“The Great Prophet” Leonardo da Vinci

“The Great Prophet” Leonardo da Vinci

1. Leonardo da Vinci cannot be easily categorized or defined. While he achieved immense artistic accomplishments, he was merely an “amateur painter.” His contributions to science were enormous, with many of his designs not realized during his time, yet they appeared in modern times. From Leonardo’s understanding of painting, religion, and the world, we can see that in that era of ignorance, he persistently upheld the scientific spirit, using the exploration of nature to guide his worldview. Looking back at Leonardo from today’s perspective, he stands as a great prophet, insightful into all things.
2. Leonardo believed that painting should be precise. His anatomical studies became the foundation for his accurate depiction in art. Throughout his life, he dissected over thirty corpses, ranging from pregnant women to infants and even centenarians. Some have even speculated that Leonardo had a “necrophilic” obsession because of this. Through these dissections, he gained the earliest understanding of human embryos and was the first to propose the concept of cardiovascular diseases. These discoveries have had immeasurable contributions to modern medicine.
3. Leonardo regarded painting as a method of studying nature rather than just an art form. His culmination of anatomical knowledge was expressed in his famous “Vitruvian Man” sketch, created around 1487. In this sketch, Leonardo connected biology and geometry, drawing the human body in its perfect proportions. This reflects his advanced, timeless understanding of the human body, physiology, mathematics, and geometry.
4. Leonardo’s approach of using painting as a tool to study nature is also evident in his many unfinished works and manuscripts. The reason these works remained incomplete is that he used sketches as a way to study specific problems. Once the problem was resolved, there was no need to finish the drawing as a research tool. In terms of quantity, Leonardo left fewer than 20 oil paintings but over 7,500 pages of manuscripts. This shows that he viewed painting as a tool for research, and one could even say that he tested his understanding and imagination of scientific knowledge through his art.
5. Leonardo’s understanding of painting is most clearly demonstrated in his treatise “On Painting.” In this book, Leonardo not only summarized his lifetime of experience and wrote numerous notes on painting, but also discussed his artistic philosophy. He believed that the essence of painting and science was the same, both based on sensory perception. The earliest beginnings of science stem from curiosity and sensory understanding of the natural world, and painting is no different. Furthermore, Leonardo believed that both painting and science could be calculated and derived using precise mathematics. For example, perspective in painting is essentially an application of geometry.
6. While Leonardo acknowledged the relationship between painting and science, he was quite dismissive of sculpture. He preferred purely rational artistic creation, and to him, sculpture seemed like manual labor. It didn’t involve the high-level techniques such as calculations and perspective found in painting, but rather just hammering and chiseling. Additionally, Leonardo was an extremely elegant person and found sculpture unappealing due to the messiness it involved. He felt the entire creative process was unsanitary and far from the image of a graceful artist.
7. Leonardo’s prophetic existence can also be seen in his attitude towards religion. Leonardo lived in a society dominated by religion, where even art masters like Michelangelo were deeply influenced by religion and couldn’t escape its grasp. But Leonardo was entirely irreligious. Not only did he conduct numerous studies that opposed religion, such as his research on heliocentrism and human dissections, but he also showed no signs of remorse. Even regarding issues such as homosexuality, which was forbidden by the church, he remained unaffected, unlike many others who were deeply troubled by it.