Like Walter Isakson here. It is a pleasure to have someone of this h magnitude and of his knowledge and wealth ofxp experience to have someone like you here. My notes are blanking out. Walter is University Professor of history at tulane, former ceo of the aspen institute, chairman of cnn and the managing editor of time magazine. He is the author of the innovators. Kissinger, a biography, steve jobs, einstein, his life and universe. Benjamin franklin, an american life. And, of course, walter brings to life Leonardo Da Vinci for us. Without further ado walter, please. [applause] thank you, javier. Thank you all from the miami book fair. Ive been here for every book and its always a great pleasure to be in this city. [applause] one reason its great to be in miami is that like so many other cities of this world, it has now become a mixpl of very creative people with the tolerance for all sorts of people. And that was what made Leonardo Da Vinci so creative. Ive written about a lot of smart people, and at a certain point it occurs to me that smart people are a dime a dozen. They dont usually amount to much, right . It takes being innovative, imaginative and creative. And one recipe for that is being able to stand at the intersection of arts and sciences to love both the humanities and engineering. Remember watching steve jobs give his product presentation. He would always end with that street sign of the liberal arts meeting technology, and say thats what thats where creativity lies. I thought thats what ben franklin did. Even v einstein would pull out s violin and play mozart when he was having trouble with his equations, saying that music and art help connect us to the spirit of the cosmos and the harmony of the spheres. But the ultimate of that and the person i decided should be the capstone of a series of books about creativity and how to achieve it is Leonardo Da Vinci. Now, leonardo at the great good fortune to be born out of wedlock. [laughing] had he been legitimate born, he wouldve been a notary like his father, grandfather, greatgrandfather, greatgreatgrandfather. Leonardo loved as he grew up in the tiny village to blend fantasy and reality. He loved to think out of the box. He loved to do things different. All the things you do not want in your notary. But it did help him become a creative artist and engineer who loved the patterns of nature he one of the to universities oren schools to have his head crammed filled with this of the middle ages until he got to o become what he called a disciple of experience. Meaning he did experiments he always questioned what whatevere was told and decided he wasue going po to see if it was right. He wasnt going to risk accept or o receive wisdom soviet union as a little kid those streams running down to the arno he put rocks in them and see how water rippled and swirl of water becomes one of the many patterns in nature that become his passion. And we see it throughout his life. Y he asked why is the sky blue and when birdd takes off, its wings go up faster or down faster . But leonardo unlike us never outgrew his wonder years. He was the most insashably curious person in history and that is key number one to his creativity we can see in his notebooks every week weird questions he decided he needed to know, not just why is the sky blue. But why does water swirl the way it does when it goes into a basin or o o pond. Or o what is size of the sun and how would you measure it and my favorite what does the tong of a woodpecker look like . I have to imagine describe the tongue of the woodpecker why even care and how would you even know open up a woodpecker but thatsde leonardo. Is struck as curiosity and tried to learn everything by age 12 his father brings him to the town like town ive been talking about, one of those createssive cities in which all sorts of people work together. Leonardo was lucky he was born the same year that gutenberg opened his print shop and spread itas to florence. So in his notebooks we see leonardo say go down to bridge and buy translation of euclid or get bock and all he wanted to learn and constant and noble saw that year he was born so people coming from the arab are world bringing mathematic and leonardo is quite a misfit. Besides being ill legitimate hes lefthanded, hes gay hes a vegetarian hes a bit of a hair tick and they love hill in florence it was under lorenzo and the family one of those places with people of diverse backgrounds all fit in a live and let live place. Leonardo worked in a workshop of andrej about people call it was a an Artist Studio but another secret to leonardo he loved to do everything look at the famous you know the there and what he builds on top of the ball on there and when he was a young apprentice and helped soughter the copper ball and he draws all of the mechanisms they use to put it on top of the dome. It is the ultimate the connection that he makes his whole life between art and science. Between bowty and engineering. Among things they do is pageant and play and leonardo loves them hes a good looking kid and kind of proud of how good looking he is. We know how good looking he is. He did a statue of david a young 12yearold david. And the young 12yearold leonardo is right there in the center catch by somebody else in the workshop pose for david. And in the plays they do, they do costume and one of leonardo first sketches etching silver point on the left the warrior another but hes doing it as a set of costumes for the visit of the dukebu of malon lowe that are de did drawing on the left but they mix fantasy and reality dragons had also the wings of a bat that aix scientifically accurate and everywhere in it those curl and swirls that leonardo like he did it for his engineering the curl and the i swirls. He sort off payments people say didnt he invent the helicopter, this drawing here the famous draw. Orpe yeah, except for it was doe too for a play. By one of the plays that they produced because sometimes we dont fox on the fact that producing play and the pageant was a big job back then they didnt have tv. They didnt have movies so there were pageants and plays and leonardo loved it because it blurred line between fantasy and reality. And in fact, he so much loves blurring that line between fantasy and reality that once he does drawings like thiss a helicopter, he decided maybe ill make a real flying machine so as you know for a long pert of his life hes trying to design flying machines. And he makes great gliderrer he also can never make a manpowerred flying machine that will off so he studied birds in flight of birds to figure out why they have a different weight rash wroa to their muscles realizes it is impossible. Another small listens from leonardo. Sometimes you should try to do the impossible so at least youll find out why it cant be done. Two he is a painter and such a good painter that the legend is he got so awed by him that he decide not to do it again but let him handle painting manager this studioec and this baptism f christ we see a pattern well see throughout leonardos life when hes very young, he does most of the painting. But leonardo did does that riff jordan comings from ancient of time and flowing into the bodies and in this case literally as pulls water over jesus, and if you look carefully, and i thank simon my publisher because they use such high quality paper that you can see the color reproduction if you look at the ripples next to ankle of jesus you see how scientifically accurate it is that kid imho loves that rippling water had to turn it into engineer hadding and into art but most importantly in his notebooks around that time e leonardo is saying that goal of a painter should also be to express the interim motion through outward expression and so angel on far left is e leonardo one next to him baroque did and Leonardo Angel a deep emotion as we see the twist of the neck and expression of the face. People express art and other emotions so one that he painted next to him about the only expression on that angel face is you can see how dide i get here next to ths far more beautiful angel. And the florence and three quarters profile with a river again coming down and connecting us to nature. Connecting from the and chengt mountains the river curving the way he had loved curl into blood of humanning connecting us to the world. Thishu is not the mona lisa with expression in the river he wouldnt pay until the evened his life. Doing a lot more agnat and saying it is a shame he wasted his time doing all of this math and geology and science and anatomy because he could have painted more paintings well thats true. But if he hngt done pattern of nature and p enriched about beig curious about everything i dont think he would have gotten to the mona lisa which is the culmination of a lifetime spent finding pattern of nature. He also used his theatrical knowledge to do paintings with maji done when he was yng and in florence, we dont just see a scene. We see that swirl he loves. A curving spiral and its a drama, its a staged drama in perspective as if it were on a stage with the second king offering the gift at very bottom swelling up to the first king already bowing down andhe each person in the spiral expression is reflect iof the person before them. It was very complicatedded and leonardo doesnt finish the paint and that happens to leonardo often. He puts things aside. Flying machines that dont fly, tanks that dont roll. Paintings and gives to a man about to discover america, at the time and i dont think he just gaveer up on painting. But i a think he always thought that maybe he would learn more andd could apply yet another brush belt whether it was mona lisa which he kept for 16 years or admiration of the he gives to friends towh hold for him and he never fully gets become to it and painting he can around the same time in the wiltedderness and its unfinished but you can see that about 20, 30 years later after you put the painting aside, he does more agnatny experiment and dissect corporation and gets it right in his anatomy drawing on far right here and he goes back to his jerome painting and redoes neck muscles of that and so qhaw what you see is somebody who makes hill a bad note reis and sometimes let the perfect be the neeflt good. Like steve jobs who wouldnt shipme original macintosh becaue a Circuit Board inside wasnt pretty and so they held it up until they could make the Circuit Board that nobody would ever see, pretty like wise, leonardo often is hold on to his drawing and saysly learn something more ill be able to make it better. The way i understood that but was not bying looking at the painting which people writtenning so brilliantly, uhuh but i use his notebooks i didnt realize 20 years ago when i was wondering arranged my wife studied in florence art history and we saw paints and go to italy quite a bit but i was stumbling across in italy his notebook pages and i realized that that was the clue to how his mind danced around different subjects just take a simple not simple but a page like this. First of all marvel how goods of a Technology Paper is. For the storage and retrieval of information. 500 years later, we can still see it. 50 years from now your Facebook Post and your tweets fortunately are not going to be reare treefable. But paper it is really good the operating system never goes out. So in the center left you see that warrior that hes always u draw. But you see a tree. Trunk branching into the torso of the warrior, as leonardos mind goes through something hes been thinking about which is the analogy between nature and human. And especially what we can call leonardos law of branching which is when theres a branch of a tree, a branch, the Cross Section of b the area of the branch toalingses up to the trunk and thats true of rivers and tributary it is true of our honoree so leonardo is making those connection and top left hes making the connections between the swirls of water he loves and curls of hair. He writes about curls of hair have the same spiral form and by the way he even makes stab at matte of the equation. As for math hes always trying to transform one shape into a different shape but with the same area. A problem to make it the same area using circle using a ruler and and chengt math math call puzzle thats not actually totally soable because it is a very irrational number but leonardoto trieses to throughout his life the square the circle. You can see it and writing to left to right because he taught himself to write and hes a left hander and doesnt want to smudge and you see the list of things he wants to learn that we qeerd things like inflate the lung of a pig and see whether they expand in length as much width you got to be kidding but hes turning 30 when he does this. At bottom left is a recipe for using husk of certain types of thuts and boil them in oil medical record in order to make a blondish hair dye. And suddenly you say man the guy is human kind of vein about his appearance. Thoseth beautiful curly locks ad hes worried about going gray. [laughter] thats our leonardo around that time too he finds the companion of his life a nickname for the little devil. Siali able to be a petty thief and Everything Else that leonardo likes him and thats how he gets his nickname so tht is like we can watch him with his beautiful curly hair, age and see hill in the notebooks as part of leonardos life. At that period of turning 30 maybe starting to turn gray, his father notarizedded the contracts and two of the paintings he hasnt yet in st. Overroam so you can kind of imagine that maybe it was tile to move on. Time leave wonderful florence. And when he does is he goes as part of a cultural dell gigs to millan because florence was not a great military power. He was even able to lose battles to pisa which was probably hard to do but they have a lot of influence because what you night call we might ar call soft power. It would send engineer and artist to do things like the 15 chapel or build buildings and in 148282 theres a big delegation that goes from florence to millan sent bit family to the duke of millan that is led by a playwright and a poet, and it has an architect artist and engineers, and of all things lee mar doe goes as a u musician. Because he does everything especially because he loves theater and invented Musical Instrument like a violin but highway made it in shape of a horses head so bring it as a gift as part of that cultural delegation. At just a painter hes blocked on last couple of paintings hes done so writes one of the coolest job application letters in history. Toe the duke of millan and its 11 paragraphs long. And the first ten paragraphs al about engineering and science, he saysen i can make great weapons of war. Including large cross bow he says i can build great buildings to divert rivers. And its only in the 11th paragraph almost as an afterthought when he says i can also paint. As wells as any person of course he can but he revels in fact when he guess to millan he eventually earns a position as engineer and painter to the duke of millan. And he works on project collaboratively because once again i want to emphasize that createssivety is a team sport. Innovation cools from collaboration. We think of leonardo as going to someones in the castle and maybe doing his great drawing like a man or his painting but, in fact, he worked with a lot of other people especially in the court of millan. His close friend the great math he does draw for devine proportion and he gets a feel for it useful in art. He also works with architects in engineers, and his first real big thing that he does is work with three or four friends on helping fix up the millan cathedral like steever steve jobs leonardo believed that simplicity was a soul of beauty. As youre looking youre probably thinking this is not the soul of beauty. This is a gothic monstrosity, but lee that are dean his friend are asked to help design this i cant quite show it but little lantern tower on top that comes up with a simple design of a square, and as you can tell the authorities in millan dont build it they build a monstrosity instead but in working on it, lee mar doe has become very Close Friends with three or four other architects and nrmings most notably [inaudible conversations] the cool thing is he painted a picture of the two of them together thats him on the right. Round face Holding Leonardo on the left and purple tunic and notebook in front of him going from right to left, though, he was always said to have had a muscular well built wellay proportioned athletic boy that chiseled face. And of course the wonderful flowing curly locks of blond or maybe dyed blond hair. And it should be proportional to a human. He wants to connect the human to nature also to the spirit. And the renaissance as you know was partly a rebirth of classical knowledge. You read you know that rediscovery rei is part of the renaissance well for his friends and leonardo there was a man you script that had just been rediscovered by the the ancient roman architect and it writes about how buildings especially churches and temples should reflect the proportions of a human and it is page after page line after line of the exact proportions of the human body. Which leonardo will say as they sayy heres proportion one thing i had discovered in leonardo notebook is that ever since his childhood he doesnt accept received wisdom hes a design of his own experiment so what he does in page after page of his notebook is due proportion working with assistance the measure to the ten to cheekbone to nose to breast sitting, standing running dozens and dozens hundreds of proportions that he does. With hiss friends hes geeking out totally obsessive on issue of squaring the circle. As page after page ways to do squares and circle yet all of the same area until having done they go down to pavia a town very close to millan. Where theyre building a cathedral that is more to their liking a very simple cathedral, and they all decide to go to the castle and look at the man ewe discriminate there because theres the copy of the manuscript of the trvia but theyre going illustrate man and we know leonardo but his friends also do it. There it is the man in proportion in the circle in the square, in the Church Design is. All sitting according to the proportions of the the truvia we see the drawings and who had a nice dinner where they were doing it and had came lee mar doe brought his companion who spilled wine on the table we know from a notebook so we can imagine these guys doing it. Looking at hoping these unspill wine and then leonardo he does his version. Yeah right as you look at leonardo the man can see it is a work of brilliant silence and puts it sideways to be in the measurement and everything in there is scientifically proportion according to to the measurements leonardo made and he gets it exactly accurate. And he said that the naval should be the center of the earth but implies that the genital are center of creation so leonardo puts a circle and square on the same base. But as you can see the circle is going up a little bit higher so naval is at exact center of the circle genitals are the center of the square, and circle goes up and hes squaring the circle. Making them the same area. Besidinginging being a work of great science and great math it is a work of unbelievable art. Unnecessary beauty see his friends are doing stick figures theres leonardo with his lefthanded cross hatching making it awesomely beautiful. I went to the fourth floor in venice where they keep it in storming because it cant be exposed to light. My wife and i and translator who was working with me we had talkedse them into showing it to us if you with look at the dust jacket and author picture in the back there i am leaning over having walked up four flights of stairs in july in venice in airconditioning builds so theres a threat if i drop some sweat under this picture 500 yearssw from now people will be saying i wonder what leonardo meant by that so i was very careful. But you see the shortly in the line he knew exactly what he was doing. Its that sketch et right in the center of the naval there. And you get a chill almost because you feel youre in the presence of the hand of the master. And then you look at the face that face starings at you we motion and intensity as you stare at it mind should go back to things youve seen about leonardo, and look at that picture to extent is leonardo drawing himself substantial doubting naked spread eagle and in the earth in cosmo in the center of creation asking how do i fit in . This is what makes it the greatestst drawing connecting te art the sciences, the humanities, and the spirit all in the curious mind saying what am i doing here. How do i fit in . He does throughout his time atom call drawings and not just great of great anatomy they also combine art and science. The visual display of information is somebody who thought they could do weaponry thisd is a map of imola. He and nicole and his friend and the war lord all spend the winter of 1502 a few months in amola what would be a great scene in a movie if i may say as leonardo realizes that greatest weapon of war is understanding where you are, and he paces off street with able tods an aerial view even though theres no airplane or balloon or drones and it looks like a current map you would have of a military map. But if you read matts when he says up with of his great weapons was surprise. He always u knew where he have and where enemy was, and what terrain was better than any adversary and all of this is part of it and he even cook up a theme buzz leonardo loves quarter in flow since he was a little boy of diverting the so that florence qowld go right to the sea. Why this is suddenly after america and Christopher Columbus have become important to be a sea port. If youre going to be part of the age of exploration also if you cant be in military you can divert river. So you can sort of starve them out. And in the theater come together in this painting in millan he does, of course, last supper and one that is noticeable it is work of a theater designer as if jesus is saying all right everybody get on this side of the table if yowpght to be o in the picture. Correct all going to vanishing point upon the forehead of jesus. Outward you can see them radiate out but walls go back and accelerate perspective way, why . Well imagine look on stage here and scenery that you imagine leonardo would have done the scenery comes in that way to make it look deeper. Its not just a moment many time buter art critic say it is eerie because it is a frozen moment not to me. Itit feels like a sequential dra narrative drama had monks come in from the right jesus saying one of you shall betray me. You see it rippling out and like water away and first group of apostle on side are reacting with this and next part of the narrative is me lord or he who will betray you and almost seems to bounce back the way ripples do as jesus says see that and you see there on the left, our left dipping his hand and then final narrative goes on and theres reaching for wine and even in a spill paint we get a dramatic narrative and curious things about it, and shadow on coming from a back window. And did he get it wrong. How could he have messedded that up and d then you go visit the monastery and you go into the room where it is an you marvel at the picture and look up to your left and then the real room is the only window and you realized that it is a light coming in midday from that window that leonardo is using to light the right wall of the painting and the table with a shadow from it directly. That science of art pane engineering also came together very very famously a few days ago. I did not know it was going on sale but i went to sigh it in london as you know on sale in kristys. Call reason i was mesmerized by it shows leonardo blurs lines knowing because he studied optics that we dont see in a that sharp line because we have two eye and our retina, see it very point of the retina so theres nothing really sharp about the line. Things get closer to you they get is happenner look at curl of jesus so spirals that leonardo loved in the light luster and as it gets to his chest, they get a little bit clear and then theres tay right hand. And it is sharply something they said maybe he didnt paint the whole thing because he wouldnt have painted a hand that sharp. As i look at notebook hes writing on perpghtive and he talks about perspective like in the last syrup and how distance perspective warnings with how you do artificial perspective in a big painting like last supper but he has a section called acuity, a sharpness perspective and he writes about how is at a distance its not perfectly easy to see. It is a focal point of our line so lines are sharp in doing it that way with the sharpness, hes making it look like the hand is coming out off the panel to bless us. It is accurate with inclusion on bottom right oftt that orb buts theres something strange about it if you think of a lens or solid crystal even a bottle of water i guess and you think of your hand behind it like this or whatever you can imagine you can see it is distorted inverted like any lens. And yet there if you look in my book is the high quality reproduction or i went to see it and look very carefully there is not the tiniest bit of distortion. In jesus why is that . It could be he just didnt e know thats ridiculous even as a kid hes doing that billion and light waves hit curvee objects and then doing lenses and studying crystal for isabella so we know he knows. It could be heis knows that you think it will be too distracting with a beautiful picture and all of a sudden words are office and people will be distracted so he doesnt do it. Maybe. Other thing it is salvador showing miraculous quality hes showing a miracle that nothing hend touches is ever distorted good thing about leonardo is you can be your own thinker of the mysteries and figure out what was in his head. He was not very close to Michael Angelo, in fact, when Michael Angelo statue of daifd is done hes on committee to figure out where to put it and leonardo wants it put under arches but you can see in his notebook he also draws the statue if you look carefully that is what leonardo calls [inaudible conversations] a decent ornament i. E. A covering up genital. Now, this is odd because leonardo was not good about nudity he has sketches but something about Michael Angelo and so the first ho years that david is gleyed it has a brass fig leaf ornament cover it up because lee mar doe wanted it that way. One thing he does is see pattern across nature as i said and this from his heart drawings he dissected human art and pigs hearts that were still beating because his had gun to figure out how do i paint whatever it may be but being leonardo it deinvolves into curiosity but curiosity sake and he wants to know everything so dissecting heart and he discovers a major discovery in science is how heart valve works people thought it pushes valve open and pressure from heart and pushes it closes and on it page on the left leonardo is saying no that would crumple it. What happens is when fluid moves from size chamber to smaller world it creates a spiral. Thee swirls of quarter that heo loved he says it is by swirling water it spreads out the membrane and thats why the heart valve membrane spreads out and closes even there he has a glass device that he is shown that you can use to prove this and indeed hes right thats how even our art pcial heart valve now work because of this. Is but to think about leonardo is every now and then youre remindinged hes human hes doing more and more drawings doing another Cross Section on the bottom. And then he gets distracted and mind wonders and he draws with a heart inside of hmm but i think is kind of sweet. Ands it reminds us yet again he human the guy is but in all of his theres always a connection of art and science. Its always the beauty of how we fitnn in to creation. And it always has from his earliest drawing to the end this wonderful pattern of nature like the quarter flowing into the bowl t and the pond and causing swirls the water going past the obstacle in coming swirls when he was a kid and when hes diverting the river in middle age or trying to, and as an old man looking at the swirl of water it all comes together in one of the greatest picture was done on the left you see him dissect humane to discover that very center of the rett retina the cone see black and white detail and he goes from his own experiment . Judgment and that edges of the retina tend to see color and shadows better. He also dissects human face so he knows every muscle and every shall it touches human lips and every nerve that controls every muscle. Makes all sorts of discoveries about muscle of is will and way cher shaped even ones that we could have discovered had had we withtakenned our wonder years of being curious and being observant is such as bottom lip is muscle on its own you be pout it and move it top is not if you cant pout it alone because it is connected with other muscles. I see people trying it. If youre with on cspan youre nowing looking ridiculous wait nlg you get home do to in front of are mirror who youre wait until you get home, do it in front of the mirror when you are alone. But all of that anatomical knowledge, despite what others said about being a waste of time, i think culminates of course in theed greatest smile ever painted. With the mona lisa you see the river connecting to the roads of civilization and then to us as humans. How do we fit in . If you want, you can look at the skies, they are amazing but start with the lips. 16 years he spent putting layer after layer of the tiniest brush strokes of oil, the tiniest bit of pigments in it because the light will go all the way down to the primer codes and then down and back he knows he can interactive. As he does the lips, he gets muscles in the movement and the shadow exactly right. But he also makes it so that the tiniest black and white details, but eveny on our left on our right goes straight. If youre staring right at the corner of the lips close up, the smile is elusive and disappeared on you. If your eyes go to her for head or chest for cheeks suddenly the smile lights up again because youre singing with a different part of your eyes. You are seeing it, she somebody who has emotional reaction but they change as our emotion changes, she seems to interact with us as it in augmented reality. It is a deep mystery of emotions being expressed by facial and other gestures,ng and changing interactively with us. Thats why, among many other things, it is a a great connecn of art to science, and a great masterpiece. He brings it with them after 16 years to france when he is dying. His patronage francis the first gives him a house next to the chateau and thereby his bed with three or four paintings including the mona lisa, st. John the baptist, you still perfecting them. When i did einstein, i looked at his last notebook page because i wanted to see what was he doing that night in princeton when his aorta burst and he knows he is dying. He does twothirds of the page of equations. Even though he is dying he is still trying to get as a step closer to the unified theory that will connect electromagnetism to gravity. Even though he knows hes not going to be able to do it, he is still trying to do it. And leonardo, on his last notebook page that we know of, you still trying to square the circle. He explains how maybe this will make a shape that you can then make an square and the circle ad has a chart in the middle showing how to do it, but the very last line, it pauses, and then he writes, but the soup is getting cold. You can imagine him up there in that bedroom with salai and his coat and the rest of the entourageow downstairs, and he s still struggling to get us one step closer to the spirit manifest in the laws of the universe, but the soup is getting cold. Thank you all. [applause] period. Speaking, and its a Beautiful Day down here in south florida. And question we have a booktv se middle of the festival, and as we do a couple of 250eu78 p time when is weve been down here we invite mitch kaplan to speak withdo us cofounder of the miami book fair. And hemi owns the books and he owns the books in books, book chain down here in south florida. Mitch kaplan,