He set himself an almost impossible task: to discovery everything there was to know. Alan Yentob, Leonardo: The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything, BBC 2011
By studying fossils he exploded the myth of the Biblical creation. ibid.
Leonardo was born in 1452 in the hills of Tuscany. ibid.
His notebooks are full of diagrams and drawings of flying machines. ibid.
Leonardo drew this parachute in the 1480s. ibid.
In the Renaissance world art and science went hand in hand. ibid.
He designed machines for transportation and warfare. ibid.
Early in 1498 the Last Supper was finished ... Something of the power of the original still remains. ibid.
He came here to the Council of Venice not as a painter but as an inventor. Alan Yentob, Leonardo II: Dangerous Liaisons
Leonardo went back to Florence. ibid.
Did he seriously believe that flight was a possibility? ibid.
Apparently, the world’s first controlled glider. ibid.
It’s a first time ever for a Leonardo flying machine successfully taking to the air. A triumph. ibid.
This is the story of the most famous work of art ever created by a human hand. Alan Yentob, Leonardo III: The Secret Life of the Mona Lisa
Visitors to the Louvre were undeterred: for some time afterwards they queued up to contemplate the blank space where the Mona Lisa had once hung. The theft made headline news around the world. A massive police hunt was launched, and among those suspects brought in for questioning was a radical young Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso. ibid.
Leonardo’s faces often seems to have some sexual ambiguity. ibid.
Leonardo da Vinci makes the first ever drawings of the foetus on the womb. ibid.
Leonardo never delivered the portrait of Lisa del Gioconda. He carried it with him wherever he went for the last sixteen years of his life even into exile. ibid.
He wrote using codes and ciphers. Now new claims suggest a hidden heretical message in his greatest work. Could it reveal the true identity of the Mona Lisa? Ancient X Files I, National Geographic 2012
The letters L & S and the number 72. ibid.
The landscape behind her doesn’t match ... A different perspective on the left and right hand sides of the painting. Also, if you join the opposite edges of the painting together, they appear to form a continuous landscape. ibid.
Could it be that the face of the Mona Lisa is not actually the beautiful young Madonna .. but rather a young man who was thought to be Leonardo’s lover and features in a number of his paintings. If this was the case then the Devil’s Bridge at Bobbio could be a playful reference to the man that Leonardo affectionately called Mon Salai [anag. Mona Lisa] – my little devil. ibid.
The secrets of our future, our fate, may be found in the work of Leonardo da Vinci ... The ultimate Renaissance man. Brad Meltzer’s Decoded: Da Vinci, History 2011
Considered by many scholars to be the greatest painter of all time, producing both the Mona Lisa and the The Last Supper. ibid.
‘What's the point of passing the world unnoticed? ... I intend to leave a memory of myself in the minds of others.’ Inside the Mind of Leonardo starring Peter Capaldi, Sky Arts 2013
So begin with the experience and investigate the cause. ibid.
Then, the Bible says, after a hundred and fifty days the waters started to recede. That’s impossible. Because water cannot move unless it falls. The flood covered the globe. It had nowhere to go. ibid.
It’s only when your judgment damns the work you have done that it's likely to be any good. It would be a poor disciple that didn’t try to out-do his master. ibid.
Every moment must count. ibid.
What deceives men the most? Why, their own opinions. ibid.
Patience protects me from insults. ibid.
Mathematics is even the basis for music. ibid.
War is beastly madness. ibid.
The joy of understanding – that is the most noble of pleasures. ibid.
This painting [Mona Lisa] is not only one of the towering achievements of the skill and vision of Art but its created embodies the central purpose of our civilisation. John F Kennedy
He privileged observation over perceived wisdom. Professor Rona Goffen, Rutgers University
There was terrible rivalry between Leonardo and Michelangelo. Professor Rona Goffen
Sometimes in a supernatural fashion a single body [Da Vinci] is lavishly supplied with such beauty, grace and ability that ... each of his actions is so divine that he leaves behind all other men ... a genius endowed by God. Men saw this in Leonardo da Vinci. Giorgio Vasari
A good painter has to bring up two things: the physical appearance of the subject he is painting but also what is in the mind: the intentions of the soul. Leonardo da Vinci
All round may be
Seen venerable trees,
Uprooted and stripped
By the fury of the winds ...
The swollen rivers
Overflow and submerge
The wide lowlands and
Their inhabitants. Leonardo da Vinci
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge. Leonardo da Vinci, notebooks
All the elements
Will be seen
Mixed together with a
Great disturbance,
Running now to
The centre of the Earth,
Now to the sky
Sometimes from
East to west,
And similarly
From this hemisphere
To the other. Leonardo da Vinci
All the waters
Dashing on their shores
Seemed to be battling them
With the blows
Of drowned bodies. Leonardo da Vinci
Among irremediable
And destructive terrors
The inundations
Caused by rives in flood
Should certainly
Be set before every other
Dreadful and terrifying
Movement. Leonardo da Vinci
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence, he is just using his memory. Leonardo da Vinci
Art is never finished, only abandoned. Leonardo da Vinci
Cities of Africa,
Your children
Will be seen to be
Torn apart
In their own homes. Leonardo da Vinci, cited Discoveringdavinci online
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time. Leonardo da Vinci
Invisible coins
Will lead to
The triumph of many
Who spend them. Leonardo da Vinci
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. Leonardo da Vinci
Learning never exhausts the mind. Leonardo da Vinci
Let no man who is not a mathematician read the elements of my work. Leonardo da Vinci