Thoughts on Art and Life

foundation; he believed the acquisition of this foundation was the result of a permanent state of mind. He had trained his own abilities to critically observe all natural phenomena. His advice was: first test things through experience, and then demonstrate why the experiment must function the way it does. For example, he noted that the eye had been defined in one way by others, but through experience, he had found it to be something else entirely.

However, by "imitation" in art, Leonardo did not mean a mindless reproduction of nature. When he wrote that “the painter strives and competes with nature,” he was following a more Aristotelian Relating to the Greek philosopher Aristotle concept. He only partially developed this idea, using "nature" in the sense used by the Stagirite original: Stagirite; a common name for Aristotle, who was born in the city of Stageira—as an inner force that shows itself through outward appearance. In fact, the idea of imitation as it appeared to his mind was two-fold. It was not just the external reproduction of an image, which was simple enough to achieve. The artist's true difficulty lay in reflecting inner character and personality. It was Leonardo’s firm conviction that every thought had an outward expression by which a trained observer could recognize it. He wrote that every person has as many bodily movements as they have different types of ideas. Furthermore, thought expresses itself outwardly in proportion to how much power it has over the individual and their stage of life. By using bodily gestures to represent feelings and ideas, the painter could influence the viewer whom he