Literary and Philosophical Fragments

tellect leads him to scientific investigation. Through a slow progression, Leonardo is led back from the Last Supper Original: Cenacolo. Leonardo’s famous mural in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. to that Treatise on Light and Shadow, to which he had already dedicated his first efforts in Florence; from the Sforza Monument The "Gran Cavallo," a massive bronze equestrian statue intended to honor Francesco Sforza, which was never cast. to the Treatise on the anatomy of the horse and on the methods of bronze casting; from various works of military and civil architecture to the Treatise on weights and motions and to that of Hydraulics.* The anecdote itself, narrated by Vasari Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), the biographer whose "Lives of the Artists" is a primary source for Renaissance art history. regarding the Last Supper, is an echo of the contrasts that his essentially speculative way of living aroused at this time. Before 1499, the practitioner has by now disappeared in Da Vinci; he places the brush in the hands of his disciples; abandoning the circle of artists, he positions himself in the very midst of the Milanese scientists, by now driven by a single goal: to solve the infinite problems that nature presented to him incessantly.

« Nature is full of infinite reasons Here, "ragioni" refers to governing principles or laws of nature., which were never in experience. » (I, 18 r.)

* PACIOLI, On Divine Proportion Original: Divine proportione.. Venice, 1509, c. I v. Luca Pacioli was a Franciscan friar and mathematician who collaborated with Leonardo in Milan.