seems an especially propitious time to consider Leonardo’s legacy, and to try to reimagine its lessons for a new time.
Leonardo’s curiosity was insatiable, and he developed methods to discipline his inquiries. He made lists. He would include on his to-do list curious items like “describe the tongue of a woodpecker,” or the goal of determining “what nerve is the cause of the eye’s movement and makes the movement of one eye move the other?” He kept notes of his investigations, and freely expressed his observations using words or drawings, as appropriate. He initiated topic-specific monographs, though he did not complete them.
His drawings, for which he is as widely known as his relatively few completed paintings, are stunningly accurate, and synthetic. They explain why things are, as well as what they are. He juxtaposed drawings of apparently unlike things—braided hair and a whirlpool, for example—relying on visual similarities or speculated similarities of form. He developed techniques to explain anatomical relationships, discovered through his dissections, then communicated using architectural drawing conventions. By using plans, sections, and cutaway axonometrics to demonstrate human anatomy, he greatly contributed to the invention of synthetic orthographic drawing.
He jumped scales, focusing on flood control in the threatened Po Valley, or eddies in whirlpools he had observed. He studied fluid dynamics using laboratory tests he invented to understand water’s flows. He also crossed subject-specific disciplines, from military engineering to portrait painting. His curiosity, genius, and energy knew no boundaries.
And yet, he completed very little. We know of his notebooks because his estate’s executor sold them to varied collectors. Only hundreds of years later are they being rediscovered and recombined to form his body of work. While he lived comfortably, often with the patronage of royal personages, he was not hugely influential during his lifetime. Like many, he was jealous of rivals, and dismayed over lost commissions. He largely avoided the political intrigues of his time, aligning himself with those most helpful to him personally.
So what can we learn from Leonardo, and how can we extend the best of his legacy to reconnect the world, as he did so brilliantly?
First, Leonardo drove his own agenda. His curiosity, and his ambitions, led him to speculate widely, and to produce prolific evidence of his inquiries. He learned by making, and he studied things he--not only his patrons or the trends of the day—found important or interesting.
Second, he worked continuously. While his biographers say he did not work obsessively—taking time to relax with friends, for example—over the course of his life he generated an enormous body of work.
Third, he worked with great attention to detail. His drawings are done with obvious care, as well as a good hand. His designs for machines, fantastic for their time, are thoroughly considered from a mechanical perspective. His theoretical speculations are creative, but always driven by and often extending the facts known about the world at his time.
At the same time, his radical creations did not change his world in his own time.
What would Leonardo do today?