He was not a religious-minded man

Later he repeats this suggestion in slightly different form, advising the painter to study not only marks on walls, but also "the embers of the fire, or clouds or mud, or other similar objects from which you will find most admirable ideas . . . because from a confusion of shapes the spirit is quickened to new inventions." "But, he adds, "first be sure you know all the members of all the things you wish to depict, both the members of animals and the members of landscapes, that is to say, rocks, plants and so forth."

I have quoted this passage at length, familiar as it is, because it is profoundly characteristic of Leonardo. Nothing could be farther from the precepts of academic classicism than the use of stains in walls as a stimulus to the imagination. This procedure was followed by Goya, one of the most anti-classical of all painters; and Victor Hugo, whose name is the first to come to mind when we read Leonardo's descriptions of a deluge, made many of his strangely exciting drawings out of accidental blots and smears of coffee. Yet although Leonardo would admit such aids to the imagination, his conception of art as a science forced him to add a warning that the painter must understand the detailed structure of all that he wished to represent.

Before leaving the Trattato I will take the opportunity of quoting from it a few of the passages which throw some light on Leonardo's character apart from his ideas on painting. First of all, we have some first-hand confirmation of those early authorities who tell us that he was elegant, solitary and calmly aware of his superiority to the average of mankind. This is apparent in his perfectly illogical attacks on sculpture. Sculpture, he says, is not a science, but an arte meccanicissima, for the sculptor in creating his work does so by the strength of his arm by which he consumes the marble, or other obdurate material in which his subject is enclosed: and this is done by most mechanical exercise, often accompanied by great sweat which mixes with the marble dust and forms a kind of mud daubed all over his face. The marble dust flours him all over so that he looks like a baker; his back is covered with a snowstorm of chips, and his house is made filthy by the flakes and dust of stone. The exact reverse is true of the painter (taking the best painters and sculptors as standards of comparison); for the painter sits before his work, perfectly at his ease and well dressed, and moves a very light brush dipped in delicate colour; and he adorns himself with whatever clothes he pleases. His house is clean and filled with charming pictures; and often he is accompanied by music or by the reading of various and beautiful works which, since they are not mixed with the sound of the hammer or other noises, are heard with the greatest pleasure.

We are reminded of the description by Jusepe Martinez of El Greco in a great house with twenty-four rooms and a band of musicians to play to him while he took his meals. But with Leonardo (as, indeed, with El Greco) this elegant way of life was combined with great austerity. "In order that the prosperity of the body", he says, "shall not harm that of the spirit the painter must be solitary, especially when he is intent on those speculations and considerations, which if they are kept continually before the eyes give the memory the opportunity of mastering them. For if you are alone you are completely yourself but if you are accompanied by a single companion you are only half yourself."

Leonardo's description of the sculptor has a further significance for us. It is an unmistakable reference to his hated rival, Michelangelo. The very hardships which Leonardo describes in derision are recorded with a kind of sardonic pride in Michelangelo's letters and sonnets. We see that the antipathy, the sdegno grandissimo as Vasari calls it, which existed between the two men was something far more profound than professional jealousy; sprang, in fact, from their deepest beliefs. In no accepted sense can Leonardo be called a Christian. He was not even a religious-minded man. It is true that he allowed himself an occasional reference to superstitious observances: thus he writes "of Worshipping the pictures of Saints. Men will speak to men who hear not. . . . They will implore favours of those who have ears and hear not; they will make light for the blind." Here and in a few other passages he seems to associate himself with the precursors of the Reformation. But these protests spring from his dislike of mumbo jumbo and loose thinking in general rather than from any real religious conviction. Michelangelo, on the other hand, was a profoundly religious man, to whom the reform of the Roman Church came to be a matter of passionate concern. His mind was dominated by ideas--good and evil, suffering, purification, unity with God, peace of mind--which to Leonardo seemed meaningless abstractions, but to Michelangelo were ultimate truths. No wonder that these ideas, embodied in a man of Michelangelo's moral, intellectual and artistic power, gave Leonardo a feeling of uneasiness thinly coated with contempt. Yet Leonardo held one belief, implicit in his writings, and occasionally expressed with a real nobility: the belief in experience.

To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses--ribelli ad essi sensi--such as the existence of God or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention. And in fact it happens that whenever reason is wanting men cry out against one another, which does not happen with certainties. For this reason we shall say that where the cry of controversy is heard, there is no true science, because the truth has one single end and when this is published, argument is destroyed for ever. But true sciences are those which, impelled by hope, have been penetrated by the senses so that the tongues of argument are silenced. They are not nourished on the dreams of investigators, but proceed in orderly sequence from the first true and established principles through successive stages to the end; as is shown by the elements of mathematics, that is to say number and measure, called arithmetic and geometry, which with complete truth treat of quantities both discontinuous and continuous. In them one does not argue if twice three makes more or less than six, or that the angles of a triangle are less than the sum of two right angles: all argument is reduced to eternal silence, and the fruits of labour can be enjoyed in peace which the lying sciences of the mind can never attain--con eterno silenzio resta distrutto ogni arguizione, e con pace sono fruite dai loro devoti il che far non possono le bugiarde scienze mentali.