Colorectal cancer is the number two cancer killer. It doesnt always cause symptoms, but it can be prevented. Get screened. Make sure you are the picture of health. The eye, which is the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding may most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature. [bell ringing] this is the countryside seen 500 years ago by a child who was destined to become one of the unique figures in the history of western civilization. What he began to learn in this italian countryside outside vinci was to know how to see. His genius gave him the ability to see clearly what others could only see mistily, transforming his life and influencing ours as well. As painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist, he searched the whole nature of creation, always beginning with what he could see. Leonardo da vinci was the natural son of piero da vinci and a handsome peasant girl named caterina. Leonardos character as a man suggests that he had a happy childhood. Throughout his life, he was sensitive, generous, and gentle. The story is told of him buying up Little Songbirds in the marketplace of florence so that he could free them from their cages. He was a vegetarian because the slaughter of animals disgusted him. Once passing a butcher shop hung with carcasses, he called out, truly man is king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others. We are burial places. We know that leonardo was strikingly handsome and possessed of great physical strength. His disposition towards others was modest, his manner cheerful. The painter biographer vasari writes of him, leonardo was in all things so highly favored by nature that everything he did bore an impression of harmony, truthfulness, and grace. No other man could ever equal him. But for all these seemingly sociable qualities, leonardo was an enigmatic and solitary person. When youre all alone, he wrote, you are all your own. He was restless and unpredictable, a man of endless curiosity. Magical powers were attributed to him by some who were baffled by the versatility of his mind and the broad range of his understanding. In one of his notebooks, leonardo comments, the best thing in the soul is wisdom. Nothing can be compared to it. Leonardos own search for wisdom began with what he could see. Let us begin there, too, today, 500 years later. [dog barking] the tuscan landscape has changed little in 500 years. It still possesses a strange kind of beauty when its shrouded in morning mist. The smell of the earth is the same, of things growing, things dead. The olive trees still spread their silvergreen shade, and the ripe olives are still picked in the same manner they were so long ago. A young boy of today would see the color here as leonardo did, looking at the spreading landscape as it stretched before him. But leonardo desired to see more. See things more closely. A simple grape leaf is a complex system of veins. Leonardos early preoccupation was with the natural world. It was an interest that never left him. The complexity of the simple things of nature fascinated him. Leonardo approached natural phenomena by asking questions. How is a thing put together . Well, he solved that question by observing carefully and then by making an accurate drawing of what he saw. To be able to draw something accurately was not only a means of understanding it, but also of making it clearer to other people. We today who have been brought up from our childhood on illustrated books on every subject, from Popular Mechanics to sophisticated medical journals, owe much to leonardo da vinci, who so fervently believed that to be able to see was to be able to know. It may have all begun with those flowers he saw in tuscany, and perhaps it did. In one of leonardos notebooks, he says, the mind of a painter should be like a mirror. You cannot be a good master unless you have a universal power of representing by your art all the varieties of the forms which nature produces. This is the da vinci house as it exists today. And it was through these narrow windows that the Young Leonardo saw the world outside. Natives of vinci will tell you that this very tree was flourishing already 500 years ago, and that leonardo himself may have played beneath its branches. Though perhaps it is best with stories of this kind to keep in mind the italian expression, se non e vero, ben trovato it may not be true, but it makes a good story. Leonardo was lefthanded, and his drawings can be recognized by the fact that the crosshatching is always from left to right, but he had a curious habit of writing backwards with his left hand, and nearly all his writing has come down to us to be read from right to left in mirror script. One would have expected leonardo to have followed his fathers profession and become a notary. But as a boy he displayed such a remarkable ability for drawing that his father could not deny him the opportunity of becoming an artist. So at the age of 15, leonardos father took him to the city of florence some 25 miles away. Leonardo drew this landscape five years after leaving vinci. His feeling for the hill country can be see in it. It was the first italian landscape ever created, for before this time, landscapes had been merely background. His new conception was eventually to alter the whole nature of italian painting. It was just such a scene as this that leonardo was leaving behind him when he was taken to the big city of florence. This is florence as it is today. 500 years ago it was a lively mercantile center. The city had already emerged from the gloom of feudalism, and it was now alive with confidence and enthusiasm. It was not only a center for the arts but a center for worldwide trade. Modern banking originated here, and the greatest banking house was owned by the medici family, who ruled the city. The great dome of the cathedral in florence, the duomo. Is crowned with a golden sphere, and leonardo was among those who helped to create it. The famous bell tower, the campanile, was in existence 150 years before leonardos birth. And the bronze doors of the adjoining baptistery were finished by Lorenzo Ghiberti in 1452, the year of leonardos birth. Michelangelo called these doors depicting scenes from the bible the gates of paradise. Nowadays people come flocking to the city to see these wonderful creations of the past. Leonardos father apprenticed him to andrea verrocchio, whose workshop was the most important in florence. Here on via dellacqua, water street, leonardos career as an artist was to begin. His master, verrocchio, was a famous craftsman a painter, a sculptor, a goldsmith. His workshop was not merely an artists studio, for he and his apprentices could fashion anything that required skill of hand. At the uffizi, the great museum in florence, is verrocchios painting the baptism of christ, more famous now for leonardos contribution to it than verrocchios. The angel on the left is the work of leonardo, an otherworldly creature that verrocchio never painted and never could have painted. By comparison, verrocchios work is stylized in the florentine academic manner. The angel has an earthy quality. He looks like a boy. He has a rather vague stare looking blankly into space, away from the baptism itself. But leonardos angel, loosely and freely rendered, is totally absorbed in watching the baptism and is a deeply moved witness. This kneeling angel, with its slight turn of the body, reveals for the first time one of the basic principles of leonardos composition building a figure by means of several interlocking movements, a kind of twisting motion. It is almost as if we see him in three dimensions. The piazza della signoria has always been the heart of florence with its great sculptured figures, many of which were created in leonardos time. Leonardo walked this square as a young man of fashion who loved wearing flamboyant clothes and wore them well. At first people only recognized him as being verrocchios apprentice, but it was not long before they came to know him as leonardo. The most famous of the statues here, of course, is michelangelos david. Leonardo served on the committee that placed the great statue in the square. The original is now in the academy of art, placed there in order to protect it from air pollution and mindless vandals. Here is another painting in the uffizi that shows the unmistakable stamp of leonardos early work the annunciation a large panel seven feet long and three feet high painted on a poplar board, as was the custom of the time. The most appealing feature of the painting is the messenger of god, the winged angel. Vasari writes that verrocchio stopped painting when he saw the evidence of his young apprentices ability, but that story is not true. It is more probable that verrocchio decided to concentrate still more on sculpture, which he preferred to painting, after realizing the great talent of the Young Leonardo. Among the sculpture of verrocchio that exists in florence today is a most charming work in the courtyard of the palazzo vecchio, the city hall. The little boy with a dolphin is one of the most famous statues in florence. Verrocchios bronze of david is displayed at the bargello museum, and some believe that leonardo may have been the model for david. That might be true, but leonardo was older than this youthful figure. It is interesting to note davids smile, because some of leonardos most famous drawings and paintings are remarkable for the manner in which leonardo has rendered their smiles. One is compelled to think of the inner thoughts of these people, which is one of the principal aims of leonardos art to capture what he called the motion of the mind. In the Benois Madonna and the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, the slight, haunting smile can be seen. And of course in the mona lisa and the john the baptist. The influence of verrocchio on leonardo is very powerful, but as leonardo himself wrote, the disciple who does not surpass his master fails his master. Between 1476 and 1477, leonardo left verrocchios workshop. He notes on one of his drawings in 1478 that he has begun work on two paintings of the virgin mary. The one that has come down to us hangs today in the hermitage in leningrad. This painting is known as the Benois Madonna, and although it is unfinished, like so much of leonardos work, the 26yearold master created a touching and original version of an eternal theme. The infant christ stretches up his hand for the flower offered him by the youthful madonna, and the three hands form the center of the composition as they come together. This portrait of ginevra debenci, which was done during this period, is a superb example of leonardos art of expression. This treasure is exhibited today at the National Gallery of art in washington, whose director is j. Carter brown. Brown america has its own leonardo da vinci. The only one in this country, the only one in this hemisphere, the only one in this world which is painted on both sides it really makes two pictures in one. Its a picture of ginevra debenci, daughter of one of the richest families in florence, adherents of the medici, with whom she was well acquainted, so that in a sense, here in the National Gallery, she has come home among many friends. She is depicted by leonardo in perhaps the worlds first psychological portrait. It is very rare anywhere in the history of art to find a portrait of someone who is sad. Why so sad . We know that she was childless. We know that her husband had financial difficulties. We know that she was in the hands of doctors, just about the time this portrait was painted. But there may be another reason, because we have documentary evidence that the dashing venetian ambassador had found inroads into ginevras heart. The picture is also a crossroads in the history of art, because leonardo is building on that marvelous tradition of 15thcentury florentine painting in which the problem of representing three dimensions in two was solved with great vigor and great threedimensional plasticity, and yet leonardo typically, with his scientific mind, is going at the problem in a new way. Since the middle ages, we have in painters handbooks the basic concept, which was somehow to capture a spiritual eminence that was of not reality in our sense and construct a symbol for it in paint. And to do that, the painter was instructed to lay down a ground and then build up the highlights on top of it, which is an additive kind of process. Philosophically leonardo turned it around. He assumed the object is there. His problem was to depict it. And the way he attacked this problem was to show where the light wasnt, where the shadows were. In his notebooks we have diagrams showing how light defines form by not being there at all. And thats what makes the beautiful modeling in this picture, that almost uncanny way in which no brushstrokes show, no thick highlights are laid on. The whole surface of the cheek and under the neck reflect light from around the ambience and seem breathed on in a way which was to become, as leonardo worked these theories out further and further over the course of his whole development, his great hallmark, and a dominant influence in western painting. On the back, the florentine drawing, the marvelous skill of hand, which was in the florentine tradition, is exemplified magnificently. But Something Else as well, because theres a symbol there. The juniper is the same word in italian almost as the word for ginevra. Its also a symbol of chastity. On the legend are the words, in lati beauty adorns virtue. What that virtue may have cost ginevra has been made immortal in paint. Gielgud for nearly a year just before he left florence, leonardo worked on an altarpiece for a convent. It was the largest commission to be given to him during those early years. But leonardo was never to finish this work, the adoration of the magi. More than 60 people as well as 60 animals are included in the composition. The architectural conception was wonderfully designed to include so many figures without overcrowding. All the figures, both human and animal, are caught in attitudes of awe, repose, or vivid action. The painting was almost completed when leonardo abruptly stopped work on it and left florence to live in milan in 1482. Why did he never finish his commission . The final task needed in a painting of this kind is to lay in the colors, but this he did not seem to wish to do, fearing perhaps that his technical skill would fail to match the idea that his intellect had conceived. This would seem to have been one of his recurring doubts. Even unfinished, the adoration remains one of the great works of the quattrocento. It influenced the direction of all italian painting, pointing the way to the classical style of the 17th century and even anticipating some of the impressionists of the 19th century. Raphael was profoundly moved when he saw it, and the influence of its composition on the young painter can be seen years later when raphael painted the school of athens, a painting in which, incidentally, leonardo was supposed to have been the model for plato. Raphael copied leonardo again when he drew leda and the swan after leonardos painting. The leonardo painting has vanished, but we know what it must have looked like from the raphael drawing and from a copy of it made by bugiardini which is in the borghese gallery in rome. In leonardos drawing of ledas head, we see immediately the twisting motion of the hair, that twisting motion he so loved to portray. Even though leonardo was to return to florence, he never attempted to finish the adoration. At the age of 30, he set out for milan. We know that leonardo sent a letter to the duke of milan, ludovico sforza, also know as il moro because of his swarthy complexion. The duke presided over the liveliest court in europe. His province of lombardy was then, as it still is today, the wealthiest province in italy. To gain his new position at court, leonardo recommended himself primarily as a military engineer. I can supply, leonardo wrote, an infinite number of engines of attack and defense. Of the ten paragraphs in his letter, it is only in the last one that leonardo informs the duke, that i can do as well as any other man as a painter. He also offers to undertake the creation of an equestrian statue to the dukes father, francesco sforza. To be out of favor at the court of Lorenzo De Medici was the worst misfortune that could befall a florentine artist, and leonardo was not a court favorite. His interest in the Natural Sciences was puzzling to the court. This drawing probably suggests something of his mental conflict. It is a sketch for the adoration, but in the corner there is a design for a hydrometer, a device for measuring the amount of moisture in the air. One would think that scientific instruments and nude drawings could have little in common, but in leonardos mind they existed side by side. There was little understanding at the Florentine Court for this kind of scientific curiosity in a man of the arts, but leonardo continued to pursue his own line of development. Milan was a new wod to leonardo, and he went there filled with confidence, hoping to be able to do there many of the things that he could not do in florence. He was to remain in the north for the next 17 years. The Sforza Castle was an armed fortress as difficult to capture as it was to defend, yet inside those thick walls, leonardo enjoyed the company of some of the leading artists and scientists of the day, for it was, despite its grim appearance, a hospitable and lively place. Leonardo began his work in milan with the virgin of the rocks. Two versions of this work exist. This one, the first, is in the louvre in paris. The painting is based on an apocryphal legend of the middle ages showing the holy family returning from their flight into egypt and meeting with the infant john the baptist. The figure of saint john is seen kneeling in prayer as he looks towards the infant jesus, who is sitting beside an angel. The angel gazes out towards one as one looks at the picture, his finger pointing to saint john to guide us to the prophetic figure who can explain the mission of the christ child. Ten years later, leonardo returned to this theme because the original painting, an altarpiece, had been taken away from its owners, the brotherhood of the immaculate conception. And this later version is now at the National Gallery in london, but there are only slight differences between the two. The conception is the same the triangular composition unaltered, the essential beauty of the creation intact. And it is fascinating to compare the two versions. To bathe a thing in light, leonardo wrote, is to merge it with the infinite. He realized that light did not exist without its opposite, shade. Leonardos subtle shading of face and form is known as sfumato. It is one of the most distinctive qualities of his drawi