(Leonard of the town of Vinci.)
“I always find uncanny similarities between the life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci and Steve Jobs.”
Ramakanta Mahapatra
It was 1476.
He was 25, young and handsome but was also facing a trial that will put him in jail for sure in the Florence town of Italy.
There’s also one more option for him. He had to leave Florence to escape the trial.
He brought a piece of paper and in his immaculate handwriting, started to draft an application for the position of a draughtsman in the military engineering services of the Duke of Milan. He was Left handed. His letters would put calligraphy into shame.
A quirk of fate had made him queer. Born of a 16 years old unwed slave girl, he was abandoned in the provincial town of Vinci by his powerful father.
His father who was a very important person in the quarters of Florence by a subsequent marriage to a powerful family had lost both the wife and the new born baby. In remorse, he had called upon this illegitimate son that he had earlier left to rot in Vinci.
Leonardo applies for a job.
Leonardo had finished 11 pages of an application to the Duke of Milan for the post of a Military Engineer. It included beautiful sketches of war machine to justify his selection as a military engineer. The sketches were artistic.
As an after-thought, he added one more line to his resume.
“I’m an artist and I CAN PAINT.”
He did manage to get a job in Milan and thus escaped his sentence term in Florence. There he drafted pageful of notes and sketches of Cannons, Chariots, flying machines and other war machines for the Duke of Milan.
But he was already known for leaving things unfinished. He would paint a picture for years without finishing it. He would look at the picture for hours contemplating before one stroke.
One such painting which was also found with him near his death bed. He had been retouching it for years without completing. It’s now kept in the Louvre museum of Paris.
It’s the Mona Lisa.
( Monalisa could be a self portrait of Leonardo himself.)
Foot note-
I always find uncanny similarities between Da Vinci and Steve Jobs. Both were born to unwed mothers and abandoned. Destiny of both were shaped by the power of their helpless mothers. Immensely creative both had scant regards for social norms and both would spend superhuman effort for perfecting their passion.
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 