Leonardo da Vinci, Pathfinder of Science

Front matter

Reading edition

Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, after a woodcut published in Lives of the Painters, by Vasari. The Latin inscription reads LIONARDO DA VINCI PITT. E SCVLTOR FIOR. Leonardo da Vinci, Painter & Sculptor of Florence.

Immortals of Science

LEONARDO DA VINCI Pathfinder of Science

Henry S. Gillette

PICTURES BY THE AUTHOR

Franklin Watts, Inc., 575 Lexington Avenue New York 22, New York

To my wife Trudy

FIRST PRINTING

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It is natural that, within the confines of these few pages, many facets of Leonardo’s extraordinary personality will be missing. That he was an artist, a man of letters, a poet and a philosopher are well known. That he was also a man of humor, as well as a prophet whose vision extended far beyond his times, are facts that I have also tried to include in this biography. There are many gaps in our knowledge of his life, and these I have sometimes filled with my own imagination to give some continuity to his story. Little is known of his early days, his period of travels after leaving Milan and his years in Rome. There is, too, a certain mystery in his relations to those around him, since our descriptions of him derive mostly from his often cryptic, personal notes and from biographers who wrote of him many years after he had died.

This book is about Leonardo the scientist, and to fully write of his many accomplishments would require an encyclopedic mind. My intent has been to extract the essence of his story in the hopes that it would arouse the enthusiasm of a reader to further his interest in those other, more fully documented books—and, above all, in the notebooks that Leonardo himself wrote.

—H. S. G.

Rome, August 1961