Open the Door of the Cosmos

Earl and his truck1But I'm still thinking about beauty, how it is incidental and cannot be contrived. Perhaps this is why I've suddenly become obsessed by the loose strangeness of Leonardo Da Vinci's Adoration of Magi, which I recently re-encountered in a Ken Burns documentaryLa pittura è mentale, Da Vinci said. Painting is a mental phenomenon. A few roughly sketched lines can evoke an entire world behind the viewer's eyes, but Da Vinci was more interested in the interior worlds of the faces on the canvas. He understood that emotion drives form. "You must wander around," he wrote, "and constantly as you go, observe, note, and consider the circumstances and behavior of men as they talk, quarrel, laugh, or fight together. Make brief sketches in a notebook, for the movements of bodies are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them. So keep these sketches as your guides and masters."Da Vinci's sketches of laughter and bickering in Florence's piazzas guided his Adoration.…