---

Da Vinci

March 7, 2019

Recently he bought the paperback, 'The Da Vinci Code'. It was a best seller by a famous mystery writer Dan Brown. The same title movie starring Tom Hanks was also famous. He never watched the movie. He bought the book only because it was on sale for half off. The story started at the Louvre Museum, the museum famous for its exhibition of the famous painting 'Mona Lisa'. The cover of the book had part of the Mona Lisa's face. It vaguely reminded him about some news that he had watched several years ago about the mystery surrounding the Mona Lisa. He saw it once when his prefecture's museum exhibited it, but that was long time ago. He couldn't remember how he felt at that time, so maybe it was not so impressive for him. He checked on the internet about the Mona Lisa: The recent conversation about the mysteries of the Mona Lisa from that of various curators and connoisseurs, as well as specialists of painting are thus: The model of the Mona Lisa was said to be Lisa del Giocondo, a wife of a merchant in Firenze. When Mona Lisa was painted, she was 24 years old. Why did Da Vinci paint her older? Mona Lisa looked like she was in her 40s or so. A century ago, another Mona Lisa was found, it was called 'Isleworth Mona Lisa'. Recently, after precise inspection of 10 years, it was judged to be Da Vinci's authentic work. The Lisa del Giocondo in the paint was young and rather prettier than the painting Mona Lisa. Why did Da Vinci painted Mona Lisa uglier? Do geniuses have a different sense of beauty? He was curious about Da Vinci and wanted to know about him: He was born out-of-wedlock between a public lawyer and his mistress. When he was a child, his mother left. He was curious about nature and studied about it intensively to fill his loneliness. He became an apprentice of a painter when he was 14. The studio was top level in Firenze, where at that time was one of the most prosperous cities in the world. It was during the height of the Renaissance, and many rich people supported artists. His skills of painting improved quickly. Eventually his master gave up painting, saying Da Vinci's techniques had exceeded his. His way of painting was thorough. He was a perfectionist. When he painted human bodies, he did autopsies of human bodies many times to see how human's expressions were made, how human's body parts moved. When he painted a soldier on a horse, he would do autopsies of horses. He took a very long time to complete one painting. People would think it was finished, but it wouldn't be. He added some brush strokes again and again for many years, sometimes decades. Oil painting enables it. Because of this, he only left 15 completed paintings or so in his 67 years. Compare this to Van Gogh who left about 1,000 paintings in about a ten year painting span. Da Vinci left about 5,000 sketches and other uncompleted paintings and drawings. The 'Mona Lisa' was one of the few paintings that he did complete.     He found an interesting remark about Da Vinci. A military commander who worked with him said, "If he concentrated on one thing, and finished it, he could even be able to reverse the flow of a river. He is the greatest and the sloppiest. From his tremendous efforts and works, nothing concrete can be born." Da Vinci worked as a military adviser and an engineer. He designed proto types of the airplane, helicopter, cannon, machine gun, tank, etc. Although none of these were realized in his era: The first airplane was built in the early 20th century; dynamite was made in the 19th century; the steam engine was built in the 18th century.  Maybe Da Vinci was born too early. He thought about various things without sleeping normally. He would divide his sleeping time into 6 times slots, and slept for only short time each. He would write his ideas on pieces of paper. He left about 5,000 notes. They were very hard to read because he would write backwards, or mirrored writing; people couldn't read them without using a mirror. This was one reason people didn't study about Da Vinci until later. He studied physics, mathematics, mechanics, civil engineering, study of water power, optics, geology, etc. He was better than most professionals. On the other hand, he was bad at calculation and learning other languages. He didn't know why Da Vinci was so absorbed in various abstract things that were hard for people to understand. Maybe it was because he was a genius. Maybe it was because he was a perfectionist. Maybe it was so intriguing that he couldn't stop thinking about them.   Da Vinci was tall, handsome, and had a perfect muscular body. He was more mysterious than mysteries.

*curator :学芸員
*connoisseur :鑑定家
*out-of-wedlock :摘出の
*apprentice :見習い
*authentic :本物の
*autopsy ::検死
*optic :目の
*abstract :抽象的な
*intrigue :好奇心をそそる