Freud describes da Vinci as an enigma. "He was a universal genius 'whose outlines can only be surmised, by no means defined'" (Freud, 1989, p. 9). The illegitimate son of Piero da Vinci and also a peasant woman, Caterina, Leonardo was to rise above this position in society to become a master painter, a beneficial natural scientist and a single in the greatest men with the Italian renaissance (p. 8). He was in a position to tackle a wide range of subjects easily, his mind often searching, looking for new knowledge.
Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter born a few years previous to da Vinci's death, described Leonardo as "an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all difficulties he studied he solved with ease" (Vasari, 1965, p. 255).
As a result, the broad scope of Leonardo's work has made him hard to label, to fit into a category, as an artist. In his search of Italian Renaissance painters and paintings, James Beck sets up two general categories or tendencies to distinguish among the a variety of generations of artists. These are known as monumental and lyric (Beck, 1981, p. 14). Whilst it's understood that no single artist represents the absolute in either category, "The monumental and lyric currents in Italian Renaissance painting should be concept of as parts of a continuum, with the painters in the period standing at various issues on it (p. 14).
Freud's situation for Leonardo's interpretation of women stemming from his early close relationship with his mother and in light of his lack of female relationships as an adult is really a convincing one, although simply because tiny else is identified about his heritage much is left to conjecture. Beck and Vasari offer no insight to assist this issue of view but they do examine each Leonardo's adult way of life and also the value in the Mona Lisa as well as other female figures.
Based on his research, Freud doubted that Leonardo had ever embraced a woman in passion nor even identified any intimate mental relationship using a woman (Freud, 1989, p. 17). In his youth there was a charge of forbidden homosexual practices but it ended in acquittal as soon as it was discovered the boy was a type that Leonardo had hired.
Beck believes a complete evaluation of Leonardo's art is hampered by the smaller amount of extant paintings. "He failed to try and do quite a few commissions, and others had been lost or destroyed (Beck, 1981, p. 286). And whilst hundreds, even thousands, of drawings and studies are observed on Leonardo's notebooks, the bulk of these drawings are related to areas of interest and experimentation other than painting (p. 287).
"It looks that I was often destined being so deeply concerned with vultures; for I recall as a single of my extremely first memories that which I was in my cradle a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me quite a few times with its tail against my lips" (freud, 1989, p. 22).
Freud extrapolates extra to state that these years alone with his mother had a decisive influence within the formation of his inner life and that like a child, Leonardo "began to brood on this riddle with special intensity, as so at a tender age became a researcher, tormented as he was by the very good question of where babies occur from and what the father has to try and do with their origin" (Freud, 1989, p. 44).
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