Leonardo Da Vinci: His Genius in Our Tomorrow
–by Elina Morizio
–Reading Time – 18 min Approx
“The mirror is our teacher.”- Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo Da Vinci (Italy 1452 – France 1519) was an artist, inventor and scientist of the Renaissance, considered one of the greatest geniuses of humanity.
Infinite are the books and documents written on his account, on his history, on his work.
But what I would like to dwell on with you today is a reflection on how much of Leonardo lives within us in the present reality and how much from his having been an avant-garde man we can deeply draw and get inspired regarding the still virgin and unbeaten path that awaits us.
A Renaissance man who tells and reflects the man of the 21st century who is in full transformation and who walks towards his self-awareness by returning to his ancient primordial origins.
What do I mean?
Modern man is at the mercy of forms of anxiety, neurosis and depression, and we are now certain that the main causes are: the detachment from Nature, from one’s emotions, from one’s intuitions and from one’s instincts; the total alienation from oneself; a hectic life paradoxically empty and inconsistent; the adherence to a fictitious, unreal self-image, required by a sterile and mechanical society that holds it in its grip.
Yet something is changing. The insights we had lost are leading us to ask questions such as: “Who am I? Where am I going? When did it happen that I abdicated myself for a life that does not reflect me? I want to get closer to the woods, to the mysterious geometries of nature, to forgive myself; I recognize my true identity and I shout to the world what I really want in life .
I deserve happiness and I have the right to express all my talents and my spirituality, beyond any religious dogma, without blame! I recognize myself as part of a puzzle, of a higher consciousness that binds everything in this world and reflects everything in the little things.
Everything is a mirror of me, especially what I don’t want to see. Behold, it is in all this and only this that the Truth dwells! Symbols speak to me, archetypes tell me about me, the ancient rituals of the ancient world reconnect me to the place from which I originated! ”
Modern man is on his own journey, he is stripping off what no longer belongs to him, he takes off his mask!
And if he doesn’t, if he doesn’t become responsible for himself, neurosis and darkness will continue to hide his way.
Leonardo did not care about adhering to preconceptions, laws, dogmas and logical definitions that were considered untouchable and immutable about the world.
He empathized with that fragment of reality that he approached to make artistically immortal. There was empathy precisely, that is, placing oneself in the state of mind of others, identifying oneself and emotionally involving oneself in the feelings of the other.
By observing the portraits of women he made, you will not only be able to grasp the soul of the lady, but also much of Leonardo himself and his feminine interior. A feminine that I will focus on shortly…
Leonardo was free, he followed his inner fire, the idea that suddenly kidnapped him, the intuition and an eternal, innocent and non-polluting intimate feeling that we find in many of his paintings. He was in connection with the cosmos, and when this happens, there is no space or time to guide us, but only and exclusively a universal feeling. His ‘Vitruvian Man’ is a case in point: man is proportion, linearity, harmony with creation.
He observed nature and its forms, every minimum fundamental and inestimable detail. He understood how much everything was interconnected, every different thing in the world was ONE with the other.
And also for this reason he dealt with philosophy, architecture, sculpture, anatomy, music, mathematics etc. He found in each of them a mysterious common thread, subjects whose original source was one and only.
Doesn’t it remind you of today’s multitasking man?
I am reminded of the book by Emilie Wapnick, artist, writer and TED speaker, and her book “How to Be Everything”: she is sure that within each of us there is a multipotential and that we have the right to listen to it fully, not giving up but giving voice to our possible multiple vocations.
An artist today can also be an art therapist, graphic designer, architect, entrepreneur.
Why continue to choose self-control and a categorized life when we can authorize ourselves to be everything we want and to celebrate all our talents?
Why be afraid of your own greatness?
Returning to the feminine, take a few minutes to observe Leonardo’s ‘La Gioconda’, his most famous work. How do you feel? What does it convey to you? Is it familiar to you?
Each man has in him a male dominant part and a female subdominant. The same goes for the woman, who in turn has a female dominant part and a male subdominant part.
There is also Leonardo’s face in La Gioconda, in that woman’s face he portrayed! It is possible to see him and his feminine that he creatively scrutinized, searched for, listened to and celebrated throughout his life! How?
The masculine represents rationality, action, concreteness.
The feminine represents emotions, intuition, instincts, what is illogical; it is the deepest feeling of every human being. It is respecting and feeling part of the Earth’s natural cycles, recognizing oneself as a primordial part of the whole.
Leonardo’s feminine had no limits! And this is what today’s man must aim for, abandoning the chains he has built over the centuries but which are now covered with rust.
A psychological, social and technological slavery from which we begin to understand that it is possible to free ourselves only by returning to our primitive nature.
The female portraits that Leonardo painted speak to me of his fidelity to his emotions, his sensitivity, his curiosity and endless empathy towards the world and himself.
Because everything speaks to us about us, everything is a mirror…
Leonardo left us unique manuscripts. Precisely because they were written from right to left: in this way, their reading would have been possible only through a mirror.
The same goes for his paintings:
I remember that my Mentor Lorenzo Ostuni, pioneer in the art of engraving on mirror, a new art technique to which I dedicate myself as an artist, had understood thanks to Leonardo the magic and mystery of observing things through a mirror: during visits to museums and exhibitions, he asked his students to bring a mirror with them, to observe each work through the reflection. How many more details, how much more beauty it was possible to perceive!
What is the mirror? It is our conscience, it is a door to everything that is hidden from us. The mirror is the microcosmic representation of the functioning of the entire universe: the single flower, the highest in the mountains, the new-born, even a simple object, are my projections, are the reflections of what I am and also of everything that exists.
You, reader, grab the object closest to you at this moment (a pen, a sheet, a glass, a table?), observe it and describe it: it is “old”, it is “fragile”, it is “robust” , is it “useless” or is it “strong enough to bear any weight”? You will realize… that you are describing parts of yourself!
The universe, also according to quantum physics, would not be just a hologram (where the entire existing reality is enclosed in every small part of creation) but a reality that doubles itself whenever a particle has the possibility of behaving in different ways, giving life in two parallel universes: in one the particle behaves in one way, in the other in the opposite way. Doubling by doubling would create infinite possible variations. Are the Earth and our galaxy at the center of creation or maybe we don’t belong to the only existing universe?
I believe that Leonardo was already aware of all this, or rather he had an intuition to which he might not yet know how to name.
But by implicitly inviting the observer to admire and penetrate his works through a mirror, he was simply leading him to different points of view, unknowingly guiding him towards the door of access to other universes within himself and within the work of art itself.
Contemporary man is awakening. He is remembering, rather than discovering, how much the structure of the cosmos is much more complex than what has been told so far.
Globalization leads us to the interconnection between souls. Meditation, art therapy, the call of archetypes are tools that are increasingly recognized and welcomed back into our lives. Means through which we finally open our eyes to ourselves and to the energy that composes us and binds us to all things and that Leonardo knew well.
He was avant-garde even with regard to nutrition: he was a vegetarian and it was unthinkable for him to end the life of a being, also composed of energy and interconnected to him, for the ultimate purpose of drawing nourishment from it.
Many of Leonardo’s projects were too complex for the minds of the Renaissance. Many of his ingenious creations (including submarines, airplanes, cars, parachutes) have only been made in recent times.
If I think of him today, I like to imagine him grinning: he observes us and wonders how far we will have the courage to push ourselves, listen to us, ask ourselves about the universe. But above all I see his defiant gaze and his eyes whispering to ours one of his most famous phrases:
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
If time and space were truly illusions of the mind and if there were infinite variants and parallel universes, I would like to visualize the genius of Leonardo as someone who has already been here, in the present reality, and is still today in this time, as a guide who takes us by the hand along the journey of self-awareness, of the return to the origins and of the irremediable choice to indulge our boundless imagination, curiosity, potential and genius that live in each of us!
His art represented all this, and much more.
Leonardo is a part of us that we have every right to draw on.
If you met him, what would you ask him?
I would carry a mirror with me, I would lay it on the ground inviting him to observe and listen with me to our two reflections, to everything that is silent, hidden but also all that one can find in the other.
There is no time or space to divide us as Humanity when we become the only Truth of ourselves.
–by Elina Morizio
