Leonardo Da Vinci: A Man of the Renaissance

June 2013

Leonardo da Vinci: A Man of the Renaissance

Leonardo Da Vinci lived his 67 years during the Renaissance. Most people do not realize that he was a “vegetarian at a time when most people ate meat.” Because his view was that every living “creature that moved felt pain” (Strom 32).  “Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, ‘da Vinci’ simply meaning ‘of Vinci’: his full birth name was ‘Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci’, meaning ‘Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci’. The inclusion of the title ‘ser’ indicated that Leonardo's father was a gentleman” (Wikipedia, Leonardo da Vinci).    In his own time he was known as II Fiorentino (the Florentine), it wasn’t till later in the 1600’s that he became known as Leonardo Da Vinci. He was born out of wedlock on April 15, 1452, near the town of Vinci, to a peasant girl, Caternia, and a notary, Ser Pierodi Antonio da Vinci.  His first 5 years were spent with a doting mother and grandmother. “From 1457 he lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but died young. When Leonardo was sixteen his father married again, to twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini. It was not until his third and fourth marriages that Ser Piero produced legitimate heirs” (Wiki, Leonardo da Vinci).  He was an only child for a long time and perhaps received so much attention that it bordered on the worshipful.  “These factors have been offered as possible ingredients for his unusual psyche, his exquisite sensitivity, superhuman drive, surpassing intelligence, and probable homosexuality – although this is all conjecture” (Atalay 4).

   Ser Piero eventually fathered twelve other children. At the death of his father, the half-siblings successfully cut him off from any inheritance.   Being illegitimate, he could not receive a formal education nor enter the same career as a notary as his father and grand-father before him.  This led to being what we would call “home schooled” which did not include the study of Greek or Latin. It is believed that for most of his life, Leonardo felt he was majorly missing out by not being able to read the old master’s in their own language.  In his later years, however, he did teach himself Latin.   He often carried around a notebook, studying nature, and rock formations at his “mysterious cave in the hills that inspired his life-long passion for geology” (Atalay 6) and was especially fascinated with the study of water in the River Arno, while completing his extensive observations and recording comprehensive notes.  “Leonardo carried out a lifelong love affair with nature—he studied it, wrote about it, drew it, painted it.  He captured its nuances as no other” (Atalay 89).