Think Like Da Vinci: 7 Easy Steps to Boosting Your Everyday Genius. Michael Gelb

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      If you have ever filled out a job application or written your résumé, then you can particularly appreciate the letter that Leonardo wrote in 1482 to Ludovico Sforza, regent of Milan. Da Vinci composed what is perhaps the most outstanding employment application letter of all time:

      “I wish to work miracles …”

      – LEONARDO DA VINCI

      Most illustrious Lord, having now sufficiently seen and considered the proofs of all those who count themselves master and inventors of instruments of war, and finding that their invention and use of the said instruments does not differ in any respect from those in common practice, I am emboldened without prejudice to anyone else to put myself in communication with your Excellency, in order to acquaint you with my secrets, thereafter offering myself at your pleasure effectually to demonstrate at any convenient time all those matters which are in part briefly recorded below.

      1. I have plans for bridges, very light and strong and suitable for carrying very easily …

      2. When a place is besieged I know how to cut off water from the trenches, and how to construct an infinite number of … scaling ladders and other instruments …

      3. If because of the height of the embankment, and the strength of the place or its site, it should be impossible to reduce it by bombardment, I know methods of destroying any citadel or fortress, even if it is built on rock.

      4. I have plans for making cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, with which to hurl small stones in the manner almost of hail …

      5. And if it should happen that the engagement is at sea, I have plans for constructing many engines most suitable for attack or defense, and ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke.

      6. Also I have ways of arriving at a certain fixed spot by caverns and secret winding passages made without any noise even though it may be necessary to pass underneath … a river.

      7. Also I can make covered cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with artillery, and there is no company of men at arms so great as not to be broken by it. And behind these the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed and without any opposition.

      8. Also, if need shall arise, I can make cannon, mortars, and light ordnance, of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use.

      9. Where it is not possible to employ cannon, I can supply catapults, mangonels, traps, and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general issue. In short, as the variety of circumstances shall necessitate, I can supply an infinite number of different engines of attack and defense.

      10. In time of peace I believe that I can give you as complete satisfaction as anyone else in architecture, in the construction of buildings both public and private, and in conducting water from one place to another.

      11. Also I can execute sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also painting, in which my work will stand comparison with that of anyone else whoever he may be.

      12. Moreover, I would undertake the work of the bronze horse, which shall endure with immortal glory and eternal honor the auspicious memory of the Prince your father and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

      And if any of the aforesaid things should seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your park or in whatever place shall please your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.

      He got the job. Although, according to Giorgio Vasari, it was probably his courtly charms along with his talents as a musician and party planner that were mostly responsible for his positive reception. It’s amazing to imagine a genius of Da Vinci’s stature devoting his time to the design of pageants, balls, costumes, and other ephemerae, yet as Kenneth Clark points out, “This was expected of Renaissance artists between Madonnas.”

      Thirty years earlier, according to a document prepared by his grandfather, Leonardo was born at 10:30 P.M. on Saturday, April 15, 1452. His mother, Caterina, was a peasant from Anchiano, a tiny village near the small town of Vinci, about forty miles away from Florence. His father, Ser Piero da Vinci, who was not married to his mother, was a prosperous accountant and notary for the city of Florence. Young Leonardo was taken from Caterina at age five and raised in the home of his grandfather, also a notary. Because children born out of wedlock were disqualified from membership in the Guild of Notaries, Leonardo was not eligible to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. But for this quirk of fate he could have been the greatest accountant of all time!

      In quattrocento Florence, it was a common practice for a master to allow one of his more gifted students to complete some of the details of a painting. Domenico Ghirlandajo, Pietro Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi were some of Leonardo’s fellow apprentices in Verrocchio’s workshop.

      Fortunately, he was sent instead to be an apprentice in the studio of the master sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488). Verrocchio’s name translates from the Italian as “true eye,” a name he was given to recognize the penetrating perceptiveness of his work and a perfect title for the teacher of Leonardo (Verrocchio’s masterpiece is the equestrian monument of General Colleoni in Venice, although he is most popularly known for his Putto with a Dolphin in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and his statue of David in the Bargello). The first painting known to be by Da Vinci’s hand is the angel and a bit of the landscape in the lower left-hand corner of Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ.