There was another reason, one even more fundamental, that Leonardo did not complete the painting: he preferred the conception to the execution.
His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the rest of us rarely pause to ponder after we’ve outgrown our wonder years. His lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method developed more than a century later by Bacon and Galileo.Above all, Leonardo’s relentless curiosity and experimentation should remind us of the importance of instilling, in both ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it - to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.So, too, was his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left - handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His ability to combine art, science, technology, the humanities, and imagination remains an enduring recipe for creativity.Leonardo knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history’s consummate innovator. But I also came to believe that his ability to blur the line between reality and fantasy, just like his sfumato techniques for blurring the lines of a painting, was a key to his creativity. Vision without execution is hallucination.He had an imagination so excitable that it flirted with the edges of fantasy, which is also something we can try to preserve in ourselves and indulge in our children. It was based on skills we can aspire to improve in ourselves, such as curiosity and intense observation.
His genius was of the type we can understand, even take lessons from.
Leonardo had almost no schooling and could barely read Latin or do long division.
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