Unexpectedly we have now reached(Leonardo da Vinci 19)

Unexpectedly we have now reached a point where we can take something as quite probable which only shortly before we had to reject as absurd. It is quite possible that Leonardo was well acquainted with the scientific fable, according to which the Egyptians represented the idea of mother with the picture of the vulture. He was an omnivorous reader whose interest comprised all spheres of literature and knowledge. In the Codex Atlanticus we find an index of all books which he possessed at a certain time, as well as numerous notices about other books which he borrowed from friends, and according to the excerpts which Fr. Richter compiled from his drawings we can hardly overestimate the extent of his reading. Among these books there was no lack of older as well as contemporary works treating of natural history. All these books were already in print at that time, and it so happens that Milan was the principal place of the young art of book printing in Italy. oil paintings for sale
When we proceed further we come upon a communication which may raise to a certainty the probability that Leonardo knew the vulture fable. The erudite editor and commentator of Horapollo remarked in connection with the text (p. 172) cited before: Caeterum hanc fabulam de vulturibus cupide amplexi sunt Patres Ecclesiastici, ut ita argumento ex rerum natura petito refutarent eos, qui Virginis partum negabant; itaque apud omnes fere hujus rei mentio occurit. oil paintings
Hence the fable of the monosexuality and the conception of the vulture by no means remained as an indifferent anecdote as in the case of the analogous fable of the scarebæus beetles; that church fathers mastered it in order to have it ready as an argument from natural history against those who doubted the sacred history. If according the best information from antiquity the vultures were directed to let themselves be impregnated by the wind, why should the same thing not have happened even once in a human female? On account of this use the church fathers were "almost all" in the habit of relating this vulture fable, and now it can hardly remain doubtful that it also became known to Leonardo through so powerful a source. art oil painting reproduction

The origin of Leonardo's vulture phantasy can be conceived in the following manner: While reading in the writings of a church father or in a book on natural science that the vultures are all females and that they know to procreate without the coöperation of a male, a memory emerged in him which became transformed into that phantasy, but which meant to say that he also had been such a vulture child, which had a mother but no father. An echo of pleasure which he experienced at his mother's breast was added to this in the manner as so old impressions alone can manifest themselves. The allusion to the idea of the holy virgin with the child, formed by the authors, which is so dear to every artist, must have contributed to it to make this phantasy seem to him valuable and important. For this helped him to identify himself with the Christ child, the comforter and savior of not alone this one woman. oil paintings on canvas for sale