Leonardo Da Vinci, Flight of Mind

The Musée du Louvre, Paris's version, Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci, 1483–1490;

The National Gallery, London's version of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, circa 1508 (right)

Leonardo Da Vinci, pages 196-226

Virgin of the Rocks, exists in two versions, when viewed they are similar but not identical.  The one that is in the Louvre, Paris is pure Leonardo, while the version in the National Gallery at London was painted much later by Leonardo and his Milan studio assistant, Ambrogio de Predis.  Why two versions?

A theory and recorded documentation shows that in 1483, while living in Milan, Leonardo was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception to paint a three-panel altarpiece for the San Francesco Grande, the biggest church in Milan.  Strangely, Leonardo deviated from the church specifications in size and created a one-panel painting absent of the requested figures and symbols.  It was believed that Leonardo began painting the Virgin of the Rocks while he lived in Florence that is why it lacked the details of the contract.  When Leonardo asked for a higher payment for the painting, the Confraternity barely came close to his request.  Thus, the painting was taken back and sold to Ludovico, Duke of Milan, who sent the painting as a wedding present to the Emperor Maximillian in Germany.   Over time the painting eventually ended up in the Louvre after 1528.

This theory explains why the second, Virgin on the Rocks, the London version, was made as a substitute for the Confraternity and why the differences in between the two paintings in additional or absence of original detail and chiaroscuro effects.

Leonardo Ornithopter

While Leonardo was working on the Virgin of the Rocks (which he considered the Madonna female personification of nature, and the mistress of all masters), Milan was in the midst of the three-year epidemic bubonic plague.  As a way to escape the misfortunes and tragedy of the time, Leonardo would make sketches, drawings and notes about building proficient cities and churches; military machinery (as he secretly wanted to be a military engineer); flying machines, such as the ornithopter (helicopter) and cogs and wheels to raise water and power hydraulic machinery.  Leonardo believed that there was a harmonious balance in architecture, machinery and, especially, nature as well as in the body.   Leonardo became known for his profound observations to penetrate deeper into the nature of nature or universal law. 

Additionally, the notebooks contained puns, word-games, cryptograms, and riddling prophesies which lingered in the mind after they were explained.  Moreover, Leonardo wrote over thirty fables about his compassionate view of nature, as he believed that nature had a soul, an existence of spirit, and oftentimes, in social circles or at court, he told his fables, prophecies, and puns.

In conclusion, not only was Leonardo a painter with an exquisite style of making the religious beautiful into miraculous, he was a man ahead of his time and had an innate curiosity in how things worked in nature as well as how to improve the lifestyle and existence of man.