![]() Such is the status he has acquired as the definitive, universal genius that the few questions raised in his quincentenary year are being put almost surreptitiously, as in a show at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome that largely comprises models based on da Vinci’s designs. He spent much of his life outside his native Tuscany in Milan, Rome and finally France as the guest of King Francis I. Florence is commemorating him with a show devoted to his master, Verrocchio.īorn out of wedlock in 1452, the son of a notary and a peasant woman, da Vinci had a lonely childhood and-probably left-handed and almost certainly gay-grew up something of a misfit. ![]() Hence the paucity of exhibitions devoted to his art in what should be his year of years. His ill-fated experimentation with materials ruined others, including “The Last Supper”. He failed to complete some of his most important commissions such as the “Adoration of the Magi”. Fewer than 20 finished works are generally attributed to da Vinci. He had brilliant intuitions in fields as diverse as anatomy and hydraulics, but because he failed to publish his theories and findings, hundreds of years were to pass before they were discovered by someone else.Įven his artistic oeuvre, though sublime, is minute. Da Vinci’s highlights the fact that, outside the field of painting, his legacy-as distinct from his genius-was modest. But his life yielded an endless succession of untested contraptions, unpublished studies and unfinished artworks.Īnniversaries are normally opportunities for reappraising the legacy of the great man or woman concerned. ![]() He had astonishing powers of observation, an extraordinary talent for making connections between different areas of knowledge, a readiness to challenge contemporary beliefs and an uncanny ability to anticipate future discoveries. Like many an autodidact, da Vinci was long on inquisitiveness but short on intellectual self-discipline. If that is indeed so, it was one of his very few inventions that had a practical application. It was constructed in 1786 and is based on a design by da Vinci that Stefano Ricci, the fashion house which owns the mill, says has been used in Florence since da Vinci was alive. ![]() In the Antico Setificio Fiorentino, Italy’s oldest working silk mill, Beatrice Fazzini turns by hand a vertical warper: a cylindrical machine that prepares yarn for weaving. ![]()
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