A documentary about Da Vinci dispels common myths about Leonardo
A documentary about Da Vinci dispels common myths about Leonardo
By Tim Brinkhof | Published: 2024-10-30 14:30:00 | Source: High Culture – Big Think
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Despite his world fame, we know little about Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from a couple of Florentine court records about the dropping of a sodomy charge, and of course his private notebooks, his name lives on primarily through his works, unique drawings, paintings, and sketches.
An eccentric, while da Vinci studied under well-known masters, such as the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio, and was, like many Renaissance men, well acquainted with the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers, most of his artistic and scientific ideas came to him through direct observation of the natural world rather than craftsmanship or scholarship.
This, coincidentally, is one of the key messages reached Leonardo da Vincinew documentary By Ken Burns. Scheduled to air on PBS in November, it aims to clear up some common misconceptions about da Vinci’s life and legacy that have contributed to centuries of romanticism — from academically questionable biographies to Dan Brown’s biography. The Da Vinci Code -You have led us to confuse the truth.
Burns’ documentary argues that the real Da Vinci did not actually invent the modern tank or helicopter. Nor was he a religious mystic with ties to the secret origins of Christianity. On the contrary, he was a very rational man, and his boundless curiosity enabled him to draw conclusions that others overlooked. Da Vinci was also not so much a polymath – a polymath – as a polymath, someone who saw the fields of art, mathematics, geology, physics and chemistry as not separate but complementary, with each contributing to a more complete understanding of reality.
In the following interview, Burns not only discusses what people often get wrong about da Vinci, but also how his work, like that of his subject, is driven above all by genuine interest and wonder.
The real Leonardo
“Leonardo is incredibly modern even though he lived more than 500 years ago,” Burns tells Big Think. When asked what attracted him to this particular topic which is arguably overrated. “Not because he invented the helicopter — he didn’t — but because he had tremendous curiosity. He remains relevant to this day because of his ability to wonder and explore.”
Perhaps the biggest misconception about da Vinci is that he was a man of his time, a product of the Renaissance and its renewed interest in the art and sciences produced during pre-Christian classical times. In fact, some of his greatest achievements resulted from ignoring the false beliefs of his contemporaries and returning to the source, to nature.
Burns says: “His circumstances, including being born out of wedlock and therefore unable to attend university, meant that his greatest teacher was nature. He was constantly making connections, seeing how the veins in a leaf mirrored those in a hand, for example. He did not accept the knowledge that came before him easily; he questioned it, dissected it – literally.”
Da Vinci not only cut open the bodies of humans and animals, but also made wax models of their organs to recreate the hydraulic properties of blood flow using water and seeds. “It took centuries for modern imaging technology to prove him right,” Burns says. “And this is a man who didn’t have access to a microscope or a telescope.”
His scientific research also served as an inspiration for his art, which he treated – creative liberties aside – as a structured, precise reproduction of nature’s outward appearance: objects that cast light, objects that cast shadows, muscles and bones that appear under the skin, and how everything we see is distorted by perspective.
One of his first completed paintings, Annunciation (1472-1476), in which the archangel Gabriel tells Mary that she is pregnant with the Son of God, combines his various interests, including anatomy, fabrics, plant life, and architecture, into one unprecedentedly complex picture. Many of his beloved portraits, including the Mona Lisa, were painted in sfumato, a technique in which gradations in color, tone and value are preserved so finely as to be imperceptible. Da Vinci took this technique further than any of his peers, applying up to 40 layers of thin, almost transparent oil paint to make his subjects’ skin appear translucent and lifelike.
He rarely finished his paintings, and on one occasion, he applied to work for the Duke of Sforza as a military engineer to escape the creative and intellectual constraints that came with regular commissions – all indications that he was not motivated by money or fame but rather by a genuine desire to understand how the world worked. To that end, the PBS documentary suggests that although da Vinci was not particularly religious in the traditional Catholic sense of the word, he saw his surrounding environment as part of an all-encompassing system—one that judged him, like God, to be perfect and unimprovable.
Beyond documentary
If you live in the United States, you probably know Burns first and foremost Civil warhis hugely popular 1990 miniseries that transformed the conflict that bore his name from the stuff of obsessed scholars and grandfathers into a widely known and widely discussed topic—no small feat. Today, most documentaries are glorified Wikipedia articles with talking heads, but they are somewhat more interesting to the casual viewer than the books they are based on. At best, however, they capture the cultural zeitgeist by making important scholarship available and appealing to audiences.
One way in which Burns elevates his documentaries above the aforementioned Wikipedia edits is by allowing his subjects to dictate the form of the documentary itself, thus ensuring that no two films are the same. “Leonardo remains a mystery in many ways, especially regarding the details of his personal life,” he says. “Despite the thousands of pages of notes and drawings he left behind, we know very little about the details of his daily life. This actually gave us some creative freedom. We didn’t feel like we had to speculate too much about his personal life, which allowed us to focus on his work and ideas.”
Inspired by Da Vinci’s multidisciplinary approach, Leonardo da Vinci It features a lot of split screens, showing diagrams of his machines alongside images of the plants and animals that inspired them, or modern machines that closely resemble his initial designs. The film also includes a wide range of interview subjects, speaking not only to da Vinci’s diverse interests but also to the range of people and professions who turned to him for inspiration. Aside from your usual group of writers and historians, you’ll also hear from some contemporary artists, as well as director Guillermo del Toro.
“I’m in favor of the latter wholeheartedly,” says Burns when asked whether he thinks a good documentary is supposed to package history — make it presentable and palatable, the way many world-class museums now feature interactive exhibits — or let it speak for itself, uninfluenced by the taste or level of knowledge of its audience. Helping history speak for itself might be a better way to put it, because the past is dead, and must be resurrected by the living in order to be passed down. Whether he’s making a documentary about Da Vinci or Abraham Lincoln, the essence of Burns’ work is fundamentally about knowing how to bring history to life without distorting it:
“Documentary filmmaking has a long and proud tradition of championing particular social or political issues. Some of my favorite documentaries fall into this category. But by choosing to focus on history, I felt it was important to surrender to the facts and remain as neutral as possible—just like umpires calling balls and strikes in baseball. The past is already incredibly interesting, and if you leave it alone, it becomes even more so.”
Like da Vinci, Burns’s admiration for history – the comprehensive order of human civilization – borders on religious faith. “God is the greatest playwright,” said Shelby Foote, a writer and historian Civil warhe once told him. In other words – and less literally – there is no story more fascinating, surprising and poignant than the entire collective story of our species, all its contradictions and complexities left intact.
“The key is to tell the story as it happened,” Burns reiterates. “There is no need for freedom. People can still draw their own conclusions from the complexities and contradictions that arise naturally. Even the greatest heroes have their flaws, and even the worst villains have some humanity. If you are honest about these complexities, the story speaks for itself. Of course, choosing which facts to include does introduce some subjectivity—nothing is truly objective—but you can still Respect complexity. ”
As composer Wynton Marsalis said in the 2001 film Burns jazzabout the history of the genre, “The thing and the opposite of the thing (can) be true at the same time.”
“If you can hold on to that duality,” Burns asserts, “you won’t be stuck in a duality where you have to make a specific political point. And when we formulated our goal, Vietnam For example, we were anticipating a major controversy in the 2007 documentary, and we had a team ready to respond to attacks from both sides of the political spectrum. But in the end, we received almost no criticism because the story was so compelling that it spoke for itself.
“Ultimately, it’s about constructing a story that honors the contradictions of real life, where someone can be one thing and the opposite at the same time. And that’s no secret — it’s just key to good storytelling,” he concludes. Coincidentally, it is also the key to understanding Leonardo da Vinci.
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