Article: The great amateur. (Leonardo da Vinci) (The Creators) (Cover Story)

Leonardo sped from one creative experience to another

Of the many mysteries surrounding Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), none is more remarkable than the disproportion between the quantity of his finished works and the grandeur of his reputation. Our awe of Leonardo is as much for what he was as for what he did, as much for his reach as for his grasp. His career was vagrant and unfocused; in fact, he never had a career. He seemed to have had no civic loyalty. Nor devotion to church or Christ. He willingly accepted commissions from the popes or their enemies. He lacked the sensual worldliness of a Boccaccio or a Chaucer, the recklessness of a Rabelais, the piety of a ...

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