Several centuries ago, in the small town of Vinci, lost in the mountains of Tuscany, one of the most amazing geniuses of our civilization, Leonardo da Vinci, was born, who to this day never ceases to amaze mankind with the versatility of his gifts, stunning artistic images, scientific discoveries, inventions, research them in various fields of science and art.
The Florentine master had a tremendous influence on the development of the entire civilization, and in the minds of many subsequent generations he remained the Italian Faust.
Until now, there are disputes about: who was the amazing Florentine, a man or …?
On April 15, 1452, in the village of Anchino, between Florence and Pisa, a boy was born, who at baptism received the name Leonardo. His father Piero da Vinci was a famous man in Florence, a wealthy notary and landowner. And mother Katarina is a simple peasant girl who has inadvertently become a fleeting whim of an influential person.
In an official marriage, Pierrot had no children, so the boy from four to five years old was brought up in the house of his father and stepmother, and his own mother, as was customary at that time, having awarded a good dowry, was hastily married to a peasant.
Little Leonardo was angelically handsome. At the same time, he was distinguished by an extraordinary mind and an affable character. He soon became a darling and darling in his father's house. To some extent, this was facilitated by the fact that the first two stepmothers of Leonardo did not have children.
Piero's third wife Margarita became the mistress of the house when her famous stepson was 24 years old. From this marriage, Monsieur Pierrot had 9 sons and two daughters, but none of them, unlike Leonardo, shone with either intelligence or beauty.
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In 1466, when Leonardo da Vinci was barely 14 years old, his father sent him as an apprentice to the great artist Verrocchio. Six years later, Leonardo was already proclaimed a master of painting. The amazing abilities of the young man amazed his teachers. But starting to study any subject, he soon gave up. We can say that most of all he learned from himself.
Many researchers unanimously argue that a person, even with seven spans in his forehead, cannot be at once a brilliant engineer, artist, sculptor, architect, fashion designer, inventor, mechanic, chemist, philologist, soothsayer, one of the best singers in his time and the creator of musical instruments of amazing beauty and sound. Leonardo da Vinci wrote many beautiful cantatas.
He has mastered the lyre perfectly. Many contemporaries recalled that he sang his improvisations divinely. Once Leonardo made his own lute, giving it the shape of a horse's head and richly decorating it with silver. Playing on it, the young man surpassed all the musicians gathered at the court of Duke Ludovico Scforza so much that he "charmed the imperious lord for life."
In addition, Leonardo was superhumanly strong. He could easily crush a horseshoe with one hand. The outstanding Florentine was also an excellent horseman, fencer and swimmer.
About Leonardo da Vinci's appearance, his friend Vasari wrote: "In all his appearance there was such a radiance of beauty that at the sight of him every sad soul became clear." However, Leonardo never married. And if he had a beloved, then most of his contemporaries did not know anything about it, so gossips accused him of homosexuality.
In 1476, the court received a denunciation that four young men, including da Vinci, were making love to 17-year-old Jacopo Santarelli, who served as a model in an art workshop. At that time, the accused for such a crime was threatened with burning at the stake. But since no witnesses were found, da Vinci was completely acquitted.
Da Vinci, according to his contemporaries, was able to completely control his feelings, in fact, without showing the emotions characteristic of ordinary people, he always maintained a surprisingly even mood, being indifferent to good and evil in the human sense.
Reading the diaries of the famous Florentine, many ask the same question: was he a man? The very nature of the recordings made in mirror image is surprising. In his diary, the great master addressed himself only to you, giving orders and orders to himself as a servant or slave:
"Order to show you …, you must show in your essay …, order to make two travel bags."
The reader got the impression that two persons seemed to live in the great Florentine. One is well-known and friendly, and the other is incredibly secretive, unknown to anyone, who guided his actions.
Another amazing feature of da Vinci was his ability to foresee the future. In this he even surpassed Nostradamus. His world famous "Prophecies" (a series of recordings made in 1494) tell about those events that today have already become our past or are our present.
Here are some of them: "People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and will answer each other (phone)", "You will see yourself falling from great heights without any harm to you (parachute jumps)", "Many ground and aquatic animals will rise between the stars (launching living beings into space) "," Countless lives will be destroyed and countless holes will be made in the earth (most likely the soothsayer spoke about craters from aerial bombs and artillery guns)."
Da Vinci's drawing "The End of the World" is shocking, which his contemporaries considered complete nonsense. Today we understand that these are the outlines of a huge atomic mushroom growing from an exploded city.
Leonardo da Vinci possessed knowledge of special psychotechnical exercises (whose roots go back to the esoteric practices of the Pythagoreans and at the same time resemble modern methods of neurolinguistics) to sharpen perception, improve memory and develop imagination. One of the secrets of the great master was hidden in a special sleep formula. He slept for 15 minutes every four hours, thereby reducing his daily sleep from 8 to 1.5 hours.
H. P. Blavatsky, an outstanding researcher of esoteric teachings, believed that Leonardo da Vinci possessed these talents because he was the messenger of Shambhala. This, in her opinion, explains his celibacy and purity, for this is a necessary condition for the development of the mental and occult abilities of a person.
This theory is also confirmed by the features of the physiological structure of the human body. E. Blavatsky noted that the activity of the medulla oblongata, due to its anatomical proximity to the pineal gland - the main organ of the "third eye" - produces a powerful effect on it, that is, the activity of one of the brain centers automatically suppresses the vital activity of the other.
The realization of our physiological senses hinders spiritual development, atrophying the "third eye". Helena Roerich's diary also contains a lot of detailed information about the mysterious master.
The author of the philosophical doctrine of integral yoga and the outstanding Indian scientist-philosopher Sriurobindo wrote: “The Yogi was Leonardo da Vinci. And he was, if not the greatest, then one of the greatest artists."
A lot of controversy is caused by the self-portrait of Leonardo, performed by the sanguine. It dates from 1512-1515. The painting depicts an elderly man, but many art critics believe that this is just a sketch of the head of the apostle for The Last Supper. The portrait has one amazing feature.
Not only the viewer perceives Leonardo's expression and facial features completely differently from different angles, but photographs taken with a slight deviation from the central axis, or a video camera in motion, show a different person. He is now melancholy, now arrogant, now wise, now he is simply indecisive, now he appears as an old man …
There is a Da Vinci drawing depicting some unearthly creature in Windsor. His face is damaged by time, but even now his striking beauty is guessed. In this drawing, attention is drawn to the deliberately huge and wide-set eyes.
But Leonardo was not mistaken, it was a deliberate trick. It is this part of the face that produces a paralyzing effect on a person. It is believed that this is an image of Beatrice - the beloved of the great poet Dante. But the anatomical structure of the face of an earthly woman cannot be so.
Leonardo da Vinci invented the scattering principle, or sfumato. From this, the objects depicted in his paintings do not have clear boundaries. Everything, like in life, is blurry, penetrates one into another, breathes, lives, awakens fantasy. In one of his scientific works ("Treatise on Painting"), the master recommended practicing such scattering, examining the spots on the walls, ash, clouds or dirt arising from dampness. Leonardo specially fumigated the room where he worked.
It is the sfumato effect that has been enlivening the smile of Dzhakonda for several centuries, when, depending on what angle you look at her, the audience thinks that she is either smiling tenderly or looking with disdain.
Another amazing property of Mona Lisa is that she is alive: her smile is constantly changing, from the fact that the corners of her lips rise higher.
Scientists from the Netherlands and the USA, using a special computer program, calculated that Mona Lisa's smile is 83% happy, 9% expresses a feeling of disgust, 6% fearful and 2% angry.
Other experts believe that the mystery of a smile is created only by the fact that a woman's eyebrows are shaved off. If you finish painting them, then its originality will also disappear. Professor M. Livingston puts forward a version: "The elusive nature of Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that almost all of it is located in the low-frequency range of light and is well perceived only by peripheral vision."
Jean Frank, French researcher and consultant at the Leonardo da Vinci Research Center in Los Angeles, claims to have “discovered the secret of the technique of this amazing canvas. The peculiarity of the sfumato technique is that the smallest strokes (0.25 mm) are applied to a clean canvas, which are inaccessible for recognition either under a microscope or using an X-ray. The composition of the painting itself is built on golden triangles, which, in turn, are parts of a regular star-shaped pentagon."
In addition, it is still unknown who is actually depicted in this amazing picture: Lisa Gherardini, the second wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco Giocondo, mother of five children; the famous Duchess of Sforza?
Or Leonardo da Vinci painted his own self-portrait in women's clothing. One of the most scandalous versions says that a student of the great master Giano Giacomo, who was next to him for 26 years and, according to rumors, was his lover, served as a model for the picture.
Da Vinci also invented the counterpost rule, i.e. opposites of opposites, creating the effect of movement. Having completed the sculpture of a giant horse in Cortevecchio, the master placed the horse's hooves in a counterpost. Everyone who saw the statue claimed that da Vinci was able to convey the movement of the animal.
And of course, it is worth emphasizing that Leonardo was an amazing inventor. The inventions and discoveries made by him cover all areas of knowledge, anticipating the main directions of the development of civilization.
In 1499, for a meeting in Milan, the French king Louis XII, Leonardo designed a mechanical lion, in which, after a few steps, the chest opened and the insides filled with lilies were visible.
The Florentine craftsman managed to create plastic, as well as a number of different machines and mechanisms: dynamometer, odometer, some blacksmith tools, lamps with dual air flow, skis and handholds for walking on water, breathing devices underwater, swimming gloves and underwater goggles, very durable metal diving suits; fish-shaped submarines; earth-moving machines and others. The scientist proved the impossibility of creating a perpetual motion machine.
In 1503-1506 Leonardo da Vinci studied the flight and anatomy of birds. As a result, several dozen of the most interesting works were written. He created a kind of delta wing; ornithopter for vertical flight; parachute; gyroscope, etc.
There were a number of other mechanisms - a bicycle and a self-propelled carriage, similar to a modern car; industrial and printing machines; textile machines; jack for lifting heavy things; parabolic compasses, carbon monoxide and projectiles for warfare and much more.
In 1516, the Florentine master, at the invitation of Francis I, moved to France, where he lived for three years. On May 5, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci died in Clu, a place near the castle of Amboise on the Loire. He was buried at the abbey in San Florentin. But, unfortunately, his remains disappeared during the religious wars of the 16th century, when the crypt was plundered.
Leonardo da Vinci left for posterity many riddles and puzzles, and so complex that mankind has been unsuccessfully trying to solve them for five centuries. The great Florentine never signed his works, leaving only a subtle sign - a flying bird - a symbol of an enlightened person.