Comparison of Arts- Leonardo Da Vinci

Running head: HUMANITIES
Comparison of Arts- Leonardo Da Vinci
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HUMANITIES
A. My Initial reaction to the work:
1. My initial thoughts and feelings
Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks provide a fascinating insight into the mind and
thoughts of Leonardo Da Vinci. While reading the chapter, Comparison of Arts (chapter
XXVIII), I was amazed by the lucid way different forms of art such as painting, sculpturing
and poetry were compared (McCurdy, 1958; Da Vinci, 1949). I felt that Da Vinci identified
the most integral components of each of these art forms and how they incite our emotions
very elegantly.
2. One aspect of the work that interested me
One aspect of the work that interested me the most was the inclination of Da Vinci
towards painting, and how he compared them to sculpturing and poetry, trying to show how
painting was a nobler form of art, clearly showing his favor towards painting.
B. Analysis of the work
1. Historical context of the period in which the work was written
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci was a result of series of records noted by the
Author which he started maintaining from the mid 1480’s when he was working for the Duke
of Milan as a military and naval engineer. He sketched series of detailed diagrams, drawing,
observations, personal notes and insights, which showed how he viewed the world. This note
book was probably the first of its kind and contained unpredictable patterns of ideas and
several inventions (Da Vinci, 2012). This was also a time of unrest in Italy, with the Second
Italian War breaking in 1499, in which the French invaded Italy in which they used life size
clay models. This caused the Duke of Milan to be overthrown, and Da Vinci subsequently
left Milan to resettle in Venice. There he started working as a military architect and designer.

2HUMANITIES
His work was to design various devises that can be used for the defense of the city against
attacks. This also made his designs highly valuable and secretive, and Da Vinci used a
technique of ‘mirror scripting’ to code his work, so that it could not be interpreted by anyone
else, if it fell into the wrong hands (Da Vinci, 2017).
2. Insights into the work
The chapter of Comparison of Arts showed what he thought of the arts of painting,
sculpting and poetry. He considered poetry as a form of storytelling that is done using a pen,
paper and words. He considered that a poet’s essential tool are words, whose meanings can
vary depending on the country, and thus poetry does not have a universal appeal, compared to
painting, where visual imagery is used that can be understood by anybody. A painter uses
paint and brush to tell a story, and is more fundamental stimulus by nature (Mc Curdy, 1958).
Thus Da Vinci concludes that among painting and poetry, painting is definitely superior, and
draws the most number of spectators (Da Vinci, 2017). When comparing painting to
sculpture, Da Vinci pointed out that each have their own advantages and disadvantages,
While sculpture can last for a longer time than a painting, its major drawbacks was that it was
highly dependent on the lighting conditions, an inability to render colors, and the inability to
represent either transparent not luminous bodies. In comparison, a painting can beautifully
depict colors; represent all types of surfaces and their interactions with light (like translucent,
luminous, glittering, or reflections). In this Da Vinci concluded that the comparison between
sculpture and a painting is not entirely a fair one (Ackerman, 2018).
3. How the work explores particular themes or stylistic characteristics from the period
The comparison of painting with sculpture and poetry by Da Vinci provides a
valuable window upon how these art forms was perceived by him, and also reflects the
contemporary styles and techniques. The painting during the times of Leonardo Da Vinci,