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How to Read Like Leonardo Da Vinci?
Practical tips for the modern reader.
A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a re-reader.
— Vladimir Nabokov
In 1499, Leonardo da Vinci moved from Milan — the city where he had spent last seven years of his life — and returned to his native Florence. Among his belongings were several items of clothes, multiple types of drawing and art supplies, and one-hundred books. He came from a wealthy family but he had never received what was considered ‘official education’, because he was born out of wedlock.
Everything he knew, he owed to nature and books. In his recent biography of Leonardo, Walter Isaacson tells how the young genius used to spend hours observing birds fly and then sketching in his notebook the structure of their wings. What Leonardo couldn’t find in nature, he found in books. He could spend weeks, if not months, studying works of other geniuses. He drew his famous Vitruvian Man by studying works of Vitruvius — architect and civil engineer of ancient Rome.
This was before the invention of the Gutenberg’s printing press. Books were scarce and hard to find at the time. Many famous stories and scientific theories were simply passed by word-of-mouth. If a book existed, it existed because it was considered essential for civilisation. If it was a work of literature, it had to be deep and profound enough for the audience to discover a new meaning every time they read it (as in Dante’s Divine Comedy); if it was a scientific work, to be published, it had to surpass previous discoveries, as Galileo’s surpassed that of Copernicus.
These circumstances created a certain type of reader. A reader who was as engaged as Leonardo, as profound as Galileo, and as appreciative as Michelangelo. Isaacson’s biography tells a story of how Michelangelo used to walk on the streets of Florence reciting Cantos from Dante’s Divine Comedy which he knew by heart.
By the time he passed away at the age of 67, Leonardo left over 6000 pages of notebooks full of…
