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[Illustration: _Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, after a woodcut published in_ Lives of the Painters, _by Vasari. The Latin inscription reads_ LIONARDO DA VINCI PITT. E SCVLTOR FIOR. _Leonardo da Vinci, Painter & Sculptor of Florence._]
LEONARDO DA VINCI _Pathfinder of Science_
_Franklin Watts, Inc., 575 Lexington Avenue New York 22, New York_
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-8426_ Copyright © 1962 by Franklin Watts, Inc. _Manufactured in the United States of America_
It is natural that, within the confines of these few pages, many facets of Leonardo’s extraordinary personality will be missing. That he was an artist, a man of letters, a poet and a philosopher are well known. That he was also a man of humor, as well as a prophet whose vision extended far beyond his times, are facts that I have also tried to include in this biography. There are many gaps in our knowledge of his life, and these I have sometimes filled with my own imagination to give some continuity to his story. Little is known of his early days, his period of travels after leaving Milan and his years in Rome. There is, too, a certain mystery in his relations to those around him, since our descriptions of him derive mostly from his often cryptic, personal notes and from biographers who wrote of him many years after he had died.
This book is about Leonardo the scientist, and to fully write of his many accomplishments would require an encyclopedic mind. My intent has been to extract the essence of his story in the hopes that it would arouse the enthusiasm of a reader to further his interest in those other, more fully documented books—and, above all, in the notebooks that Leonardo himself wrote.
1 _The Shield_ 1 2 _Florence_ 9 3 _A Studio of His Own_ 20 4 _Years of Frustration_ 28 5 _Milan_ 37 6 _The Monument_ 49 7 _Success_ 60 8 _The French_ 73 9 _Cesare Borgia_ 86 10 _Shattered Hopes_ 98 11 _The Return to Milan_ 114 12 _Rome_ 129 13 _The Last Years_ 147 14 _Mankind’s Debt to Leonardo_ 159 _Significant Dates in Leonardo’s Life_ 162 _Index_ 164
Dusk was beginning to gather in the valley at the foot of Monte Albano as young Leonardo turned toward home. Stopping by a rushing stream to wash the dust of the day’s explorations from his face, he laid aside his cap and his leather pouch and plunged his hands into the cold mountain water. He felt the force of the current and watched the whirl and flow of bubbles around his bare arms. There was the same feeling, he thought, to the flow of air he had experienced blowing around the rocky crags of the mountains.