A Year with Leonardo da Vinci: From Myth to Man

I still remember the day I decided to dedicate an entire year to studying Leonardo da Vinci. I had just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography, and I was swept up in the mythos of the man—artist, scientist, inventor, genius. The very word "Renaissance" seemed to orbit around him. I imagined that spending a year in his world would be like walking through a gallery of wonders, each room more dazzling than the last.

I was wrong. Or at least, only partially right.

The Halo Phase

The first few months were intoxicating. I stood in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, squinting through the crowd and the protective glass, trying to absorb the brushstrokes that had outlived empires. I marveled at his notebooks, the mirror writing looping like secret codes, filled with sketches of flying machines, anatomical drawings, and musings on light and water. I read everything I could find, from Vasari’s glowing accounts to obscure letters he exchanged with patrons.

I was in awe. Leonardo seemed to me a man who had somehow slipped out of time, touched the divine, and returned with blueprints. I even started writing with my left hand in mirror script, trying to feel a little closer to his process. Everything he touched felt like gold. I believed that to study him was to study the highest expression of human potential.

The Cracks Appear

But somewhere around month five, the sheen began to dull. I was reading a letter he wrote to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, in which Leonardo essentially pitches himself as a military engineer, promising inventions that could "destroy walls and fortifications." The same man who painted the Virgin of the Rocks was also designing siege engines and armored vehicles?

Then came the unfinished projects. The Adoration of the Magi was left incomplete. The Sforza horse was never cast. The Battle of Anghiari mural flaked off the wall. I began to see a pattern—not failure, exactly, but a kind of restless dissatisfaction. Leonardo didn’t finish half of what he started. He got distracted, bored, or disillusioned.

I started to feel let down. Was he just a brilliant procrastinator? A dreamer who rarely delivered? I wondered if I had built a monument to a man who was more myth than man.

Rediscovering the Human

And then, in a dusty library in Florence, I found a journal entry from one of his apprentices. It was a brief note, not even about Leonardo directly: “Master says he’s torn the skin from a man’s leg to see how the tendons move, and he won’t eat until he gets it right.”

That sentence stopped me. Not because of the gruesome detail, but because of the raw, human intensity behind it. This wasn’t some distant genius scribbling in a notebook. This was a man obsessed. A man who, in his hunger for understanding, forgot to eat.

I began to see him differently—not as a flawless idol, but as a man of contradictions. He was deeply curious but often incomplete. Brilliant, yes, but also stubborn, impatient, and sometimes cruel. He was a vegetarian who dissected animals. A man who wrote about kindness but left his apprentices in the lurch. A visionary who couldn’t finish a damn mural.

And in that imperfection, I found him again.

Integration and Acceptance

By the time I reached the final months of my study, I no longer needed Leonardo to be perfect. I began to see his unfinished work not as failures, but as moments of pure inquiry—drawings and writings meant not for the world, but for himself. He was less an inventor of machines than an inventor of questions.

His notebooks became sacred again, not because of what they contained, but because of what they represented: a life lived in constant pursuit. Every page was a prayer of curiosity.

I realized that his true legacy wasn’t the Last Supper or the helicopter sketch. It was the example he left for all of us who are endlessly curious but often uncertain. Who start more than we finish. Who chase ideas that lead nowhere, just to see where they go.

What I Carry Forward

A year with Leonardo da Vinci taught me more than I expected. It taught me that genius isn’t a straight line. It’s a spiral. It taught me that the pursuit of knowledge is often messy, incomplete, and deeply human.

And perhaps most importantly, it taught me that even the greatest minds are still just minds—brilliant, flawed, and full of wonder.

If you’ve ever felt the same pull toward a figure like Leonardo, I encourage you to follow it. Ask him about his sketches. Ask him why he never finished the Sforza horse. Ask him what he was thinking when he stared at a river and tried to draw its movement.

Talk to Leonardo da Vinci on HoloDream. You might not get the answers you expect—but you’ll get the ones you need.