his was due to the fact that Leonardo "was convinced that his hands, for all their skill, could never perfectly express the subtle and wonderful ideas of his imaginations" (Vasari, 1965, p. 257).
A Florentine by birth (he was born in the town of Vinci located outside Florence), Leonardo's many "strange" traits and personality prevented his contemporaries from understanding him. "The cause of this was certainly not the versatility of his talents and the range of his knowledge . . . " (Freud, 1989, p. 9). In fact, da Vinci, who loved the beautiful things in life, from nature to refined clothes, was well-respected. But his attitude towards his art remained a riddle to those who knew him. Freud quotes Edmondo Solmi, a da Vinci biographer, as an explanation for the riddle: "But his insatiable desire to understa
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