“Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed , yet we still view Leonardo with awe.” Liana Bortolon
http://spiralzoom.com/Culture/LeonardoDaVinci/LeonardoDaVinci.html
The very multiplicity of the interests which Leonardo represented is commentary on how little either his thought or his action was compartmentalized into those divisions which have become so characteristic of the modern world.
The man who more than any other single figure has seemed to successive generations to be a microcosm of the creative forces of his age, the archetype of universal man, was at once scientist and artist, theorist and practitioner.
He stood at a critical point when the great lines of division were beginning. The arts were ceasing to be crafts and were becoming “fine arts.” The opposition between the world of science and the world of art was becoming discernible. The theorist was coming to be separated from the practical worker. Yet for Leonardo these dichotomies did not exist. The highest achievements of art could be determined by scientific rules, on the proportions of the human body, on perspective, on effects of light and shadow.
Like those of his contemporaries who were concerned with harmonizing the historical religions and philosophic traditions, Leonardo perceived behind the apparent multiplicity of the universe a single truth.
