Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Book

The mind of a painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the color of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects are in front of it.
I picked up this book on a whim, and read it for the same reason. My edition is an attractively bound selection of Leonardo's most interesting notes and drawings, arranged to give the reader an appreciation of the breadth of this quintessential Renaissance man's interests, and the great scope of his imagination.

I must admit right off the bat that this book is often a bit of a bore to read through. Leonardo's notes are typically terse and functional'more like grocery lists than diary entries. But the real treat, of course, is seeing Leonardo's many drawings and studies, reproduced here in color photographs. Simply turning from page to page, taking note of whatever sketch caught your eye, would be enough to convince you that this man was a great genius.

We all knew this already; but determining the exact nature of Leonardo's genius is, by contrast, a bit more difficult. Of course, he was a great painter, one of the very best; this alone would be enough to secure him lasting fame. But he also distinguished himself'though he wasn't known for it at the time'for his interest in science and engineering. He did pioneering studies in human anatomy, making drawings so detailed that they could be used in Gray's Anatomy. He sketched several ideas for inventions, many of them frighteningly futuristic, such as a flying machine and a tank. He made accurate maps and designed buildings and bridges. He even made careful studies of the workings of the eye and the behavior of light.

At first sight, all this seems almost impossible, like Isaac Newton and J.M.W. Turner rolled into one. But Leonardo's mind wasn't quite as flexible as the above paragraph might suggest. (Not to detract from his accomplishments, of course.) For example, Leonardo was not especially adept at performing feats of logic or reason; nor was he an experimenter, making careful and controlled tests of his ideas. Aside from his extraordinary creativity, Leonardo's main asset was his extremely keen, almost supernatural, skill as a visual observer. He had the ability to make his mind a mirror of his environment, and then to accurately and attractively depict whatever phenomenon caught his fancy. Simple as this sounds, this can get you a long way. For instance, if you set yourself the task of drawing a bridge as accurately as possible, this will teach you something about the design of bridges, how they are constructed and bear weight. Do this with everything around you in your daily life, as Leonardo did, and it will force you to pay attention to the way things are put together and teach you how they work.

This is the main lesson Leonardo taught me about becoming a Renaissance man: master a certain medium, whether it be visual, verbal, mathematical, musical, or what have you, and then use this medium as a filter for your experiences. This will allow you to notice things that other people might not, and then to represent your observations in an engaging form. Of course, this strategy wasn't Leonardo's only asset; he was also a creative genius. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with a method for becoming a brilliant innovator. And perhaps, sad as it seems, a mechanism for turning average folks into world-class geniuses is something beyond even Leonardo's powers.