Leonardo

  Understanding Leonardo da Vinci the Man

Most historians and art historians who do research relative to
Leonardo da Vinci focus on the artworks indivually, his inventions, and
the history of Leonardo's art one piece of art at a time. Few if any of
the serious researchers have concentrated on the man Leonardo
“wholistically”, and the application of his written discourse, (codices)
philosophy and teachings as they relate to his artworks and inventions.

We feel that most, if not all the scholars and people studying Leonardo
da Vinci, (Lionardo di Sir Piero da Vinci) have missed many of the
subtleties da Vinci cleverly placed within his works and hence many of
the points he was trying to make and truths he was trying to convey.
The effects of light and how it is perceived by the observer, how light
and dark can be used to create illusions, and at a more sophisticated
level, how encrypted hidden meanings both within and even outside
the frame of the artwork could be achieved have been overlooked even
though they are in plain sight.

Leonardo studied nature in its finest detail. He considered the eye and
its perception paramount, so he sought to understand the cause and
effect of light and shade as perceived through sight in order to make
his art as true to life as possible. He also applied his prodigious
knowledge in other areas of the physical sciences, of which he was
aware, to his works. The resulting combination of sciences and
mathematics coupled with his philosophy of telling the truth, as he
understood it, allowed him to succeed in re-creating animate and in-
animate subjects in the most intricate detail imaginable in his art. When
portraying life he invented techniques to make his subjects appear
totally alive. Few if any artists in history have achieved the perception
of movement in a static work of art and a sense of self-awareness on
the part of the subject within the art. His understanding of many
different aspects of the physical world and his ability to measure and
draw to exacting mathematically correct proportions, and the ability to
do it repeatedly, combined with his understanding of Light and shade
is what allowed him to paint and draw in a manner that made his
subjects seemingly have motion.
He had the ability to capture the essence of spirit and what might be
considered by some to be the soul of any animate subject human or
otherwise. His unique combination of knowledge and philosophy
leaves many who view his art with a feeling of having a connection
with the art at an emotional and spiritual level that is all but unique to
Leonardo's art.

It is Leonardo’s unique genius and his ability to apply his knowledge to
his art, that has enthralled the world for over five hundred years with
visible works, while hiding another, until now, totally unrecognized
level of communication totally unrelated to the visible art itself. His
underlying and hidden meanings depicted through the use of his
invention of mirrored encryption and optical illusion, we at the da Vinci
Project Research and Group™ have come to call “Pictures within
Pictures”,TM “Outside the Box outside the Frame” ™.

The recognition of the role played by Leonardo's unique inventions in
depicting his hidden messages have opened a door to a dimension of
knowledge and field of study that scholars, art historians, writers and
the public have thought existed and sought for hundred of years but
until 2005 were never able to find.

The da Vinci Project Research and Group has achieved the first step in
making the connection between inventions Leonardo was known to
have used and his art, by understanding the man in all his complexity
and applying that knowledge to bring this new element he kept hidden,
to light. This new aspect of communication and the constructs found
within the art will undoubtedly require many years to decipher and will
have far reaching philosophic and perhaps religious implications.

But it must be recognized first and foremost that Leonardo was a
complex individual who tied many different fields of study together in
his work. Recognizing this fact is the first step in understanding the
messages. His art and codices therefore must be studied as a work in
total, not just as a series of beautiful artworks, if we are ever to
understand the “code”, his truths, as he Leonardo intended us to do.