Literary and Philosophical Fragments

of Monte Ceceri A hill near Fiesole where Leonardo conducted his flight experiments; local legend suggests his assistant Tommaso Masini attempted a flight from here. near Fiesole, in the Spring of 1505, was intended to soar over Florence, it would have been nothing more than a material and fleeting realization of the magnificent laws he discovered regarding the elasticity of air, and the structure and functions of birds. The theoretical work was completed, while the practical application remained imperfect; but the aim of Vinci's life was the laws of perspective and anthropology, and the mechanical and mathematical laws, by founding himself upon which he and the coming centuries would gather the ripest fruits of art and science.

There is an expression by Vasari Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), the "father of art history," known for his biographies of Renaissance artists. that reveals to us the falsity of the common judgment spread about Leonardo:

« Even though Vinci worked much more with words than with deeds, because of his many divine qualities, his name and fame shall never be extinguished.* »

No, we respond, it is precisely because he worked more with words than with deeds that his name and fame shall not be ex-

* The Lives original: Le Vite — Vasari's seminal work, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects., vol. IV, pages 50-51.