Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, after a woodcut publishedin Lives of the Painters, by Vasari. The Latin inscriptionreads
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
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-8426
Copyright © 1962 by Franklin Watts, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
DESIGNED BY BERNARD KLEIN
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It is natural that, within theconfines of these few pages, many facets of Leonardo’sextraordinary personality will be missing. That he wasan artist, a man of letters, a poet and a philosopher arewell known. That he was also a man of humor, as wellas 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 imaginationto give some continuity to his story. Little is knownof his early days, his period of travels after leavingMilan and his years in Rome. There is, too, a certainmystery in his relations to those around him, since ourdescriptions of him derive mostly from his often cryptic,personal notes and from biographers who wrote of himmany years after he had died.
This book is about Leonardo the scientist, and to fullywrite of his many accomplishments would require anencyclopedic mind. My intent has been to extract theessence of his story in the hopes that it would arousethe enthusiasm of a reader to further his interest in thoseother, more fully documented books—and, above all,in the notebooks that Leonardo himself wrote.
—H. S. G.
Rome, August 1961
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