hFive hundred years have passed since the death of Leonardo da Vinci, and much has been written about him. Leonardo, the artist, the scientist, the architect, the inventor, whose genius has been perceived as the charm of an unfathomable enigma. But some of the words written about Leonardo after his death at Clos-Lucé in France on May 2, 1519, point to a very different man than many of us know. According to his first biographer Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo died regretting “having offended God and humanity by not having worked on his art as he should have done” (Vasari, 1996; Nicholl, 2004; Vecce, 2006).
The story of da Vinci is one of a paradox: a great mind that has explored the wonders of anatomy, natural philosophy, and art, but who also failed to complete so many projects (Freud, 1922; Kemp, 2006). Excessive time spent brainstorming and lack of perseverance appear to have been particularly detrimental to completing the tasks that had initially attracted his enthusiasm. Leonardo’s chronic struggle to convert his extraordinary creativity into concrete results and fulfill commitments was proverbial in his life and present from early childhood:
“… in learning and in the rudiments of cards, he would have had great competence if he had not been so variable and unstable, because he set out to learn many things and then, after having started them, he abandoned them” (Vasari, 1996)
Leonardo died regretting “having offended God and humanity by not having worked on his art as he should have done.”
His difficulties concentrating became even more evident later in adolescence, when he moved from the small village of Vinci to Florence in the workshop of Andrea Verrocchio. Verrocchio, a true Renaissance man, shared Leonardo’s wide range of interests and eclectic talent. But Leonardo lacked his teacher’s quick execution power and his organizational skills. Leonardo’s first major commissioned works, some obtained through his father’s connections, were extensively prepared but quickly abandoned. Other scheduled works were never started. Leonardo’s struggle to work independently as an artist could also explain his prolonged stay in Verrocchio’s workshop, which lasted until he was 26, when he probably managed to establish his own independent studio in Florence. On 10 January 1478 he received his first recorded commission as an independent painter, a large altarpiece to hang in St Bernard’s Chapel. For this prestigious commission he obtained a cash advance of 25 florins, but never delivered the work (Nicholl, 2004). Probably, given his unreliability in completing commissioned projects, he did not achieve much success as an independent painter and, unlike other artists from Verrocchio’s workshop who were transferred to work in papal Rome, he was sent by Lorenzo de’ Medici to Milan as A musician (Kemp, 2006). We do not know in what state of mind Leonardo left Florence, but it is possible that he felt “a sense of failure and frustration: his paintings unfinished, his lifestyle controversial, his reputation a mixture of brilliance and difficulty” (Nicholl, 2004 ). For comparison, at the same age, Raphael had already made more than 80 paintings, including large frescoes in the Vatican.
At the court of Ludovico il Moro, the future Duke of Milan, he amazed his clients with the most ambitious ideas and projects, but failed to gain their confidence in his ability to deliver on time. Even when Leonardo was finally commissioned with the important project of building a bronze statue of Ludovico’s father, the future Duke asked his ally Lorenzo il Magnifico if he could indicate a Florentine artist more suitable for the project because he doubted Leonardo’s ability. Leonardo to carry it out. completion’ (Vecce, 2006).
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The novelist Matteo Bandello, a contemporary who observed Leonardo working on the Last Supper (Fig. 1), clearly identified his instability of temperament and his chaotic organizational skills:
“I have also seen him, while he was being carried away by whim or caprice, he left at noon, from the Corte Vecchio, where he was working on the clay model of the great horse, and went straight to the Grazie and there mounted the scaffolding and raised his brush and give one or two touches to one of the figures and then suddenly he gives up and leaves again” (Nicholl, 2004; Vecce, 2006).
Leonardo was capable of sustained contemplation or study, but this often did so at the cost of losing track of the overall progression of the project, a relentless procrastination. His unreliability was so well known that the Duke of Milan wanted Leonardo to sign a contract obliging him to finish a work “within the stipulated period” (Kemp, 2006). When the duke capitulated in 1499 and parted ways with Da Vinci after almost 20 years of service, Leonardo admitted in his diary that “for him none of his projects were finished” (Vecce, 2006).
Perhaps the most disturbing side of his mind was a voracious curiosity, which fueled his creativity and distracted him from maintaining a firm path to the end. Aware of his limits, Leonardo tried to work around them, often with unfortunate consequences. His reluctance to work in fresco painting, for example, which requires rapid execution before the plaster dries, led him to risky experiments in the search for new oil pigments and varnish techniques that endangered the Last Supper and They finally destroyed the Battaglia of Anghiari in Florence. Such was Leonardo’s whim that other artists were often asked to work on paintings commissioned from him for the first time.
Perhaps the most disturbing side of his mind was a voracious curiosity, which fueled his creativity and distracted him from maintaining a firm path to the end.
Leaving aside his own inventiveness, Leonardo tried to associate with others who could help him. In the winter of 1510–11, he worked with Marcantonio Della Torre, a professor at the University of Pavia, to create a treatise on anatomy. Together they studied the human body and performed dissections that Leonardo described beautifully. This was the only period in his anatomical career during which Leonardo “achieved a balance between detail and coverage.” It was as “if the professional anatomist standing on his shoulder could save Leonardo from his habit of delving even deeper into the details of a physical scenario” (Clayton and Philo, 2012). But within months, Della Torre died of the plague. Alone, Leonardo never managed to organize the large number of his anatomical drawings into coherent material for his publication. In his notebook, he noted discouragingly: “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
Leonardo used his wit to mask his flaws and talk his way out of trouble or embarrassment caused by his behavior. While working on the Last Supper, for example, he was subjected to the continuous pestering of the previous superintendent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, who eventually requested the intervention of the Duke of Milan. Invoked by the duke, Leonardo quickly justified his delay with the difficulty of finding the models of the last two characters, Jesus and Judas. For Judas, he explained, he had searched the prisons of Milan in vain for the perfect scoundrel. Nothing could be found and he admitted that, in the end, if he could not find a better model for the cruel apostle who betrayed our Lord, he would have to use the face of the former importunate and tactless one. The duke laughed and Leonardo went back to work in his free time.
Others were less forgiving of his behavior. Pope Leone In his desperation, Leone This man will never do anything, because he begins thinking about the end of the work, before the beginning” (Vasari, 1996). Leonardo’s presence in the Vatican lasted less than 3 years. Unlike Michelangelo and Raphael, he left no trace of his passage in Rome. At 64 years old and with nowhere to go, Leonardo must have been relieved to receive an offer from the King of France. He took with him all of his drawings and an unfinished painting, Mona Lisa (Fig. 1), which he continued to adjust until death finally separated the master from his masterpiece.
Lack of discipline, artistic temperament or attention deficit disorder?
Leonardo da Vinci’s exceptional artistic abilities were undisputed even by his detractors. However, it would be historically incorrect to accept the biographical account drawn up by Romantic authors of Leonardo as a solitary genius who was not appreciated by his contemporaries because his ideas were too advanced for his time. His most attentive biographers had always indicated that Leonardo strove to please clients who were inevitably left with the disappointment of being denied possession of a concrete expression of his talent. His contemporaries could never understand or forgive his lack of discipline, not his visionary mind. In the psychoanalytic essay on Leonardo, Freud saw what he defined as Leonardo’s “artistic sterility” as infantile sexual repression caused by “her illegitimate birth of him and the pampering of his mother” (Freud, 1922). But modern neuropsychiatry might have a different explanation.
Could Leonardo have had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? ADHD is a highly heritable childhood behavioral disorder characterized by continuous procrastination, inability to complete tasks, mental confusion, and restlessness of the body and mind (Demontis et al., 2018). In modern times, a diagnosis of ADHD prescribes the level of intellectual ability and is increasingly recognized among college students and adults with successful careers (Palmini, 2008). Arguably, if channeled positively, some characteristics of ADHD can have an advantage: mind wandering can fuel creativity and originality; Restlessness can lead to seeking novelty and action for change.
We suggest that historical documentation supports Leonardo’s difficulties with procrastination and time management as characteristics of ADHD, a condition that could explain aspects of his temperament and the strange form of his dissipative temper. Leonardo’s difficulties were widespread from childhood, which is a fundamental characteristic of the condition. There is also unquestionable evidence that Leonardo was constantly in…