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La filosofía de Leonardo da Vinci — Transcript

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0:07This man is Leonardo da Vinci and he is
0:09remembered for many things, including
0:10being the author of some of the most
0:12famous works in the world, such as the
0:14Mona Lisa or The Last Supper. But if
0:16you don't know Leonardo, the real him,
0:17if you don't understand him, you may
0:18not understand his works either and may
0:20just find them beautiful and that's it.
0:22In this video I'm going to try to tell
0:23you the story of this incredible
0:25character, who is much, much more than
0:27just a painter. He wasn't just any guy,
0:29he was a painter, engineer, scientist,
0:31sculptor, architect and theorist. He
0:33had knowledge in practically everything
0:35. Painting, cartography, astronomy,
0:37anatomy and even paleontology. He
0:39designed armored tanks, flying machines
0:41, even something like a self-driving
0:43car and he didn't paint like everyone
0:45else. In this video you're going to
0:46understand him, you're going to
0:48understand his philosophy of life, how
0:49he thought, his painting techniques
0:51that make these works so incredibly
0:52famous. We're going to study Leonardo's
0:54reasoning when he created them to
0:56understand why these works are much
0:57more than just beautiful. I promise
0:59that if you stay until the end of this
1:01video, you will never see Leonardo or
1:02his works the same way. Leonardo was
1:04born on the night of April 15, 1452, on
1:07the outskirts of Florence, Italy, in a
1:09small, modest town called Vincy.
1:12Leonardo's parents came from completely
1:14different worlds. His mother, Caterina,
1:16was only 14 years old, illiterate,
1:18uneducated, a peasant, and lived in
1:20great poverty. His father, Serpiero,
1:22was 24 years of age. He was from the
1:25upper middle class with a high level of
1:26formal education and heir to land,
1:28property, and a lucrative business.
1:30This greatly affected Leonardo's future
1:32, since this difference in worlds
1:33prevented his parents from getting
1:35married, making Leonardo worthy of the
1:37title of bastard. Although at first
1:39glance, being a bastard sounds like a
1:40problem. In Leonardo's case, it was a
1:42fortune. But before understanding why,
1:44we need to know the reason why his
1:45parents did not marry, this went much
1:46further than the fear that people would
1:48see them in a bad light. The most
1:49scandalous thing about their union was
1:51not the age difference at all. This was
1:53relatively normal. Families sought to
1:55marry off their daughters as young as
1:57possible, almost always in their teens.
1:59This guaranteed two things that society
2:01at the time considered fundamental for
2:03women: virginity before marriage and
2:05the greatest number of biological years
2:07possible to give birth and secure heirs
2:09. And for men, especially those from
2:11the middle class, Walter delayed
2:12marriage until they had completed their
2:14education, established their
2:15professions, and accumulated the
2:17financial stability necessary to be
2:18able to maintain a home. The real
2:20problem with Leonardo's parents 'union
2:22was that they belonged to completely
2:24different social worlds. Marriage at
2:26this time had nothing to do with love
2:29or romance. It was fundamentally and
2:31legally a corporate function between
2:32two families. Marrying an orphan with
2:35no land, no money, and no family did
2:37absolutely nothing to the family
2:39business and, in fact, harmed it. This
2:42was the reason why Leonardo was
2:43considered a bastard. This is a term
2:45that was used back in that period for
2:47children born out of wedlock. Since his
2:49parents were unmarried, Leonardo was
2:51not even entitled to a royal surname.
2:53Da Vinci was not his lineage, it was
2:55simply the place where he was born,
2:56Leonardo, de Vinci. In the Italy where
2:58Leonardo was born, being an
3:00illegitimate child meant that the doors
3:02to high society and formal education
3:04were locked. He could not inherit a
3:06prestigious business from his father,
3:08he could not attend university, and no
3:09one bothered to teach him classical
3:11Latin or basic mathematics. But what at
3:13the time seemed like a curse, as I said
3:15, was probably in reality the greatest
3:17blessing in Leonardo's history. Imagine
3:19for a moment what would have happened
3:21if Leonardo had been a legitimate son.
3:22He would have been taught to draw up
3:24contracts, seal inheritances, and
3:26memorize texts. He would have been
3:27swallowed up by the bureaucracy of
3:29Florence. The world would probably
3:31never have known the Mona Lisa or the
3:32designs for the first flying machine.
3:35Freed from the shackles of traditional
3:36education, Leonardo was raised on his
3:38own. And your uncle Francesco, a man
3:40who loved the countryside, noticed that
3:41the boy had trouble concentrating on
3:43normal tasks, that his mind would jump
3:44from one place to another, but instead
3:46of punishing him, he took him to the
3:47fields and vineyards of Tuscany. There
3:49Leonardo found the only school he would
3:52ever need: nature. And in that school
3:54he developed what would be his great
3:55superpower, the secret weapon that
3:57would take him to the top of history:
3:59an almost obsessive capacity for
4:00observation. Leonardo didn't look at
4:02the world; he scrutinized it, lying on
4:04the ground watching lizards move their
4:06legs. He would spend hours meditating
4:08on the course of a river just to
4:10understand why the water formed little
4:11whirlpools when it hit the rocks. He
4:13would catch fireflies to try to
4:15understand where their light came from,
4:16and he studied with fascination how the
4:18leaves of plants made their way to the
4:20sun. He proudly called himself
4:22homosensale tre, a name without letters
4:24, because he understood something that
4:26the intellectuals of his time ignored.
4:28True wisdom was not simply written
4:29within the books of those men who are
4:31now dead. It was alive, breathing, and
4:33beating all around him. That curious
4:34boy who ran through the hills chasing
4:36insects and drawing flowers was
4:38unknowingly building one of the most
4:40brilliant minds the world would ever
4:42know. A mind that asked the simplest
4:44yet most revolutionary questions in
4:47existence. Why? How? That boundless
4:50curiosity that was born in the fields
4:52of Tuscany soon needed a larger stage.
4:54When Leonardo was 12 years old, his
4:56father, impressed by the strange and
4:58detailed sketches that the young
4:59Leonardo was constantly drawing,
5:01decided to take him to Florence, Italy,
5:03and this is where the legend begins. At
5:05that time, Florence was no ordinary
5:07city; it was the absolute epicenter of
5:09the Renaissance. It was the birthplace
5:11of this movement. But to understand why
5:13Florence was so important to
5:15Leonardo’s development, you have to
5:16understand what the Renaissance was. It
5:18is simply a name for the new ideas that
5:20were emerging in this place. Florence
5:22was a pressure cooker of intellect, art
5:24, and power. Humanism was being born in
5:26those years. But to understand what
5:28humanism is, you have to know the ideas
5:30that existed before the Renaissance and
5:32any of the ideas it proposed. All
5:34explanations of reality, nature,
5:35history, and politics began and ended
5:37with what the Church determined. The
5:39main objective was not to discover new
5:41knowledge, but to use human reason to
5:43try to understand and defend the truths
5:45already revealed by the Christian faith
5:47. If a sacred text or an author
5:48approved by the Church said something,
5:51that was an absolute truth.
5:52Intellectual debate consisted of
5:54commenting on and interpreting those
5:56existing texts, not experimenting with
5:57reality or questioning the sources.
5:59This was their greatest mistake, as
6:01they tested all their knowledge in a
6:03church that at that time had them
6:05completely subjugated. The truth is
6:07that the church at that time prohibited
6:09the people from reading the Bible.
6:10Access to the Holy Scriptures was
6:12extremely limited and was not a common
6:14experience for the majority of the
6:15population. Only the clergy and the
6:17intellectual elite had access to these
6:20texts. What these people didn’t see
6:21is that the truth is not afraid of
6:23being questioned. It’s okay to have
6:24questions, to keep investigating, to
6:25look at more sources, because there is
6:27only one truth. No matter how many
6:29times you question anything, if you are
6:30truly seeking the truth, there is
6:32nothing you cannot question. In the
6:34scriptures themselves that these people
6:36were forbidden to read, it said this,
6:37the truth will set you free. But of
6:39course, it didn't suit them to tell the
6:41people. The problem with these people
6:43is that they weren’t even guided by
6:44what the scriptures they were supposed
6:46to defend said, but by what the dogma
6:48of the Church of that time said. Faith
6:49and the Scriptures were never the
6:51problem, people were. Another idea that
6:54people had before the Renaissance was
6:56that human beings were worth very
6:57little. People were deceived into
6:59thinking that if you were born a
7:01peasant, your divine purpose was to
7:02work the land with resignation. Born a
7:04noble, your duty was to fight.
7:05Questioning the social order or
7:07attempting to ascend was not only a
7:09lack of politics, but an act of hubris
7:11against the divine design of the church
7:13. These ideas were what began to be
7:14questioned in the Renaissance. One of
7:16the ideas that emerged was humanism.
7:18People were finally realizing that we
7:21are incredibly valuable, capable of
7:23doing wonders. The only creatures on
7:25Earth with the unique capacity for
7:27reasoning to understand complex ideas,
7:29the capacity for creativity and
7:30creation. People were just beginning to
7:32realize that questioning was never a
7:34bad thing, but quite the opposite,
7:36because asking the right questions
7:37leads to the right answers. Humans were
7:39no longer seen as irredeemably fallen,
7:42sinful, and insignificant creatures.
7:44They were now seen as the pinnacle of
7:46divine creation, endowed with immense
7:48dignity, beauty, and intrinsic worth.
7:50Leonardo, unknowingly, was in the right
7:52place at the right time when he arrived
7:54in Florence. But these ideas did not
7:55come out of nowhere. These ideas were
7:57made possible by the minds that came
7:59together in that place. There were the
8:01best artists of all kinds there,
8:03philosophers, mathematicians,
8:04geographers, chemists. But in order for
8:06these people to come together in that
8:08place, the power that moves everything
8:10in this world was needed: money.
8:12Florence became what it was precisely
8:13because the city was being financed by
8:15the influence of the all-powerful
8:17Medici family. The Medici were a very
8:19powerful banking family, since they
8:21were in charge of the banking center of
8:23all of Europe thanks to the Florin, a
8:25currency so stable that it served as
8:27the dollar at the time. The Medici were
8:29not only the bankers of the people and
8:31the middle and upper classes. Their
8:33power reached an international level
8:35when they became the official bankers
8:37of the Pope. In Florence, they ruled
8:39from the shadows, buying loyalties,
8:41controlling elections, and economically
8:43destroying their rivals. For the Medici
8:45, art was public relations and
8:47propaganda. They financed the best
8:49architects, sculptors, and painters.
8:51Characters such as Michelangelo,
8:53Donatello and Leonardo da Vinci himself
8:55were financed by this family. There, a
8:57teenage Leonardo arrived in Florence as
8:59the illegitimate son of a wealthy
9:01notary and as such did not receive the
9:03education expected of a future notary,
9:05but rather a very basic training.
9:07However, he entered as an apprentice in
9:09the workshop of Andrea de Birrochilo,
9:11the most sought-after artist in the
9:12city at that time. But Birrochio's
9:14workshop was not just a place where
9:16paints were mixed, it was a laboratory
9:18for innovation, teaching chemistry,
9:20metallurgy, mechanics and carpentry.
9:22For Leonardo's hyperactive mind, it was
9:24an endless impact of games. Leonardo
9:26soaked up the new spirit of his time.
9:29He understood the respect for harmony
9:30and proportion, something that can be
9:32appreciated throughout his career and
9:34that you will soon understand better.
9:35From here on, he shows something that
9:37had stood out for him since he was
9:38young. He was a great observer, very
9:40curious and especially sought constant
9:43experimentation over theory or reading
9:45the classics. From his position as an
9:47observer, he longed to understand his
9:49studies of light, the anatomy of optics
9:50, and human psychology. He poured all
9:52of this into his art, which in turn was
9:54the best tool for learning about the
9:56world. To understand this better, one
9:58must fully understand a concept that
10:00Leonardo applied and applied throughout
10:01his life. The whole is greater than the
10:04sum of its parts. This is a phrase from
10:06the Greek philosopher Aristotle, but it
10:08perfectly represents Leonardo. He
10:11understood this. He understood that a
10:14person was not their leg, their arm, or
10:15their eye. They were the combination of
10:17all their parts. Leonardo understood
10:19reality in a holistic way. For him, a
10:21painting was not a collection of
10:23isolated figures and a body was not a
10:25sack of independent organs, but living
10:27systems in which each element only
10:29gained meaning when interacting with
10:30the others. This vision was
10:32artistically embodied in his famous
10:34smoke art technique, where he managed
10:36to dissolve individual features into a
10:38single atmosphere, making the overall
10:40expression of the face infinitely more
10:43profound and mysterious than the simple
10:45sum of its features. Leonardo did not
10:47paint parts; he painted the whole.
10:49Leonardo only finished fewer than 20
10:51works in his entire life. Fewer than 20
10:54works. He was obsessed with capturing
10:55the whole of the work. Each of his
10:57paintings has such tiny and special
10:59details that I am sure many of them
11:01continue to go unnoticed even today.
11:04This was what made Leonardo special. He
11:06did not focus on one part of the work
11:08and leave the rest as secondary. He
11:10understood that the work should be seen
11:12and enjoyed in its entirety. And he
11:14applied this not only to art, but to
11:15everything he did in his life, but
11:17there is still much that we have yet to
11:18understand. The climax of this stage
11:20came with a collaborative work called
11:22The Baptism of Christ. He commissioned
11:25his apprentice to paint one of the
11:26angels, specifically the one on the
11:28left. He had used oil paint, a novel
11:30technique at the time, to give the skin
11:32a luminosity and depth of shadow that
11:34the rest of the painting simply did not
11:36have. Here you can see that Leonardo
11:38not only focused on the angel's face,
11:40but also on his clothes, his hair,
11:41everything. The naturalness in the
11:43folds, the dynamic pose, the expression
11:45on his face, the transition between
11:46light and shadow. Leonardo was painting
11:49the angel, not the parts of the angel.
11:51But Leonardo was not so much interested
11:53in art. For him, painting was simply a
11:55tool. It was a visual means of
11:57documenting how the world worked and,
11:59pragmatically, a way of making money to
12:02fund his true obsession: research and
12:04invention. Art was a job. His mind, on
12:07the other hand, belonged to engineering
12:09and science. It is impossible to
12:10understand Leonardo's work without
12:11understanding the way he observed the
12:13world. And it is impossible to
12:14understand his way of understanding the
12:16world without capturing his sense of
12:17life. Leonardo was never someone who
12:19focused on just one thing. He liked to
12:21experiment, discover, and understand.
12:23So he worked in Berrocho's workshop
12:25until 147 AD, that is, until he turned
12:2825. Having already gained a certain
12:30amount of fame and confidence, he set
12:32up his own workshop. But it was a
12:34disaster. He received three commissions
12:36in 5 years and did not finish any of
12:38them, which would become another of his
12:40hallmarks throughout his life:
12:41procrastinating and abandoning projects
12:43. As a result, he left many works
12:45unfinished and many of the ones he
12:46finished he never delivered to those
12:48who had commissioned them. Since he did
12:49not leave anything written about it,
12:51there is still much debate today about
12:52the reasons why he signed projects and
12:54then did not finish them. But it seems
12:56that the most plausible hypothesis is
12:57his character, his unhealthy
12:59perfectionism. He never finished his
13:01works. To him they were never perfect,
13:03he never finished them, he just left
13:05them. As I said, Leonardo was a
13:06perfectionist and it seems that he
13:08preferred to do nothing rather than do
13:10something that he could consider
13:11mediocre. Another example of this is
13:14his work The Adoration of the Magi. In
13:16this famous biblical scene, we can see
13:18with a glance at the unfinished
13:19painting the disproportionate ambition
13:21of Leonardo's proposal, a scene with
13:23thirty different characters in
13:25different planes and where we see once
13:27again this characteristic so
13:29distinctive of Leonardo. He understood
13:31that a work is seen as something alive,
13:33a story expressed, so he studied all
13:35angles of the scene, not only the
13:37composition of the work, but absolutely
13:39all aspects of it. The whole is greater
13:41than the sum of its parts. But in order
13:43to capture the whole of the work, to be
13:45able to represent the complexity of
13:47people's emotions, it was necessary for
13:49him to go down to the root, from their
13:51anatomy to their emotions, and from
13:53there analyze all their details: from a
13:55smile, which has so much in the
13:56anatomical structure that produces the
13:58smile with a mechanical study of
14:00tendons, muscles and bones, to the
14:01motivations for producing the same
14:03smile, which implies not only a
14:05psychological study of that person, but
14:07also of the interaction with the rest
14:09of the characters. The definitive proof
14:11of this came a few years later. Tired
14:13of Florence and looking for new
14:15horizons, Leonardo at the age of 30
14:17decided to move to Milan, Italy. In
14:19order to get a job, he wrote a letter
14:21of introduction to Ludovico Esfuerza,
14:23the Duke of Milan. This letter is one
14:25of the most extraordinary and strange
14:26resumes in history, but to understand
14:28this letter it is necessary to know
14:30that at this time Leonardo saw himself
14:31more as an engineer than as a painter.
14:33Leonardo loved spending his time
14:35designing pulleys, levers and machinery
14:37of all kinds. When he sent this resume
14:40to the Duke of Milan, instead of
14:41presenting himself as the artistic
14:43genius he already was, Leonardo sold
14:44himself as the ultimate military
14:46engineer. Over the course of several
14:48paragraphs, he promised the Duke
14:50weapons, light and indestructible
14:51bridges that could be transported to
14:53the battlefield, methods for emptying
14:55the moats of enemy castles, elegantly
14:57designed cannons that fired storms of
14:59shrapnel, and silent underground
15:01passageways. He even proposed the
15:03design of an armored car, equipped with
15:05cannons and secure against any attack.
15:07In other words, he was offering him the
15:09first war tank in history 500 years
15:11before they were invented. And only at
15:14the end of this long list of weapons of
15:16destruction, almost as a whim, did
15:18Leonardo add a brief line: In times of
15:20peace, I believe I can give perfect
15:22satisfaction in architecture and in
15:24painting and sculpture. I can do as
15:26much as anyone else. This letter
15:28conceals the deepest and most painful
15:30paradox in Leonardo's soul. The man who
15:33designed these terrifying death
15:34machines to curry favor with the rulers
15:37was, deep down, one of the greatest
15:38pacifists of his time. In the 15th
15:41century, Italy was in a state of
15:43perpetual war between cities like
15:44Florence, Milan, Venice, and the papacy
15:47. A duke or ruler like Ludovico Esforzo
15:49, to whom Leonardo wrote this letter,
15:51had no need for a painter. Painters
15:53were plentiful and cheap. What they
15:55desperately needed to survive was their
15:57military technology priority. Leonardo
15:59knew perfectly well what product his
16:01client needed: engineering solutions
16:03for war. While Europe was bleeding to
16:05death in constant war and human and
16:07animal lives varied very little,
16:09Leonardo was a very empathetic person,
16:11not only with people, but also with
16:12animals. He was a strict vegetarian, an
16:15absolute rarity in his time. He refused
16:17to wear leather clothes so as not to
16:19dress up the death of a living being,
16:21because after years of animal biology
16:22and studies he had come to a very
16:24obvious conclusion, but one that not
16:25everyone sees. Animals felt pain and
16:28anguish exactly the same as humans. On
16:30the one hand, his mind needed the money
16:32and protection of tyrants and war dukes
16:34in order to continue his research. But
16:36on the other hand, his heart revered
16:38life in all its forms. To understand
16:40Leonardo, one must understand the
16:41golden rule that governed his brain.
16:43For him, everything in the universe was
16:45connected. Let us recall once again the
16:47phrase that also describes Leonardo.
16:49The whole is greater than the sum of
16:51its parts. Today in schools we are
16:53taught biology on one side, physics on
16:54the other, and art in a different class
16:56. For Leonardo, these separations were
16:58absurd. He saw the world as a single
17:01gigantic organism where everything
17:02obeyed the same laws. Today we know
17:04fractals, geometric objects whose basic
17:07, fragmented or apparently irregular
17:09structure is repeated at different
17:11scales and in different things that may
17:13initially seem unrelated, things that
17:15unless you were like Leonardo you would
17:17not have seen before. Everything is
17:19connected. Everything in this world
17:21obeys the same architecture at
17:22different levels. Leonardo did not know
17:25the term fractal, but he saw it
17:27everywhere. What he saw was
17:28mathematical proof that everything is a
17:30network. This philosophy of Universal
17:33Connection crystallized in 1490 in one
17:35of his most famous sketches, the
17:37Vitruvian Man. Marcubitrubio Poleón
17:39was a Roman engineer who worked under
17:41Julius Caesar, but he went down in
17:42history for a treatise on architecture,
17:44the only one that survives from the
17:46classical era. In this book, Pitrupio,
17:48inspired by Plato and other ancient
17:50philosophers, proposed using man as an
17:52example of harmony in the proportions
17:54that the rest of the elements have to
17:56follow. Each element of a temple, for
17:57example, had to follow a proportion
17:59given by the human body that served as
18:01a canon of harmony between its parts.
18:03Although at first glance it is just a
18:04drawing of a naked name inside a circle
18:06and a square, it is actually one of
18:08Leonardo's most profound philosophical
18:10statements. The square represents the
18:12earthly world, matter, the physical,
18:14the tangible. The circle represents the
18:16universe, infinity, divinity. By
18:18fitting the human being perfectly in
18:20the center of both figures, Leonardo
18:22was making us understand that man is
18:24capable of accessing both worlds, the
18:26earthly and the divine. Thoughts that
18:28he shared with Plato. Plato believed
18:29that there are two levels of reality.
18:31The sensible world, what we see,
18:33objects, people, physical things, and
18:35the world of ideas, which has always
18:37been there, our consciousness that is
18:39perfect, eternal and immutable. We are
18:41not only the only creatures on Earth
18:43with these exact proportions, we are
18:45also the only ones with the
18:46intellectual capacity to transcend
18:48irrationality. Leonardo understood this
18:51perfectly and this graph is the
18:53ultimate representation of this. So, to
18:55understand the mysteries of creation,
18:56it was first necessary to understand
18:58the human machine. And to achieve this,
19:00Leonardo crossed a line that few dared
19:02to tread. He challenged the most sacred
19:04taboos of his time. In the Renaissance,
19:06the human body was considered a sacred
19:08temple, the divine creation that should
19:10be treated with veneration, not as an
19:12object of technical study. Leonardo,
19:14however, overcame this qualm. He showed
19:16respect for corpses, but he also set
19:18out to study them in depth. Over the
19:20course of his life, he examined more
19:22than 30 cadavers, from old people to
19:24young women. And what he found changed
19:26science without anyone realizing it at
19:28the time. One of his most moving and
19:30daring drawings was when he opened the
19:32belly of a pregnant woman who had
19:34tragically died and became the first to
19:36depict a human fetus resting peacefully
19:38inside its mother's womb. But
19:40Leonardo's mind did not stop with
19:42contemplation. He wanted to use this
19:44knowledge not only in his paintings,
19:46but in everything. Leonardo spent hours
19:48gazing at the sky. At a time when
19:50people believed that birds floated by
19:52magic or like ships at sea, Leonardo
19:54understood aerodynamics. He realized
19:57that flight was not a miracle, it was
19:58pure physics, the resistance of air
20:00against the shape of a wing. That
20:02epiphany unleashed a storm of
20:03inventions. He drew up plans for
20:05enormous mechanical rooms powered by
20:07human arms and legs. He designed the
20:09first parachute. He even encased a
20:11spinning rotor made of linen designed
20:13to compress air and lift himself up. He
20:15was dreaming of the helicopter more
20:17than 400 years before the first one was
20:19invented. All of this knowledge that
20:21Leonardo collected throughout his life
20:23needed a place to exist, even if it was
20:25on paper. Leonardo rarely wrote about
20:28his feelings, but when he did, he
20:30revealed a solitary soul deeply
20:31tormented by the passage of time. He
20:34felt that time was slipping through his
20:35fingers. Bored with everything quickly
20:37and jumping from one obsession to
20:39another, he left dozens of paintings
20:40and sculptures unfinished, earning him
20:42a reputation as an unreliable
20:43individual. At times, he felt like a
20:45failure. On one page of his diary, the
20:48man writes this: While I thought I
20:50learned to live, I learned to die. And
20:52on another he noted, "Tell me if I ever
20:53did anything. Tell me if I ever did
20:55anything." In 1503 in Florence, a silk
20:58merchant named Francesco de Giocondo
21:00commissioned a portrait of his wife
21:03Lisa Gerardini. That portrait became
21:05his total obsession. Leonardo never
21:07gave the painting to Francesco de
21:09Geocondo. He never collected payment
21:11for it. Instead, he kept it for himself
21:13. He packed the Mona Lisa in his trunks
21:15and traveled with her for the rest of
21:17his life. This man who had spent his
21:19entire life trying to decipher the
21:21universe inevitably began to age.
21:23Constant wars in Italy, political
21:25instability, and fierce rebellion
21:27against a new generation of artists
21:29such as the young Michelangelo ended up
21:31exhausting his spirit. He was a man in
21:33his seventies whose right hand, the one
21:35that had drawn the designs of the
21:37machines of the future, had become
21:38partially paralyzed. After suffering a
21:40stroke, he felt tired, marginalized in
21:43his own country and at that time he
21:45felt that his greatest enemy was
21:46finally winning the race. But fate had
21:49one last act in store for him. The
21:51young King Francis I of France, a
21:53monarch fascinated by the Renaissance,
21:55made Leonardo an offer he couldn’t
21:57refuse. He offered him the title of
21:59first painter, engineer, and architect
22:02to the king, a generous pension, and a
22:04beautiful residence. The Château de
22:06Côte was connected by an underground
22:08passageway to the royal castle of the
22:10two. And what did the king expect in
22:11return? Nothing, he demanded nothing.
22:13First, Francis gave Leonardo the
22:15greatest gift anyone could give a mind
22:17like his: time and peace. The king
22:20visited him almost daily for the simple
22:22and pure pleasure of sitting and
22:24talking with him, listening to his
22:25ideas on philosophy, water, the stars,
22:27and anatomy. For the first time in his
22:29history, Leonardo was paid not for what
22:31his hands could make, but for what his
22:33mind held. It was there in the
22:35tranquility of the French countryside
22:37that Leonardo spent the last three
22:39years of his life sorting through his
22:41papers, trying to make sense of the
22:4213,000 pages of notes he had
22:44accumulated. On May 2, 1519, at the age
22:47of 67, the engine of his mind stopped
22:50forever. Leonardo da Vinci was
22:51undoubtedly the greatest genius of his
22:53time, but his perfectionism paralyzed
22:55him. He never considered that his
22:57research was sufficiently finished to
22:59be ready for printing and publication.
23:01That is why he never published his
23:02journals. When he died, those notebooks
23:04were scattered. They were sold off
23:06piecemeal or hidden in private
23:07libraries. However, Leonardo may not
23:09have cared. He did not work for future
23:12glory or wealth. Although kings, popes,
23:14and dukes offered him mountains of gold
23:16throughout his life, he usually refused
23:17the commissions and the idea did not
23:19ignite a spark of curiosity in him. For
23:21him, anyone who pursued material wealth
23:23was a fool, because he lacked the true
23:26and only treasure of existence, pure
23:28knowledge. He taught us that genius is
23:30not a magical gift that fell from the
23:32sky, but the result of a fierce
23:34curiosity, of never giving up in awe
23:36and of refusing to accept the world as
23:37it is presented to us. If we have the
23:39patience to observe carefully, the
23:41entire universe is willing to whisper
23:43its secrets to us. I hope to see you in
23:45the next one.

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