Leonardo and The Tech Museum

This exciting exhibit of Leonardo de Vinci is at The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA. The enormous horse sculpture is a replica of the one Leonardo da Vinci tried to sculpt and assemble for a competition. It was very difficult. Horses was one of his fascinations. Inside The Tech are room after room of drawings and written explanations on moveable walls and scale wooden models of his many inventions from hardware to tools to a flying machine hanging on the ceiling that had the right idea but was too heavy. Today a man can jet across the English Channel in something similar to da Vinci's invention.

My favorite part of the exhibit was his devotion to painting and how he believed it was the highest form of communication and that he considered himself first and foremost a painter, an artist. Leonardo da Vinci is one of two artists in the world and all time who has moved me to tears. When I was in London, I visited the National Gallery, the museum where one of his two painting titled Virgin of the Rocks is ( full title: The Virgin of the Rocks (The Virgin with the Infant Saint John adoring the Infant Christ accompanied by an Angel), the other is located in the Louvre in France. This painting, which is located at the top of this post, is enormous reaching from floor to ceiling maybe 10-12 feet in height and 4-5 feet wide. It is very dark and features an angel, baby Jesus, Mary and baby John the Baptist sitting on dark, jagged rocks jutting up out of the dark water. I was standing in front of it and a man yelled at me to move out of the way, that I was blocking his view. So I moved clear back across the room. When I looked up at the painting I began to weep. Thank you Leonardo for communicating to me from across time and continents in such a way that I will never forget you or your painting.