If Leonardo da Vinci's words provided by Bernd Roeck were correct— leonardo da Vinci thought he had achieved nothing, that he had done nothing, that he had touched things that no one else could have seen—that leonardo da Vinci would probably not have imagined that hundreds of years later he would have become an all-powerful genius among the world,"an idol worshipped by everyone, and the object of his dissection by the tireless study of everyone. Baind Lecty's words actually want to summarize the current research status of Leonardo da Vinci. The IP of the world's celebrities is actually not easy to rub, everyone is scrambling to cultivate in this piece, it is actually difficult to get out of the circle, even if it is a rigorous academic community, with a large amount of first-hand materials, how to write a legendary figure of Da Vinci is still a challenge.
Regarding da Vinci's biography, the Chinese translation is published almost every year or every other year, and the authors of da Vinci's biography are all over Europe and the United States (Italy, France, Germany, the United States, Britain, etc.), and the Russian writer Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezkowski even used da Vinci's life as a model for writing the book "The Resurrection of the Gods"... There seems to be nothing wrong with using "a variety" to describe the state of Da Vinci's biography in the publishing world. Even so, in 2019, Bernd Luke published his research on Leonardo da Vinci, "Leonardo: Der Mann, der alles wissen wollte." In 2022, the book was translated into Chinese, and it was this "Biography of Leonardo da Vinci" that was translated. But to complain, the book emphasizes the author's use of massive literature in the introduction, but in addition to the information of leonardo Vinci's works interspersed in the book, the relevant citations and references in the text are all deleted, which will actually greatly reduce the credibility of the author's research; Chinese some of the translated sentences may be influenced by the original work, and the expression is not particularly smooth (example: "Leonardo was taken from Milan by Napoleon's army to save the notebook in Paris and France," this sentence is not very understandable).
BerndLerk is an expert in the history of the German Renaissance, so this biography of Leonardo da Vinci takes the life of Leonardo da Vinci as a clue and connects the social landscape and artistic ecology of the Renaissance Europe in which he lived. Based on this, the book shows Bernd Luc's understanding and analysis of the different creations of leonardo Vinci, his own views on the shortcomings of da Vinci's traditional research, and more importantly, he tries to mention in this book that Leonardo da Vinci surpassed his time and became a frontier, which is the "foreign ideas" of the Renaissance.
But "foreign ideas" didn't influence Leonardo da Vinci in the first place, at least before he learned the art of painting. In this book, the author seems intent on correcting the general view of past da Vinci's research, starting with da Vinci's birth. For example, Leonardo da Vinci was not a young genius, his knowledge of the humanities was largely influenced by his family (his father's professional needs), and learning to paint was also a blessing in his father's connections, so he found Verocchio, the best artist in Florence at that time, to serve as Da Vinci's painting teacher.
Bernd Luke believes that da Vinci entered verrocchi's studio in 1465 to learn the art of painting. During this period, the European Renaissance was reaching its peak (16th century), and like Alberti's "diversity" of painting, da Vinci was not only deeply influenced by Alberti, but also immersed in the soil of the diverse styles in which the Renaissance flourished.
When did Leonardo da Vinci get out of the loop? There is no specific conclusion in the book. According to Baind Luke's research, after leonardo da Vinci studied and became Verrocchio's partner, he began to receive orders for paintings through his father's connections, but many of the paintings we can see now, most of the paintings we can see now, most of them are not delivered to customers as finished products by Leonardo da Vinci, and Baiend Luke believes that this is caused by Da Vinci's own perfectionism, and it is difficult for him to complete them as long as he is not satisfied with the creation at hand. In any case, at the beginning of the 16th century, leonardo da Vinci was already a "master" of the royal family, and around this period, he was focusing on the study of flying technology - bionic technology (birds), and his observation and research were called "the age of mechanization" by the later historian of science Pierre Dion. It was also at this time—1502 and before—that Leonardo da Vinci could choose his patrons almost as he pleased.
"The only person who can draw the Mona Lisa is Leonardo (da Vinci)." In contrast to Freud's analysis of da Vinci's sexual enlightenment and sexual orientation in the Mona Lisa, Bernd Luke reminds us that the Mona Lisa stands out for da Vinci's knowledge of the materials of the painting and the skill with which he used it:
The Mona Lisa, written by da Vinci for the wife of businessman Giorcondo, took four years, but as always, the work was actually an "unfinished product".
How exactly does "foreign thought" manifest itself in Leonardo da Vinci and his ideas and works? It may seem difficult to discern this in the detailed section of Leonardo da Vinci's biography, but according to Bernd Luck's summary, da Vinci was a man of many facets, and the trajectory of his life was very much in line with the development of European countries at that time; the flourishing of the Renaissance, the diversification of information became his nutrition; traditional disciplines and ideas such as Galen's medicine, Ptolemy's cosmology, Aristotle's physics and medieval mechanics, etc., became the basis of his thought.
It is not difficult to find that Leonardo da Vinci has a lot of energy that a very human being has. In fact, in the title of the original da Vinci biography, Bernd Luke summed up Da Vinci this way: "Der Mann, der alles wissen wollte." He said he was curious about everything and studied everything sleeplessly. Folk psychology is said to have thought that Leonardo da Vinci suffered from "attention deficit disorder" (ADHS), but his notes highlight his "over-focused" side. This contradiction is also reflected in his perfectionism and the above-mentioned overly humble words he said at the beginning, why does a man who seeks fame claim that he has achieved nothing? However, his many unfinished works seem to prove that he is a "three-minute heat" person, and in his plan, when will those works become really finished products, and what will the works that he feel satisfied with look like? Although Bernd Luke devotes da Vinci and the Renaissance era that belonged to him and represented him in 406 pages (Chinese translation), Da Vinci's work, his real ideas, and his true side are still as fascinating as the Mona Lisa.
The only true self-portrait of leonardo da Vinci is the shadow painted on the plane of the round arched window. (Palazzo Vecchio, Milan, 1492)