Sublime

Leonardo da Vinci wrote, a century after Cennini: And take a note… with slight strokes in a little book that you should always carry with you… preserved with great care; for the forms, and positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them, wherefore keep these sketches as your guides and masters.

He probably had more of a hand in the Lansdowne, and saw it to completion, given that it has the more Leonardesque landscape and lustrous curls. At least five of the surviving versions of the painting include the little scene of Joseph building the baby walker. This indicates that these versions were being painted in Leonardo’s studio before he

In his quest to figure out how the centenarian died, Leonardo made a significant scientific discovery: he documented the process that leads to arteriosclerosis, in which the walls of arteries are thickened and stiffened by the accumulation of plaque-like substances. “I made an autopsy in order to ascertain the cause of so peaceful a death, and

Leonardo’s relationships with his half-brothers had improved since the resolution of the family’s inheritance disputes, and when he got to Rome he sought out his father’s oldest legitimate son, Giuliano da Vinci, who, not surprisingly, was a notary. Giuliano had been promised a benefice—a Church appointment that came with a stipend—but there had