“On February 9, 1498, Leonardo starred in an evening of debates at the Sforza Castle that involved the relative merits of geometry, sculpture, music, painting, and poetry. He gave a rigorous scientific and aesthetic defense of painting, which was then considered a mechanical art, arguing that it should instead be regarded as the highest of the liberal arts, transcending poetry and music and sculpture. The court mathematician Luca Pacioli, who was there to argue for the primacy of geometry, wrote that the audience included cardinals, generals, courtiers, and “eminent orators, expert in the noble arts of medicine and astrology.” This type of staged debate on the comparative value of various intellectual endeavors, ranging from math to philosophy to art, was a staple of evenings at the Sforza Castle. Known as a paragone, from the Italian word for “comparison,” such a discourse was a way for artists and scholars to attract patrons and elevate their social status during the Italian Renaissance. The relative merit of painting in comparison to other forms of art and craft had been debated since the dawn of the Renaissance with a seriousness that transcended our current-day debates on such things as, say, the merit of television versus cinema. Cennino Cennini in his treatise The Book of Art wrote, in about 1400, about the skill and imagination required for painting and argued, “It justly deserves to be enthroned next to theory and crowned with poetry.”2 Alberti provided a similar panegyric on the primacy of painting in his 1435 treatise, On Painting. A counterargument was made in 1489 by Francesco Puteolano, who argued that poetry and historical writing were most important. The reputations and memories of the great rulers, including Caesar and Alexander the Great, came from historians rather than sculptors or painters, he said.3 By exalting the interplay between art and science, Leonardo wove an argument that was integral to understanding his genius: that true creativity involves the ability to combine observation with imagination, thereby blurring the border between reality and fantasy. A great painter depicts both, he said. If you, O poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness, and less tedious to follow. Take a poet who describes the charms of a woman to her lover, and a painter who represents her, and you will see where nature leads the enamored critic. You have classed painting among the mechanical arts, but, truly, if painters were as apt at praising their own works in writing as you are, it would not lie under the stigma of so unhonored a name.6 Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci (p. 262). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci (p. 261). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci (p. 261). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci (p. 261). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. ”
