#197 | 20 Life Lessons from Leonardo da Vinci: A Complete Biography on the Iconic Renaissance Artist and Polymath

episode SUMMARY:

Douglas Vigliotti explores the biography “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson, delving into Leonardo’s art, theories, techniques, and 20 life lessons we can learn from the creative genius himself. From embracing curiosity and retaining a childlike sense of wonder to relying on experience and avoiding silos, Vigliotti shares the secrets behind Leonardo's artistic brilliance and most famous works like the “Mona Lisa”, “Vitruvian Man”, and “The Last Supper”. Join him in this inspirational episode and discover how to apply these timeless principles to your own life.

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week I have an excellent biography for you. It is titled “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson. It's a big book at over 600 pages. It came out in 2017. You may have heard about it. It had a lot of critical acclaim when it first came out, and for good reason, which I will share momentarily as I dive into more about the book, and the author, and most importantly give you 20 life lessons that you can learn from Leonardo himself. So I thought that would be a fun way to structure this episode. It was tough to decide what to include in this episode because I have almost nine pages of notes on this book, mostly because I am interested in the subject matter as well as the time period, and of course, the length dictated it.

(01:08)

So what to include, what not to include. Either way, we are here. I hope you enjoy the rest of this episode. But before I do that, I just want to remind you of a couple of things. One, my 2021 poem collection, “mini heartbreaks (or, little poems about life)” is now live on Slightly Crooked: Good Stories, Told Well as season two, so you can listen to that poem collection in its entirety. The season is in three parts, one being the front matter of the book, two being the actual collection, and three being the back matter of the book, which is an essay that I wrote for my website and then included as the conclusion for the poem collection. So I hope you enjoy that. I would encourage you to go over and check it out if you are interested. And again, the podcast is called Slightly Crooked: Good Stories, Told Well.

(02:05)

Well, it is linked up in the show notes for all of these episodes. Also, I wanted to remind you that if you are a regular listener, there are two very important ways that you could support the podcast. One is subscribing and the other is sharing. So subscribing on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on and sharing with a friend or a family member, either one of those things goes a long way in helping new listeners find the show and inspiring more men to read. So if you could do either one of those two things, I would greatly appreciate it. Now, having said that, let's jump into the book for this week. Again, it is Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. Isaacson is probably one of the most acclaimed biographers alive. He's written a lot of books on very famous people like Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Jennifer Doudna, who if you don't recognize the name, she's Noble Laureate and biochemist who invented CRISPR or gene editing, which was a major breakthrough obviously.

(03:14)

And then most recently, Elon Musk. So as you can see, Leonardo da Vinci fits pretty well into this category of individual as somebody who is widely influential and for lack of a better term, or maybe not so much a genius, so to speak, and I will talk more about that. First, let me share what you can expect in this book. In short, this is the story of Leonardo's life from start to finish. I think where it's unique is that instead of looking at his life through the lens of his iconic art, “Vitruvian Man”, “Mona Lisa”, and “The Last Supper”, all of which obviously are included in great detail in the biography, and perhaps more importantly, what surrounds the impact of each of those works and how he came to them and all of that. But most importantly, like I was saying, Isaacson uses his private journals, Leonardo's private journals as the backbone material.

(04:17)

So I think this offers a really unique perspective on his life, straight from the horse's mouth, as they say in total, I think it was 7,200 pages of notes ranging from his early years in Florence all the way to the end of his life and his final days in France. And for me, perhaps Leonardo is one of, if not the, most interesting man of all time. I guess in a way that's where the term Renaissance man might actually be derived from in how Leonardo lived his life, which was entirely more wide-ranging than the art that I had previously mentioned, or the artist that he is most known to be, at least in the general public or in popular culture. He really was a self-taught polymath who blended science and art and valued above almost everything, curiosity, and experience, and I'll talk a little bit more about that.

(05:28)

In many ways, Leonardo's genius was hard-earned, not born. This is something that Isaacson doesn't let you forget in this biography, and neither does Leonardo for that matter, in his own words, in his notes, but this is what makes Leonardo someone who we can learn from because unlike Albert Einstein or Jennifer Doudna or somebody who relies on mathematical skills that 99.9999% of us do not have and probably will never have as a skillset, the things that Leonardo brings to the table and what he based all of his genius off of were things that we could learn from and things that we can approach life with ourself. This makes the book not only inspirational but something that we can utilize as a guide if we want to. Of course, that's not to say you have to live your life like Leonardo or that you even should, but that lens makes this book unique and Leonardo's life unique as somebody who, again, you would put in the same bucket as all of those other people that I mentioned in the book.

(06:45)

You learn the differences between him and his contemporaries. Other very popular Renaissance artists like Michelangelo, they couldn't have been two more completely different individuals both in demeanor style, and then just everything else really like their approach to religion and their sexuality and everything. Of course, you'll learn about land artist relationships with all of his patrons. So the Medicis, Sforzas, Cesare Borgia, and Francis I, are some of the more important ones. And then his techniques too are something that reoccurs over and over and over again, probably most famously sfumato, which is blurring and contouring to reduce sharpness, and then also chiaroscuro, which is a technique going from light to dark to make things appear. 3D, he utilized both of these over and over and over again, but it wasn't just these techniques that made him so brilliant. It was everything else. And that's why I wanted to end this with 20 life lessons from Leonardo.

(07:56)

These are things that I will go through as quickly as possible just for the sake of time, but they're things that you'll learn in great detail in the book if you read it. And they're also summarized nicely at the end of the book by Isaacson himself. So number one is to be curious, relentlessly curious. So this was Leonardo's backbone of his entire life. Curiosity drove everything, and it was beyond what you think of it as not just curiosity like I wonder what will happen if I use this color versus that color. Curiosity in everything, in anything as he's walking through life, why is this guy blue? Why do the birds chirp like that? What makes a pig's lungs exhale or inhale or I don't know, something crazy like that. Legitimately, his curiosity was wide-spanning, and we know this from his notebook. Number two, seek knowledge for its own sake.

(09:05)

I love this because it emphasizes that seeking out knowledge, it doesn't have to have a point, and it allows us to release this idea of practicality, something that I myself have been working on, and maybe that's why it hit me because I think practicality can stifle our imagination and our dreams and our ability to follow our own interest or curiosity. Number three, retain a childlike sense of wonder. I think this is so important because we lose this as we age. We stop questioning things and we start believing that, and I'm using air quotes. We know when we really don't, and I think this is such a good lesson to retain a childlike sense of wonder for as long as you possibly can. And Leonardo was a great example, a shining example of this. Number four, observe. Now, this may seem like it relates to the first three and it does, but observation is a much different thing than curiosity in that it is really paying attention to what you are doing.

(10:18)

It has a lot to do with mindfulness, and this is how you're able to delineate differences. Something that you may have heard me talk about in previous episodes with reading, but observation doesn't just relegate itself to that. It's in reference to everything. Number five, start with the details. This is truly different. It's something that I think doesn't come to us innately, definitely not myself, but it's something that Leonardo definitely did. Number six, see things unseen. This is quite simply the ability to imagine. I think one of the strengths of reading books is the power of working that all-important imagination muscle, and this is something Leonardo did quite heavily in his career, his ability to imagine possibilities and things that others couldn't. Number seven, this relates very closely to a lot of the things that you've heard me say already, and that is go down rabbit holes.

(11:20)

Leonardo would often take months and years to discover new things and not just stuff about art. I'm talking stuff about anatomy, optics, engineering, all kinds of stuff that does not pertain to painting or anything of that nature. Number eight relates closely to number seven, get distracted. Leonardo would often leave work unfinished, even commissioned work. And yes, this has some negative effects, but it also led him to very important discoveries. Number nine, respect facts. And to me, this is a really important lesson to key in on because as Isaacson says in the book, “If we want to be more like Leonardo, we have to be fearless about changing our minds based on new information.” And I love that because I feel like it's something that we don't do so easily, especially as we age. We get anchored into the things that we think we know and we form our identity a lot of times around these things.

(12:32)

And then they become very hard to uproot. Leonardo never let himself do that. He always updated his model of the world, and this was mostly because his knowledge was based on experience rather than learning from somebody else. So he was the type of individual who wanted to notice something experientially and then figure out why it worked or didn't work, not go to the books and listen to why other people have this take on something. There's this great line in his notes that says, “he who has access to the fountain does not go to the water-jar.” And I just love that for so many reasons, but for the sake of time, I will move on to life lesson number 10, which is procrastinate. So take your time, and allow yourself ample loads of time to craft your artwork. This is most famously noted with the “Mona Lisa” because it took him, I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years, something like that.

(13:43)

I think he started in 1503, and then it was recovered at his death, which was 15, 17 or 1519. So think about that. He just constantly applied a new layer of paint and chipped away at it little by little. This again, is just a famous example of the idea that procrastination has power to it. Number 11, let perfect be the enemy of good. This is very closely related to the example I just gave about the Mona Lisa, but he would do this a lot. He would not stop until something was perfect, at least in his eyes, and if he didn't think he could make it perfect, he would literally give up on it. He would allow himself to get distracted and he would leave. This is most notable in the “Battle of Anghiari”, which was a mural that he was commissioned to paint at the Palazzo Vecchio, which is what it's called now in Florence, and he just didn't have the vision for it, so he left the commission and left Florence altogether and went to Milan.

(14:45)

And I can go on and on about those examples. This is a different idea in that letting perfection be the enemy of good. But again, if you want to be more like Leonardo, at least in this sense, that is something that he definitely did. Number 12, think visually. So he wasn't blessed with math smarts or anything of that nature, as I already alluded to. And so he had to use his mind, his imagination, and to see things that he wanted to create and share and depict to the world in many of the various ways that he did. So number 13 is avoid silos. So this quite simply means don't do the same thing over and over because people want you to, again, like Leonardo, follow your curiosity, and seek knowledge for its own sake. And he did this time and time again as people wanted to label him a painter and commissioned him to do artwork.

(15:38)

He was more focused on studying the anatomy of the human body, designing military bases, or how water can be diverted for city planning or all of these things that he would go down rabbit holes and do. He would not allow people to bucket him as one thing. He avoided silos. Number 14 relates to number 13 pretty tightly. And that is let your reach exceed your grasp. So this is simply to do things you've never done before. Do things that are way out there, things that people don't think that you could do, and try to make those things possible through the visions that you have for them. And again, number 15 relates to both of those. Indulge in fantasy, to me, fantasy is imagination times four or times five, I don't know. Fantasy is completely allowing yourself to go deep into that imagination, something that Leonardo definitely did in his life.

(16:46)

Number 16 is create for yourself, not just for patrons. This is a great reminder that money isn't required to create art. That's only something that has to do with commerce. Art is not commerce. There is a commercial aspect to art, but they are two completely different things. Again, they intersect, but they're different things. Most notably, I don't want to utilize the same example over and over, but since everybody is very familiar with the “Mona Lisa”, this was something that he was originally commissioned to do for somebody, and then he didn't deliver the commission and ended up keeping it for himself to perfect it, paint it, and what would ultimately be his masterpiece combining so many of the styles and things that he would most become known for. Number 17 is collaborate. So this is a big misnomer about a lot of artistic geniuses. And definitely with Leonardo, he had a lot of people around him all the time.

(17:49)

He had groupies, so to speak, and also creative communities that he was a part of at different aspects of his life, almost without exemption. Number 18 is make lists. This is something that is very obvious in the journals of Leonardo. He had daily lists of things that he wanted to do, and often they were very strange, like “describe the tongue of a woodpecker” or “ask Gino, the Bombardier, about how the Tower of Ferrara is walled.” And then there were just more mundane things as well. But his notebook is filled with lists of curiosity, really, which leads to number 19. Make sure you take notes on paper, which is the basis of this book and something that Leonardo did quite heavily. And then lastly, number 20 is be open to mystery. This relates to number three, retain a childlike sense of wonder. But to me, mystery means that everything doesn't need to be spelled out or as Isaacson says, “Not everything needs sharp lines.”

(19:00)

I love that line. To me, this is the basis of Leonardo's life, and his art, especially sfumato, which is something that I talked about briefly earlier, is the art technique that is closely related to this life principle. So it is something that Leonardo lived as well, which is probably why he was able to utilize it with such success in his art. Isaacson says in the book, “Sfumato is not merely a technique for modeling reality more accurately in a painting. It is an analogy for the blurry distinction between the known and the mysterious, one of the core themes of Leonardo's life, just as he blurred the boundaries between art and science, he did so to the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between experience and mystery, between objects and their surroundings.” And so with that, I think I've probably given you enough to chew on in this episode.

(20:07)

But before I do, I wanted to share one quote directly from Leonardo that comes from his notebook and he says, “I am fully aware that my not being a man of letters may cause certain presumptuous people to think that they may with reason blame me, alleging that I am a man without learning. Foolish folk! They strut about puffed up and pompous, decked out and adorned not with their own labors, but by those of others. They will say that because I have no book learning, I cannot properly express what I desire to describe. But they do not know that my subjects require experience rather than the words of others.” And I wanted to end on that because I think for everyone who's listening, it couldn't be a more inspirational quote and something that is achievable. If only we could be more like Leonardo. Alright, so that's all I've got.

(21:16)

I want to thank you for listening. I know this was a very long episode. I didn't intend it to be so, but I just went with it. And the great words of Richard Branson, screw it. Let's do it. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to share it with a friend or a family member and definitely subscribe because that's how new listeners find the show and we inspire more men to read. You could always connect with me on Instagram @douglasvigliotti. It's the only social media that I have. And lastly, for more information, you could visit BooksforMen.org where you can get full transcripts for all of these episodes, as well as sign up for the monthly newsletter, which is just one email every single month that summarizes and rounds up all of the episodes from that month. So it includes full book and author information, episode summaries, all the best quotes from each of the books, and newsletter-only book recommendations. Again, if you're interested in that, you could sign up at BooksforMen.org.