Beyond Love and Hate: Leonardo Da Vinci, Part I
Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the most important figures of the Italian Renaissance, a multi-talented genius, whose limits we can only imagine and never define — as Bukhardt said-. He exerted an intense influence on painting during his time. However, his greatness as the physics researcher contained in the artist has only been recognized in the present-day. In addition, he played the zither, he built new musical instruments, and he had great knowledge of architecture and military engineering; in short, a man with multiple talents. He lived isolated from his contemporaries, they considered him to be an enigma, a nutcase for wasting time on research instead of dedicating his time to painting the portraits he was commissioned.
As for his pictorial activities, many criticized his inconsistency; it is said that he would climb up the scaffolding in the early morning and work on his paintings without a break until sundown, not even stopping to eat, but then weeks would go by where he would not paint at all.
Apart from his genius, he was a slender man, with a beautiful face, physical strength, not at all common; socially charming, cheerful, affable and eloquent; he loved everything that was beautiful, he would wear magnificent suits and he valued life’s refinements.
These are a few of the details known about Leonardo’s life, which are told by the less risky, more cowardly biographers.
In E. Solmi’s biography of Leonardo, he gives us an insight into the private details of this enigmatic Renaissance artist.
From this biography, we have two interesting phrases in our possession that unmask a little of the enigma that has always kept him concealed. These phrases do not intend to break down our image of Leonardo; on the contrary, they allow him to be known and loved for whom he was.
Very little or nothing is known about Leonardo’s sexual life. Nothing about love or passion is mentioned in his diaries. He does not mention either topic, possibly because he considered them to be of little or no importance. However, the studies conducted on his personality reveal that he did not have a sex life: it is doubtful that he ever had a woman in his arms; nor, from what is known, is it believed that he had any platonic affair.
In E. Solmi’s biography, whom I mentioned a few lines above, there is a phrase that demonstrates Leonardo’s great repulsion regarding sex; it states: “coitus and everything related to it is so repugnant that Humanity would become extinct in a short period of time if this act did not constitute an ancient custom and there were no beautiful faces and sensual natures.”
This “ancient custom” reveals to us his sexual repulsion, and when he mentions “beautiful faces and sensual natures”: he was possibly referring to those youths that he frequently met with, took in as disciples and who, as was customary in the time, lived with him.
There is another phrase from Leonardo that Freud settled on when he wanted to study the development of Leonardo’s state of mind, and it states: “You cannot love or hate something if you have not understood it first.” From this phrase, Freud concluded that Leonardo had substituted passion, in light of his sexual repulsion, by the desire for knowledge; he surrendered to the scientific research and pictorial activity that carried out brilliantly, with the desire shown by a man in love with a woman.
Leonardo must have figured out that his last phrase was false in the specific case of human behavior. Men do not stop to consider if the object that attracts their attention meets 40 requisites; there is a type of impulse, an acceptance that announces the sudden arrival of a feeling, be it love or hate. Leonardo used to say that that which humans call love is not fair and perfect love, that one should hold that feeling, analyze it, submit it to an intellectual contrast and then, if the object of our study is victorious in our examination, we love it or we abandon it.
Leonardo went beyond love and hate since he did not love or hate; instead he would ask himself what was the origin of that which was to be loved or hated and what was its significance. He converted feelings into his objective intellectual interest.
His childhood memories hold the key to this attitude toward life, the reason why he refused sex, the reason for Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile, the basis of the two phrases cited in this article.
