Who Was Leonardo da Vinci 达·芬奇 Chapter 3 The Wider World

Leonardo stayed at Verrocchio’s workshop a long time—thirteen years. He became a master and a member of the guild¹. But he didn’t move out to start a studio of his own. Perhaps Verrocchio’s studio felt like a home to Leonardo, a place where he belonged and was wanted. Verrocchio was a kind master, and the two were probably quite close.

Florence was also an exciting place to live. It was full of new ideas. It was also a city with books. Lots of books. Until the mid-1400s, there were no printed books. Every book was copied by hand. Sometimes beautiful pictures were painted on the pages. The result was a work of art in itself. But it took a long time to make a single book. Then, around 1450, in Germany, a man named Johannes Gutenberg made a discovery. He figured out how to build a printing press. It used letters made of pieces of steel. They could be moved around to create different words. An inked page of type could be printed onto paper many times. The Bible² was considered the most important book. So the first title printed was a Bible.

Very quickly, however, other books were printed as well. Books on math. Books of maps. Books by great thinkers of the past, like Plato and Aristotle. With more books available, more people started learning³ to read.

As a child, Leonardo had been taught to read and write. He also knew simple math. But that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to learn about everything. He couldn’t attend a university. But he could teach himself. So he started buying and collecting books. He continued to do this all his life.

Artists needed math in order to make paintings look three-dimensional, or 3-D. In the Middle Ages, paintings didn’t look realistic. The people in them looked flat, like a king or a queen on a playing card. The buildings looked flat, too, like pieces of scenery in a play. But in the 1400s an artist named Filippo Brunelleschi figured out a way to make paintings appear to have depth. A person looking at a painting would be tricked into thinking it was something in real space. For instance⁴, figures close-up had to be much bigger than figures that were supposed to be far away. This is called painting in perspective⁵. A painter needed math to measure out the correct spaces for figures on the wood panels⁷.



Leonardo was a great painter because he followed the rules … and then made rules of his own. There was magic in his fingers. He blurred⁸ hills and valleys in the background of a painting. Just a little bit. They looked as if they were blending⁹ into the sky. This is exactly how faraway mountains appear to our eyes. They don’t have sharp details or sharp outlines.

In 1478, when Leonardo was about twenty-six years old, he completed a whole painting. It is a scene of the Annunciation. The Annunciation was when an angel appeared to Mary. He told her that she was going to have a son named Jesus. In Leonardo’s painting, Mary is wearing clothes that a woman of the time would have worn. She is sitting in a walled garden. The landscape in the background looks very much like the hills of Vinci. The picture is very peaceful, and yet it also has drama.

The Annunciation is one of only thirteen paintings that experts are sure that Leonardo painted. And three of those thirteen aren’t finished. Why did he paint so few? It wasn’t that he died young. He lived well into his sixties. He wasn’t lazy. He loved to work. For the Annunciation, he did dozens of drawings beforehand¹⁰. Every curl¹¹ of hair had to be right. Every blade¹² of grass.

Perhaps Leonardo finished other paintings that may have gotten lost. Someday, in the future, a Leonardo painting may be found in a tiny church or a castle. That would be a great gift for the whole world.

But the fact is that Leonardo had trouble sticking with a project. If he got an order for a painting, the first steps interested him the most. He liked figuring out how to group the figures on the panel⁶. That part was a challenge—like fitting¹³ together all the pieces of a puzzle. But finishing a painting, filling in the colors, wasn’t as exciting. So very often he left his work undone¹⁴. Also, his patrons¹⁵ could be fussy¹⁶. And Leonardo did not like to be told what to do. He was a genius, after all!

By 1478, Florence was not the peaceful, pleasant city it had been. The Medici family and another powerful family were at war with each other. There were plots to kill the Medici rulers. The streets were dangerous.

At age thirty, Leonardo decided¹⁷ it was time for a change. He left Florence to go north to Milan, another city-state. There, he hoped to work for the ruler of Milan, a scheming duke named Ludovico Sforza.
 

1 guild   

n.行会，同业公会，协会

参考例句：

• He used to be a member of the Writers' Guild of America.他曾是美国作家协会的一员。
• You had better incorporate the firm into your guild.你最好把这个公司并入你的行业协会。

2 bible   

n.《圣经》；得到权威支持的典籍

参考例句：

• According to the Bible we are all the seed of Adam.根据《圣经》所说的，我们都是亚当的后裔。
• This dictionary should be your Bible when studying English.学习英语时，这本字典应是你的主要参考书。

3 learning   

n.学问，学识，学习；动词learn的现在分词

参考例句：

• When you are learning to ride a bicycle,you often fall off.初学骑自行车时，常会从车上掉下来。
• Learning languages isn't just a matter of remembering words.学习语言不仅仅是记些单词的事。

4 instance   

n.例，例证，实例

参考例句：

• Can you quote me a recent instance?你能给我举一个最近的例子吗？
• He's a greedy boy,yesterday,for instance,he ate all our biscuits!他是个贪吃的孩子――比如，他昨天把我们的饼干都吃了！

5 perspective   

n.视角，观点，想法

参考例句：

• You can get a perspective of the whole city from here.从这里你可以看到城市的全景。
• We may get a clear perspective of the people's happy lives.我们知道人民对幸福生活的展望。

6 panel   

n.面，板，专门小组，控制板，仪表盘

参考例句：

• The unusual control panel on the walls caught our attention.墙上不同寻常的控制板引起了我们的注意。
• The panel of judges included several well-known writers.评判小组中包括几位知名作家。

7 panels   

镶板( panel的名词复数 )； 面； （门、墙等上面的）嵌板； 控制板

参考例句：

• One of the glass panels in the front door was cracked. 前门的一块方玻璃破裂了。
• Make sure the panels are treated with a wood preservative. 确保镶板用木材防腐剂处理过。

8 blurred   

v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离

参考例句：

• She suffered from dizziness and blurred vision. 她饱受头晕目眩之苦。
• Their lazy, blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears. 他们那种慢吞吞、含糊不清的声音在他听起来却很悦耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 blending   

n.混和，混成，混和物v.（使）混合( blend的现在分词 )；（使）混杂；（使）调和；协调

参考例句：

• The city is a happy blending of town and country. 这个城市是城乡的巧妙结合。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The then current concept of heredity through pangenesis implied a blending process. 当时流行的泛生说的遗传概念意味着遗传是一个融合的过程。 来自辞典例句

10 beforehand   

adj.事先，预先，提前地，超前地

参考例句：

• If I'd known this beforehand,I would not have gone back.早知如此，我就不回去了。
• They proposed to make arrangement beforehand.他们提议事先做好安排。

11 curl   

n.(一绺)鬈发；卷曲；vt.卷曲；vi.卷曲；缭绕

参考例句：

• She put her hair in rollers to make it curl.她用卷发夹子把头发弄鬈曲。
• Does her hair curl naturally?她的头发是天然鬈曲的吗？

12 blade   

n.刀刃，刀片；叶片

参考例句：

• Blade and handle are the component parts of a knife.刀身和刀柄是一把刀的组成部分。
• He is a good blade.他剑术高明。

13 fitting   

n.[pl.]设备，家具，配件，试穿；adj.适合的

参考例句：

• I'm going to a fitting tomorrow.明天我要去试穿新衣。
• The President's address was a fitting end to a bitter campaign.总统的讲话为一场激烈的竞选运动适时画上了句号。

14 undone   

a.未做完的，未完成的

参考例句：

• He left nothing undone that needed attention.所有需要注意的事他都注意到了。

15 patrons   

赞助人( patron的名词复数 )； 资助人； 老主顾； 名义赞助人（支持慈善组织等的名人，名字常用于有关的广告宣传中）

参考例句：

• "Of course. Every hotel depends upon the repute of its patrons. “当然啦，每家旅馆都要依靠其主顾的名声。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Patrons are requested to leave their bags in the cloakroom. 顾客请将手提包留在衣帽间。

16 fussy   

adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的

参考例句：

• He is fussy about the way his food's cooked.他过分计较食物的烹调。
• The little girl dislikes her fussy parents.小女孩讨厌她那过分操心的父母。

17 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。