Leonardo was a bit of a flake. Honestly, it’s the first thing you realize when you look at the actual record of art by Leonardo da Vinci. For a guy who basically defines the Renaissance, he left behind a surprisingly small pile of finished work. We’re talking maybe 15 to 20 paintings that everyone can agree are definitely his. He’d get distracted by a bird flying past or start wondering how water ripples around a rock, and suddenly that commissioned portrait of a nobleman was gathering dust in the corner of his workshop for a decade.
It's frustrating. But maybe that’s why we’re so obsessed.
When you look at a Leonardo, you aren't just looking at paint on a board. You’re looking at a guy trying to solve the universe with a brush. He didn't see art and science as different things. To him, painting a human face was just another way of doing anatomy. Every shadow was a physics lesson.
The Blur That Changed Everything
Most people look at the Mona Lisa and think about the smile. Sure, the smile is famous, but the real magic is the sfumato. That’s just a fancy Italian word for "smoky." Before Leonardo, most painters drew sharp outlines. You could see exactly where a nose ended and a cheek began. Leonardo thought that was total nonsense. He looked at the real world and realized there are no lines in nature. Everything is just light and shadow blending together.
He’d layer these incredibly thin, translucent glazes of oil paint—sometimes dozens of them. It’s why her skin looks like it’s actually pulsing. If you look at the corners of her mouth or the edges of her eyes, they aren't "drawn" at all. They just sort of dissolve into the skin. This wasn't just a stylistic choice; it was a radical shift in how humans represented reality.
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It’s also why his work is such a nightmare to restore. Because those layers are so thin, cleaning a Leonardo is like trying to wash a butterfly wing without removing the dust.
That Disappearing Supper
Then you’ve got The Last Supper. It’s a masterpiece, but technically speaking, it’s a failed experiment. Leonardo hated working in fresco—the traditional way of painting on wet plaster. Fresco is fast. You have to paint before the plaster dries. Leonardo? He wanted to take his time. He wanted to tinker.
So, he decided to invent his own medium. He painted on dry stone using a mix of tempera and oil.
It was a disaster.
Within years, the paint started flaking off the wall. By the time he died, it was already a mess. What we see today in Milan is a ghost of the original. It’s been patched, repainted, and "restored" so many times that some critics, like the late James Beck, have argued there’s barely any Leonardo left. Yet, the composition is so powerful it doesn't matter. The way he captures the "motions of the mind"—that split second of chaos after Jesus says someone will betray him—changed narrative art forever. He didn't just paint 13 guys at a table. He painted a psychological explosion.
The Mystery of the Salvator Mundi
You can’t talk about art by Leonardo da Vinci without mentioning the drama of the Salvator Mundi. This painting sold for $450 million in 2017. $450 million! For a painting that spent years being shoved around in basement sales and was once bought for about $60.
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Is it a real Leonardo?
The art world is split. Some experts, like Martin Kemp from Oxford, are convinced it’s the real deal. They point to the "sfumato" around the eyes and the specific way the curls of hair are rendered. Others, like Frank Zöllner, are skeptical. They think it might be a workshop piece—something Leonardo’s assistants started and he maybe touched up at the end.
The biggest red flag for some is the glass orb in Christ’s hand. Leonardo was an expert in optics. He knew how light refracted through glass. But in the painting, the orb doesn't distort the robes behind it. People argue: Would the smartest man in history make a basic physics mistake? Or was he trying to show Christ’s power over the laws of nature? It’s the kind of debate that keeps art historians caffeinated for decades.
Drawings: The Real Leonardo
If you want to see the "real" him, you have to look at the notebooks. The Codex Atlanticus or the Leicester Codex.
His paintings were his public face, but his drawings were his private thoughts. There are pages where he’s drawing a heart valve next to a sketch of a flower, next to a design for a giant crossbow. He was obsessed with the way things worked. He spent years dissecting cadavers—which was not exactly a legal or pleasant hobby back then—just so he could understand how a specific muscle in the neck moved when someone cried.
Look at the Vitruvian Man. It’s not just a guy in a circle. It’s a mathematical proof. He was trying to bridge the gap between human proportions and the perfect geometry of the universe. It’s peak Leonardo: beautiful, precise, and slightly obsessive.
Why We Keep Coming Back
We live in an age of high-definition photos and AI-generated images. We can see anything we want, instantly. So why do people stand in line for four hours just to catch a thirty-second glimpse of the Mona Lisa behind bulletproof glass?
It’s because Leonardo’s art feels alive in a way most things don't. He didn't just record what things looked like; he recorded how things felt and how they moved. He understood that the world is a blurry, messy, interconnected place.
His "unfinished" style—the non finito—wasn't always a mistake. Sometimes, he just realized that a sketch captured the soul of a subject better than a polished painting ever could. Look at The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. The landscape in the background looks like it’s still forming from the mist. It’s primordial.
Actionable Ways to Appreciate Leonardo Today
If you actually want to understand his work beyond just seeing it on a coffee mug, there are better ways to do it than fighting the crowds in Paris.
- Look at the underdrawings. Search for infrared reflectography of his works. These scans show the "ghost" versions of his paintings—the sketches he made underneath the paint. It shows you his process of trial and error.
- Study the hands. Leonardo was the king of hands. In the Mona Lisa or The Lady with an Ermine, the hands are just as expressive as the faces. They tell you about the subject’s tension, their grace, or their status.
- Visit the smaller sites. If you’re in Milan, go to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana to see the Portrait of a Musician. It’s often overshadowed by the Last Supper, but it’s one of the few portraits of a man he ever did, and the intensity in the eyes is haunting.
- Check the Royal Collection online. The UK’s Royal Collection Trust has a massive digital archive of his drawings. You can zoom in until you see the individual chalk marks. It’s much more intimate than seeing a painting from ten feet away.
Leonardo didn't leave us much. But what he did leave is so dense with thought and observation that we still haven't finished unpacking it. He wasn't just a painter. He was a guy who refused to believe that there was any limit to what a human being could understand. That’s the real legacy of his art. It’s an invitation to look at the world a little more closely, even if you never finish what you started.
Next Steps for the Interested Observer
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To truly grasp the technical brilliance of Leonardo's "Sfumato" technique, compare his Mona Lisa directly with a contemporary's work, like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Notice the "hard edges" in Botticelli versus the "dissolving edges" in Leonardo. This visual contrast is the fastest way to train your eye to see what made Leonardo a revolutionary rather than just another skilled painter. For a deeper dive into his scientific mind, the most accessible entry point is the Codex Arundel, which is available in high-resolution digital format through the British Library. Observing his mirror-writing and anatomical sketches side-by-side with his finished paintings will reveal the "hidden" mechanics behind his most famous portraits.