People think of Leonardo Da Vinci as this sort of professorial bearded figure who painted 'The Last Supper' and the "Mona Lisa'. If you drill down a little further, you see he's a guy who invented some crazy inventions. But if you read his actual notebooks - at the least the pages still existing - you get a pretty good sense of his character, And there were a lot of contemporaries who were writing about him. He was a fascinating, mercurial character - a but of a braggart. He clearly had a chip on his shoulder because he felt he should've gotten more respect and credit for things he'd done. He clearly was a dilettante, a procrastinator, a practical joker. He had a sense of humor. He published a book of jokes during his lifetime. He was bisexual. He was arrested twice and put on trial. He came in contact with a lot of interesting people of the time, from Machiavelli to Borgia. He was also kind of a jerk, in the way a lot of geniuses are. He was selfish and he had feuds. He was a friend of Botticelli's, but was dismissive of his artwork. If we get there - but this would probably be in season four or five - he and Michelangelo hated each other. They got into fistfights. He was not this dry, kind of beard-stroking guy. He was this vibrant bigger-than-life character. You just think, 'My God, this guy had enough crazy things in his life to base ten shows on'.
Show less «