Dark Side : Leonardo da Vinci

Dark Side : Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci has been coined by many as the “ultimate Renaissance man.”   A title well founded, for if you have ever read into Leonardo’s life he exemplified what the Renaissance was all about.   The ideals he gave on humanism, his revolution in how to produce art, his passion to gain scientific knowledge; all point to not only his extreme genius, but the embodiment of the Renaissance.   In all my readings I have yet to find a man of the Renaissance period that compares to Leonardo in pure talent, genius, and philosophical wisdom.   He was painted by all as a moral man, who despised war, the ignorance of man in natural science, and in a web article that sums it all up, he was a man “who strived to live ethically and believed strongly in the importance of self-mastery.”{Nuland} It all sounds so perfect and wonderful, but it is all too good to be true.   For Leonardo had a darker side; a side that would make people cringe if they were not so enthralled into the “perfect picture” that has been painted around this man for hundreds of years.  
How does one deconstruct the character of a man that has so far in all readings been depicted as the virtue of things that are good?   The only true controversial issue surrounding the man’s name sake is whether he was a homosexual or not.   The question formed at the beginning of this paragraph is a relevant question for it gives course as to what is about to follow.   The only way to truly view the darker side of Da Vinci is to simply look at his life and analyze certain aspects of what he did in his life, how he did it, or what he did not do.
Before getting on to the examples of how Leonardo showed his dark side, it must be explained why he did develop a dark side that was devoid of a certain level of moral value, and why no one noticed it before.   The answer to both of these questions can be thrown into one very simple answer: curiosity.   Leonardo was driven by curiosity; as written in The Life and Times of...