Leonardo DaVinci – Monday 21st August 2023

Leonardo DaVinci – Monday 21st August 2023

When dealing with developmental delay and learning disabilities, you often have to skim through subjects and tend to learn as needed, so unfortunately art, or my knowledge of, is quite limited. Vincent van Gogh and Leonardo DaVinci are generally the artists most known to me.
With VVG it’s his artwork that stands out to me, whereas with LDV, it’s about the man himself. (Though I realise his artwork is exceptional).
I knew a little about him that sufficiently convinced me that he was different. Today I did some further reading and my first thought was, ‘he never married’, I checked and indeed that was so. He had no children, no wife, yet he had a dozen? siblings.
I learnt that his mother was just 15 years old when he was born and unmarried, his father was married (several times) hence the number of children.
This would have caused Leonardo to feel different to his siblings I would think, he lived with his mother till age 5 and then his father took him to live at his home. This must have been very difficult, leaving his mother and I wonder if his siblings treated him as one of them… knowing how children can sometimes be,
I suspect not, but his artistic self thankfully would have kept him engrossed. You get the sense that Leonardo and his mother had no say in their lives and their feelings didn’t matter. This would have been detrimental for a sensitive little boy on the personal relationship level.

His father realised Leonardo had a special artistic ability and sent him off to live and train with a well known artist, when he was about 14 years old.
My feeling is that Leonardo understood his art was valued, but possibly not himself so much. There isn’t mention of his siblings having much contact with him, so again, one gets the sense that Leonardo is connecting with people purely on the artistic level, but that his personal life is almost non-existent.
He was a perfectionist when he painted and would spend years on a single painting. Sometimes, people would cancel their commission with him, probably due to the length of time he needed to spend on a painting and then some commissions he never completed. His writing showed the same perfection. No errors, extremely neat and uniform. I think a page would have taken him hours to write and yet a single error on the last line would have (I feel) had him rewrite the whole page. Thats what I see when I look at Leonardo’s writing. Were he alive now a secretary would type his letters, leaving him more time for his work. The writing of his notes that he wrote backwards, again so very neat and compact.
I would like to know when exactly he began writing his notes in this reverse style, because I find myself wondering if it commenced shortly after his arrest.
This incident, I believe, must have devastated him. I don’t get the sense he was gay, not at all. I don’t think he wanted that kind of relationship with a man or a woman, I think he was so spiritual and driven with his work, that he was celibate and just wanted plutonic, meaningful friendships. Which could then suggest that his arrest may have been orchestrated. His painting was so beautiful, yet he had no wealth. An envious person so inclined, could have instigated his arrest. Leonardo did apparently spend a short time in prison and goodness knows what happened to him while there, this incredibly talented, young, sensitive man. And of course he would have been so terribly anxious about his writings and drawings and work whilst being incarcerated.
The charge was later dismissed and upon his release, Leonardo promptly disappeared for some years. It reminded me of Snow White having to run away and hide. Something very serious went on there and he probably felt afraid for many years. Reading his writing today and how much he loved animals and how cruelty toward them upset him so, I certainly related to his feelings, as most of us can, but reading his writing showed a very special and spiritual person with strong feelings about unfairness etc. and indicating that he had to keep his thoughts to himself for his own safety.

I noted that when he painted or sketched women, he did so lovingly, yet in his sketches of certain men, he made them look hideous, as if to match their outward appearance to how he saw their inward selves. When it came to particular men, he certainly didn’t seem too impressed. I feel he was too fearful to say what he thought of them though, so he drew them instead.

He would be gratified to know how his paintings are cherished all these centuries gone by. They were very difficult times he lived in, yet he was driven to do his work and his art and his mind loved thinking and building and creating his ideas, which were so far ahead of his time. I think it wore him out, but what an amazing and interesting man he was.
Fiona MacLeod (C)