"Whatever Exists"

The great Leonardo da Vinci knew what magic lay in art: "If the painter wishes to see enchanting beauties, he has the power to produce them. If he wishes to see monstrosities ... he has the power and authority to create them. If he wishes to produce towns or deserts, if in the hot season he wants cool and shady places, or in the cold season warm places, he can make them. If he wants valleys, if from high mountaintops he wants to ... see the horizon on the sea, he has the power to create all this. Indeed, whatever exists in the universe, whether in essence, in act, or in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands."

A handsome 492-page book, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci (Reynal & Hitchcock; $10), published last week, proved once again that the master was speaking from experience.

Whenever long-bearded Leonardo put chalk or quill or silverpoint* to paper, he produced pictures more subtly and precisely finished than most modern "masterpieces." Da Vinci knew how good his drawings were, hoarded the odd scraps carefully. Mostly quick studies of things which interested him, they showed that the giant of the Renaissance was as much scientist as artist.

Among the things Leonardo had "firs in his mind and then in his hands" were anatomy (he dissected over 30 corpses); hydraulics (he planned a canal project on the Arno); horses (he wrote an essay on their proportions); airplanes (he made small models which flew); cartography (he made bird's-eye-view military maps for the Tyrant Cesare Borgia); weapons (he invented tanks, portable bridges, one-man submarines, super-catapults); landscape (he wrote the first treatise on landscape painting); botany, geology, sculpture, and architecture.

*A pencil using silver instead of lead.

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