Leonardo, Five Hundred Years Into the Future, Part II

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Davinci

There have been many speculations and tall tales regarding one of our Art History most famous paintings, Mona Lisa , painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Some of the chatter is that it took him almost 17 years before he completed this painting; she is actually a self-portrait of the painted himself; she was his secret lover; and many others have circulated for the hundreds of years Mona Lisa has looked back at us.

After experiencing this incredible showing of one of our GREATEST Masters in history I spent some time with this painting of 'Mona' with a new perspective on the man, the artist, and the most intriguing mind of this person, Leonardo!

As a painter myself most of my life I have been aware of specific theories and principles in applications of perspective and such for painting. Little did I realize that much of today's practices were constructed by the master himself throughout his journals.

Leonardo's fascination of how and why things appear or move led him into proving his theories. He even risked being put to death to "study" human cadavers.

One of his studies was his deep belief that man evolved from bird and man could once again fly!

I was so intrigued with this part of the exhibition for prior to this, I had not realized that Leonardo truly believed , with all his heart, that we human evolved from bird. I knew he was really "the first man to fly", taking years studying and constructing different flying machines. Until visiting and spending time with Leonardo during my visit to the San Jose, Tech Museum and this fantastic exhibition which took a team of 40 artisans, many from Italy, over four months of installation , I had not realized just how much of Leonardo is with us in present day practices, machinery, art and ideals!