Leonardo da Vinci: the childhood

To understand why Leonardo neglected painting and devoted himself to scientific research it is necessary to understand this man deeply.

He searched for the deepest meaning of life that is the meaning of life itself. Leonardo himself didn’t have a clear idea of what he was looking for. But what was Leonardo’s cultural background?

Firstly,he defined himself an uncultured man (omo sanzalettere) and for this reason he was unable to master western philosophy and particularly Greek philosophy.  For this reason it was impossible he knew that the Epicurians and above all Lucretius, many centuries before had denied the existence of every  god.

Secondly, Leonardo couldn’t have known eastern philosophy, in this case I’m speaking about Buddhist philosophy. Thanks to the interpretation given by Nichiren Daishonin to The Lotus Sutra, one of the basic textbooks of the Buddhist thought, this philosophy had already asserted that the law regulating the universe is life itself with all its phenomena. This statement is a bit difficult to be understood by western people and yet it is the statement more suitable to the scientific reality of life.

Let’s return to Leonardo’s life.  In common with many great men his childhood was problematic.  He was the illegitimate son of SerPiero da Vinci, a notary, and his mother was a young peasant called Catherine.  Leonardo lived for five years with his natural mother.  In the same year that Leonardo was born, his father married madam  Albiera, an aristocrat.  The couple were unable to have children and at the age of five, Leonardo was taken away from his natural mother and made to live with his father and his wife.

Infancy is an influential period for many reasons and also a time when the first sexual orientations develop. In order to understand how the lack of a father in his first years affected the great genius’s life it’s necessary to look at a preparatory sketch drawn by Leonardo and kept in the National Gallery of London: the Virgin Mary with St.Anne, her son and St.Giovannino.

In this drawing we can see how the two women’s heads ( The Virgin Mary and Saint Anna, her mother) are clearly emerging from only one bust: it  certainly wasn’t a mistake according to Sigmund Freud in his essay on Leonardo.  Freud’s theory that the two women represent Catherine, his natural mother and Madam Albiera, his adoptive mother is confirmed by the fact that St.Anna should clearly

be a woman older than Mary, while in the sketch the two women are more or less the same age. Even more important for the history of artis the fact that both women have a smile which is normally ascribed to the most famous Gioconda which in fact was painted after this sketch. Since this sketch of the Virgin with her son, St.Anna and St.Giovannino represents, according to Freud, but in my opinion as well, the most intimate essence of Leonardo’s soul, we can certainly state that the typical smile of the women painted by Leonardo refers to the memory of the love the two mothers gave him.

When Leonardo turned this “first sketch” into the final picture it would seem that he had overcome his initial emotions, as the two figures of the Virgin and St. Anna are completely separated. However, the typical smile of other female figures painted by Leonardo, also the Mona Lisa among them, is still wonderfully expressed in both women.  Finally, Caterina (the Virgin Maria in the picture) is hugging Leonardo with great love and Madam Albiera (Saint Anna) looks at Caterina with great affection, almost love. Leonardo creates in this picture his perfect family.