In the following essay, Vallentin surveys Leonardo's interests and studies in military engineering, painting, civil engineering, astronomy, and hydrodynamics. The critic frames her study within the context of Leonardo's “obsession” with flight.

In the following essay, originally published in German in 1910, Freud applies his methods of psychoanalytic investigation to Leonardo's writings. He makes controversial assertions regarding events in Leonardo's childhood and their effect on his later life, maintaining that evidence points to the artist's homosexuality and the sublimation of his sexual urges into his art.

In the following essay, which was originally published in German in 1953, Jaspers provides “an account of Leonardo's philosophizing, describing first the character of his thinking, then its content, and its reflection in the painter's way of life.”

In the following essay, McCurdy offers a detailed overview of the contents of Leonardo's manuscripts, commenting on the diversity of the writings, which focus on such areas as optics, astronomy, botany, geology, perspective, light and shadow, and equine and human anatomy. McCurdy also states that the scientific thought present in these writings presages the later discoveries of great scientists such as Bacon and Newton.

In the following essay, Heydenreich reviews the content, construction, and textual history of the Treatise on Painting. He also assesses the significance of the treatise, discussing its influence on other painters.

In the following essay, Farago outlines the method by which Leonardo distinguished painting as superior to poetry, music, and sculpture. She also analyzes Leonardo's treatment of painting as a science, discussing his views on the creation of optical effects.

In the following excerpts, Pedretti discusses Leonardo as a teacher of art and analyzes the Codex Huygens, a compilation of Leonardo's writings that deals with, among other things, the form, structure, and movement of the human figure.

In the following essay, van Maelsaeke highlights similarities between the philosophical thought of Leonardo and that of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He notes, for example, that in terms of natural philosophy, both men advocated the use of the experimental method, and both viewed nature as a force with both good and evil qualities.

The following essay was first published in French as the preface to Leo Ferrero's 1929 work, Léonard de Vinci, and reprinted in slightly revised form in Valéry's Variété III (1936).The translation by Malcolm Cowley originally appeared in volume 8 of The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, edited by Jackson Mathews (1956-75). In this essay Valéry seeks to determine why Leonardo is not often recognized as a philosopher, despite his penetrating intellect. He...

In the essay that follows, Winternitz examines the Paragone, the section of Trattato della Pittura in which Leonardo reveres painting as the noblest of the arts. The critic maintains that upon close analysis of this text, music is demonstrated to be an art equal to painting.

In the following essay, Andersen examines the historical consequences of Freud's analysis of Leonardo's dream, which relies on a mistranslation of Leonardo's account.

In the following essay, Plochmann asserts that, despite the fragmented nature of Leonardo's writings, his work was informed by a philosophical system. The critic concedes, however, that Leonardo failed to provide connections between his distinct areas of study, and that his philosophy lacked a “single guiding principle.”

In the following essay, Gombrich calls for a new edition of Leonardo's Trattato della Pittura, one in which the problems of the “derivation and date” of particular items are addressed, and one which provides an analysis of the relationship between Leonardo's theories and practice.

In the following essay, Birmele de-emphasizes the significance of Freud's reliance on a faulty translation of Leonardo, arguing that Freud was interested not in asserting the biographical certainty of his analysis of Leonardo, but in demonstrating the way in which psychoanalysis may be used within the context of biography.

In the following essay, Gangoly examines the variety of Leonardo's achievements within the context of the intellectual and spiritual movement of the Italian Renaissance.

In the following essay, which was originally delivered as a lecture in 1952,Gordon maintains that the twentieth-century image of Leonardo has been shaped by a variety of factors, including how he has been depicted in portraits; by his reputation as a “prophet” of modern science due to his studies of nature; by his characterization over the years as a “Renaissance man” or as the “uomo universale” of fifteenth-century Italy; by his being viewed as an “oracle&#...

In the following essay, Fly contrasts the differing conceptions of human sight reflected in the works of Leonardo and Shakespeare. For Leonardo, he declares, “the primary function of the eyes” is “the scientific scrutiny of the phenomenal world,” while for Shakespeare it is “the acknowledgment and expression of essential human relationships.”

In the essay that follows, Beck describes Freud's essay on Leonardo as a “brilliant psychobiography”; however, he focuses his discussion not on the merits or flaws of Freud's analysis, but on the implications of Leonardo's dream itself, as recalled in his journals.

In the following essay, O’Neill points out the similarities between Leonardo and Freud and contends that Freud's “overexcitement” for his methodology, that is, for imposing sexual psychoanalytic theory onto Leonardo's “sketchy” biography, resulted in errors in Freud's interpretation.

In the essay that follows, Marinoni traces the critical opinion of Leonardo's literary work from the disdain it garnered from early scholars to the “mythological” image of Leonardo established by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics.

In the following essay, which was first published in 1939, Clark surveys the content of the notebooks Leonardo kept, observing that Leonardo's writings are characteristically thorough.

In the following essay, Rodini focuses on Leonardo's fascination with both the potential and the limitations of language, stressing that “Leonardo shared with his contemporaries the notion that language defines culture and the individual, and that our humanity resides in our capacity to articulate or to concretize abstractions.”

In the following essay, Roberts offers a brief textual history of Leonardo's written works, stressing that the notes and drawings that have been recovered represent only a fragment of what Leonardo wrote.

In the following essay, which was written in 1940, Barzun analyzes the flaws in Freud's 1910 biographical essay on Leonardo. The critic argues that Freud relied on hearsay and guesswork as evidence for his findings.

In the following essay, Papini reviews Leonardo's accomplishments and comments that although Leonardo was a scientist, his achievement in this area is often exaggerated, and that his philosophy “does not amount to much.”