One great example of the value of reading Leonardo as literature is his 1508-10 notebook page, RCIN 912700v. 

Both sides of this page contain major examples of Leonardo’s highly developed literary sensibility.  The verso depicts an allegory of a flower being watered by a fountain, with the motto “sine lassitudine” -- “without fatigue.”  The other side of the page shows mottoes and images for emblems on the theme of truth and masks; and in the same time period 1506-10 Leonardo created three other major emblems with verbal mottoes: “hostinato rigore,” “destinato rigore,” and “guided by a fixed star.”  All of these emblems would have coincided closely with the time period (circa 1503-1516) when Leonardo was working on his famous portrait La Gioconda, La Joconde, a.k.a. the Mona Lisa.

Leonardo declared himself an author, and the profusion and depth of his writings can leave no question of his dedication to written language as a key part of both his working process and intentional legacy.  He planned books, and completed major parts of them (leaving details to assistants, his heirs, or future scholars). 

Most complete, perhaps, and first published was the Treatise on Painting.  Building on or responding to an earlier work of the same name by Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo’s Treatise has had a monumental effect on all later art history as well as the sciences.  An excerpt from its Introduction or “Proemio” even served as the first page ever of the Leonardo journal in 1968.  In this vignette, sometimes referred to as “a man without letters,” Leonardo portrays himself facing a hostile court of judges and defending his work by an appeal to Esperienza, experience and experiment personified, who guides his work that is “the subject of experience not of words… [and] as maestra, I will cite her in all cases.” 

As a literary work, this courtroom mini-drama is both a precise echo of the ancient Greek Apelles’ legendary lost painting, titled Calumny (reimagined by Botticelli in 1494-5), and a powerful statement of the larger social and intellectual currents which undergirded all of the major transformations of the early modern and Renaissance eras.

Leonardo’s lifelong dedication to writing should come as no surprise, because literature pertains as much to science as it does to art.  Pamela Smith, in her 2022 book From Lived Experience to the Written Word, demonstrates this dynamic throughout the early modern age across many diverse nations and social strata.  The history of science is to a very great extent a written history, as Leonardo scholars Robert Zwijnenberg and Carlo Vecce have also shown in their respective concepts of “the labyrinthine gaze” and “infinite writing.” 

Even the Nobel-winning innovator of today’s AI systems, Geoffrey Hinton, wrote a fascinating article in 1975 about about a major painting by Max Ernst which addressed the still relatively new science of psychology in 1923 by incorporating Freud, surrealism, and the written medical records of a celebrated case study into an oil painting  based in part on the astronomical drawings in Leonardo’s Codex Leicester.  Ernst’s canvas included an extensive written portion on the back, echoing many Renaissance works such as Leonardo’s Ginevra de Benci.  Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, Hinton would later in 1992 explain his novel theory of machine learning with language mirroring Leonardo's: “How Neural Networks Learn From Experience.”

Another key historical example of major scientific importance is Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.”  Galileo based his scientific method on Esperienza, which had played a key role in his early education as an artist, and had also been the basis of his father Vincenzo’s work in music.  Both were steeped in the culture of Florence, its world-class innovation, and revered Esperienza despite lacking access to Leonardo’s not-yet-published Trattato. 

Certainly, to understand Leonardo’s visual art we must understand his writing, just as we must appreciatively engage with his visual art to to truly grasp the nuances of his science.

Perhaps it is only by “connecting the dots” that Leonardo provided, and performing what Gombrich described as “the beholder’s share” in order to integrate the problem-solving and creative potential of all spheres of life and knowledge in concert, that we can most effectively address the many challenges of the sustainable age. 

Next blog:  Leonardo as Mindfulness