LEONARDO DA VINCI: EXPERIENCE, EXPERIMENT, DESIGN

Force

Motion

Leonardo da Vinci, Forster Codex, Volume III, 42r, Late 15th - early 16th Century. Museum no. F.141 Volume III R42 (Forster) (click image for larger version)

Leonardo’s vision of the natural world was extraordinarily dynamic. Force was the key to the vision. The application of force was necessary for anything to move. Motion gave life to all things but also exercised a huge destructive potential.

The human body was at the centre of his vision. Bodily movements expressed the “motions of the mind”. These motions were essential for the painting of convincing narratives. Leonardo’s “cinematographic” images of little figures in action portray the continuity of motion in space in a way that no one had captured previously.

As an engineer Leonardo’s supreme ambition was to amplify human motion so that man-powered flight might become possible. The key, as always, lay in nature, above all in the study of flying creatures and their anatomy.

Destruction

Leonardo described war as “beastly Madness” and wrote “prophecies” and “fables” about the horrors of its weaponry and destruction. Yet he was fascinated by military engineering and the harnessing of power on a huge scale. He devised chariots in the ancient manner, weapons systems and projectiles.

His representations of battles depict the savagery of conflict as never before. Humans and animals fight in violent concert.

One small drawing depicts an extraordinary vision of “beastly Madness”, so intensely tangled that we can hardly discern one combatant, animal or human, from another.

The ultimate expression of force in the natural world is witnessed in dreadful storms. Wind, rain, waters, trees, soil and rocks are wrenched up in whirling cataclysms. Whole mountainsides are torn apart and explode with elemental fury. Beside such forces, human power remains puny.