Receiving a glimpse into the superlative and highly laudatory world of Giorgio Vasari’s appreciation for Leonardo da Vinci has “started me knowing something I already knew.” (a line from one of my favorite blues bands back home. Apparently I am missing America!) Leonardo was undoubtedly an amazing man, perhaps the culmination of all of humanity’s hard earned direction towards perfection. The Renaissance aim towards perfection in all aspects though causes me pause in wonder. It seems in many situations of our current time, if someone is very gifted in school but incapable of concentrating on many things long enough to complete them, many times their parents are quick to lock them in a room with a bottle of Ridlin and a pencil in hand. This focus on the ideal of achieving perfection in all realms, the true embodiment of the Renaissance man, seems unattainable without the very “disorder” that our society is so quick to closet and attempt to control. ADD is indeed a serious case that can prove detrimental to the mental health of many students in class, yet it was utterly laudable in the Renaissance mindset for a man to shift back and forth between different topics, often times leaving those items uncompleted and ideas half thought. Now this is certainly my interpretation of Vasari’s interpretation of Leonardo’s life. Whereas Vasari chose to interpret this breakdown of completion as an attribute of Leonardo’s genius and ensuing incapability to bring his hand into the same light as his mind. But it seems to be the only way that any human being could feasibly attain the variance in interest necessary in the ideal man of the Renaissance. Think about it! Leonardo was talented in anatomy, art, sculpture, sketching, physics, inventing, writing backwards, playing music, singing music, and who knows what else! I understand that he was described as something that was just formed by God's hands here on earth as opposed to being born like the rest of us for a reason! But as this summer semester comes to an end I am reminded of a question that I asked myself some short five and a half weeks ago: what is a Renaissance man and is that goal obtainable? Honestly, having been in this Renaissance mindset, worldview, and birthplace, I am beginning to embrace its feasibility as something real. It is indeed something powerful and mighty: the human potential for achievement is a limitless un-cappable thing. I have secretly worked so hard to be opposed to the ideas of the Renaissance this entire trip. Not so much because I disagree with it but rather in attempts to form my own distinct argument, to be right and unique; a daisy in a field of tulips. And yet there is something so infectious and righteous about this thing called the Renaissance that I can see why it is still all about me today, why I was raised and encouraged to pursue a liberal arts education. It is such an amazing, formative, and transformative kind of thought process. Perhaps it is not right. Perhaps humanity is not an utterly unlimited thing and there is something to be said for the atrocities have committed to work against the humanism, secularism, Creative historical self consciousness, and especially the virtuosity of the individualist approach. But imagine the potential! I have consistently been a cynic for many of the latter half of my life. It's easier to not expect good and then just to be surprised when the good occurrences actually take place. And yet this is something that the Renaissance mindset doesn't see as necessary. Almost in an ultimate and superlative optimist mindset, the Renaissance thinkers like Castiglione, Ficino, and the even Vasari here recognize and laud the capability of reaching a perfect kind of humanity: the embodiment of humanism. This produces something in me I never thought possible. I expect humanity to become something greater and that they can! Not just to make it into heaven either! There is a reason to be a good civic individual, to become something of a versatile and virtuous human for this place, to meet the past, embrace it in education and enhance it and make it something for the better. Mayhaps ADD is necessary to achieve all of this, the optimal balance of humanism, secularism, historical self consciousness, and individualism, but perhaps that is why our generation is so riddled with it!? Perhaps this is indeed the optimal time for the rebirth of rebirth; to become once more what we once were to do once again the things that are no longer done.
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