11 myths about Leonardo da Vinci you shouldn't believe in

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you want to know who is actually depicted in the painting "Mona Lisa" and whether its author was a predictor of the future and a vegetarian, you are here.

1. Da Vinci is a surname

Let's start with the simplest, but also the most common misconception. When the majority hears the name of the artist, they think that da Vinci is a surname. However, in reality it means "from Vinci" - there is such an Italian city in Tuscany, in the vicinity of Florence. It still exists, and the house where Leonardo was born houses his museum.

The artist's full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, that is, "Leonardo, son of Monsieur Piero of Vinci."

Fun fact: he had a complete namesake in history - Leonardo Vinci. By the nature of his work, the composer became famous for his operas. Vinci ended up being poisoned by her husband after an unsuccessful affair with a girl. That's about whom Pushkin should have written a tragedy, and not produce fakes about Mozart and Salieri.

2. Leonardo was a vegetarian

Very often, fans of the vegetarian diet claim that Leonardo also followed it. He allegedly never ate meat, and his beliefs hated killing animals for food. Some see da Vinci's rise to such heights as a sign that a vegetarian diet has a positive effect on intelligence.

The artist is even credited with the following quote:

Truly, man is the king of beasts, because his cruelty surpasses them. We live on the death of others. We are walking cemeteries! I gave up meat from an early age, and the time will come when people will look at killing animals the same way they view killing a person.

Sounds cool, of course, but old Leo didn't say that. This is an excerpt from the novel by Russian writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky "The Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci ". And apparently, the myth that Leonardo was a vegetarian appeared precisely thanks to this book.

There is no convincing evidence that da Vinci did not eat meat. He was fond of Note di cucina di Leonardo da Vinci, Da Vinci's Kitchen: A Secret History of Italian Cuisine, cookery, worked for 13 years as a court feast manager in Milan and created his own recipe "from Leonardo" - a thinly sliced stew with vegetables on top. The dish was very popular.

In addition, Leonardo has invented several cooking gadgets to make the work of cooks easier, including an automatically rotating spit. Was Was Leonardo Da Vinci a Vegetarian among da Vinci's papers? shopping lists that mentioned wine, meat and cheese.

So the idea that Leonardo invented vegetarianism back in the Renaissance is untenable.

3. Leonardo's diaries are carefully encrypted

Da Vinci left behind a large number of notes and diaries - today there are approximately 13,000 pages of handwritten text with drawings.

Fans of alternative history claim that they contain all the secrets of the universe, which the great artist and thinker comprehended centuries earlier than official science. But reading these invaluable notes is still a task. After all, Leonardo, who did not want the treasures of his wisdom to fall into the wrong hands, carefully encrypted them.

To this day, scientists are struggling to decipher the "da Vinci code" and have unraveled only a small part …

So, this is absolute nonsense. Da Vinci did not use any codes or ciphers. His strange handwriting is not a cipher, but a mirrored letter. This is a very real, albeit uncommon phenomenon. Most often, left-handed people can write and read reflected letters. According to one study, 15% of them can do this.

In addition, brain injury or neurological diseases such as essential tremor, Parkinson's disease, or cerebellar degeneration sometimes cause people to write in mirror image.

Da Vinci was ambidextrous, but he wrote with his left hand, with mirrored text from right to left - apparently, simply because it was more convenient for him. In addition, he did not smear the charcoal and ink on the paper this way.

No deciphering of his writing is required: it is enough to bring a mirror to the page. Or take a picture, drive it into Paint and click the "Flip Vertical" button.

But if he wanted to, Leo wrote normally - for example, this is how he scribbled a letter to his employer, Duke Lodovico Sforza. In it, he stated that he could build “cannons, mortars, catapults, ships that would withstand the fire of all the heaviest cannons, means of burning and destroying enemy bridges, cannon-covered wagons, as well as an infinite number of bridges, climbing ladders and others. tools.

And he added: “Besides, I can sculpt sculptures from marble, bronze and clay; painting is also subject to me, in which my works are able to withstand comparison with the creations of any other master, whoever he may be”.

As you can see, Leonardo did not suffer from false modesty. True, he never built the promised mortars, tanks and armored battleships for the Duke. So later, the possession of Sforza was captured by King Louis XII - and the defeated duke had to spend the rest of his life in captivity in France, in the castle of Loches. So trust these free artists.

4. Leonardo did not read books …

It is believed that da Vinci did not like books, preferring to study everything on his own experience. He called himself omo sanza lettere - "a man without letters." And argued that it is better to study nature, and not moldy tomes.

Whoever has access to the fountain does not go to the water pot.

Leonardo da Vinci

From this statement, some opponents of the education system conclude that reading books is optional. Da Vinci himself says that he does not read anything, but he became a great intellectual and polymath. So, well, these books are not in them the truth.

However, in fact, this is another bike from the category "Einstein was a Losers." Among Leonardo's notes, a list of his literature stored in his home in Milan - 116 volumes was discovered. In addition, he often borrowed books from libraries and friends.

Da Vinci read not only scientific tomes, but also knightly novels, and Aesop's fables. Among his favorite authors are Plato, Aristotle, Strabo, Archimedes, Frontino, Alberto Magno, Alberto Saxon, as well as Dante Alighieri, Ristoro d'Arezzo and Cecco d'Ascoli.

And the fact that Leonardo called himself omo sanza lettere only means that he did not read Latin, which all self-respecting scientists of that time should have known. Da Vinci kept his notes in his native Italian.

However, already in adulthood, at the age of 30, Leo independently mastered Latin, and also took up mathematics and geometry for the first time, studying them with enviable persistence. It is unlikely that he would have been able to do this without fundamentally opening books. So a dislike for reading is clearly not a sign of a "second da Vinci".

5. … but managed to come up with his own proof of the Pythagorean theorem

Most likely, from school in your memory, it was deposited in your memory that the sum of the squares of the lengths of the legs is equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse. This is the Pythagorean theorem used to calculate the sides of right-angled triangles. There are several mathematical justifications for this theorem, one of which is called Leonardo da Vinci's proof. If you are interested, you can find it.

He's a versatile person, isn't he? He also excelled in geometry.

True, there is one small but. Leo did indeed work on the proof of the Pythagorean theorem in his manuscript entitled The Code of Arundel. He tried to illustrate it - and not in two-dimensional, but in three-dimensional projection. But he didn’t work out anything sensible, and he abandoned the search for a solution, putting the rest of the sheet under the candlestick patterns.

"Leonardo da Vinci's Proof" actually belongs to Johann Tobias Mayer, a German physicist, astronomer and mathematician. He opened it in 1772.

Why was the evidence credited to Leo? Probably because everyone knows da Vinci, and Mayer is only German students who prepared for exams using his textbooks.

6. "Mona Lisa" is a portrait of Leonardo himself. Or his lover. Or Jesus Christ, with high cholesterol levels

Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, is da Vinci's most famous painting. For a long time, art critics were not quite sure who, in fact, Leonardo captured in this portrait. It was suggested that it was Caterina Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Milan, Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan, Pacifika Brandano (Giuliano Medici's mistress) or some other noble lady.

People with a developed imagination claimed that Leo portrayed himself in the picture - he simply invented gender-changing filters before FaceApp appeared. Others believe that this is a portrait of a disguised Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed Salai, a student and, possibly, lover of da Vinci (yes, there is a version that the maestro preferred curly-haired boys, although there is no exact evidence).

Those who are especially filled with knowledge generally prove that this is a portrait of Jesus Christ (whom Leonardo, of course, knew by sight) or Yahweh himself. It is enough to lean a mirror against the left half of the Mona Lisa and you will see the face of the Lord.

Smaller finds: American artist and designer Ron Picchirillo turned the Mona Lisa on its side and found the heads of a lion, a monkey and a buffalo in the outlines of clouds in the background. And doctor Vito Franco from the University of Palermo even managed to put the model of Leonardo, whoever he or she was, from a portrait, diagnosed with xanthelasma. That is, a subcutaneous accumulation of cholesterol, in this case, next to the left eye.

Well, about the personality of the model, all the controversy, at least among serious scientists, ended in 2005 when the notes of the artist Agostino Vespucci, an assistant to Niccolo Machiavelli, with whom Leonardo was friends, were discovered. He wrote: "Now da Vinci is working on three paintings, one of which is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini."

Lisa Gherardini, or Lisa del Giocondo, is the wife of the fabric merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo. He ordered a portrait of his wife as a gift in honor of the birth of their second son Andrea.

And yes, whether Lisa had high cholesterol levels - we are unlikely to find out. However, it is not a fact that Dr. Franco's diagnosis is correct. After all, over the course of five centuries, this painting has undergone several unsuccessful restorations, so its accuracy is probably inferior to X-rays. As for mirror reflections and flips, pareidolia is common to most people, and it forms a variety of images.

7. "La Gioconda" is painted on canvas

By the way, here's something else interesting about the most famous painting in the world. "Mona Lisa" for its popularity is very much loved by various writers, filmmakers and other people of art who constantly place it in their works.

For example, it is "Mona Lisa" that is torn to pieces in Ray Bradbury's story "Smile".

Blindly imitating the others, he stretched out his hand, grabbed a piece of glossy canvas, tugged and fell, and shocks and kicks knocked him out of the crowd and into the wild. He was covered in abrasions, his clothes were torn, he watched how the old women chewed pieces of canvas, how the men broke the frame, kicked the hard rags with their feet, tore them into small, small pieces …

… Only now his hand loosened its grip. Quietly, carefully, listening to the movements of the sleeping, Tom lifted her up. He hesitated, took a deep, deep breath, then, all the anticipation, unclenched his fingers and smoothed out a piece of painted canvas. The world was asleep, illuminated by the moon. And on his palm lay a Smile.

Ray Bradbury "Smile"

As a reference to this story and Bradbury's other work - Fahrenheit 451 - Mona Lisa is destroyed, this time with a flamethrower, and in the dystopian film Equilibrium. And also in the novel by Chuck Palahniuk "Fight Club":

I wanted to burn down the Louvre. Hammer the Greek collection in the British Museum with a hammer and wipe with the Mona Lisa. From now on, this world belongs to me!

Chuck Palahniuk "Fight Club"

Just fun fact: Leo wrote the painting on a poplar board. It is unlikely that you will be able to tear it apart and even more so use it instead of toilet paper.

8. Leonardo invented the bicycle

Da Vinci invented and sketched a lot of all sorts of progressive things for his time, including a tank, a submarine, a helicopter, an ornithopter and a parachute. True, during Leonardo's lifetime, only one of his inventions was embodied in metal: a wheel lock for a pistol. The rest remained on paper. Yes, and there are doubts: perhaps the castle was not designed by Leo, but by some unknown German.

But among all the notions of da Vinci, the one that stands out the most is his … bicycle! Take a look at a tank or a helicopter by Leonardo: they are completely different from their modern counterparts, only the principle of operation is guessed. But the bike is like a real one.

Historian Hans Erhard Lessing researched this sketch and found that the bicycle was drawn in Leonardo's Atlantic Codex by a monk from the monastery of Grottaferrata, where the manuscript was kept. Moreover, he is almost our contemporary - the picture appeared in the period from 1966 to 1969.

Why did the clergyman climb to add gagging to da Vinci's works? Apparently he wanted to joke. Or give compatriots a reason to be proud. As writer and director Curzio Malaparte said:

“In Italy, the bicycle belongs to the national artistic heritage, just like Leonardo's Mona Lisa, St. Peter's dome or The Divine Comedy. It is surprising that it was not invented by Botticelli, Michelangelo or Raphael."

But here the Germans bypassed the Italians: the first semblance of a bicycle was created not by da Vinci, but by a German professor - Baron Karl von Drez - in 1817.

9. Leonardo portrayed Christ on the Turin shroud

The Shroud of Turin is a piece of cloth that depicts the face and body of a man. Many Christians consider it a shrine. Allegedly, the body of the Savior was wrapped in it after the crucifixion, and the image of God was imprinted on it.

A couple of writers, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, have hypothesized that the Shroud is in fact another Leonardo's masterpiece. And even a whole book about it dashed off.

However, the radiocarbon analysis of the Shroud will upset both devout believers and supporters of Leonardo's sacrament. Documentary mentions of this artifact first appeared in 1353 in France, a century and a half before the birth of da Vinci. And the fabric of the shroud was woven in the 13th or 14th century.

So either da Vinci was not involved in the creation of the shroud, or he created another undocumented invention: the time machine.

10. Leonardo predicted the future like Nostradamus

In his diaries, Leo left a lot of very peculiar Prediction phrases, which some of his fans interpret as prophecies. Da Vinci is said to have predicted:

1. The invention of the telephone: "People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other."
2. The emergence of bank cards: "Invisible coins will make those who spend them triumph."
3. Oil production and wars for black gold: "Countless lives will be destroyed, and countless holes will be made in the earth."
4. The invention of aviation: "Feathers will lift people like birds to heaven."
5. The numerous plane crashes that followed: “Many can be seen rushing on large animals in a fast run towards the destruction of their own lives and speedy death. Animals of different colors will be visible through the air and on the ground, carrying people to the destruction of their lives."
6. Numerous human casualties due to impending terrible epidemics: "Oh, how many there will be those who, after their death, will rot in their own homes, filling the area with a fetid odor."
7. And, as befits any self-respecting fortuneteller, Leo also prophesied Apocalypse with the death of the human race: “People will think that they are seeing new calamities in heaven; it will seem to them that they are flying up to heaven and, leaving it in fear, are saving themselves from the fires erupting from it; they will hear beasts of every kind speak the human language; they will be their own person instantly scatter to different parts of the world, not moving from their place; they will see the greatest radiance in the darkness. About the miracle of human nature! What is this madness that captivates you so much? You will speak with animals of any breed, and they will speak with you in human language. You will see yourself falling from great heights without any harm to you. Waterfalls will accompany you …"

Imbued with the atmosphere? But in fact, these are not prophecies, but riddles. The answers are given immediately, in Leonardo's notes:

1. "On the writing of letters from one country to another."
2. "About monks who, by wasting words, receive great riches and give paradise."
3. "On mowing the grass."
4. "That is, the writing created by these nibs."
5. "About soldiers on horseback."
6. "About shells and snails, rejected by the sea and rotting in their shells."
7. "About a dream."

These riddles Leo apparently composed for use in salon games at the court of Lodovico Sforza. A complete list can be found, for example,. The author did not believe in any predictions, and about magic, alchemy and other necromancy responded with mockery:

Those who want to get rich in one day live for a long time in great poverty, as it happens and will forever be with alchemists seeking to make gold and silver, and with engineers who want stagnant water from itself to give a moving life through constant movement. and with necromancers and spellcasters at the height of folly.

Leonardo da Vinci

11. Da Vinci is a productivity icon

Many productivity, motivation, and personal responsibility coaches use Leonardo as an example. Judge for yourself: he invented polyphasic sleep, only to stay awake more time and do useful things! There is definitely a lot to learn from such, isn't there?

However, in fact, Leo was still a bummer. A simple example. Duke Lodovico Sforza took da Vinci under his patronage to build the Gran Cavallo, the largest equestrian sculpture in the world, more than 7 meters high. It was to become a monument to the Duke's father, Francesco Sforza. Leonardo took the order with enthusiasm.

Moreover, I am ready to take on the work of casting a bronze horse, which is supposed to perpetuate the blessed memory of your august father and glorify in posterity the imperishable glory of the great family of Sforza.

Leonardo da Vinci

Later, the enthusiasm faded a little. Leonardo made several sketches of this cursed horse, at the same time deciding not to put it on its hind legs, as planned, but to install it on four limbs. Then da Vinci wrote a whole treatise entitled "On Weight", dedicated to bronze casting. Then he made a clay model of the statue.

All this took, for a minute, 10 years, during which da Vinci sat on the duke's neck. At some point, Lodovico reasoned that the statue was a statue, and the French attacking Milan, meanwhile, would not kill themselves. And he put the bronze, reserved for the manufacture of Gran Cavallo, on the cannons. There was more sense from them than from a hypothetical horse, and the French retreated.

The creation of the statue was again postponed indefinitely. On this occasion, Michelangelo, his rival, even laughed at da Vinci.

The ten-year epic with the horse ended with the French invading Milan in 1499, capturing Sforza and imprisoning the castle in Loches in France, and using the clay model of the Gran Cavallo as a target for archery training.

Leonardo, seeing how his creation was being treated, fled from Milan to Mantua, to Isabella d'Este, the sister of the wife of his former patron Sforza. For her, he, at least, wrote a treatise on chess.

As you can see, Leonardo was definitely not one of those who adhere to deadlines.