I'm not sure if I shoulda asked this here or in the TV section, but I recently caught the new show Da Vincis Demons, and even though it's not entirely historically accurate, they paint Da Vinci in a really awesome way. While I already know how important and great the man was, just wondering if theirs any truth to his characteristics. I've really only ever read about the old man, maybe there's some good books on him?
Oh man you gotta, it's amazing in its one right, my new favorite show, but as an unexpected side effect it's given me an obsession with Leonardo Da Vinci, I just hope he's anywhere on the spectrum of how cool his television counter part is.
With amazing intellectual and artistic abilities, Leonardo also possessed a great heart . Owing to his compassion for animals and birds, he was a vegetarian and I have read that he used to buy caged birds in order to free them.
Giorgio Vasari, the earliest writer on Leonardo, says in his 'Lives of the Artists' (1550 ad) : "The richest gifts are occasionally seen showered, as by celestial influence, on certain human beings:nay, they sometimes supernaturally and marvelously congregate in a sole person; beauty, grace, and talent being united in such a manner that, to whatever the man thus favoured may turn himself, his every action is so divine as to leave all other men far behind, and manifestly to prove that he has been specially endowed by the hand of God himself, and has not obtained his pre-eminence by human teaching, or the power of man" Leonardo was definitely one of the greatest geniuses of the Italian Renaissance, if not of all time. Arguably the Renaissance did produce better painters, but Leonardo stands out because of the scope of his interests and his character, which seems to have been far in advance of his time. Some say he was gay incidentally, although there's no absolute proof he was. I don't think it matters much either way.
