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It happens that our intellect is that which prompts the hand to create the features of figures in divine aspects until it finds satisfaction; and since the intellect is one of the tones of our soul, by means of the soul it composes the form of the body where it dwells, according to its volition. And when it has to reproduce a human body, it takes pleasure in repeating the body which it originally created; whence it follows that they who fall in love are prone to become enamoured of what resembles them.

It happens that our intellect is that which prompts the hand to create the features of figures in divine aspects until it finds satisfaction; and since the intellect is one of the tones of our soul, by means of the soul it composes the form of the body where it dwells, according to its volition. And when it has to reproduce a human body, it takes pleasure in repeating the body which it originally created; whence it follows that they who fall in love are prone to become enamoured of what resembles them.

Approximate author period: c. 1486 AD · medieval

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Leonardo da Vinci
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1486 AD · medieval
author lifetime midpoint (1452–1519); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Thoughts on Art and Life (1906 English edition) (1906 AD)

Thoughts on Life, complete printed unit 73; Maurice Baring translation; Boston: The Merrymount Press,1906

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The voice behind the words.

Leonardo da Vinci: Drawn portrait

Represented by the complete source-numbered selections in Thoughts on Art and Life, Maurice Baring’s1906English translation, edited by Lewis Einstein. The catalogue records1452–1519; the historical collection is a selection from notebooks, not a continuous book composed by Leonardo or independent authentication of every attributed passage.

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