The Topeka state journal., 1911-09-21
Most Versatile Genius.

The theft OF the Mona Lisa from
the Salon Carre of the Louvre. the
chief OF the art treasures of that
world-famous museum, has attracted
universal attention not merely to the
work but to the extraordinary person
atty or the master who conceived and
wrought those two marvellous paint
tngs, THE Last Supper" and the
Mona Lisa (known also as La Jo-
conde'), to say nothing of such pic
lures as The Virgin of the Rocks"
The Annunciation," and the we'll
nlgh countless sketches and studies,
fragments of more comprehensive de-
signs But If all that Leonardo did
as an artist were suddenly efraced. as
the Mona Lisa" disappeared over
night from the Louvre, his achieve
ments in many other fields would still
cause him to be regarded as perhaps
the most versatile human being who
ever lived. For it almost makes one
dlzzy merely to contemplate his mani
Iold activities. He was a mechanical
inventor; he made birds that strutted
about, If they could not sing; there
was a walking lion stuffed with lilies,
rlValing Samson's conquest that yield
ed honey; there was a lizard eouiDped
With horns and eyes and waving wings
glistening with quicksilver. But these
were merely fantastic diversions; he
seriously studied the anatomy of
plants they say that he worked out
many of the laws that Newton after
ward formulated; he founded, or at
any rate refounded, the science of hy-
draulics; 1t is alleged that he left COM
plete plans for a flying machine and
devised the earliest wheelbarrow. Then
he studied optics and evolved the
theory of the camera, so that even the
modern kodak fend" ought to be
grateful to him; the saws that you
may still see in operation in the marble
Quarries of Carrara are of his devising,
and he made the best rope-making
machine. He studied the chemistry
of high explosives. He knew that
steam could be made available to drive
a wagon or a boat, and he left plans
for that. Lord Bacon, with his few
furtive experiments and the vague
conjectures of his Advancement of
Learning, might well look to his lau-
rels. Leonardo drew designs for
breech-loading cannon, and military
men still give serious consideration to
his numerous plans for fortifications,
just as civil engineers find a great deal
of food for thought in his projects for
excavating canals 1t took the mind
of poet, Goethe, to anticipate accu-
rately the Panama Canal under the
supervision of the United States. but
Leonardo, the painter, was first in
many fields of research and experim ent
wholly alien to one of his tempera-
ment.
1t is supposed that this incompar-
able genius first saw the light in 1852
he died in 1919. He was the son of
Piero da Vinci. Vinci being a fortified
village near Empoll, in Florentine ter
ritory. Piero was notary to the sig
noria of Florence in 1859 and 1888, a
member of the fifth successive genera
tion in his family to follow the occu-
patton of a man of law. Piero was
married four times, and It is known
that by his third and fourth wives he
had eleven children. Leonardo was
the son of a peasant woman. and her
identity is mysterious. There is much
that is obscure in the details of the
artists life. - Philadelphia Public
Ledger.