As an artist and someone who has spent years running a gallery, I’ve always felt that a physical work of art is a direct extension of the person who created it. We talk about the artist’s “soul” being in the work, but it turns out that might be more literal than we thought. Recent studies on a 500-year-old drawing have uncovered DNA traces that link back to Leonardo da Vinci’s own family line.
Leonardo was the ultimate polymath, a restless inventor and scientist who saw no walls between a flying machine and a portrait. To think that his actual biological cells might still be embedded in the fibers of a sketch he handled is staggering. It turns out the paper has a memory that goes far beyond the image drawn on it.
This discovery makes me wonder if we should look at these masterpieces differently. Is the drawing just a visual idea, or is it a physical relic of the man himself? For me, it brings this legendary genius down to earth and reminds us that behind the myth of the great inventor, there was a flesh-and-blood artist working in a studio, just like the rest of us.
Read more about the study: Could Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA Be Hiding Inside One of His Renaissance Sketches? – Smithsonian Magazine
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