Summary
Leonardo da Vinci: Treatise on Painting
"Leonardo is one of the first artists who most deeply connected the study of natural sciences and their technical applications in human life with his artistic visions. Among the writings from his legacy are researches on the problem of the earth's gravity, mechanical movement, flight of birds, notes on his experiments on the realization of the idea of human flight.
As an artist of the mature Renaissance, he created an endless space. Unlike unnatural, spaceless forms of earlier art, Leonardo erased the touches of contours and let things and figures drown in the soft blue haze of heavenly and earthly distances. Because of his broad interests in art, science and technology and their synthesis, Leonardo was called "homo universalis".
In his time, the hidden drivers of nature had yet to be discovered. Leonardo explained and transformed nature, it is the substance from which everything is created and built, for him the highest and most precious thing. He did not paint the god in a superhuman appearance. Everything that nature stands for encompasses and unites with its harmony."
Oto Bihalji-Merin
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