"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." - Leonardo da Vinci

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An individual for an individual.

Leonardo da Vinci was an individual who worked for himself. He recorded and sketched and wrote. His notebooks are extensive and detailed and contain drawings, scientific diagrams and his thoughts on the nature of painting. He did this for himself. These unprecedented notebooks reveal the curiousity and the scope and depth of his interests. There was no commissioner here, nor was he completing them to impress the intellects and scholars of the time. He wrote in them well...because he wanted to. It is a sheer expression of his interests and curiousities.

Leonardo da Vinci, Self-Portrait in red chalk, c. 1512 - 1515

Interesting fact: Leonardo wrote in his notebooks using "mirror writing", cursive starting from the right hand side of the page moving towards the left, not from left to right. Only when he was writing something intended for others did he write in the traditional direction. Scholars use a mirror to read his notebooks. Contemporaries of Leonardo left records indicating that they witnessed him writing and painting with his left hand. Being left handed was extremely unusual and unaccepted during the Renaissance. Because Italians were (and still are, I may add), superstitious, children who naturally started using their left hands to write and draw were forced to used their right hands.

Above: A sample of Leonardo's writing.

Using a mirror to review the same text.

Scholars suggest several possibilities as a possible explaination for Leonardo's "mirror writing":

• Smugging occurred when writing with the left hand using ink, so he chose to move his hand from right to left to prevent smearing as his hand moved across the page.
  
• Hiding his ideas from the Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Leonardo had observed.
  
• Attempting to making it more difficult for others to read his notes take ideas.