Guy Posts

In the book “Math and the Mona Lisa”, Bülent Atalay highlights the work of Leonardo da Vinci to explore the historical thread between art and science. Although widely known for his portrait of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo was, first and foremost, a scientist. When we think of science we think of cold rationalism and this thing: Σ. When we think of artistic beauty we imagine something beyond the scope of rigorous human mastery, devoid of an analytic foundation— it just exists. Leonardo shatters this expectation by producing art grounded in geometric proportions and ratios which implies a grander plan than just chance creation. While the evidence of a plan exists, this evidence only seems to deepen the mystery, both of the Mona Lisa, and of the painter, Leonardo da Vinci. What exactly was his plan?

Da Vinci published very little of his scientific work. Most (if not all) of what we know about him comes from his journals— journals that yield evidence of a mind of unparalleled genius: schematics for submarines, cars, helicopters, and an understanding of projectile motion centuries before any of these things were formally proved or invented. On one journal page, da Vinci, with no further explanation, left but a note, “the sun does not move.” Da Vinci passed away in 1519. Copernicus didn’t publish his thoughts on heliocentrism until 1543.  

While the breadth of Lenoardo’s canon spans many disciplines: physics, math, painting, sculpting, etc., the depth is lacking. Although he could diagram projectile motion, he failed to mathematically prove it. He seemed more content with jumping from subject to subject before he became bogged down in the details of any particular thing. While da Vinci’s work resembles that of a dozen men, he has very few finished products as a result. He could do a little of everything, but not a lot of anything. This was his sacrifice. Lore has it that this attention deficit led him to pine on his death bed, “Tell me if anything ever was done. Tell me if anything was done.”  But it’s in the little bits that he does produce that the magic speaks, as one da Vinci biographer notes of the Mona Lisa’s smile:

…perhaps the smile is in itself Leonardo’s ultimate message to the ages: There is even more to me than you can ever capture; though I have spoken so intimately to you in my notebooks even as I have spoken to myself, I have kept final counsel only with the depths of my spirit and the inscrutable source that has made me possible; seek as you may, I will commune with you only so far; the rest is withheld, for it was my destiny to know things you will never know. -Sherwin B. Nuland

At first I disregarded this analysis. There was no way, I thought, that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa with the intent of leaving an indelible mark on human civilization. But I realized that Leonardo’s intent wasn’t to score an eternal resting place in the history books, but to live a full, complete, and rewarding life— something that we can all identify with. I’m convinced that Leonardo wouldn’t object to the fact that most of his work was either lost or destroyed for it creates a fitting legacy: The great problem solver has left behind a great conundrum for us to solve: How could he do so much, across so many fields, but leave such a small trail? More remarkably, how does but a trail of breadcrumbs reveal a man so uniquely gifted to be unanimously revered as the world’s quintessential Renaissance man?

Leonardo strived to have his time on Earth resemble a life well lived but hid the unifying threads from view. He kept the magic, the secret, and the mystery to himself. Mystery: this is Leonardo’s legacy. It’s also one we wouldn’t mind for ourselves. 

“Sacrifice, that’s the price of a good trick” - The Prestige