Sublime

Leonardo got to pursue, in a leisurely and broad fashion, all of his curiosities and passions at the Melzi villa. Though he no longer had access to human corpses, he dissected animals, including the rib cages of oxen and still-beating hearts of pigs. He completed his geology writings in the Codex Leicester, analyzing the nearby rock formations and

Léonard est profondément influencé par le livre d’Alberti et se fait l’écho de son injonction dans ses propres carnets. « Un bon peintre doit principalement représenter deux choses : l’homme et l’intention de l’esprit », écrit-il. « Le premier est simple à dépeindre au contraire de la seconde, qui doit être traduite par les gestes et les mouvements

Leonardo’s dedication to connecting movements of the body with movements of the soul was manifest in the other great painting he probably began around that time,36 Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (fig. 17). The unfinished work shows Saint Jerome, a fourth-century scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, during his retreat as a hermit in the dese

transcend conflict and through his architecture bring different forces into accord.

As always with Leonardo, in his art and in his life, in his birthplace and now even in his death, there is a veil of mystery. We cannot portray him with crisp sharp lines, nor should we want to, just as he would not have wanted to portray Mona Lisa that way. There is something nice about leaving a little to our imagination. As he knew, the outlines

Les descriptions des proportions du corps humain de Vitruve inspirent Léonard, qui les applique aux études anatomiques qu’il a entamées en 1489 afin de rassembler des mesures semblables. La conviction que les proportions du corps humain sont analogues à celles d’un temple bien conçu – et à celles du monde – devient définitoire pour Léonard.

Le Corbusier’s latest project, the Dominican monastery at La Tourette.

It was Parkinson who, with the delicious insight of the born historian, applied this Principle to Architecture, pointing out that PERFECTION OF PLANNING IS A SYMPTOM OF DECAY

To what extent might Vitruvian Man be a self-portrait? Leonardo was thirty-eight when he drew it, about the age of the man in the picture. Contemporary descriptions emphasize his “beautiful curling hair” and “well-proportioned” body. Vitruvian Man echoes features seen in many assumed portraits of him, especially Bramante’s depiction of Heraclitus (