Sublime

During the decade of 1506–16, as he wandered between Milan and Rome pursuing his passions and seeking patronage, Leonardo worked on three paintings that have an elegiac and spiritual quality, as if he realized that his days were numbered and was contemplating what lay on the road ahead. These include two sensuous paintings of Saint John the Baptist

The goal of Leonardo’s argument was to elevate the work of painters—and their social status—by linking their art to the science of optics and the mathematics of perspective. By exalting the interplay between art and science, Leonardo wove an argument that was integral to understanding his genius: that true creativity involves the ability to combine

The scene Leonardo set out to paint in the Adoration of the Magi was one of the most popular in Renaissance Florence: the moment when the three wise men, or kings, who have followed a guiding star to Bethlehem, present the newborn Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Unlike the usual depictions of the Leda myth, Leonardo’s is not about sex but birth.2 These themes of generational and natural renewal apparently resonated with him now that he was in his mid-fifties, with no heirs. Around the time he began to paint Leda, he adopted Francesco Melzi, who painted the Leda copy shown as figure 81, to be his surrogate