Джорджия Кларк (Clarke Georgia)CHAPTER ONE
Leonardo's Life and Times
Leonardo was, first of all, a painter and an artist.
But he was also a great thinker.
There are few people today who have never heard the name Leonardo da Vinci. But it is five hundred years since he died, in a small town in northern France. Why is his name still so well known? Who was he, and what did he give to the world?
Leonardo was, first of all, a painter and an artist who wanted to examine, describe and show through his work the beauty of the natural world. But he was also a great thinker. He hoped to use his understanding of nature to invent and build machines that would improve the world he lived in. Leonardo was admired in his own time as an artist and as an inventor. Today, people still think that his paintings are beautiful, although only a small number of them exist. We also admire the cleverness of his inventions, although we only know these from his writings and his drawings.
In 1994 Bill Gates, then head of Microsoft, bought a book of Leonardo's writings and drawings for $30.8 million. The book is thirty-six pages long and is filled with Leonardo's scientific notes from the years 1508 and 1509. It is the only book of Leonardo's writings owned by a private person in modern times.
Leonardo was born in 1452 and died in 1519. This was during the time that we now call the Renaissance. The word 'renaissance' is French and means 'rebirth'. Renaissance was first used to describe this time in history, and especially Italian history, in the nineteenth century. But the idea of the Renaissance began in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At this time, people were looking back to and admiring the literature and art of Greece and Rome from 2,000 or 1,500 years before. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, artists and writers wanted to copy what they thought was beautiful from that distant time. They also compared the art and books that they were producing with works from the past. Some even thought of it as a competition.
At the same time, a number of people were excited about questioning the world around them. The great thinkers did not want just to accept ideas and facts that were told to them. They wanted to find out for themselves what was and was not true. Leonardo belonged to this group of thinkers, and he was one of the most important. He was always looking at nature and thinking about ideas to help him understand the world better. Many artists and thinkers were interested in science as well as art, but Leonardo was unusual because he was interested in a large number of subjects and he studied them in great detail. He enjoyed the natural world and the wonderful things he saw in it, and he never missed an opportunity to learn. He led the way for others in his studies.