Leonardo Da Vinci (Part 2)

One day Leonardo was walking through one of the central piazzas of Florence, talking with some friends. He was extroverted, personable, and popular, and so he always seemed to have a retinue of followers, associates, and friends following him around to discuss intellectual issues. And at this particular time, they were discussing a passage from the great Italian poet and writer, Dante. Some of his friends had just asked Leonardo his opinion on the meaning of a particular passage, and at that exact moment, Leonardo noticed a fellow artist walking by. So Leonardo decided to bring this fellow artist into the conversation. He turned and called out and asked him what he thought of the passage. But it went horribly wrong. The artist took offense. He thought Leonardo was mocking him. No he shot back. Explain it yourself. And say, aren't you the idiot who started that big statue in Milan and wasn't able to finish it and had to give up the attempt in shame? The young artist then stormed off. It must have been very awkward. I imagine Leonardo's friends looking down at their shoes or their hands, just kind of shuffling back and forth awkwardly, not knowing how to respond. And Leonardo shrugging and saying something like, well, that's Michelangelo for you. Michelangelo and Leonardo are a good comparison in opposites. Leonardo was the ultimate polymath. He liked to flip from topic to topic, subject to subject, and field to field. One day he was a painter. The next he was an architect. The next he was a scientist. Michelangelo on the other hand was intensely focused on whatever he was doing. It had no room in his mind for anything else. He was not interested in science or technology or invention. He just wanted to be the greatest artist in the world. And whereas Leonardo was popular, collaborative, and handsome, Michelangelo was reclusive, secretive, abrasive, and ugly. He was hunchbacked and disheveled and usually smelled bad. This was because he didn't have time to bathe. When he woke up, he just wanted to focus on the statue or painting he was working on and obsess over it until he passed out. And it's amazing that using such a different approaches that two of them were able to become two of the greatest artists of their time, perhaps of all time. And from stories like this, you get the impression that Michelangelo was jealous of Leonardo. I mean, after all, he was sacrificing so much, he was sacrificing everything in order to be a great artist. He was sacrificing food, sleep, and friends, whereas Leonardo seemed to sacrifice very little. He just followed his curiosity. He lived a great and happy life surrounded by friends. Michelangelo was a slave to his art. He was married to it. Whereas in his eyes, Leonardo must have seemed like a dilatant. And yet this dilatant was every bit as good as him. How could he possibly be pulling it off? And I think the answer comes back to this idea of combining art and science, art and technology. Leonardo's studies in these disparate fields came together to give him understandings and abilities that others simply didn't have. And if this frustrated Michelangelo, it must have also frustrated his peers in academia. How is it that this painter was a better scientist than them? Last episode we talked a lot about how technology and science can make you a better artist. And I think that's kind of obvious, right? You've got new tools at your disposal for your art. But today we'll talk about the inverse. How being an artist can make you a better scientist, technologist, entrepreneur, or really any field that you might be in. So let's get into it. Let's hear about the rest of the life of Leonardo da Vinci. Welcome to How to Take Over the World. I'ma show you how great I am. I just want to say that from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize. To absolutely nobody. So when we left off last time Leonardo had just left Milan. The French had just invaded, which meant that his patron, the former Duke of Milan, Ludovic show Sforza, was forced to flee. So without a patron Leonardo leaves Milan, he wanders around northern Italy for a while, stops in Venice where he advises the city, designs some underwater scuba suits for them that they were never used, goes around some other northern Italian cities before ending up back in Florence. On this journey, he catalogs everything that he takes with him. And so we can see everything that he owned and we can see that he really did wear this flamboyant clothing. He had in his luggage pink stockings, a rose tunic, a purple hat. So to Vinci really is going around dressing like Elton John at the time. Add to it the fact that he was a great musician. He played the lute and other instruments. He really was the Renaissance Elton John. So we see that he had a slightly distinctive way of dressing, just like a number of other grates. Steve Jobs had his mock neck, Caesar had his long togas with the fringe, Joan of Arc had her suit of armor, Napoleon had his hat, and Da Vinci had his colorful clothing. Just like the other grates, he felt the need to wear something slightly distinctive to mark himself out to set him apart. Well, when he gets to Florence, this is one of the more productive periods of his life. He produces a number of famous artworks. His most famous artwork at the time was not the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper. It's a painting that he completes during this time period in Florence called The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. So the painting depicts Jesus and his mother Mary, and Mary's mother, whose name is Anne. Mary's sitting on the lap of her mother and she's twisting to hold baby Jesus who is holding a lamb. It was unrivaled in its realism and in particular its depiction of motion. A lot of paintings from the early Renaissance, the characters look quite stiff. And if there is motion or movement, it's very obvious or unnatural. You can just tell that's not how someone looks when they are reaching or when they are pointing. Well the twisting and reaching of Mary and Jesus is extremely realistic and natural. And of course you get everything else that you get with Da Vinci, extremely subtle and realistic shading, unparalleled use of light and shadow, very interesting and well-drawn faces and bodies. And the result is not only beautiful, it's revolutionary. And this is actually the painting that makes Da Vinci the most famous artist in the world. So Vassari is biographer from the 1500s, writes, quote, "Men and women young and old continued for two days to flock for a sight of it to the room where it was as if to a grand festival to gaze at the marvels of Leonardo." So this is like a blockbuster movie of its time. People are lining up the door just to catch a look at this painting. This is also the time when he starts the Mona Lisa. He doesn't finish it in Florence. He actually never finishes it. He would tinker and add to an enhanced Mona Lisa right up to the end of his life. It was never on display during his lifetime. But he starts it here in Florence. The subject of the painting was named Lisa Del Giacondo. She was the wife of a pretty prominent cloth merchant of Florence. And there's a little mystery surrounding why exactly it was that Da Vinci agreed to draw the portrait of this particular woman, Lisa. Because at the same time, there was this woman in another city, I think it was Padua, who had begged Leonardo for a portrait and he was actively declining to do it. And this woman was one of the more wealthy women in all of Italy. She was a great patron of the arts and she actually followed Da Vinci around all the way to Florence and was talking to his friends and trying to get any angle she could to get him to paint her portrait. And he steadfastly refused. He would not paint a portrait of this woman. And it's because he just didn't want to. He wanted to focus on other things. And so the question is, why would he refuse this much more prominent and wealthy woman? And yet agreed to paint the portrait of Lisa Del Giacondo. And there are a few reasons why this might have been the case. One is that her family was friendly with Leonardo's father and they did business together, so it might have been a personal favor. Additionally, if the families knew each other Leonardo might have personally known Lisa. So there might have been a personal relationship there that made him want to paint her. There's one cryptic line in one letter to suggest that one of the Medici's might have intervened and personally requested that he take the commission. And if you're living in Florence, you can't really turn down a Medici. So maybe that was the reason. All of this might have played into it. Their families did have relationships, so maybe that's part of it. I think the real reason that he did it was that he was taken with her. Not romantically, but there must have been something about her that he found captivating. He never delivered the portrait to Lisa or her family, so clearly it was more about the art than it was about the commission to him. And he worked on it for the rest of his life, so clearly he had some attachment to it. Now, one thing I want to point out about the Mona Lisa is that what we have is only a shadow, only a pale remnant of what was originally done. And obviously it's still a masterpiece. But Leonardo loved to use these thin layers of oil paints to create a three-dimensional effect. And many of those layers have faded over time, leaving us without the original effect, without the original feeling that people would have had when viewing it. But for example, biographer Vasari talks about how incredible and realistic the Mona Lisa's eyebrows are. They're extremely detailed and realistic and beautiful, nothing like it had ever been done. Well, go look at the Mona Lisa. She doesn't have any eyebrows. She has no eyebrows whatsoever, basically. So this feature that he spent hours and hours painstakingly detailing, you know, each little layer of hair. The most realistic eyebrows ever done, it's lost to history. You can't see it. So the Mona Lisa is still a masterpiece, but it's incredible to realize that 500 years ago, it was even more masterful. Another piece that he undertakes at this time is called the Battle of Anguari. It was a mural on a wall of what at the time was known as the Palacio de la Cimiorria, which is now known as the Palazzo Vecchio. At the time, it was essentially Florence's town hall, the seat of their government. It was one of the most important buildings to Florence. And so its beauty added greatly to their prestige, so they wanted a big, beautiful, divinci mural for it. And so they hired Leonardo to paint one of the few big battles that Florence had ever won. They weren't much of a military state. They were known for money for their finances, and they rarely fought their neighbors. And even more rarely won. But this was one of their more famous battles. so they asked Vinci to paint it. So he starts to paint it. He does extensive studies of war and conflict and of horses too, to make sure that everything is extremely accurate and realistic, and dramatic. And at the time he's getting started, the Florentines actually then go. And for the opposite wall, right across the room, they go and hire Michelangelo to paint the opposite wall with another famous battle from their history. So Leonardo is going to be painting one wall with a battle scene, and Michelangelo is going to be painting the other wall at the same time right across the room. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got ourselves a good old fashioned showdown. (crickets chirping) I imagine the pressure must have been incredibly intense for both artists. The rivalry was heated and very public. Everyone was referring to it as a competition, and I don't think that was accidental. The masters of Florence who funded the affair, were hoping that this competition would spur both men onto glorious new heights, and as we heard at the beginning of this episode, the two did not necessarily like each other. But this competition did not spur them to new heights. In fact, neither one of them finished their painting. In Leonardo's case, this was because he often didn't finish commissions, because he would get bored and lose interest, and because his painting style did not lend itself to large murals. His layers and layers of thin oil paints that tended to fade over the years started to fade in just a matter of days when they were done on walls rather than on canvas. And for Michelangelo, he didn't finish, I think, I mean, who knows, but because Leonardo's mural was clearly so much better. Michelangelo was the world's greatest sculptor, but he was not the world's greatest painter. And his painting would improve over the years. He's famous for the Sistine Chapel, and that is a masterful painting, but at the time he's only 28, and not as great of a painter as he would eventually become. In fact, Da Vinci publicly ridiculed his painting, which featured a number of nude men, so the story of Michelangelo's battle is that the Florentines were bathing in the river, and the enemies try and surprise them, and they quickly grab their arms and go to fight. So there are a number of naked men bathing in the river, and Da Vinci said that the men's bodies looked like sacks of walnuts, and he's kind of right. Compared to Da Vinci's bodies, they were overly muscled, unnatural, very ineligent. Now, I said that neither of them finished, and that's true, but that didn't stop the murals from becoming incredibly famous and influential. Artists flocked from all over Europe to see the parts that were finished, and the cartoons, the initial drawings, that established the vision of what would come. I think one of the other reasons that Leonardo never finished the Battle of Angiari was that he was more interested in science and technology than ever before. He was conducting experiments and research, but more and more of his time, and he's kind of starting to get bored with art. And actually, at this time, he had the opportunity to become a military engineer, an advisor to an adventurer named Cesare Borja. Borja was the illegitimate son of the Pope at the time, and he was a conqueror and adventurer. He'd managed to carve out a territory for himself in Central Italy, and as he's doing that, he comes up to the city of Florence, who I just mentioned are not known for their martial capabilities. And so he says, "Guys, I'm gonna take Florence, I'm gonna take your city, unless you happen to want to give me a bunch of money." A classic protection racket. And they say that sounds great to us, so they essentially bribe him to go away, and as part of the package, as token of goodwill, they send Borja two of their great minds. They send him Leonardo da Vinci to be a military engineer, and an artist, and an advisor, and, you know, offer him all the knowledge that comes with Da Vinci. And then the other person they send him, interestingly, is one of the other great geniuses of history, Nicolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli is one of the great philosophers and political scientists of all time. He's best known for his book, The Prince. And actually Machiavelli and Da Vinci get along really well. They get to know each other quite well in Borja's service. In fact, at one point, they were winter together with Borja in this small walled town, only a few blocks across in each direction. And so for a few months, Machiavelli, Da Vinci and Borja are stuck together in this little town, walking around, talking, planning, plotting. And it's one of those moments where, if I could choose to be a fly on the wall, at any time period in history, those conversations are one of the things that I would want to hear. Three of history is great and most interesting geniuses all in the same room. So in his service, Da Vinci does a number of things. He makes some suggestions that are practical, some that are not. He tells him that he needs to curve all of his castle walls because if they're curved, then when a cannon is firing at castle walls, cannonballs are more likely to glance off and not do damage to the walls. He also helps design a self-reinforcing bridge. So this is essentially a bridge that you can put up really quickly because it uses boards and poles that crisscross and reinforce each other without needing any hammering or nails. His biggest innovation in the service of Borja is one that combines science and art and it's a map. It's essentially the world's first modern map of a town or city. Da Vinci takes his odometer and very carefully measures out exactly the dimensions of the city and he draws an exact overhead map. It's extremely accurate and it is the first map of its kind. Most maps from the era are sort of representative. They show it from a sort of diagonal angle and it gives you a general idea of what the big buildings look like and where they might be, but it kind of just handwaves the smaller buildings and everything else in the city. But this is a true map. It shows you the distances, it shows you exactly where everything is, all the plots of land, where the walls are and it's extremely detailed and accurate. And this is extremely useful for military planning. It might seem like a kind of simple thing to us who have Google Maps and are used to being able to see and think of the world from overhead. But just think of someone who has never seen a map like this before. They literally don't even have in their mind that you can picture the world in this way. You can picture it from overhead and think of roads in that way, right? So it really is kind of innovative and he has to kind of break out of the box to be able to think of doing a map like this and it's a big help to Borgia. Now eventually, Leonardo and Machiavelli leave the service of Borgia after actually just about a year. And we don't know exactly why they left. Probably it's because their term of service was coming to an end. But at the same time, they weren't dying to stay in this service and that's because Borgia was a pretty brutal, conniving ruthless man. If you have heard of Machiavelli, there's a strong chance it's because you have heard of the adjective associated with his name. Machiavellian means scheming, ruthless, unscrupulous, power seeking, power hungry. And that's because the suggestions that he makes in his book The Prince were for leaders, those who were trying to become, you know, princes and kings and we're trying to take and maintain power. And he suggests that you do pretty brutal and conniving stuff, you know. One of the famous suggestions is, you know, if you take control of the city, the nobles always try to cause problems. So you should just wipe out the nobles, just kill them. So this is the kind of person who Machiavelli is. Well, Borgia is a little too Machiavelli and even for Machiavelli, the man himself. So there's one time in particular where they take over a town and the town surrenders. They offer to let Borgia come in unopposed and he says, that's fine. Just bring your notable men to the town square at such and such a time and we'll take over command of the city from them. And the men show up and Borgia has them strangle to death then sets his men loose on the city and they pillage and loot. And so you can read in Machiavelli's diary, he writes, "The sack of the town continues, although it is now the 23rd hour. I am much troubled." And so if you're doing things that trouble Nikolomaki of Ellie, like you are way over the line, right? And this ruthlessness would help lead eventually to Borgia's downfall and in the short run, it may have hastened Leonardo and Machiavelli's decision to leave his service. In Florence, Da Vinci actually continues to try and be a military and civil engineer as well as an artist. He attempts two really ambitious waterworks projects, one as a military venture to try and divert a river from a city and another to drain some marshes around Florence. They were both technically feasible, but two grand, two ambitious to actually work. And this is considered a major flaw of Da Vinci. He spends a lot of time working on inventions and ideas that while interesting, would not be anywhere close to feasible in his lifetime. We're talking helicopters, scuba gear, machine guns, airplanes, diverting entire rivers, things like that. And yes, I agree, it's a flaw, because he spends a lot of time on stuff that never happens. But it's also, I think, one of the things that makes him great. Walter Isaacson wrote about Da Vinci, "Innovation requires a reality distortion field. Sometimes fantasies are paths to reality." And of course, he's comparing him to Steve Jobs and his famous reality distortion field. But I think he's right. Sometimes fantasies are just paths to fantasies, but sometimes they're paths to reality. People who try the impossible end up being wildly successful because sometimes they achieve the seemingly impossible. Other times they don't, sometimes the impossible is actually just the impossible. But the point is, you don't know in advance which is going to be which, so you have to be willing to try the impossible if you're going to accomplish it. Well, there's never going to be much appetite and Florence for these impossible projects that he was attempting. The Florentines were merchants, and they liked nice, clean contracts. We pay you money, you deliver us painting. And so Leonardo started to look abroad again, specifically his eyes were now going back to Milan where the French were inviting him to return. The French always loved Da Vinci, and of course they loved his paintings, but they were also more open to all of his other ideas. Whereas the Florentines wanted clean commissions, the French believed in aristocratic largesse. Essentially, we'll pay you a stipend, we'll keep you around, we'll take care of you, and you do what you want to do. And so the governor of Milan is willing to bring him back and give him essentially a blank check to work on whatever he wants to work on. And so Leonardo decides that it is a good deal, and 1508, he returns to Milan. And we will pick it up from there, right after this quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix makes the best mattresses on planet Earth. I sleep on a Helix mattress every night, and I used to wake up with back pain, and now I don't. That is a huge deal for me. It has changed my life. That is why I'm a huge fan of Helix. Others have found the same thing. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. A study they ran found that 82% of those involved saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on a Helix mattress. I have the Helix Midnight Elite, its phenomenal. Upgrading your sleep is one of the easiest ways to upgrade your life, because you're sacrificing nothing. You're going to be spending that time sleeping anyway. You might as well do it on a great mattress that helps you sleep better. So go to helix sleep.com/takeoverpod for 20% off. That link is in the show notes if you need help remembering it. That's helix sleep.com/takeoverpod for 20% off. Make sure you enter our show name after check out so they know we sent you. In his second stint in Milan, art that he produces is much more limited, because what he really wants to work on at this time is furthering his scientific work. So this is a good time to take a step back and take a look at the body of his scientific accomplishments. He made some contributions in math, in geometry mainly, and it's done through collaboration with a guy named Pacioli. This actually starts during his first stint in Milan, so back in the late 1400s it's now 1508. Pacioli did a book on something called the Golden Ratio, which is this particularly interesting ratio that is found in nature and mathematics, and he has Da Vinci do the illustrations for his book. And so he illustrates all these three-dimensional polygons and shapes, and of course it's beautifully done and only Da Vinci could have done it. Only he had both the artistic, merit to be able to pull it off, and the mathematical skills to understand what he's supposed to be portraying. That's his biggest formal contribution. He was also just obsessed with math problems, puzzles and riddles. His diaries are filled with pages and pages of these little math riddles. One of the most interesting to him was figuring out how to square a circle. So in other words, how to take a circle and find the measurements of a square with an equivalent area, and vice versa. It's pretty tough to do at the time because Paci hadn't been discovered and Paci is sort of the key integer that you need in order to calculate areas of circles. The biographer Kenneth Clark writes of these attempts to solve these little mind puzzlers that they are quote of no interest to mathematicians and of even less interest to art historians. I get that perspective because you think, man, you look at these pages and pages of these little math doodles and you think how much better would it have been if we had four or five more Da Vinci paintings instead of these useless little squares and circles. But at the same time, you know, this is someone who was so curious and that's what made him such a great painter and such a great scientist and so great at so many things. And so he had to follow that curiosity wherever it led him. And sometimes it led him in very interesting and fruitful directions and other times it didn't. It reminds me a little bit of Isaac Newton. Newton was obsessed with the Bible and figuring out when the end of the world was going to be when the apocalypse would occur based on numerology and reading tea leaves from the Bible and he was obsessed with alchemy. People similarly think that was a waste of time for Isaac Newton. But similar to Da Vinci, he was just following his curiosity wherever it led him. And sometimes it led him in productive areas like his research into gravity, which was groundbreaking and other times not. Another example is Walt Disney and his toy trains and that seems like a totally crazy obsession when he was supposed to be leading this huge film studio but it ended up leading to Disneyland. The point is you can't necessarily know in advance what is going to be productive and what isn't. So the best policy, at least in the case of geniuses like Da Vinci Newton and Disney, is to follow your curiosity wherever it leads no matter what. One of the areas that was more productive for Da Vinci was anatomy and biology. This is probably where his greatest scientific contributions come from. He made an attempt to chart out and understand the entire human body from head to toe. He wanted to understand every element of it so he made a list of topics that he wanted to explore about the human body in his journals. So these are the bullets that he wrote out of what he wanted to learn. What nerve is the cause of the eyes movement and makes the movement of one eye move the other. What nerve is the cause of closing the eyelid of raising the eyebrows of parting lips with teeth clenched of bringing the lips to a point of laughing or expressing wonder. Set yourself to describe the beginning of man when he's created in the womb and why an infant of eight months does not live. What sneezing is what yawning is epilepsy spasm paralysis fatigue hunger sleep thirst sensuality what nerve causes the movement of the thigh and from the knee to the foot and from the ankle to the toes. And that's just a sampling Da Vinci went on and on and on. He really wanted to figure out everything he made hundreds of drawings of the human body and wrote more than 13,000 words about his findings. He made discoveries that wouldn't be matched for hundreds of years Walter Isaacson writes as far as it is known he became the first person in history to describe fully the human dental elements including a depiction of the roots that is almost perfect. If there were not so much else to remember him for Leonardo could have been celebrated as a pioneer of dentistry. I mean just think about that he could have been famous as the father of dentistry if he hadn't been such a great painter and scientist and done all this other stuff. He also has these important skull drawings the most accurate depictions of the skull made up to that point he discovers how the aorta works in the heart he discovers that blood did not originate in the liver. He also measures all the proportions in comparison to one another in the human body so he writes the space between the mouth and the nose is one seventh of the face from the mouth to the bottom of the chin is one fourth of the face and equal to the width of the mouth. The space from the chin to the base of the nose is one third of the face and equal to the length of the nose to the forehead. And he doesn't stop with the face he does the arms the legs the torso everything gets all these proportions measured to one another. And part of the way he was able to discover all this about human bodies was that he dissected over 20 bodies in his life including a 100 year old man because he thought this was fastening a man who lived to 100 what was different about his body he wanted to find out. And in these sections he's able to use some of his art techniques so this is again a little bit of how art is able to influence and help science so for example he wanted to be able to see the inside of a brain but your brain is very wet very liquid and brain tends to fall apart when you cut it open. And so he in the structure of it would change as soon as he cut it and so he figured out how to do a casting of a human brain in order to diagram the inside of it the way you might kind of cast a statue so he pours hot wax into the brain of a cadaver unless it fill up all the chambers and folds and gets a good diagram of what a brain looks like on the inside. Now with all this knowledge unfortunately most of it does not make its way into the scientific community it all has to be rediscovered later by others often dozens or hundreds of years later because he didn't publish any of his findings. He was very collaborative he's always talking with other people sharing his findings he wasn't secretive at all but the fact that he didn't actually publish his work in a book means it doesn't become part of the scientific consensus it doesn't get spread throughout Europe in the world. He meant to publish he was always half gathering things in the manuscripts and then abandoning them and in anatomy this is the biggest shame because he was very very close he had a brief collaboration with a professor from the University of Padua which is pretty close to Milan named Mark Antonio de Latore and de Latore had a great mind like DaVinci he worked in anatomy that was his field of study and so they really connected on this. And they were going to collaborate on a book and this is good because de Latore is much better at finishing things and publishing than daVinci and so they made a lot of progress together it's going great and it looks like this is going to be a monumental accomplishment in the field of human anatomy and then a big plague sweeps through Italy and kills de Latore. And this is pretty painful to read about because if he hadn't died they could have advanced understanding of human biology by decades maybe even centuries but it wasn't to be it's one of those sliding doors moments the man dies and to me it just goes to show the power of having good collaborators that is the main thing that DaVinci was missing from his scientific endeavors. So we talked about math we talked about human anatomy we won't get into all of his other scientific inquiries but his mind was incredibly far reaching he studied physics astronomy the anatomy of animals ecosystems flight and a lot of other things and made some pretty brilliant realizations but unfortunately because of his failure to publish none of this really becomes part of his legacy is just something that we get to see in marvel at as we look through his notebooks. Just one other thing I'll highlight before we move on from his experiments is his work with water he wanted to understand how it flowed and moved and as part of that he came up with an experiment to throw blades of grass into a river so that by observing the grass he could see what water went where how the water flowed around itself and yeah how it moved so for example he realizes that waves don't actually move water. Right, because he watches waves move through water and he sees that the grass stays in the same spot. It just bobs up and down. And from that, he realizes, oh, waves don't move water. They're just energy moving through water. But the reason I wanted to highlight this particular experiment is because of what he writes about it. So, in his journal, he's writing how to conduct the experiment with grass and water, and he writes, "From this experiment, you'll be able to proceed to investigate many beautiful movements, which result from one element penetrating into another." And I think that is a really important insight into the mind of Da Vinci. He describes the movement of the water as beautiful. I think beauty was a huge motivator for him. For both his art and his science, you'll be able to proceed to investigate many beautiful movements, which result from one element penetrating into another. I think fundamentally, that is why he investigated all this stuff. That's why his mind was so curious, because he found all these things in nature and biology, astronomy, mathematics, and of course, in art as well. He found them beautiful. It reminds me of, there's this new book called Make Something Wonderful, Steve Jobs in his own words. It's put out by the Steve Jobs archive. You can go to Steve Jobs archive.com and read it. But it's just a collection of stuff that Steve Jobs said. And I'm going to do an episode on it shortly. But he's always talking about how beautiful and elegant his products are and why it's important to make things amazing and beautiful. He's always striving for aesthetic perfection. He's got a great quote. He says, "One of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there." And so they have this kind of connection, right? Both of them are obsessed with making something beautiful. And just think about it. Let's say that you are a professor of anatomy, and you're studying the human body because that's your job. That's how you make money. Or let's take it even a step further. Let's say that you think your studies in human anatomy are important, are crucial to human advancement and the good of humanity. And you're competing against someone who is absolutely transfixed by the beauty and elegance of the human body. Who is going to work harder? Who is going to stay at the lab, at the dissecting table longer? The person who is working hard because they think they should or the person who can't help it, who is transfixed by the beauty of what they are working on. We hear a lot of advice these days about finding a career that you're passionate about. And I think it's a good advice. I mean, I agree with that certainly. But it's also passion is difficult to define. So I think it's often not helpful advice because it doesn't really help you know any more what you should do. I think beauty is another way of thinking about it that is potentially more helpful. Work on something that you find beautiful. Whether you're a technologist like Steve Jobs or an artist and scientist like DaVinci, you're going to be successful and you're going to enjoy it, which is arguably even more important. Okay, so that's time to bow on it. That is sort of the body of accomplishment of his scientific studies. So a lot of the scientific progress happens in his second stint in Milan. It was a very fruitful time for him scientifically, but it didn't last forever. So the first time in Milan, he's serving the Duke of Milan, this guy named Sforza. The second time he's serving the French, but then in 1513, the French get kicked out. And so once again, Leonardo gets out of Milan. So after he leaves Milan, Leonardo goes to Rome. He had found a patron there. It's actually a Medici. The Medici's were kind of the ruling family of Florence, but this particular guy had moved from Florence to Rome. And so he agrees to be Leonardo's patron. Leonardo manages to thoroughly frustrate him by hardly ever finishing any of the commissions he's given and focusing on his scientific and mathematical studies instead. This is especially stark because the other star artists of this court are Raphael and Michelangelo and they are in their prime and they do turn out a lot of our work. But that's not to say that Leonardo never finishes anything. One of the few works he actually does complete at this time is called St. John the Baptist. And this is I think one of his most interesting paintings. I really like it, even though I'm sort of disturbed by it, frankly. It's very dark. And John is drawn as extremely androgynous. It's like almost an erotic painting. He's giving this sort of almost seductive look to the viewer. And so when I look at it, I feel imposed upon, almost violated. He's really jumping out of the painting. I've never seen anything like it. But for that reason, it's not popular. No one really knows what to do with it. A French cataloger in 1625 is logging the painting, which is supposed to be a religious work of art, right? It's St. John the Baptist. And the cataloger is like, this one's no good. He writes, it does not please because it does not arouse feelings of devotion, which I think yes, is an understatement. There's a sketch version of it that was found in his workshop that was probably done by one of his disciples, probably this guy named Salai. It's drawing of the same painting. But it features John with full-on female breasts and an erect phallus. So from that, we see, you know, if his protegees are kind of joking about it, how sexual this painting is, you know that Leonardo definitely knew what he was doing. This was an intentional effect that he is creating. To me, even though, you know, I find the effect that it creates sort of disturbing, it is just such an amazing painting because it does affect you so viscerally. That's one of the things I like about it. I think on a certain level, this painting represents Leonardo dropping the curtain on his sexuality a little bit and just feeling less inhibited, more open about what he enjoys. He's not in Rome for that long. He's there from 1513 to 1516 when in 1516, he is invited by the King of France to move to France. And the King of France is named Francis I, very appropriately. And he's Leonardo's true patron, the man he's been looking for his entire life. Francis is a warrior. He's a man's man. He's tall. He's broad-shouldered, charismatic and courageous. He's also a civilized and decent man. He didn't think of himself as a scholar, but he did love scientific and artistic achievement. And so he's obsessively Leonardo. He loves everything that he does. He gives him complete freedom to work on whatever he wants to work on. He talks with him almost every single day. He'll listen to him for hours on end. He even installs him in a house right next door on his own estate. And so this is kind of the twilight of Leonardo's life. He doesn't start on any new projects in France. In fact, at a certain point, he couldn't. Pretty early on, he has a stroke that leaves one of his hands paralyzed. But he lectures, he researches, he reads, he tinkers, and he continues to polish and put some finishing touches on the Mona Lisa and a couple other pieces that he carried with him. And this really is what Leonardo had been looking for his entire life. And he finds it finally at the end, right? This ideal living arrangement, going and doing as he pleases, constantly well-supplied and well-funded by his patron, no strings attached and no demands, no pushy patrons, no deadlines, there's Leonardo waking up every day and checking him with his curiosity and saying, "Okay, what do I want to learn about today?" However, he doesn't get to enjoy it that much because his health is steadily deteriorating. And on May 2nd, 1519, he dies in the arms of King Francis, who loved him so much that he wanted to be with him even until the very end. So let's talk about some takeaways. The first is Da Vinci's method for observation, how he learns things. And he actually wrote about it. Here's what he wrote about his method for learning things. He said, "If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the form of objects," so he's talking about it specifically in a context of drawing or painting, "begin with the details of them and do not go onto the second step until you have the first one well-fixed in memory." Okay, so that seems pretty clear. So detailed the detail and then don't move on from one until you can recall it from memory, you know, really figure out one detail and then go onto the next. So there's actually an example of this that's not done in drawing or painting. It's done with his scientific inquiry. He wants to figure out how birds fly. This is one of his big scientific pet projects. So he breaks down how he's going to do this. He writes, "First, define the motion of the wind and then describe how the bird steers through it with only the simple balancing of the wings. Do this after the description of their anatomy." So he writes it a little out of sequence, but you can kind of rearrange it. "First, describe the anatomy of a bird. Second, describe the motion of the wind." So how does wind move? And then third, how do the two interact? How does the anatomy of a bird interact with the motion of the wind in order to create flight? And using this process, he comes up with the most accurate description of the physics of flight ever discovered up to that point. So this is a pretty simple method, but I think it's powerful. List out everything you need to understand first and then go through step by step only moving on once you have truly mastered subject. And that seems really simple, but I think it's very easy to just dive right in without taking the time to diagram out, "Okay, what are the sub-subjects that I need to learn in order to master this entire thing?" And then once you start getting into it, you realize how big of a task this is, how much there is to learn. And it gets intimidating and it slows you down. And so taking that time to do that simple step of listing out in advance, "All right, here are the sub-topics I'm going to do." I need to learn, I think goes a long way. Another big lesson for me from Leonardo is don't get bogged down and what you should do. There were lots of people trying to tell Leonardo what he should do, hey man, you need to finish this commission and he just ignored it a lot of times and just did what he wanted to do. He relentlessly followed his curiosity and that's something I took away. You know, obviously this has some trade-offs, Da Vinci left a lot of things unfinished but that's what made him Da Vinci. I think the best approach for him would have been to find partners who could have helped him gather, organize and publish his thoughts. But the thing that made him so special was that he was so curious and he always wanted to pursue that curiosity wholeheartedly. And I think focusing too much on what he should do on completing all the commissions he'd been given would have dulled that genius, that brilliance that made him so great. And I think that's true for everyone. I think even though there are trade-offs following your curiosity totally and completely is really worth it if you can pull it off. My next takeaway is be an experimenter. Da Vinci really believed in experience and experimentation. And he actually kind of looked down on book learning, at least early in his life, he was kind of skeptical of it. He wrote, "Though I have no power to quote from authors as others have, I shall rely on a far more worthy thing on experience. He who has access to the fountain does not go to the water jar." So I think that's interesting. You know, he's saying essentially, why would I read books? I can experiment. I can go straight to the source of knowledge. I can find out for myself. Now, as time went on, he softened to the idea of book learning and he did quite a bit of reading. But I guess that's the point is that he started with experience, practice and experimentation, and only then moved on to book learning. So I think that is the proper sequence. So let's take an example. Let's say you are someone who has never played basketball before, never. And you are studying Michael Jordan. You read every book about Michael Jordan. That's the greatest basketball player ever. You watched every interview, you watched all his game tape, broke down and learned every move. But didn't actually practice, didn't play any basketball in that time. All you did was study the life of Michael Jordan. Do you think you would improve as a basketball player? Of course, you would not. You'd be no better at the end than you were at the beginning. So let's say you're playing basketball multiple hours every single day. You're training, you're practicing. And throughout that process, you're also studying Michael Jordan reading the books, watching the game tape. Would you improve under that circumstance? And the answer to that question is known. There are many players who have done that, most notably Kobe Bryant, who sort of copied Michael Jordan, moved, removed everything that he did. And the answer is, yes, of course. In once you are already practicing and you have experiential learning, at that point, book learning, learning from the grades can help you a lot. But you have to start with experience and experimentation. And so, you know, that's a takeaway for me. Whatever I'm learning about, I need to put into practice. I need to experiment with because if it just stays book learning, it's useless. And I think that's what DaVinci was trying to get across. And then my final takeaway is about that question that I opened with. How does art spur science and technology? And to me, it goes back to what I mentioned, that beauty is what motivated Leonardo. His art helped him see and recognize beauty. And beauty is what made him want to explore these topics of science and technology. He marveled at the human body, at rivers and trees, birds, flight cities and geometric shapes. I think this is the reason he was so good at geometry and so bad at algebra because he couldn't see any beauty in an equation, but he could see it in circles, triangles, and squares. Because he saw that beauty, he really loved what he was working on. And I think that's what made him so great, that love for humanity, for art, for the natural world. I know that sounds cliche, but I think it's really the secret of what made Leonardo who he was. To close, I just want to resurface a quote that I brought up in the first episode. But I think this quote actually sums up who Leonardo was and what motivated him and what made him so curious. He wrote, "If there is no love, then what?" Thank you for listening to How to Take Over the World. It was written, researched and produced by me, Ben Wilson, who's sound design by Ezra Bakker Trapiano. Until next time, thanks for listening.