Showing posts with label Leonardo da Vinci. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leonardo da Vinci. Show all posts

Friday, July 19, 2019

sometimes


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Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong,
sometimes acid and sometimes bitter,
sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin,
sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence,
sometime health-giving, sometimes poisonous.

It suffers change into as many natures as
are the different places through which it passes.

And as the mirror changes with the colour of its subject,
so it alters with the nature of the place,
becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty,
incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow,
green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim.

Sometimes it starts a conflagration,
sometimes it extinguishes one;
is warm and is cold, carries away or sets down,
hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes,
fills or empties, raises itself or burrows down,
speeds or is still;

is the cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation,
nourishes at times and at others does the contrary;
at times has a tang, at times is without savor,
sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods.

In time and with water, everything changes.






~ Leonardo da Vinci
(art by Leonardo, The Last Supper, the face of John)

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Thursday, March 29, 2012

water







The water which sees the air through 
broken veins of the high mountain summits is suddenly 
abandoned by the power which brought it there, 
and escaping from these forces 
resumes its natural course in liberty. 

Likewise the water that rises 
from the low roots of the vine to its lofty head 
falls through the cut branches upon the roots and 
mounts anew to the place whence it fell. 





~ Leonardo Da Vinci
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Friday, April 15, 2011

Leonardo da Vinci




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Leonardo da Vinci
Born: 15 April 1452 in Anchiano in Vinci,
Died:  2 May 1519 at Schloss Clos Lucé Amboise,
Leonardo di ser Piero actually,  
Leonardo, was a painter, sculptor, architect, anatomist, mechanic, engineer and natural philosopher. 

His name suffix "da Vinci" is not a family name, but means from Vinci. 
The birthplace Vinci is a fort or fortified hilltop village,
 located in the Florentine territory, about 30 km west of Florence, near Empoli.


He learned painting from the painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence where da Vinci later worked independently, before he entered the service in 1482 the Count of Milan. In his time in Milan, da Vinci painted a mural of the Last Supper, and also accomplished much of his scientific work. He returned to Florence in 1503, here he painted the portrait of "Mona Lisa".   His "Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa" are among the most famous and influential paintings of the Renaissance. 

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more on Leonardo: http://www.mos.org/leonardo/

thanks to Semsakrebsler

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Saturday, October 10, 2009

from 'The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci'



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I cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is, when you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well drawn forms. And these appear on such walls confusedly, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine.
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~ translated by Jean Paul Richter