When we break up an infantile phantasy we strive to separate the real memory
content from the later motives which modify and distort the same. In the case of
Leonardo we now think that we know the real content of the phantasy. The
replacement of the mother by the vulture indicates that the child missed the
father and felt himself alone with his mother. The fact of Leonardo's
illegitimate birth fits in with his vulture phantasy; only on account of it was
he able to compare himself with a vulture child. But we have discovered as the
next definite fact from his youth that at the age of five years he had already
been received in his father's home; when this took place,oil painting on canvas for sale, whether a few months
following his birth, or a few weeks before the taking of the assessment of
taxes, is entirely unknown to us. The interpretation of the vulture phantasy
then steps in and wants to tell us that
Leonardo did not spend the first decisive years of his life with his father and
his step-mother but with his poor, forsaken, real mother, so that he had time to
miss his father. This still seems to be a rather meager and rather daring result
of the psychoanalytic effort, but on further reflection it will gain in
significance. Certainty will be promoted by mentioning the actual relations in
Leonardo's childhood. According to the reports,art oil paintings for sale, his father Ser Piero da Vinci
married the prominent Donna Albiera during the year of Leonardo's birth; it was
to the childlessness of this marriage that the boy owed his legalized reception
into his father's or rather grandfather's house during his fifth year. However,
it is not customary to offer an illegitimate offspring to a young woman's care
at the beginning of marriage when she is still expecting to be blessed with
children. Years of disappointment must have elapsed before it was decided to
adopt the probably handsomely developed illegitimate child as a compensation for
legitimate children who were vainly hoped for. It harmonizes best with the
interpretation of the vulture-phantasy, if at
least three years or perhaps five years of Leonardo's life had elapsed before he
changed from his lonely mother to his father's home. But then it had already
become too late. In the first three or four years of life impressions are fixed
and modes of reactions are formed towards the outer world which can never be
robbed of their importance by any later experiences. abstract oil paintings for sale
If it is true that the incomprehensible childhood reminiscences and the
person's phantasies based on them always bring out the most significant of his
psychic development, then the fact corroborated by the vulture phantasy, that
Leonardo passed the first years of his life alone with his mother must have been
a most decisive influence on the formation of his inner life. Under the effect
of this constellation it could not have been otherwise than that the child which
in his young life encountered one problem more than other children,oil paintings for sale online, should have
begun to ponder very passionately over this riddle and thus should have become
an investigator early in life. For he was tortured by the great questions where
do children come from and what has the father
to do with their origin. The vague knowledge of this connection between his
investigation and his childhood history has later drawn from him the exclamation
that it was destined that he should deeply occupy himself with the problem of
the bird's flight, for already in his cradle he had been visited by a vulture.
To trace the curiosity which is directed to the flight of the bird to the
infantile sexual investigation will be a later task which will not be difficult
to accomplish. oil paintings of flowers
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