The How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci Workbook: Your Personal Companion to How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb

Author:Michael J. Gelb
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Reference, General
ISBN: 9780440508823
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1999-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

As you awaken your powers of Curiosità, probe the depths of experience, and sharpen your senses, you come face to face with the unknown. Keeping your mind open in the face of uncertainty is the single most powerful secret of unleashing your creative potential. And the principle of Sfumato is the key to that openness.

“To the medieval mind the possibility of doubt did not exist.”

–WILLIAM MANCHESTER

The word sfumato translates as “turned to mist” or “going up in smoke” or simply “smoked.” Art critics use this term to describe the hazy, mysterious quality that was one of the most distinctive characteristics of Leonardo’s paintings. This effect, obtained through the painstaking application of many gossamer-thin layers of paint, is a marvelous metaphor for the man. Leonardo’s ceaseless questioning and insistence on using his senses to explore experience led him to many great insights and discoveries, but they also led him to confront the vastness of the unknown and ultimately the unknowable. Yet his phenomenal ability to hold the tension of opposites, to embrace uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox, was a critical characteristic of his genius.

The theme of the tension of opposites appears repeatedly in his work and grew in intensity through his lifetime. Writing on the ideal subjects for painters in the Treatise on Painting, he conjures up images of profound contrast: “… the essences of animals of all kinds, of plants, fruits, landscapes, rolling plains, crumbling mountains, fearful and terrible places which strike terror into the spectator; and, again pleasant places, sweet and delightful with meadows of many colored flowers bent by the gentle motion of the wind which turns back to look at them as it floats on.…”

“That painter who has no doubts will achieve little.”

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