To sharpen his perception of the world, improve memory and develop imagination, Leonardo practiced special psychotechnical exercises that go back to the esoteric practices of the Pythagoreans and - imagine! - modern neurolinguistics
He seemed to know the evolutionary keys to the secrets of the human psyche. So, one of the secrets of Leonardo da Vinci was in a special sleep formula: he slept for 15 minutes every 4 hours, thus reducing his daily sleep from 8 to 1.5 hours. Thanks to this, the genius immediately saved 75 percent of his sleep time, which actually lengthened his life time from 70 to 100 years!
Master's Workshop
And after five centuries, the mysteries and secrets of the genius of the Renaissance never cease to amaze our contemporaries.
Italian researchers recently discovered Leonardo da Vinci's secret workshop. It is located in the building of the monastery of St. Annunziata in the heart of Florence. Monks from the Order of the Servants of the Virgin Mary rented out some of the monastery rooms to eminent guests. The existence of the workshop was known for a long time from various documents; it was also known that Leonardo stayed in this monastery. But the cleverly sealed rooms were not easy to find. Behind the unsealed door was a staircase dating from 1430, by the Florentine sculptor and architect Michelozzo Bartolomeo. This staircase led to five rooms in which Leonardo lived with his students. In the monastery, the great scientist was offered excellent conditions, since he was already famous.
The largest room with two windows was the bedroom. In addition to her, there was also an adjoining secret room where the Master worked himself. The rest of the rooms served as a workshop for Leonardo and his students, who were 5-6 people. Some details suggest that the chef was among them.
The location of the workshop was perfect. The monastery library contained a collection of nearly 5,000 manuscripts that were of great interest to da Vinci. Nearby was the St. Mary's Hospital, where he could engage in the anatomy of corpses.
The frescoes in the workshop are indisputable proof that Leonardo was engaged in the workshop. They evoke associations with other works of the master at first sight. Computer studies fully confirm these associations.
By the way, the family of the wealthy merchant Francesco del Giocondo had a chapel in the monastery of St. Annuciata. It is possible that it was in the monastery that the great painter met the merchant's wife, Lisa Cerardini. The young woman served as a model for the artist to paint the famous La Gioconda.
He or she?
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Researchers have been struggling to solve the mystery of Mona Lisa's smile for many years. Almost every year there is a scientist who reports: "The secret is revealed!" Some believe that the difference in the perception of La Gioconda's facial expression depends on the personal mental qualities of each. To some it seems sad, to some thoughtful, to someone crafty, to someone even spiteful. And some believe that
Gioconda does not even smile at all!
Other scholars believe that the matter is in the peculiarities of the author's artistic manner. Allegedly, Leonardo applied paints in such a special way that the Mona Lisa's face is constantly changing. Many insist that the artist depicted himself on the canvas as a woman, which is why such a strange effect was obtained.
There is a version that the artist, who was allegedly bisexual, painted not himself, but his student and assistant Gian Giacomo Caprotti, who was with him for 26 years. This version is supported by the fact that Leonardo left this painting as a legacy to him when he died in 1519.
The opinions of doctors require special attention. Dentist and painting expert Joseph Borkowski believes that Mona Lisa's facial expression is typical of people who have lost their front teeth. And the Japanese doctor Nakamura discovered a lesion in the corner of the left eye of Gioconda and concluded that she was predisposed to heart disease and suffers from asthma.
Another version - about paralysis of the facial nerve - was put forward by the otolaryngologist Azur from Auckland and the Danish doctor Finn Becker-Christiansen, who suggested paying attention to the fact that Gioconda smiles with her right side and grimaces with her left. In addition, he discovered that Mona Lisa even had symptoms of idiocy, motivating them with the disproportionate fingers and lack of flexibility in the hand. But, according to British doctor Kenneth Keel, the portrait simply conveys the peaceful state of a pregnant woman.
They say …
… that it is the model of La Gioconda that the great artist owes his death. That many hours of grueling sessions with her plagued the great master, since the model itself turned out to be a biovampire. This is still talked about today. As soon as the painting was painted, the great artist was gone.
We can't read
Everyone knows that Leonardo was left-handed, he wrote from right to left in a mirror image. His early notes are absolutely unreadable, but over time, Leonardo's mirror writing took on a definite form, a characteristic, albeit illegible handwriting.
Having established the outline of individual letters, some researchers have learned to read it as usual, from right to left. It would seem that the key has been found! But illegible handwriting is not so bad. Leonardo still had the habit of writing by the auditory method, then he separated the syllables of one word, then suddenly he blinded several words into one. Add to this the vastness of knowledge available only to specialists in different fields. All this could not but mislead the researchers. That is why almost all the secrets of genius remain unsolved for humanity.
Riddles without answers
Among the prose works of Leonardo there are mysterious "Predictions", which is a kind of game of riddles and clues. Most likely, he prepared them for the entertainment of the court or secular society. Leonardo gave a verbal description of the phenomenon, correct by individual signs, which, as far as possible, diverged from the essence of the described. At the same time, the most common thing turned into its opposite. The listener had to recognize the thing and call it by name. Da Vinci's task was, on the one hand, to separate the description of the attributes of a thing with its actual appearance as much as possible, and on the other, not to break the ties between them.
For example, here is how Leonardo da Vinci encrypted the riddle “About swaddled babies”: “O sea cities! I see you, your citizens, both women and men, tightly bound by strong bonds hand and foot by people who will not understand your speeches, and you can alleviate your suffering and loss of freedom only in tearful complaints, sighing and complaining between yourself yourself, for the one who tied you will not understand you, nor you will understand them."
He wrote something similar about sucking babies: "Many Francesco, Dominico and Benedetto will eat what others in the neighborhood have eaten more than once, and it will take many months for them to speak."
“Oh, how many there will be those who will not be allowed to be born,” he wrote about eggs from which no chickens will hatch.
Many riddles have an encrypted prophetic meaning. Researchers believe they have solved some of the puzzles.
For example:
“An ominous feathered race will fly through the air; they will attack men and beasts and feed on them with a great cry. They will fill their belly with scarlet blood”- the prediction, experts say, is very similar to the creation of aircrafts, airplanes and helicopters.
“People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other” - what is this if not a prediction of the invention of telephone, telegraph and radio communications?
“Many can be seen rushing on large animals in a fast run towards the destruction of their own lives and speedy death. Animals of different colors will be visible on the ground, carrying people to the destruction of their lives”- cars and all kinds of armored vehicles.
“There will be many who will move against one another, holding a sharp iron in their hands; they will not harm each other other than fatigue, for as far as one bends forward, the other will bend backward. But woe to the one who falls in the middle between them, because in the end he will be cut into pieces - two-handed saw.
"There will be many who will skin their mother, turning her skin on her, using for this terrible beast" - agricultural machines. Another saying also applies to this: "It will be seen how they turn the earth upside down and look at opposite hemispheres and open the holes of the fiercest animals."
“Animal skins will bring people out of silence with great shouts and curses” - balls for sports games are made of leather.
And here are the predictions about possible cataclysms associated with warming: “Sea water will rise to the high peaks of the mountains, to the heavens and again fall on people's homes. It will be seen how the largest trees of the forest will be carried by the fury of the wind from east to west.
But Leonardo da Vinci also has such riddles, before which researchers are lost. Maybe you can decipher them?
* It will unfold … Beasts will come out of the earth, clothed in darkness, which with amazing swoops will jump on the human race, and it will devour the human species with brutal bites and shed blood.
* People will walk and will not move; they will speak to those who are not, they will hear those who do not speak.
* Countless lives will be destroyed and countless holes made in the earth. Then most of the people who survived will throw out of their homes the food they have saved for free prey for birds and land animals, not caring about it at all. People will throw out of their own homes those supplies that were meant to support their lives.
* The time of Herod will return, for innocent babies will be taken away from their nurses and will die from great wounds at the hands of cruel people.
* There will be many such peoples who will hide themselves, their children and their supplies in the depths of dark caves, and there, in the darkness, they will feed themselves and their families for many months without any artificial or natural light.
* It will be seen how in the air at the greatest height huge snakes fight with birds.
* Most of the masculine gender will not be allowed to reproduce, since their testes will be taken away.
In a hurry, you make people laugh
Leonardo da Vinci was never in a hurry to complete the work. He believed that incompleteness is an obligatory quality of life. To finish is to kill! The slowness of the creator was amazing, he painted his canvases for years. He could take two or three strokes and leave the city for many days, for example, to improve the valleys of Lombardy or create a device for walking on water. Almost every one of his significant works is "unfinished". Many were spoiled by water, fire, barbaric treatment, but the artist never corrected the damage, as if he gave life the right to interfere in his work, to correct something.
Good = Evil
Creating the fresco "The Last Supper" Leonardo da Vinci was looking for ideal models for a very long time. Jesus must embody Good, and Judas, who decided to betray him at this meal, is Evil.
Leonardo interrupted his work many times, going in search of models. Once, while listening to the church choir, he saw in one of the young singers the perfect image of Christ and, having invited him to his studio, made several sketches and studies from him.
Three years have passed. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo never found a suitable model for Judas. The cardinal, who was in charge of painting the cathedral, urged the artist on, demanding that the fresco be completed as soon as possible.
And after a long search, the artist saw a man lying in the gutter - a young, but prematurely decrepit, dirty, drunk and tattered man. There was no more time for sketches, and Leonardo ordered his assistants to deliver him directly to the cathedral. With great difficulty they dragged him there and put him on his feet. The man did not really understand what was happening and where he was, and Leonardo captured on canvas the face of a man mired in sins. When he finished his work, the beggar, who by this time had already come to his senses a little, walked up to the canvas and exclaimed:
- I have seen this picture before!
- When? - Leonardo was surprised.
“Three years ago, before I lost everything. At that time, when I sang in the choir, and my life was full of dreams, some artist painted Christ from me …
Inventions of a genius
Leonardo was an excellent magician (his contemporaries called him a magician). He could summon a multi-colored flame from a boiling liquid by pouring wine into it; easily turned white wine into red; with one blow he broke a cane, the ends of which were placed on two glasses, without breaking any of them; put a little of my saliva on the end of the pen - and the writing on the paper turns black. The miracles that Leonardo showed were so impressive to his contemporaries that he was seriously suspected of serving "black magic". In addition, there were always strange, dubious personalities near the genius, like Tomaso Giovanni Masini, known under the pseudonym Zoroaster de Peretola, a good mechanic, jeweler and at the same time an adherent of secret sciences …
Leonardo encrypted a lot so that his ideas were revealed gradually, as humanity "matures" to them. Scientists only last year, five centuries after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, were able to figure out the project of his self-propelled cart and build it. This invention can be safely called the predecessor of the modern automobile.
Da Vinci's inventions and discoveries cover all areas of knowledge (there are more than 50 of them!), Fully anticipating the development trends of modern civilization. In 1499, Leonardo designed a wooden mechanical lion to meet the French king Louis XII, which, after taking a few steps, opened its chest and showed the insides "filled with lilies". The scientist is the inventor of the spacesuit, submarine, steamer, fins. He has a manuscript showing the possibility of diving to great depths without a spacesuit due to the use of a special gas mixture (the secret of which he deliberately destroyed). To invent it, it was necessary to understand well the biochemical processes of the human body, which were completely unknown at that time!It was he who first proposed installing batteries of firearms on armored ships (he gave the idea of an battleship!), Invented a helicopter, a bicycle, a glider, a parachute, a tank, a machine gun, poisonous gases, a smoke screen for troops, a magnifying glass (100 years before Galileo!). Da Vinci invented textile machines, weaving machines, needle-making machines, powerful cranes, pipe drainage systems, and arch bridges. He created drawings of gates, levers and screws designed to lift huge weights - mechanisms that did not exist in his time. It is amazing that Leonardo describes in detail these machines and mechanisms, although they could not be made at that time due to the fact that they did not know ball bearings at that time (but Leonardo himself knew this - the corresponding drawing was preserved). Sometimes it seemsthat da Vinci just wanted to learn as much as possible about this world by collecting information. Why did he need it in such a form and in such quantity? He did not leave an answer to this question.
Author: Daria USATOVA