Léonard de Vinci , né à Vinci le 15 avril 1452 et mort à Amboise le 2 mai 1519, est un peintre florentin et un homme d'esprit universel, à la fois artiste, organisateur de spectacles et de fêtes, scientifique, ingénieur, inventeur, anatomiste, peintre, sculpteur, architecte, urbaniste, botaniste, musicien, poète, philosophe et écrivain.
Après son enfance à Vinci, Léonard est élève auprès du célèbre peintre et sculpteur florentin Andrea del Verrocchio. Ses premiers travaux importants sont réalisés au service du duc Ludovic Sforza à Milan. Il œuvre ensuite à Rome, Bologne et Venise et passe les dernières années de sa vie en France, à l'invitation du roi François Ier.
Léonard de Vinci est souvent décrit comme l’archétype et le symbole de l’homme de la Renaissance, un génie universel, un philosophe humaniste, observateur et expérimentateur, avec un « rare don de l’intuition de l’espace », et dont la curiosité infinie est seulement égalée par la force d’invention. Nombre d'auteurs et d'historiens le considèrent comme l'un des plus grands peintres de tous les temps et certains comme la personne la plus talentueuse dans le plus grand nombre de domaines différents ayant jamais vécu,.
C'est d'abord comme peintre que Léonard de Vinci est reconnu. Deux de ses œuvres, La Joconde et La Cène, sont des peintures mondialement célèbres, souvent copiées et parodiées, et son dessin de l’Homme de Vitruve est également repris dans de nombreux travaux dérivés. Seule une quinzaine d'œuvres est parvenue jusqu'à nous ; ce petit nombre est dû à ses expérimentations constantes et parfois désastreuses de nouvelles techniques et à sa procrastination chronique. Néanmoins, ces quelques œuvres, jointes à ses carnets contenant dessins, diagrammes scientifiques et réflexions sur la nature de la peinture, sont un legs aux générations suivantes d'artistes ; nombre de ces derniers le considérant comme seulement égalé par Michel-Ange.
Comme ingénieur et inventeur, Léonard développe des idées très en avance sur son temps, comme l'avion, l'hélicoptère, le sous-marin et même jusqu'à l'automobile. Très peu de ses projets sont réalisés ou même seulement réalisables de son vivant, mais certaines de ses plus petites inventions comme une machine pour mesurer la limite élastique d'un câble entrent dans le monde de la manufacture. En tant que scientifique, Léonard de Vinci a beaucoup fait progresser la connaissance dans les domaines de l'anatomie, du génie civil, de l'optique et de l'hydrodynamique.
“There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings
Contexte: There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West; and those of the South, being involved in the course of the winds, will follow them to distant lands.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Contexte: Amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time, lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in the present. This nothingness has the part equal to the whole, and the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible; and the product of the sum is the same whether we divide or multiply, and in addition as in subtraction; as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth figure which represents zero; and its power has not extension among the things of Nature.
“Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
Contexte: Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. Shadow is of the nature of darkness. Light is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. They are always associated and inseparable from all objects. But shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body.
“The name of man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
Contexte: The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen. If you, historians, or poets, or mathematicians had not seen things with your eyes you could not report of them in writing. And if you, O poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness and less tedious to be understood. And if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Now which is the worse defect? to be blind or dumb? Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings; for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. Now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of man or the image of the man. The name of man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XV Astronomy
Contexte: The earth is not in the centre of the Sun's orbit nor at the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements, and united with them. And any one standing on the moon, when it and the sun are both beneath us, would see this our earth and the element of water upon it just as we see the moon, and the earth would light it as it lights us.
“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
No published occurrence of such an attribution has yet been located prior to one in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre — Band 3 http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2411/pg2411.html by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Disputed
Variante: Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
“It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Variante: It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
“I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy
Variante: While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Variante: Just as iron rusts from disuse... even so does inaction spoil the intellect.
“Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
Variante: Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
“Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy
“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
