What was the most important thing to Leonardo da Vinci? Was it fame, glory or something else?

Question

Please provide a resource that supports your answer. Thank you.

Answer 1

I think that at times the brilliant Leonardo was unsure of himself and the legacy he was to leave. 'I know that many will call this useless work', he stated. He valued experience and proof over pompous talk without substance. 'Those men who are inventors and interpreters between Nature and Man, as compared with boasters and declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. For the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness.'

Leonardo was driven by overwelming curiosity with regard to the mechanics of all natural and designed. He was a driven man.'Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.' He probably thought that if he became famous for his discoveries or art then this was a great moral quality. Leonardo said, 'Fame alone raises herself to Heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with God[and] disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to God and tend to hell.'

Money was important to Leonardo. He liked to keep horses and dress well (as Vasari tells us) therefore he lived and worked where the money was and where he was able also to work on his own projects.'It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters'.


Leonardo probably would have had a huge ego and have loved that we regard his work so highly. Paolo Giovio said 'he was by very nature curteous, cultivated and generous'. Jean Lemaire said he had a 'supernatural grace'. Thus Leonardo probably had what we call charisma.

Da Vinci comes over as a little aloof and at the same time uncertain of his great abilities wjether he wanted fame or not he got it. He was famous during his own lifetime as Vasari's and Isabella d'Este's writings prove. I've studied da Vinci for many years and been lucky enough to handle many of his original works so I feel like I know the man. In my opinion the most important thing to Leonardo was his quest for knowledge and actually existing long enough to complete his mental journey. 'Tell me if anything was ever done.' was written in his notebooks in despair of so many projects that were never completed. Shortly before his death he wrote,' every hurt, every displeasure in the memory, except for the supreme hurt, which is death, which kills the memory together with life'.

I'll leave the final words on the importance if virtue and knowledge to Leonardo.

'That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them'

'It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.'

Answer 2

In writings from his time, the people that knew him called him "the loneliest man on earth". Clearly, he wasn't motivated by fame or glory. He was exiled by the church-led government for teaching things that threatened their economic stranglehold on the "common " (poor) people. I would guess he was motivated by the truth. His fame only came generations later, when people were ready to hear what he was trying to tell us.
Same story for the one who was hung up on a tree and butchered for telling the truth, which threatened the economic stranglehold the leaders of that day had on the "common" (poor) people.
Once again, we see the noose of that stranglehold being tightened around the necks of the poor.
Hmmm, seems to be a pattern there. Perhaps its time we broke that pattern and try something completely different. Like putting the truth in the churches and governments.

Answer 3

Creative thought.

Answer 4

Truth, my friend. It was Truth. Uncovering the mystery of life.

Answer 5

he loved to express himself and what he felt. simple.