No other personality was so intimidating, no other career so difficult to encompass, so biographers often resort to the assumption that Leonardo embodied some superhuman quality: "il divino". Vasari (a contemporary biographer of Leonardo) writes:
"there is something supernatural in the accumulation in one individual of so much beauty, grace, and might. With his right hand he could twist an iron horseshoe as if it were made of lead. In his liberality, he welcomed and gave food to any friend, rich or poor." His kindness, his sweet nature, his eloquence ("his speech could bend in any direction the most obdurate of wills") his regal magnanimity, his sense of humor, his love of wild creatures, his terrible strength in argument, sustained by intelligence and memory, the subtlety of his mind which never ceased to devise inventions, his aptitude for mathematics, science, music, poetry. What's more, Leonardo was a man of physical beauty beyond compare."
This teases my nerves. It whispers me to shun the glamour of a material, conspiring life for a higher purpose. Being perfect isn't in my kit perhaps, but I know that I have ample of time to do enough good to the world. I'll be quite satisfied if I get even a tenth of praise of this kind by the time I turn to ashes.
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