PDF Summary:Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson

In Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson narrates the life, accomplishments, and struggles of the Italian painter, engineer, and scientist—the ultimate Renaissance man. He traces Leonardo’s evolution, finds explanations for his flaws, and extracts lessons from his life and work that you can apply to your own.

Isaacson believes that making cross-disciplinary connections is at the core of being innovative, creative, and, ultimately, a genius. There’s no better example of this than Leonardo da Vinci. His studies in science, engineering, and art helped him satisfy his curiosity and understand the world around him, and they contributed to making his masterpieces scientifically accurate, innovative, and intriguing.

Our guide explores the known facts of Leonardo’s life, the key elements of his genius, and the lessons you can learn from him. We also discuss the historical context of Leonardo's life and work and connect Isaacson's lessons to other authors’ complementary advice.

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Self-Directed Learning

Leonardo was different from other Renaissance intellectuals because he didn’t base his learning on examining the classics since he couldn’t speak Latin or Greek (although he tried, unsuccessfully, to learn Latin). Isaacson explains that, instead, Leonardo learned by making observations, carrying out experiments, and refining his insights.

Isaacson explains that Leonardo became a precursor of modern scientists:

• He made observations, identified patterns, and conducted experiments to test his ideas. Before drawing conclusions, he conducted further experiments under different conditions so he could be sure his results were valid (an early version of the scientific method).
• He was systematic in his observations. He listed details of an object or scene, then observed one detail closely and committed it to memory before continuing to the next.
• He supported his observations and experiments with theory, but he wasn’t afraid to question accepted theories.
• He didn’t limit his curiosity to specific areas—he made connections across different subjects, using analogies to show the patterns he discovered. For example, while learning to paint perfect curls, he also learned about the movement of water.

(Shortform note: At the basis of Leonardo’s scientific insights was his ability to observe, a learnable skill—except it might be impossible for most people to learn to observe like Leonardo. Scientists are currently working on sequencing Leonardo’s genome to see whether his vision or other senses were genetically different and predisposed to detailed observation.)

Leonardo’s Notebooks

The best testament to Leonardo’s self-directed learning is the notebooks he systematically kept, starting in the 1480s. The practice of keeping a notebook was popular during the Renaissance, but Isaacson argues that no one amassed such extensive and diverse material as Leonardo. (Shortform note: This digitized fragment of one of his notebooks shows some of the variety in his notes. The front page (recto) contains detailed notes on hydrology and hydromechanics, while the back (verso) has drawings he made while dissecting an ox.)

Some of the themes that filled his notebooks include:

• Interesting vignettes he encountered around town
• Sketches and ideas for future paintings, innovative musical instruments, and the theater
• Questions he wanted to investigate, such as “what yawning is”
• Engineering mechanisms, both real and imagined
• Outlines and drafts of treatises on arts and science that he never finished or published
• Calculations and sketches showing how light and shade work from different angles
• Names of people he wanted to have conversations with or ask questions of
• Books he wanted to borrow or buy
• Everyday notes, such as to-do lists and expenses

(Shortform note: Leonardo collected all his valuable ideas and information in one single notebook—like a bullet journal. However, the modern bullet journal method, as Ryder Carrol describes it, can be a lot more organized. For example, you can decide ahead of time what kind of topics you’ll want to write about and customize your journal to have a section for each topic. This will allow you to keep your anatomy and hydrology studies separate, for example, but might prevent cross-pollination of ideas from happening on the same page.)

Mathematics

Leonardo nurtured a passion for mathematics, especially geometry, throughout his life. Isaacson argues that, to Leonardo, painting was both an art and science because artists need a deep understanding of mathematics to convey their imagination through their art. (Shortform note: Researchers argue that Leonardo’s ability to create three-dimensional images is related to his affinity for solid geometry and stereometry (the measurement of solid bodies).)

The Abacus School

During his first stay in Florence, Leonardo’s father paid for his education at an abacus school. Isaacson argues that Leonardo’s takeaway from this education was using analogies and patterns. For example, he took what he knew about water eddies and hypothesized that the aortic valve used a similar process. (Shortform note: Some argue that Leonardo’s ease with making analogies was the basis of his genius. He found common patterns between phenomena to understand each individual phenomenon. For example, once he threw a stone inside a well at the same time a church bell rang. He saw the rings rippling out around the stone and imagined that sound must also travel in waves, just like water.)

Luca Pacioli’s Mentorship

From 1494 to 1499, while he lived in Milan, Leonardo and mathematician Luca Pacioli were both on Duke Ludovico’s payroll. During this time, Luca taught Leonardo geometry and algebra. Isaacson reports that Leonardo’s notebooks contain passages of Luca’s word-for-word explanations of difficult topics so that he could review them over and over.

Leonardo and Pacioli also collaborated on a book: De Divina Proportione. Luca wrote the book to explore the importance of proportion in architecture, mathematics, anatomy, and art. Leonardo was fascinated by the topic and produced 60 illustrations for the book. Always at the cutting edge, Leonardo innovated by making the illustrations see-through instead of colored so they could be easily understood. He also applied his artistic skills of light and shading to make the objects appear three-dimensional and realistic.

(Shortform note: Pacioli’s mathematical insights influenced Leonardo’s art. Divine proportion is just another term for the golden ratio, an irrational number (roughly 1.618) that appears in architecture, nature, and, of course, works of art. Critics argue that Leonardo followed this mathematical pattern in his art, as you can see here.)

Optics

Isaacson claims that Leonardo's work made dimensionality the greatest artistic achievement of the Renaissance, possibly thanks to the following two gains from his study of optics:

1. Optics enhanced his understanding of light, shades, and edges. Isaacson reports that, through experimentation and dissection of eyeballs, Leonardo learned that the eye perceives images through the entire retina. This means that the brain perceives scenes as a whole, not as individual objects separated by sharp edges. (Shortform note: Despite the breakthroughs Leonardo made in understanding how the eye works, he believed that the lens was circular rather than an ellipsoid. This might be because, to prevent the contents of the eye from spilling when he dissected it, he boiled it, which resulted in the lens changing shape.)

2. Optics refined his use of perspective. He went beyond linear perspective (how to make a flat surface seem deep) and studied acuity perspective (how objects become less distinct when they are farther away). Isaacson explains that Leonardo understood that he needed to paint objects in the background more diffusely than those in the foreground. (Shortform note: To ensure he was drawing with accurate perspective, Leonardo built a perspectograph: a sheet of glass positioned in front of a frame with a small slot through which he looked at a scene he wanted to paint. Looking through the slot, he traced the scene on the glass, then used those tracings to guide his initial drawings.)

Architecture and Engineering

Architecture and engineering are areas where Leonardo didn’t leave concrete marks. None of his designs came to fruition, and Isaacson argues that this was because they were too ambitious for his time. (Shortform note: Centuries after Leonardo, other inventors had similar ideas and finally got around to making the machines he designed. See whether you can match Leonardo’s drawings with the modern-day machines they resemble.)

In terms of architecture, he developed plans for new cities, royal palaces and villas, and churches. Isaacson says Leonardo was the first architect to systematically analyze the causes of wall fissures, and he developed plans to make cities more hygienic and prevent plague outbreaks. (Shortform note: You can see a scale model of Leonardo’s plans for an ideal city.)

Isaacson reports that Leonardo's interests in engineering spanned aeromechanics, hydraulics, and military engineering. He designed flying machines and complex water management systems, including a plan to change the course of the Arno river. In military engineering, he designed several weapons. (Shortform note: If you travel to Milan, you can see some real-life examples of Leonardo’s inventions, such as a giant crossbow and sliding doors in water canals designed to control the flow of water.)

While Leonardo didn’t manage to construct working prototypes for his designs, Isaacson claims he made significant engineering and scientific advancements:

• He was the first to explain how different birds managed to fly.
• He previewed the laws of gravity, but he called gravity “the attraction of one object to another.”
• He previewed Newton’s laws of motion, Amonton’s rules of friction, Galileo’s principle of relativity, and Bernoulli’s fluid principle.
• He calculated how much weight a man can lift with each of his muscle groups.

(Shortform note: For all his learning and scientific breakthroughs, Leonardo is a lonely branch in the tree of scientific progress. Since he learned from his own experience, it’s difficult to trace his ideas back to medieval thinkers. His insights are not part of a lineage of scholarship because he could only make them thanks to his experiments. Also, since his notebooks weren’t published until centuries later, his ideas didn’t help the next generation. By not leaving behind a published record of his learning, he had a limited impact on the breakthroughs that came after him.)

Anatomy

During his first stay in Milan, Leonardo collaborated with anatomy scholars at the University of Pavia who taught him to perform dissections. According to Isaacson, his studies of anatomy allowed him to explore two central questions:

1) How does man fit into the universe?

2) How do emotions transform into gestures and movements?

Isaacson identifies several scientific breakthroughs Leonardo made through dissections and observations of living people and animals:

• He was the first to draw the two halves of the skull together, to correctly draw the frontal sinus, and to give a description of the full set of human teeth.
• He was the first to study the anatomy of the human smile, including each participating nerve (He studied the smile at the time he was painting the Mona Lisa).
• He illustrated every human body part and limb.
• He explained the process that leads to arteriosclerosis.
• He was one of the first to discover that the heart was the center of the circulatory system, rather than the liver, as was then thought. He determined that the heart was a muscle with four ventricles with specific functions, and he explained how the aortic valve worked.
• Using his knowledge of sculpture, he mapped the internal cavities of the brain by injecting molding material into a skull, and he sculpted a model of a bull's heart to test how blood ran through it.

(Shortform note: Although Leonardo’s contributions to anatomy are better known than those of his contemporaries, the Renaissance was a time of intense collaboration between artists and physicians. Artists needed physicians’ access to human bodies so they could depict them better, and physicians needed artists’ skills to capture what they discovered. This led to fruitful collaborations between both areas of human knowledge, a hallmark of the Renaissance.)

Hydrology and Geology

As Isaacson explains, Leonardo’s interest in water was second only to his interest in the human body. He explored how water moved and shaped the earth, and he made it a central part of his art and engineering projects. (Shortform note: His interest in hydrology seems to have started when he saw a flood in his childhood.)

Leonardo made several breakthroughs in this area. He invented goggles, floats, and instruments to measure the current and movement of rivers. Also, Isaacson says Leonardo carried out experiments that prompted important discoveries:

• He learned that you can’t compress water.
• He discovered that vortices appear when water flows past an obstacle.
• He discovered how sea waves work.
• He discovered that erosion was the result of water wearing out riverbanks.
• He discovered that mountains were the result of movements in the crust of the earth.
• He was a pioneer in the study of fossils and fossil traces.

(Shortform note: Some consider Leonardo to be one of the founding fathers of hydrology. He previewed a basic tenet of hydrology when he realized that the amount of water that builds up on mountains each year is the same as the amount that comes down through rivers and rain.)

Astronomy

Leonardo’s curiosity about the earth led him to study its place in the universe. According to Isaacson, Leonardo made many astronomic insights that were ahead of his time:

• The earth is not the center of the universe.
• Gravity keeps the waters attached to the earth.
• The moon doesn’t emit light but rather reflects the light of the sun.
• The sky is blue because the sun illuminates the drops of water present in the air.

(Shortform note: Leonardo hypothesized that he could use mirrors to construct a machine to help him see celestial bodies more clearly, and he made some sketches of a proto telescope.)

The Microcosm-Macrocosm Analogy

Isaacson cites Leonardo's approach to the microcosm-macrocosm analogy—a comparison of the human body’s functions with those of the earth—to show how he was willing to abandon a flawed idea. The microcosm-macrocosm analogy claimed that the human body and the earth behaved in similar ways. (Shortform note: The microcosm-macrocosm analogy is present in ancient Greek culture, religious philosophy from the Middle Ages, Buddhism, and Hinduism.)

However, Isaacson argues that Leonardo saw the limitations of that analogy through his studies. First, he realized that the mechanisms that allow blood to irrigate the body are different from the mechanisms that make water emerge from deep in the earth. Second, he learned that veins and arteries age and become thinner, but river beds tend to grow each year. (Shortform note: Some scientists still find the analogy useful, and see evidence of its relevance in similarities between, for example, bacterial division patterns and supernova explosions.)

Because the facts invalidated the analogy, Leonardo let go of it. However, he continued using it in his art. Although the mechanisms were different, the beauty and unity of human and animal bodies reflected the beauty and unity present in the earth and the universe. (Shortform note: Leonardo might have held on to the analogy as spiritual as well as aesthetic guidance. Some scientists argue that his vegetarian diet is a result of his belief in the interconnectedness of organisms and systems of all sizes.)

Element #2 of Leonardo’s Genius: Creativity

The second key element of Leonardo’s genius was his creativity, which, according to Isaacson, was the result of his unbridled imagination plus his scientific insights. This section will discuss how he expressed his creativity in three of his masterpieces.

(Shortform note: Isaacson’s description of Leonardo’s creativity dispels some common myths about creativity. For instance, it shows that creativity requires both logical and intuitive thought patterns, and that creativity doesn’t depend on sudden bursts of inspiration because Leonardo continuously nurtured his imagination and scientific insights.)

“Vitruvian Man”

According to Isaacson, Leonardo’s “Vitruvian Man” was the result of his explorations of mathematics and philosophy and his collaboration with architects Francesco de Giorgio and Giacomo Andrea. (Shortform note: The drawing is at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venezia and you can see a digitized version here.)

In 1490, Leonardo and Francesco traveled together to Pavia to consult on the design of a church. During the trip, they studied a copy of a classical treatise on architecture written by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in the first century BCE. On their return, both of them plus Giacomo became engrossed in drawing a Vitruvian man, sharing their sketches and conversations on its deeper meaning. (Shortform note: An architect discovered Giacomo’s drawing in 1986 after being lost to time after his death during the French invasion of Milan.)

Isaacson explains that the Vitruvian Man was a metaphor for the relationship between man and the cosmos. Vitruvius argued that the design for a temple should follow the proportions of a “well-shaped” man. He gave specific measurements for that well-shaped man and explained how to draw him inside a circle and a square to use as a foundation for the temple’s design. (Shortform note: The Vitruvian Man is related to the macrocosm-microcosm analogy, with the circle representing the sky and the square representing the earth.)

Vitruvius’s metaphor became popular during the Renaissance because it resonated with humanist ideals. Isaacson explains that the metaphor celebrated the place of individuals in the universe as worthy of straddling the immediacy of the earth and the timelessness of the cosmos. (Shortform note: The precise measurements also indicated that it was possible to know how humans fit in the world and the broader universe.)

Of all the drawings he and his friends made, Isaacson argues that Leonardo’s “Vitruvian Man” became the definitive one thanks to his scientific and artistic commitment. 1) While the other two produced sketches, he planned the drawing over several sketches and produced a confident final illustration. 2) He drew the details of the man’s body, face, and hair with delicate traces, making his subject a metaphor for the human and the divine. 3) He followed Vitruvius’s instructions for the placement of the man inside the circle and the square precisely, but he made adjustments to the measurements of the man. Isaacson explains that those adjustments came from his studies of anatomy and his willingness to challenge received knowledge.

(Shortform note: Another change that elevated Leonardo’s drawing was placing the legs and arms in two different positions, thus creating an equilateral triangle with the legs.)

“The Last Supper”

Between 1495 and 1498, Leonardo painted “The Last Supper” for Duke Ludovico—a commission that tested the duke’s patience but showcased Leonardo’s masterful application of narrative, symbology, and optics. Isaacson reports that the duke was setting up his family’s mausoleum in the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery and he asked Leonardo to paint one of the walls of the monastery’s dining room. (Shortform note: You can see “The Last Supper” here in high definition.)

Leonardo’s creation process was haphazard, which made the monastery’s prior (or leader) and the duke uneasy. Isaacson explains that, some days, Leonardo would spend hours painting, not stopping to eat, and people would even gather around him to watch him work. On other days, he would spend hours simply looking at his work in progress, or arrive, paint a single stroke, and leave. The prior complained about his erratic progress to the duke, and Leonardo explained that working slowly allowed him to perfect his ideas. He also warned that he would use the monastery’s prior as a model for Judas Iscariot if the man didn’t stop badgering him.

(Shortform note: Besides being placed at the Sforza family’s mausoleum, the painting included other “Easter eggs” that referenced Ludovico and his court. For example, Leonardo had members of the Milanese court model the different characters in the painting, and the tapestries in the painting were reminiscent of the tapestries in Ludovico’s castle.)

The duke’s patience ran thin when his wife died. She was placed in the mausoleum, so he went to the monastery and ate dinner there every week. Isaacson says that to speed Leonardo up, Ludovico had him sign a contract clearly stipulating the deadline. But the duke’s patience was finally rewarded with a work of art that encapsulates much of Leonardo’s genius through three key characteristics that Isaacson identifies. (Shortform note: Besides rewarding the duke’s patience, the painting also catapulted Leonardo to the widespread recognition he craved.)

The Narrative

Isaacson explains that the painting shows the aftermath of Jesus declaring that one of his apostles would betray him that night. Leonardo lifted each apostle’s emotions and reactions from the Bible and painted gestures and expressions that would showcase them. (Shortform note: There’s been a lot of speculation about the gestures the apostles make in the painting and whether they convey a secret message from Leonardo. However, it’s most likely that they just convey the drama of the situation through gestures that would have been commonly understood at that time.)

The Symbology

Jesus’s gestures are symbolic of the Eucharist (a Christian rite of thanksgiving and commemoration of the Last Supper). Isaacson explains that Christ’s hands are signaling toward a glass of wine (symbolizing his blood) and a piece of bread (his body). After declaring that one of his followers would betray him, the Bible describes how he blessed the wine and bread and shared it with the apostles because his blood would cleanse their sins. Leonardo chose the placement of Jesus’s hands carefully: The first thing you see is the hand pointing toward the piece of bread and inviting you to participate in the Eucharist.

(Shortform: Although he was mindful of tradition, Leonardo might not have bought into the religious meaning of the painting. Critics speculate that Jesus doesn’t have a halo because Leonardo thought Jesus was a regular person.)

The Application of Optics

Isaacson argues that Leonardo applied his knowledge of optics to “The Last Supper” in two ways:

1) He made Jesus larger than the other characters. He painted him in front of an open window, knowing that a light background makes objects appear larger. This way, he achieved the dominant effect he desired without making Jesus seem unnatural compared to the other characters.

2) He deftly applied the laws of natural and artificial perspective—and disregarded them when necessary. All the straight lines in the painting meet at a vanishing point on Jesus’s forehead. This helped Leonardo create a natural perspective and make the painted room seem real—like an extension of the actual dining room, with even the tapestries in the painting aligning with the tapestries in the monastery room. To achieve this effect, he stuck a nail in the center of the wall and carved radiating lines on the wall to guide his paintbrush.

However, natural perspective has its limitations, which Isaacson says Leonardo got around by playing with artificial perspective. The wall is too large and the room too narrow for a viewer to stand at the perfect distance from the painting to take the scene in without it looking distorted. Artificial perspective made it possible to adjust how viewers would see the painting, depending on where they were in the room. Isaacson identifies a series of optical illusions Leonardo applied to make the viewing experience smooth, such as:

• Aligning the painting perfectly with the left wall, but not the right wall
• Making the right side of the painting’s ceiling slightly higher than the left
• Making the right side of the painting brighter to match the light in the real room
• Making the back wall narrower and the room shorter than they would have been
• Painting the table and decorative molding across the top of the scene to disguise the ways he had interfered with the natural perspective

(Shortform note: Leonardo’s mathematical accuracy in the creation of this painting’s perspective also serves a symbolic function. Since all the lines converge on Christ’s forehead, he is the vanishing point where all the traces begin and end.)

“Mona Lisa”

Isaacson reports that Leonardo began working on this masterpiece in 1503 and continued perfecting it until his death, putting into practice his knowledge of optics, the human body and psyche, textures, and nature. (Shortform note: You can see the painting in high resolution here.) Francesco del Giocondo, an up-and-coming silk merchant, commissioned Leonardo to paint his wife, Lisa del Giocondo. Possibly, Leonardo agreed to paint her because she wasn’t a noblewoman, and he wouldn’t have to worry about traditional rules for portraits. (Shortform note: Francesco and Lisa never got their commission since Leonardo never turned in the painting. When he died, the portrait stayed in the possession of King Francis I.)

Leonardo applied everything he had learned over the years in this work of art, including these three key sets of insights that Isaacson identifies:

How Optics Work

He applied his knowledge of optics in three creative ways:

1) He departed from traditional methods to take advantage of light and shade. Isaacson explains that Leonardo primed the painting with lead white, instead of the traditional mix artists used at the time. This reflected the light better, even from below the innumerable layers of oil, which added to the luminosity and depth of the painting. He also created shade in his subject’s face with a mixture of iron and manganese, another departure from tradition. This softly delineated her features and mimicked the texture of skin. (Shortform note: Leonardo’s unique mix of pigments allowed him to create the sfumato that characterizes his paintings. Scientists only recently discovered what those pigments were thanks to X-ray studies.)

2) He created an artificial source of light to highlight her features. The light in the painting should be coming from behind her, where the landscape is. However, Isaacson says Leonardo created an artificial light coming from the top left to illuminate her face but he did it inconspicuously so that it wouldn’t feel unnatural. (Shortform note: Unfortunately, the light in the real world has been less kind to the “Mona Lisa.” The cracks in her surface and the darkening of her pigments partly result from the lighting the painting has been under.)

3) He emulated how our eyes work to make the painting more lifelike. To mimic how the eye sees far away objects less clearly, Leonardo made the background diffuse while her hand and body were more clearly delineated. Then, Isaacson explains that Leonardo fixed her eyes on the viewer by playing with how our eyes process light and shades. If you look at a three-dimensional object from different angles, you see it differently, but this doesn’t happen in a two-dimensional plane. Thus, every time you look at her eyes, you see them fixed in the same position, apparently looking straight at you.

(Shortform note: A study suggests that Lisa is not, in fact, looking at you. According to measurements taken while volunteers looked at the painting, Lisa is looking over your right shoulder, not straight at you.)

How Emotions Work

The central element of the painting, Mona Lisa’s smile, is a product of Leonardo’s knowledge of optics, anatomy, and human emotion.

Isaacson reports that Leonardo had been dissecting and drawing human mouths, tracing each layer of muscle and thread of nerve. He then figured out which muscles and nerves created a smile, a purse of the lips, or any other movement of the mouth. In his notebooks, alongside different drawings of dissected mouths, there is a drawing of a smile that looks a lot like Lisa’s.

Besides in-depth knowledge of anatomy, Leonardo used optics to create Mona Lisa’s cryptic smile. Isaacson explains that Leonardo knew that the retina catches the light differently at different points of its surface, which makes the eye see things more or less clearly depending on the angle it uses. When you stare at something directly, you see it in more detail; when you look at it from the corner of your eye, you see the surrounding shadows.

Knowing this, Leonardo delineated her mouth clearly and used shadows to hint at a smile. Isaacson explains that, when you look at her mouth, you see the details but no smile; when you look anywhere else in the painting, you notice the shadows around her mouth and it seems like she’s smiling. Look back at her mouth and you lose her smile.

Using his knowledge of anatomy and optics, Isaacson argues that Leonardo created a smile that was representative of human emotion. It exists beneath the surface, not clearly delineated but shaped by the surrounding shadows. (Shortform note: Mona Lisa’s smile elevated the portrait from a regular painting to the most famous painting in the world. For the first time, people looked at a portrait and saw a real person with life in her expression.)

How the Individual Is Part of the Cosmos

Embracing the aesthetic and spiritual aspect of the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, Leonardo made the landscape and Lisa become one. Isaacson explains that the paths and river behind her seem to flow into her with her hair and clothing following the same patterns. Besides the synchronic fusing of Lisa with the earth, the earth is a diachronic blend. Isaacson describes the river shaping the rocks, mountains, and valleys, while the bridge near her shoulder represents human history—all of it culminating in the young woman. (Shortform note: This was not the first time Leonardo used a sitter’s background to convey a history of creation. He accomplished the same effect, for example, in “Virgin of the Rocks.”)

Element #3 of Leonardo’s Genius: Flaws

According to Isaacson, the third element of Leonardo’s genius was the flaws that humanized him and gave his life and work a unique edge: perfectionism and a lack of discipline. The key result of his flaws were unfinished would-be masterpieces, a variety of engineering projects he designed but never completed, and several treatises he never published. In this section, we’ll explore two of his unfinished works: “The Adoration of the Magi,” and the horse monument. (Shortform note: Maybe Leonardo couldn’t complete many of his projects due to material constraints, rather than personality quirks. He relied on commissions to support himself, and those commissions didn’t fund his “passion projects,” including his engineering designs and treatises.)

“The Adoration of the Magi”

In 1481, Leonardo began working on a masterpiece he would never finish: “The Adoration of the Magi.” Despite it being unfinished, Isaacson explains that Leonardo’s preparatory drawings (one of which you can see here) show that he was on his way to accomplishing something great:

1. He applied his studies of optics to the careful design of perspective, including the vortex that formed around the central figures: the Virgin and the child Christ. (Shortform note: Leonardo was fascinated by vortices. He found the shape in the movements of water, air, and blood—centuries before scientists could use advanced technology to identify it.)

2. He applied his talent for metaphor. The background showed a pagan temple being rebuilt, a metaphor for Christianity destroying Roman paganism and creating a new culture. (Shortform note: Experts argue that the metaphor goes deeper. The temple represents peace, while the battle on horseback in the background represents war. The palm tree in the middle symbolizes Christ’s suffering as the path from conflict to peace.)

3. He applied his talent for narrative. Through their actions, the characters surrounding the Virgin and Christ are telling the story of the epiphany: the moment they realized Christ was the child of God. (Shortform note: An important element of this narrative is the presence of two characters in the foreground, one in each corner of the drawing, looking out and gesturing with their hands to invite people to join in the moment of epiphany.)

Isaacson argues that Leonardo might have stopped painting because he imagined something more perfect than he could accomplish. There were over 30 characters in the painting, and each one had to cast shadows on the other 29. Likewise, each person’s emotions and actions had to be coherent with the others’. (Shortform note: When Leonardo failed to complete his commission, Filippino Lippi took it over. His work clearly takes inspiration from Leonardo’s preparatory drawings, but lacks the optics knowledge to ensure that each character would affect the light and shade on the characters surrounding them.)

The Horse Monument

In 1489, Duke Ludovico of Milan commissioned Leonardo to build a bronze monument in honor of his father, but Isaacson reports that both Leonardo’s creative process and Ludovico’s change of heart conspired to leave the work unfinished. Still, the commission elevated Leonardo to one of the duke’s favored artists. (Shortform note: Although Leonardo couldn’t finish his project, Nina Akamu finally brought his plans to life in 1999. You can see it here today.)

It was a challenging project, and Isaacson explains that Leonardo made it even more ambitious:

1. He planned to make the monument at least 23 feet high, almost two times taller than similar monuments Verrocchio and Donatello had created. (Shortform note: In fact, Leonardo advertised the monument as “the largest equestrian monument in the world.”)

2. He became fascinated with equestrian anatomy and decided to dissect a horse before he designed one. Through those studies, he even produced a treatise on horse anatomy and came up with systems to make stables more comfortable for horses (Shortform note: You can see part of Leonardo’s comparative studies of horse and human anatomy here.)

3. Usually, large bronze monuments were cast into separate pieces, then put together for the finished product. Leonardo, being a perfectionist, decided his monument would be cast in one piece. To achieve this, he devised a complex engineering system and made several experiments to find the right method and materials. (Shortform note: Leonardo’s plan to cast the monument in one piece didn’t pan out. Akamu, who built the monument in 1999, cast the monument into several pieces before melting it together.)

Unfortunately, Leonardo took too much time to make progress. Isaacson explains that, right as Leonardo was finally getting ready to cast the final monument, a war broke out. In 1494, France invaded Italy and Ludovico decided to use the bronze set aside for the monument to build cannons instead, in preparation for the imminent arrival of the French in Milan. (Shortform note: Leonardo held on to hope that he would at some point finish the monument, but that hope was finally quashed when Ludovico lost to the French and fled Milan in 1499.)

Part 3: Leonardo’s Lessons

While Leonardo’s particular genius was unique, you can replicate it by nurturing the same natural inclinations and leaning carefully into the same flaws. To achieve this, Isaacson extracts lessons from Leonardo that you can apply to be more like the Renaissance genius:

1. Nurture an insatiable, child-like curiosity.
2. Learn because it gives you pleasure, not because you need to.
3. Pay attention to details.
4. Let your imagination run free.
5. Don’t be afraid of distractions or procrastination if they feed your creativity.
6. Use critical thinking and experimentation to find the facts.
7. Use visuals to understand complex ideas.
8. Find the intersections between different subjects and areas.
9. Seek perfection.
10. Seek collaboration.
11. Don’t let money dictate your passions.
12. Write things down (even your to-do lists).
13. Appreciate the mysteries you can’t delineate with sharp lines.

Shortform Suggestions to Help you Apply Leonardo’s Lessons

These books from the Shortform library offer more guidance to follow Leonardo’s lessons:

• In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert explains that you can practice “gentle inquisitiveness” to see where your interests lead you and how they can feed your creativity.

• You can follow the approach Scott Young outlines in Ultralearning to design a personal learning project about an interest you want to learn more about: Conduct meta-learning research, create a schedule, follow your plan, analyze your results, and create a follow-up plan to retain everything you’ve learned.

• If you struggle with details, try doing one of your daily activities in slow motion, as Bhante Gunaratana recommends in Mindfulness in Plain English. Slow down to 10X the time it takes you to do an activity and pay full attention to each component.

• The voices of critics can stifle your imagination. To make sure they don’t put out your creative fire, follow Stephen King’s advice in On Writing: Write (or do any creative activity) with the door closed, literally and metaphorically. This will help you block out the outside world and create for yourself, rather than worrying about what others think.

• If you feel guilty about procrastinating and getting distracted, remember what Austin Kleon advises in Steal Like an Artist: The time you spend on hobbies and being bored improves your creativity because it encourages your mind to make new connections.

• In Principles, Ray Dalio suggests keeping your eye on two hurdles for finding the facts: your ego and your blindspots. To avoid letting them get in the way, look at your mistakes as proof that you’re learning, and frame your search for facts as the search for the best possible answer, not for the best answer you can come up with.

• You don’t have to be an artist to use visuals. In Make it Stick, Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniels explain that using illustrations and images helps you understand and retain new concepts. They also suggest examining multiple examples and problems at the same time to find common threads.

• One way to make striving for perfection manageable is to ask yourself “How can I do better today?” As David Schwartz explains in The Magic of Thinking Big, this will prompt you to find daily opportunities for improvement. He also suggests seeking out collaboration by always asking more questions than you answer and by offering your views in the form of questions to elicit feedback from others.

• Money didn’t dictate Leonardo’s passions, but it did dictate where his career could take him. To make sure you can build a career you love and also have a steady financial base, follow the steps Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez outline in Your Money or Your Life: Understand the flow of money in your life, align your spending with your values and goals, graph and increase your income, cut spending, and invest.

• In The Bullet Journal Method, Ryder Carroll also advocates for writing things down, even when technological alternatives seem more efficient. He argues that analog writing such as in a bullet journal can help you get organized, live in the present, find clarity on what’s important to you, and see your progress through time.

• To tap into Leonardo’s appreciation for mystery, you might get inspiration from the Tao Te Ching, which explains that some things can’t be understood, only experienced. To engage with the inexplicable, keep your thoughts simple, be patient with others, and be compassionate toward yourself.