Da Vinci was a genius with a beginner's mind. Unlike his educated peers who had their foot firmly in the door. He had to pick up all the pieces himself.
Very interesting interview. It appears to me that Walter Issacson has got to grips with the complex character of Leonardo just as he managed to do with Steve Jobs - he's clearly interested in people and in particular geniuses whose work crosses the artist - engineer - scientist artificial boundaries. I am very much looking forward to reading his biography of Leonardo when it comes out in October - so glad he chose to write it :)
8:00 because painting was the universe for Leonardo to live on. there is no reason to leave (or finish) it. He said "I will continue...." when he was dying.
I don't want to be too hard on Walter Isaacson because none of the art critics or art journalists noticed this either but Leonardo did NOT paint the Salvator Mundi. I'll stake my life on it. Here's proof: @
this is in Vitro in retro Spect in situ in the moment when the WORK is done it is excruciating and NO WAY to pre Dict anything easy for the smart guys 100 years later
salvator mundi.this particular painting has been floating around for many years. I believe it was made by Bernardino Luini. he was a student of leonardo and never used halos to distinguish between saint and sinner. Leonardo was an art instructor. there was no paper but lamb skin, which is difficult to draw on so they used a slab of poplar wood. maybe a foot in diameter. give or take an inch. if you look at the salvator mundi(latin for the christ one) you first notice the person is wearing a dress?! in those days women wore hoods, long sleeve, dress that draged on floor and a straight collar so as not to show clevage. long hair dainty hands. no beard. the painting on wood is student size. when the student mastered painting they would go on to paint on large canvas, frescos.murals. etc.If this painting was made by leonardo it would have also had a Halo. christies and sotherbys are crooks.they brought this painting for 1,000 and paid off all fake authenticators. the mona lisa was not painted by leonardo, student size!
Leonardo did not use tempura (37:37), which is a Japanese dish consisting of vegetables and seafood. He used tempera, which is paint mixed with a glutinous binder such as egg yolk. The French culture minister, Andre Malraux, did not resign in protest against the loan of the Mona Lisa to the United States (43:00). According to an article by Leonardo scholar Frank Zöllner, Malraux was the one who brought up the subject of the loan to Jacqueline Kennedy (see John F. Kennedy and Leonardo's Mona Lisa: Art as the continuation of politics, 1979). The 1963 trip to the U.S. was not the last trip of the Mona Lisa outside of France. In 1974 it was exhibited in Moscow and Tokyo.
