This amazing painting of the greatest monarch of England fascinates yours truly to no end as there is so much history in the work commemorating England's victory over Spain's
Spanish Armada in 1588 but ... this blurb is not about Elizabeth and England but rather about the notion of genius and what it actually entails beyond IQ, a specific aspect of intellect so overrated as to be almost meaningless in this writer's opinion.
If Mozart could hear in his head how the music ought to go, Leonardo, judging from his sketches, could simply see in his mind’s eye how the machine should work or the painting should look. Here, too, Leonardo’s natural technical facility is manifest, as seen in the hand-eye coordination that results in correct proportions and the cross-hatching lines that suggest three-dimensional perception. Likewise evident is Leonardo’s relentless curiosity. We watch his mind range across an endless horizon of interconnected interests; on one page, for example, a heart becomes the branches of a tree, which then become the tentacles of a mechanical pulley. How do all these seemingly disparate things of the world hang together? Leonardo wanted to know. With good reason, the cultural historian Kenneth Clark called him ‘the most relentlessly curious man in history’.
Seems I may be right about this. :)
Walking is the act of controlled falling. - Robert E.
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