Produced by Al Haines THE HUMANISTS' LIBRARY Edited by Lewis Einstein I LEONARDO DA VINCI THOUGHTS ON ART AND LIFE THOUGHTS ON ART AND LIFE BY LEONARDO DA VINCI Translated by MAURICE BARING Boston The Merrymount Press 1906 Copyright, 1906, by D. B. Updike A TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ix I. Thoughts on Life 3 II. Thoughts on Art 59 III. Thoughts on Science 141 IV. Bibliographical Note 193 V. Table of References 194 {ix} INTRODUCTION * * * The long obscurity of the Dark Ages lifted over Italy, awakening to a national though a divided consciousness. Already two distinct tendencies were apparent. The practical and rational, on the one hand, was soon to be outwardly reflected in the burgher-life of Florence and the Lombard cities, while at Rome it had even then created the civil organization of the curia. The novella was its literary triumph. In art it expressed itself simply, directly and with vigour. Opposed to this was the other great undercurrent in Italian life, mystical, religious and speculative, which had run through the nation from the earliest times, and received fresh volume from mediaeval Christianity, encouraging ecstatic mysticism to drive to frenzy the population of its mountain cities. Umbrian painting is inspired by it, and the glowing words of Jacopone da Todi expressed in poetry the same religious fervour which the life of Florence and Perugia bore witness to in action. Italy developed out of the relation and conflict of these two forces the rational with the mystical. Their later union in the greater men was to {x} form the art temperament of the Renaissance. The practical side gave it the firm foundation of rationalism and reality on which it rested; the mystical guided its endeavour to picture the unreal in terms of ideal beauty.