Time for some Fun Facts.
The genius of the Renaissance age, Leonardo da Vinci.
Why is he such a genius? Could it be that he had some disease/condition that helped him?
And why are his paintings magical anyway?
Join me for an Easter special thread. https://twitter.com/isasquare/status/1243908065382055937

The age of the Renaissance is an era in the 14th century, when the rebirth of antiquity and scholarship took place. The evolution of thinking, the birth of new ideas, the resurrection of old ideas, the advancement of art. A phenomenal paradigm shift.

Our legend, Leonardo da Vinci lived in this era. And we will take some time to go through his genius. What role he played in human civilization, and some fascinating things about him and his works, some of which are only being discovered today.

Da Vinci was a great scientist, his contribution to various fields of science are still studied today, but he wasn't known for his science back then, perhaps because he doesn't know Latin? Thus couldn't connect with the academic world. Nor did he had access to the Arabic world

The Arabic world back then, was way ahead of anyone in Arithmetics, Science and Technology. But Da Vinci had no access to them either, however, we later saw how his genius will be adopted in Europe by Galileo etc 100 years later.

We will focus only on the paintings of Da Vinci today, and I've decided to make a proper blog piece about Leonard da Vinci - tweets just can't do justice. I will try and write the piece before this lockdown finishes. Amen!

To fully understand the magic of Da Vinci's art, we need to understand the era at which he lived. Before the Renaissance, paintings were weirdly 2D. Artist just can't figure out how to depict a 3D scene. You recall imagine like this everywhere.

I have a funny blog post on Medieval-art, I'll attach at end of this thread.
We're almost accustomed to these kind of images as Medieval art.
Until sometime in 14th century. The theory of "Linear perception" was conceived. By Da Vinci's colleague Luca Pacioli, et., al.

The idea was revolutionary, it says that: "For 3D scene, Parallel lines tend to converge to a common 'vanishing point' when drawn on a paper".
And boom! There you have it. All of a sudden, we can see "depth". We can visualise scenery. Revolutionary indeed.

One of the ppl that masters this is obviously Leonardo da Vinci. By making hashed lines, images such as the "La Scapigliata" were finally being made.

But da Vinci went a step further. He invented the mixing of oil & pigments, to depict 3D scenery. Such at his Masterpiece: The Last Supper.
The original painting of The Last Supper unfortunately is getting damaged, he painted it on a wall and some fine details are wearing off

But there is another copy which he made along side his students. It's in London. Recent X-ray investigations can help us understand something phenomenal about the copy. It would appare that there are sketches under the painting, except for Jesus Christ and John the Baptist.

This would suggest that Jesus and John were drawn by the master himself - Da Vinci.
The painting is a dramatic illustration of a scene described in d 4 canonical Gospels. The Last Supper Jesus has before his crucifixion. Imagine the scenery.

Particularly, the book of John 13 1-17, when Jesus had the Last bread with his disciples, and he announced to them that one of them is a betrayer. Da Vinci froze this scene. You can see the reaction of each disciple. Shocked. Surprise. In-question. Disbelief. It's a masterpiece.

We can go on and on about The Last Supper, but da Vinci has other paintings- even the more expensive painting in the world- Salvator Mundi.
But what I want to discuss now is a hypothesis.
In recent years, scientist have tried to understand the genius of da Vinci.

They concluded that he most probably had the eye condition called Strabismus. You know this condition, you just didn't know the name. Here are some pictures. It's sometimes called cross-eye

Scientists analyzed 6 of his paintings and they could see various characters having a certain degree of this eye condition. But is this enough to attribute such condition to the painter??
Well, maybe. What is the painter known for saying. From his famous quotes.

Da Vinci himself said: "The soul guides the painters arm, and makes him reproduce himself, that's the best way the painter understands human being".
It is not a stretch to assume he has cross-eye. If you check his famous (and most expensive) painting of Jesus making the cross.

It's not only that, scientists analyzed the pupils of David and Warrior, Salvor Mundi, etc, and they could always see a degree of cross-eye.
Interestingly, da Vinci has a portrait of himself. Could that give us more clues ??

Unfortunately, the famous portrait of himself is not a fresco, it's pencil. And it's very difficult to conclude definitely from it. Check out for yourself.... Do you think this person is cross-eyed ?

We need to end this thread, it's getting very long. But I will wrap-up with another mystery that was uncovered this recent years. Over 500 years after da Vinci.
Remember I said he was a scientists, and he documented his work in form of Codex..

In his famous "Codex of The Flight of Birds", it was recently noticed that there is something like a nose between the lines.
Using modern X-ray and UV techniques, the writing on the Codex were digitally eliminated.

Lo and behold!!! A self-portrait.
While it is still not clear if he has cross-eyes, I'm perfectly comfortable taking that assumption to my grave.
I think I will end here and hope you enjoy this series of Fun Facts.

Here is the link to my blog on Medieval-art, I wrote some years ago.
Enjoy a good laugh .. https://bythepens.com/2017/09/21/medieval-art/