Secret_History

670 The Secret History of the World
The limbs which are used for labour must be muscular and those which are not
much used you must make without muscles and softly rounded. Represent your
figures in such action as may be fitted to express what purpose is in the mind of
each; otherwise your art will not be admirable.
Fame should be depicted as covered all over with tongues instead of feathers, and
in the figure of a bird.
Pleasure and Pain represent as twins, since there never is one without the other; and
as if they were united back to back, since they are contrary to each other.
This represents Pleasure together with Pain, and show them as twins because one is
never apart from the other. They are back to back because they are opposed to each
other; and they exist as contraries in the same body, because they have the same
basis, inasmuch as the origin of pleasure is labour and pain, and the various forms
of evil pleasure are the origin of pain. Therefore it is here represented with a reed in
his right hand which is useless and without strength and the wounds it inflicts are
poisoned. In Tuscany they are put to support beds, to signify that it is here that vain
dreams come, and here a great part of life is consumed. It is here that much
precious time is wasted, that is, in the morning, when the mind is composed and
rested, and the body is made fit to begin new labours; there again many vain
pleasures are enjoyed; both by the mind in imagining impossible things, and by the
body in taking those pleasures that are often the cause of the failing of life. And for
these reasons the reed is held as their support. Evil-thinking is Envy or Ingratitude.
Envy must be represented with a contemptuous motion of the hand towards heaven
[See Plate 20.], because if she could she would use her strength against God; make
her with her face covered by a mask of fair seeming; show her as wounded in the
eye by a palm branch and by an olive-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and
myrtle, to signify that victory and truth are odious to her. 431
It is thus strongly suggested that, in every painting he ever executed, Leonardo
da Vinci was conveying messages. Not only that, the messages were somewhat
codified. We can extract general principles from his writings and utilize them in
examining his works.
As time passed after the death of Leonardo, critics began to come forward
declaiming loudly that, “after all, Leonardo was only a man and his paintings, like
those of other artists, consisted simply of colors applied to a surface”. This was
John Ruskin’s general opinion paraphrased, and he made it clear that he thought
the Master was greatly overrated. Renoir said: “Leonardo da Vinci bores me.”
The most dramatic attacks on Leonardo’s image came via Sigmund Freud.
Working with what he mistakenly thought were historical facts, he produced an
431 Leonardo’s quotes from: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci compiled and edited from the
original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter, Dover Edition, 1970, first published in 1883 by Sampson
Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington under the title The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Dover
Publications, New York