XX
LEONARDO DA VINCI
1452-1519
"The richest gifts of heaven are sometimes showered upon the same person, and beauty, grace and genius are combined in so rare a manner in one man, that to whatever he may apply himself, his every action is so divine, that all others are left behind him." With these words Vasari begins his life of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most gifted mortals whom the world has ever seen. The personal beauty and heroic strength, the brilliant conversation and fascinating presence that charmed all hearts, were only the outward signs of a marvellously subtle and refined intellect, and of a mental energy that has been seldom equalled. Never before or since, in the annals of the human race, has the same passionate desire for knowledge been united with the same ardent love of beauty, never have artistic and scientific powers been combined in the same degree as in this wonderful man. There was hardly a branch of human learning which he did not seek to explore. Architecture, sculpture, mathematics, geology, hydraulics and physiology, all in turn
