"Nature is the best teacher." Leonardo da Vinci

Article by WN.Com Correspondent Dallas Darling.

"Nature is the best teacher." -Leonardo da Vinci

Just like the tens of thousands of students that flooded the streets in Italy to protest university budget cuts, Leonardo da Vinci's life was one of resistance and protest too. Having been born in a small town, Vinci, and out of wedlock to a wealthy Florentine and a young peasant girl, Leonardo soon understood what it meant to be marginalized. Even when he was apprenticed to the great painters Verrocchio and Antonio Pollaiuolo, he was often misunderstood. One assignment was to paint a dragon on an aristocrat's shield. After dissecting lizards and other reptiles to comprehend their true nature and movement for the dragon shield, Leonardo's father observed the drawing and recoiled in fear and terror. "This," said Leonardo, "is exactly what dragons are supposed to do."

Scientific realism and three-dimensional perspective, both of which were used by Leonardo to produce stunning and magnificent paintings, had not yet been accepted and valued. Neither was his belief that one should not only observe the world, but to also saper vedere, or to "know how to see." While The Grotesque tried to understand and capture ugliness and beauty, which Leonardo said were projected onto others and the outer world from within, he continually recorded and sketched everything around him and everything he experienced. This was called his Notebook of the Explosion of Ideas (which culminated in the his final Visions of the End of the World.) Leonardo was terribly fascinated with the forces of nature, having once observed a catastrophic deluge.

After being accused and publicly humiliated by the morality police for allegedly committing sodomy, Leonardo painted St. Jerome. Instead of the more common and serene St. Jerome removing a thorn from a lion's paw, Leonardo portrayed the saint as a ghastly and frightful figure with a vulnerable expression. Perhaps this Renaissance of Resistance and protest was the reason a wealthy patron overlooked him when painting the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo would instead, have to settle with painting portraits like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. While the Mona Lisa was a painting of the wife of an obscure Florentine citizen, The Last Supper would depict the most awful and dreadful moment of when Jesus says, "One of you will betray me." To this day, the Mona Lisa smile, that mirrors the inner complexities of human nature, is still baffling. So is betrayal.

But Leonardo was more than a painter and artist. He was an engineer, architect, botanist, naturalist, scientist, astronomer, mathematician, anatomist, and inventor. He worked on problems of irrigation and central heating. He designed and invented devices for guns and cannons, flying machines and parachutes, and submarines and flame throwers. (He once commented how he hoped his innovative ideas and designs would not fall into the hands of those who harbored evil intentions for humanity.) He was overwhelmed with the need to know what things were and how they worked. He was both imaginative but concrete, in the sense that, everything must be observed directly and not only through abstractions. But most importantly, Leonardo recognized the supreme principles of the cosmos: restlessness, change and force. Despite the Crusades, Bubonic Plagues, Hundred Years War, and France's invasion of Italian kingdoms, this was something the Italian Renaissance did not want to acknowledge.

Just like the Italian Renaissance, today some think it is much safer and easier to only believe in a secure and a never-changing world. But the world does change, as do humans and human nature itself. Instead of universities, uni-governments, uni-economics, uni-societies, uni-religious traditions, and uni-cultures, some in Italy are wanting multiversities, multi-governments, multi-economics, multi-societies, multi-religious traditions, and multi-cultures. Others are challenging a uni-prime minister and an uni-People of Freedom political party. Civilizations, nations and leaders, who resist this kind of multi-renaissance and multi-resistance, collapse. This is why tens of thousands of Italian students, and students throughout France, Greece and Britain, are demonstrating and protesting. They are tired of "uni," or everything being the same.

Students and youth in Italy are also weary of a twenty-five percent unemployment rate. Italian students who torched cars and smashed shop windows and who battled authorities are challenging the centre right rulers, like Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his uni-corruption. Refinancing universities will not be enough, neither will superficial educational reforms, especially at a time when the role of the private sector is increasing in public education. The recent confidence vote to keep PM Berlusconi was another charade, another scam. Like Leonardo, some saper vedere, or "know how to see. They have observed the ugly and the beautiful, and they have dissected human nature and experience, including brutal and ruthless governments. They too have been publicly humiliated, and realize that a better future does not mean betrayal, but a true renaissance education and well-paid career.

Although Leonardo was funded by patrons and the wealth of the Medici family, even he realized money and the market economies, that even usurped royal bloodlines, still had its pitfalls. In other words, can one really put a price on curiosity, the love for learning, and education? Can corporations and governments really believe they can become wealthy and pacify the masses through specialization, commercialism, and consumerism? They have forgotten that human nature is ever changing, restless, and even forceful. And above all, who can control and contain the infinite "nature" of knowledge? Just as Leonardo dissected corpses to lean how bones and muscles work, students in Italy, who are in the streets protesting, are dissecting their government, exploring which political muscles and which economic tendons "become prominent or retreat in the different movements of each limb."

News reports claim that if the educational reform bill becomes law, it will be PM Berlusconi's only significant achievement since taking power in 2008. Dating back to the Medici Family and how it thought money could buy everything, even things like art and democracy, PM Berlusconi appears to be making the same mistake. With his own lawyers and corrupt corporate CEO's "serving" in the Italian Parliament, and with his near-utter control of the Italian media, it is little wonder the young and students pursuing their own Renaissance of Resistance. Leonardo perceived that there were three classes of people: "Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see." Like Leonardo, the tens of thousands of students who are demonstrating and protesting for a better and more equitable state see. PM Berlusconi and his reactionary party do not see, unlike the students and Leonardo.

It is interesting to note too that Leonardo's Visions of the End of the World depicts his sense and observations of the powerful and overwhelming forces of nature. In his mind, he believed that such forces possessed power and change that no one had ever seen before or could imagine. Did his illustrations also include the realism and natural experiential deluges of human nature, as opposed to unnatural marketplaces and extremely commercialized environments? The increasing isolation of renaissance women and men, politicians, and governments from the world around them reflects corporate culture's power to define and dehumanize humanity, including its tendencies to abandon and even destroy democratic experiences. Only time will tell what is ugly and what is beautiful in this present-day Italian Renaissance of Resistance.

After all, civic curiosity, economic inclusiveness, and an explosion of resistance has a double edged sword, as does corporate greed, political ignorance, and State betrayal.

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)