Leonardo da Vinci (1452- 1519)

“What is the dimension of man? It was my quest then and it remains whole”, by Valérie Mallet.

How do you feel about our century? Squaring the circle. Measurement is no longer in use, everything has taken on proportions beyond the measure of men. So they can no longer control the expansion. An expansion that threatens them then. According to me, man no longer exists within the limits of what he was created for.

Is that to say? Maintaining the order, the one of the spinning wheel. Today, he looks like a hamster in his infernal wheel and is no longer in the commands of the axis of the universe, the task that the divine man had to take on. Man must rediscover the boundaries of his field of action, this tenuous link with God, this divine lightning rod. Man must remain within his own proportions. In the cosmos reigns an order where everything has its place.

Tell me about Mona Lisa ... The sex of the angels, the man woman unity, the Parnassus, a seat ... There is nothing particularly human about her, it is a mountain in flesh and in painting.

Why were you writing backwards? A simple coding... Not to hide, but to exercise my brain. A gymnastics that I imposed on myself. A fair return to the sources, to the source of my imagination. Letting go of my mind, in the straight line of pure thinking And back then the divine language was written following that sense. Left to right is not the sense of reading of the sacred scripture, so I married the two. This is my job! Great Organizer of the World (note 1). I was there to compose. According to me, the organization, the geometrical distribution, is essential. The order of proportions. Yes, the Vitruvian Man existed in his measures, but I provided him with an additional proportion (note 2).

Have you taken part in any movement of thought? Yes, but I got away from the dogma, because for me the essential thing was to create my codes, my language, my codex, to redefine certain things in the turning point of my time, similar to the one you find yourself in today.

So what can one dream of for our time? Your thinking has taken a new turn, your relationship to space is no longer of the same quality, or rather dimension, should I say. Now it is about reaching other spheres, both physically and in thinking. I admit that I would love to live in your century ... so many things to invent, like for example, well ... the mental machine to abolish time and space, comparable to the one for learning how to fly in my time. It is no longer about the bird man but the star man. There you go, I would invent the star man.

A form of cosmonaut? No, it is not about the distance to be traveled, but the stellar dimension. One connexion of communication, one fiber, another perspective.

Tell me about Saint John the Baptist, your painting ... Christ in his childish candor. And a young man who I liked. The beauty of what the Greeks called the ephebe, but which for me represented all the purity. A model in every sense of the word.

And the Renaissance? I would rather say birth, because for me it was that: opening the doors of the world that offered itself. You are also at a threshold today.

What are you doing? I would like to draw new contours, but I have too much ambition and I am not there. I would like to work at the court, but the princes are no longer there. I was ageless in my time, I feel old in yours.

A regret for not having said, done? Pushing my audacities further and communicating about them. I kept a lot to myself.

What do you think of progress, of the advent of the airplane? A means of transport. Making the man fly ... It was about something else then. Reaching the ascension. Making him grow! There, I wanted to make man grow in wisdom, knowledge and qualities. And since that time not much seems to have changed in this area. I feel a little defeated... a sort of defeat. You speak of progress, but what progress has man made towards himself? And his qualities, I do not see them well? This is what it is about now! Man must progress for himself, rediscover his intrinsic qualities, those that compose him and have participated in his creation. The magic of the times of the creation. Granted, there seems to be a lot of melancholy in what I’m expressing, I have a nostalgic nature, a kind of tear, sfumato in front of the eyes. Until then times have proven right of my concerns. How I would love to be wrong and see the glimmer. Reaching the sun, without man burning his wings. I do not see very clearly. I am not clairvoyant.

Which spirit would you like to be? No specific desire, I am not in the projection.

And art ... I don’t consider myself to be an artist, I was the spokesperson for the concepts of my time. You would call it conceptual art today. I was not in the literal but the lateral, that side step that allows you to see differently. And in the century of perspective, I took this offbeat angle, to create my own prism of decoding the history and the reality. I considered art as a science, a logos, a word of the world. What I was interested in, it was not life, but its constitutive mysteries, the framing of the principles of the Creation, of time, the origins, man and his thinking. Human thinking within the framework of its corpus, of its body. Anatomy and thinking, man as the vehicle of his thinking, this is my field of research and expression. The human body is a magic square in all its formations, to divert it is to create other thoughts and I don’t think that goes very far. My painting was a mental thing. It is the thinking that has always interested me, how it is articulated in matter. Thinking as a mode of creation, and this is what quantum physics theorizes and expresses today. This is what I wanted to say in my own way: thinking precedes creation, the creative gesture proceeds from the thinking, the hand, the gesture follows the idea. The preeminence of the thinking, Cosa Mentale: this is why I returned to forms and anatomies. To find the thinking there, and by that very fact, the process of creation. Go back to the origins, like my writing that sweeps time against the grain. The inversion of the systems makes it possible to better define their dynamics, their proportions, to rationalize the framework of creation, the multiplied relations of the universe, and also to understand their fuel, their food. I nourished myself from this source, from the creative principle of the form and the verb. I have combined the two.

And God ? The principle of the divine order.

Your relationship with Michelangelo? We were in contention over our desire to access the very principle of the order of the Creation, each with our own sensitivity. I was less muscular than him, my parameters were on other paths, in the humanism of our century, also no doubt, closer to the antiques and to older civilizations. Him, in the spirit of our time. We looked at each other and turned our backs, put back to back, it could have been a duel, however we were not face to face ...

Tell me about Francis I? In him I found an attentive ear to my questions about the world and its creation. We shared the same areas of interest. Our fruitful exchanges nourished the end of my life. A real happiness for my salvation. And this welcoming land, in which I was able to feel the tranquility that my country had never offered me.

Your notoriety? I was a researcher, searched a lot, dissected, but ultimately what did I find? Not much, apart from the abyssal void of the Creation which is beyond you. What is the measure of man? This was my quest and it remains whole, despite the pages and pages I have filled. One life is not enough. The mystery of creation remains intact and today just as magnificent in the stardust.

What advice would you give? Aim bigger than yourself, because the measure of man goes beyond the limits of the frame, of the one on which I worked.

What do you think ? Thinking is a vain quest, without rest, a kind of ghostly wandering where no one finds rest. The state of being, alone, is oneness.

Notes:

1) Rewrite the universal aspect of the Code of Creation.

2) Modified version of the Vitruvian Man. The center of the pentacle is now located on the

navel and no longer on the pubis.

To read:

Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci by Edward Maccurdy, translated from Italian by Louise Servicen, Quarto Gallimard

Leonardo da Vinci, Propheties preceded by Philosophy and Aphorisms, selected texts from the Carnets, translated from Italian and English by Louise Servicen, Folio Sagesses Gallimard Léonard and Machiavel, Patrick Boucheron, Verdier, Poche editions