Leonardo Da Vinci: A close up of a man like us
Alice Bonetti
Book summary: Leonardo Da Vinci, The Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl
Painting analysis: Virgin with the Child and Saint Anne by Leonardo da Vinci
Art, Literature and Religion of Europe (F0VL7a)
KULeuven, 2014-2015
Professor Hedwig Schwall
What is fair in men passes and does not last. (Da Vinci Notebooks 257)
In this essay I’ll convey and discuss the biography of the Italian genius Leonardo Da Vinci, basing myself on the bestselling biography Leonardo Da Vinci, The Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl. After briefly summarizing the genius’ biography, I’ll focus my attention on the painting Virgin with the Child and Saint Anne, from which I will take the cue for analyzing the painter’s particular relationship with the key figure of the mother and the woman in a more broad-spectrum.
Charles Nicholl’s major attempt in his book is to
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It comes natural to think that such a great mind must have lived his life luxuriously, surrounded by the love of his family and friends, but this is not the case in Leonardo’s life. The trauma of having had two different mothers who loved him so much basically chased him for his whole life. From my non-professional point of view I suppose his problems derived from a mixture of an absent father (too focused on his job and on making money) and a combination of too much love coming from the maternal side. In my opinion, having had an excessive amount of attention from his mothers and too few consideration from his father’s side, he was naturally prompted to find an additional paternal figure. These facts, together with the big success of the gay trend in Renaissance Florence, have been the reasons for his homosexual