Obren 8B

Bruno Nardini

Portrait of a Master Leonardo

Pages: 184

1.      As I prepare to enter HS, how can I live my own life in a better way to fulfill the life goals I have for myself? 

 My goal in life is to get the best education and the opportunity to study in some of the prestigious universities like Harvard, Yael, Oxford, or Sorbonne. Since these are some of the most desirable universities in the world, the competition is very tuff, and studying is very expensive, so it is not easy to get a scholarship. Right now my main interest is math and science, but I am also very interested in art, architecture, design, geography, and history. I want to develop all my potential and talent, and learn as much as I can from other topics, in order to gain a general knowledge. In order to get a scholarship, I need to continue playing the piano, finish music school, put more emphasis on rowing, and start competing. I should improve my French a lot, and start studying it more seriously. To achieve my goal, I am aware that in the coming period I will have to put a lot more effort into learning, working hard, sacrifice some other pleasure, and overcome laziness which from time to time overtakes me.

2.      Describe your figure’s mentors and special trainings?

Francesco, Leonardo’s young uncle, with whom he spent his early years in a country house in Vinci near Florence, made a greatest influence on his interests in since. they spent a lot of time outside together, observing nature and sketching pictures.  Since he was a philosopher, he taught Leonardo many things and that everything in nature has a cause. He developed curiosity, which later lead him to do all sorts of experiments and inventions in different fields from mechanics, architecture, perspective, to anatomy, diving and flying, “He urged him not to make hasty decisions, but to listen to an inner voice. Don’t do as you want, but as you feel.” (str 18 Bruno Nardini, “Portrait of a Master Leonardo”). 

Leonardo’s father paid a lots of attention to education and wanted to obtain his son the best possible teachers, so because of that he moved him to Florence. He had three classes of music, arithmetic, the flute, grammar. When he noticed Leonardo’s talent in paintings he took them to the best painter in Florence, Verrocchio, with the words “are you sure you have enough talent? I mean enough talent to be the first, not the last.”

Verrocchio one of the greatest painters of his time in Florence, was Leonardo’s teacher and mentor concerning art and paintings. He had many apprentices, and Leonardo was one of them. He stood out from the rest, and Verrocchio saw his talent from the start. It usually took apprentices around seven years or more to become masters, but it only took Leonardo four. He learnt by copying drawings done by his master, and by helping him in his work. Often, Verrocchio would ask his apprentices to paint some of the easier or less important parts of a picture. In this way, the apprentice would learn through practice. They all lived in Verrocchio’s house, and would even clean and cook for him, and do whatever he asked of them, but in the same time, he would provide them food, shelter, education and skills.

3.      What is one MORE unique thing you have discovered about your figure?

Leonardo with his inventions and scientific way of thinking was “so far in advance of the times as to seem the fantasy of a disordered mind.” (page 55 Bruno Nardini, “Portrait of a Master Leonardo”) It is barley known that “conception of organic new city Leonardo do not only conceive, but described and drew as a historical reality and social necessity”,(page 55 Bruno Nardini, “Portrait of a Master Leonardo”) 500 years before Wright and Le Corbusier, famous architects of the 20^th century, who made the first steps towards this idea in modern history.