PREFACE

practices, and defined him as varied, unstable, mutable; we, contemplating his vast theory, to which he dedicated the forces of his entire life, must define him as intent on a single purpose and firm in the face of every conflict. From the first years of his youth until death, he in fact directed his forces toward a unique goal: the knowledge of the laws of phenomena, the description of natural forms.

When Michelangelo reproaches Leonardo with a stinging remark, sitting beside him on the street-bench of Geri degli Spini,* regarding works left unfinished; he, like all his contemporaries, considers only the external, visible work, not the internal, grandiose labor entrusted to the manuscripts, which was destined to be shipwrecked for four centuries before landing in ours. When Vasari says that Vinci worked much more with words than with deeds; he does not know that science is just as important as art, and that the face full of sweetness and softness

• ANONYMOUS Original: Anonimo. Likely referring to the "Anonimo Gaddiano," an unidentified 16th-century author who wrote a brief biography of Leonardo., Short Life. Italian Historical Archive, series III, vol. XVI, p. 226.