“Do not read me who is not a mathematician in my principles”, he would answer like this Leonardo da Vinci to the article that appeared recently on theEconomist who questions his genius, and with clumsy attempts tries to reduce its universal importance.
That foreigners, especially the British, have often considered the somewhat ignorant Italians, and above all unworthy of their artistic heritage, it is well known, but from here to discredit an Italian genius, heritage of all humanity, borders on the ridiculous.
THEarticle ofEconomist winks at one published in the 80s in which the question was timidly raised on the actual originality of some of Leonardo's "discoveries" which seemed to have been taken from ancient texts and from Luca Pacioli's studies... Even if that were the case, I don't understand what the problem is: Leonardo has made some "crazy and desperate" studies and declares it, this man without letters who, with determination and with the fundamental curiosity of the researcher, has refuted or improved intuitions and discoveries has not appropriated other people's projects such as "de 'reciters and trumpets", if anything he wanted to overcome them with personal experiments.
Leonardo was an empiricist. And his method was to do and undo in order to arrive at the most precise and punctual knowledge, as Galileo would later claim, closely followed by Sir Francis Bacon, a great observer of Nature just like Leonardo da Vinci to whom it inspired.
The mistake Leonardo's detractors make is to consider him first as a painter and then as a scientist, and to compare him to Raphael and Michelangelo, claiming the superior value of these to belittle the other, as does theEconomistmeans to have a summary historical-artistic knowledge (Raphael considers Leonardo his master and clearly looks at his pictorial technique, just think of the Lady with the Unicorn and Portrait of Maddalena Strozzi), and put three geniuses in some sort of downward competition o very cheap, to put it in English, is rather depressing.
THEeconomist, as evidence of the need for scale back Leonardo refers to the small number of his completed works, to the failure - "under everyone's eyes" - of his pictorial techniques (indicating the Cenacolo), and to alleged plagiarisms of scientific and engineering theories. With the exception, continues the English columnist, de La Mona Lisa, a picture in which a certain talent is recognized. I would have expected a constructive parenthesis on Leonardo's most commercially known painting, such as reflecting on the hypothesis that the woman portrayed is Costanza d'Avalos, and opening a debate - this is indeed interesting - on the cultural and artistic liveliness between Florence and Naples in the Renaissance.
Let's start by saying that Leonardo was not inconclusive, he was a perfectionist, and as such never satisfied with the result obtained. It can be a limit, in a certain sense, but it must be contextualized in the era in which he lived. I don't think it's a coincidence that only in the century of Romanticism, i.e. in the nineteenth century, Leonardo has been rediscovered and re-evaluated: in fact, he embodies the ideal of the Sturm und Drang, of the restless and misunderstood genius (he himself complained of being opposed. Even Lorenzo de' Medici, however "magnificent", did not understand his talent and sent him as a musician in Milan); yes, an empiricist, more than an idealist but imaginative (Leonardo thinks in images!) and driven by that insatiable Streben, that "I always wanted, I wanted very strongly," of Alfier's memory.
In the destructive paroxysm, theEconomist goes so far as to argue that Leonardo, openly anti-clerical (?) was used by the French who "built" the fame of genius to combat clerical obscurantism.
I'm stunned, somewhat: if il Revival of Leonardo's genius begins in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the French struggle against clerical obscurantism begins in the Age of Enlightenment, i.e. in the eighteenth century, or theEconomist is it based on historical documents unknown to us, or the attempt to dismantle the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci leaves the time it finds.
William Shakespeare, another genius – probably Italian -, writes: “A drop of evil is enough to discredit any virtue”.
