Honoring Nature in the Spirit of Leonardo da Vinci, the Unbeknownst Animist

Most indigenous cultures on this planet consider the earth to be alive, to possess a spirit of its own, to be imbued with consciousness that we as humans can only approximate with our linguistic and theoretical models. These cultures are broadly termed animistic.

No Mere Aberration

And this is not merely a historical aberration. There are many cultures which are still animistic. Aborigines in Australia, Bushmen in the Kalahari, Inuit in Alaska, and Cherokee in North Carolina are merely a few of the ethnic groups who were, and still to some degree are, animistic.

Based on the recognition of life, spirit, and intelligence in all beings, animism is essentially the root to every branch of human religion. It’s the way our most distant ancestors viewed and interacted with the world, and it’s still relevant to this day in the way it provides a familial relationship to all creation, motivating the preservation of the earth for future generations.

While the name itself is a construct of European anthropologists working in an academic setting that’s predominantly antagonistic toward indigenous cultures, the word nonetheless conveys a sense of the mystery at the heart of religion, in which the divine is recognized to be immanent within all creation, waiting only for our willingness to listen to the world with all our senses.

Other Currents of Animism

And it’s not merely indigenous people who have held animistic views throughout history. So have some of the most potent visionaries and inventors in all of Western culture.

One of these was Leonardo da Vinci, who throughout his life had a reputation for purchasing birds in the market not to slaughter but to release. He was perennially mesmerized by the power and beauty of water, which he captured in many of his works of art. In his writings, he frequently imbued natural elements with human qualities in what would today be considered the most blatant anthropomorphism.

And while he never would have applied the title of animist to himself — if only because the title didn’t exist in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when he lived — he nonetheless worked throughout his life to find the underlying holistic principle that united his pursuits in art, engineering, anatomy, design, and optics. Most people are unaware that his interests were so varied, and they’re similarly unaware that one of the reasons for this diversity of interests was the basic tenet of his scientific outlook, expressed by this quote from what’s now known as his Codex Leicester:

“We might say that the earth has a spirit of growth, and its flesh is the soil, its bones [are] the arrangement and connection of rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage [is] the tufa, and its blood [is] the springs of water. The pool of blood which lies around the earth’s heart is the ocean, and its breathing… [is] the ebb and flow of the sea… and the seat of the earth’s soul is in the fires.”

At Odds with Religion

Leonardo was also homosexual, which put him at variance with the ideology of the Catholic Church and resulted in the most traumatizing event of his early life, the Salterelli affair. This took place in 1476 when he was accused by one Jacopo Salterelli of committing sodomy along with three other men. Despite the relatively tolerant atmosphere of Florence at the time — Florence was a vibrant artistic center that was effectively the San Francisco of its day — the full legal penalty for homosexual behavior at this time in Catholic Europe was burning at the stake. While the charges were most likely fabricated for political reasons and were eventually dismissed, the period of two months during which the threat of burning at the stake hung over Leonardo’s head must have been enough to awaken him to the brutality of life in the city amongst powerbrokers and their pawns.

Despite living much of his life in the city, Leonardo was nonetheless a country boy at heart, raised by his Uncle Francesco and his grandparents in the sleepy Italian village of Anchiano. Leonardo’s father, Ser Piero, had conceived Leonardo out of wedlock in 1452 and consequently regarded his firstborn in the manner of unwanted luggage. Uncle Francesco however regarded the young boy with love and affection, showing Leonardo the hidden secrets of life in the Italian countryside. It was indeed Uncle Francesco who instilled a love for the land in his precocious nephew and gave Leonardo the first inkling that he might indeed be good for something.

A Family, not of Blood but Friendship

Despite his Uncle Francesco’s efforts, however, Leonardo was estranged from his family in later life. He took to the road after his apprenticeship in Florence and forged a new life for himself with a small band of travelling companions who formed the nucleus of his improvised family.

Among his improvised family members, there was Luca Pacioli, one of the foremost mathematicians of his day; Salai, the “little demon” who took up residence with Leonardo after the latter recognized the surpassing beauty of the young man; and Francesco Melzi, a young aristocrat with artistic talent who idolized Leonardo and may have been his lover in later life. It was in fact Francesco Melzi who received the greatest portion of Leonardo’s worldly goods when he died in 1519.

Long before his death, however, Leonardo distinguished himself as the foremost polymath of his generation.

In addition to his career as a painter and sculptor, he was an engineer who created schematics for flying machines, scuba gear, and a primitive tank. He was a skilled musician who was sent by Lorenzo de Medici in the capacity of musical ambassador, so notable were his skills. He was an anatomist of the first degree, a man who risked charges of heresy to better understand the physical form of his own species. He was an endless explorer of optics, demonstrating principles of light that foreshadowed the work of physicists centuries later.

And though he never would have claimed the title for for himself, he was an unbenknownst animist who saw the spirit in all of nature and celebrated it through his work.

Follow on Instagram

Subscribe on YouTube