These are the words of the Catholic University academic which give a little insight to the conflict Da Vinci faced during these oppressive times when thought was even less well managed than today. "Leonardo and Luca Pacioli worked together for many years, and as we have seen, the intervention of Master Luca was decisive. Nevertheless there existed between the two categories a social and hierarchical conflict, even if no one had ever placed in doubt the supremacy of the liberal arts as the only depositories of true science. And the one who rose up resolutely against the exclusion of the mechanical arts from the sphere of science {Such deceit to call what the church allowed people to think of, as science.}, or as it was then known, 'philosophy' was Leonardo." (58)
The best part of the whole book for me is the bicycle. It has a chain drive mechanism that looks like a 19th century model of something he would have seen in the future. His representation is not engineered so perfectly that he would have been able to inspect it however. It had no steering mechanism, for example. On top of the original drawing that was discovered long after the death of all parties is a childish drawing of a penis to look like a cat with legs. Still they don't actually use words to say he was 'gay' and we know he would say something about this if he was alive today. It is a certain thing about propaganda - great people become more manageable after they die - you can 'spin' their image to your hearts desire. In the case of Jesus they make him over every century! I guess all the priests abusing children across North America and the court awards have made them a little sensitive - can you say risk management? Can you say hypocrites? They still exclude 'gays' from all sorts of things and marriage is just one of them. Maybe this is the area 'master' Luca was most instructive to Da Vinci?! It is an area of their expertise but what Da Vinci was able to produce, is not.
"While they recognize the unmistakable nature of this machine, the few scholars who have examined the drawing are decidedly reluctant to admit its antiquity. Since the application of the chain-drive goes back only to the end of the 19th century, they propose a dating of the drawing within the early years of the present century. Such a hypothesis, however, collides with insurmountable difficulties: (1) The page in question remained hidden for almost four centuries, and it is unimaginable that 70 or 80 years ago a boy would have obtained from the directorship of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana the permission to view the codex, detach one or two of the pages, and then draw upon them and glue them back again. (2) Even in that case, he would have drawn a bicycle of a type then existent, not one of wood with wheelbarrow wheels, {And this imaginary child the academics try to say drew the cat/penis, would have been a pretty smart kid to know the name of Leonardo's pupil/model/lover. There is a small matter of his signature.} no means of steering, and the teeth of the central gear so squared off that they could not be fitted to the chain. (3) The odd toothed wheels and the chain coincide exactly with those drawn by Leonardo in Codex Madrid 1, folio 10 recto. (4) We cannot separate the bicycle from the other drawings visible in folios 132 verso and 133 verso of the Codex Atlanticus. Actually they were drawn when the pages were united at the two halves of one page. Reuniting them, we see that another hand has drawn, also in pencil and from left to right, two pornographic drawings obviously meant as a joke, over which, on the right side, is clearly written 'salaj', that is, Sa
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