The Creativity, Life & Works of Leonardo da Vinci: Seeing into the Heart of Things 

£45: Three week course

 ‘We live in an age of celebrity, of flashes in the pan. But when it comes to Leonardo’s works, which supersede time and place, we have to realise that there is something more going on here, something beyond the pigment…’ – Professor Martin Kemp

These sessions will have a particular emphasis on his works of art, and on creativity and the coming together of both the human and the ‘genius’, of someone grounded in the world of natural phenomena yet deeply spiritual and soulful. We will question what we still might be able to learn from his embodied approach to discovery and learning, to skill and imagination, and to keeping our eyes open to the beauty and mystery of the world around us with an ability to be able to ‘see into the heart of the things’, as one biographer described Leonardo. 

In this three week course, we will explore the nature of creativity through the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. A name which barely needs an introduction, Leonardo and his works have become synonymous with the term ‘genius’, driven by an insatiable urge to explore the world of natural phenomena and what lay behind it. Yet Leonardo also encountered his own very human struggles and worked with immense persistence and resilience, incorporating a number of different qualities and cognitive faculties which co-existed alongside each other. Considered to be the archetypal renaissance person – a polymath, his paintings and drawings, his words and others’ descriptions and observations of him,  reveal the depth and breadth of qualities associated with the term ‘creativity’ and reach beyond the ‘ordinary’ world of the human to the ‘extraordinary’ in the cosmos. What we find in Leonardo is a coming together of head, hands and heart/ imagination, which awaken the whole human and the world. 

We will consider the faculties of: Intelletto (higher Intellect), Invenzione (skill with discovery), Fantasia (imagination) and the Sensus communis (common sense) as fundamental aspects of creativity which Leonardo wrote about and developed, and the qualities of apprenticeship, imitatio and rebirth in their literal and deeper symbolic meaning. We will explore Leonardo’s mind and work with a ‘renaissance view’ – that is –  of a necessity for the broadest possible context for knowledge and understanding by also seeing through the lens of Leonardo’s contemporaries; of depth psychologists Carl Jung & James Hillman; of the neuroscientist Dr Iain McGilchrist; and art historians E.H Gombrich and Professor Martin Kemp, among others.

These sessions will have a particular emphasis on his works of art, and on creativity and the coming together of both the human and the ‘genius’, of someone grounded in the world of natural phenomena yet deeply spiritual and soulful. We will question what we still might be able to learn from his embodied approach to discovery and learning, to skill and imagination, and to keeping our eyes open to the beauty and mystery of the world around us with an ability to be able to ‘see into the heart of the things’, as one biographer described Leonardo. We will follow Leonardo’s life chronologically through his work and words, and in doing so, consider the transformative effects on us, the learner, when we encounter his work through a deeper participation.


This course is recorded and available for purchase – click the button below.
Week One – Awakening & Apprenticeship – painting and a window to the world  

Some of the areas we will cover will include – Leonardo’s early life in Vinci; Master and Apprentice – Verrocchio’s workshop in Florence;  painting the movements of the heart and the soul; the eye – seeing and looking, discovery and skill (invenzione), the discipline of draughtsmanship; human struggle.

Some of the works of art we will cover will include –   St Jerome, Ginevra de’ Benci, The Annunciation (Uffizi),  The Adoration of the Magi; early drawings among others.

Week One – Awakening & Apprenticeship – painting and a window to the world  

Some of the areas we will cover will include – Leonardo’s early life in Vinci; Master and Apprentice – Verrocchio’s workshop in Florence;  painting the movements of the heart and the soul; the eye – seeing and looking, discovery and skill (invenzione), the discipline of draughtsmanship; human struggle.

Some of the works of art we will cover will include –   St Jerome, Ginevra de’ Benci, The Annunciation (Uffizi),  The Adoration of the Magi; early drawings among others.

Week Two – Leaving the Master –  rebirth and beauty  

Some of the areas we will cover will include – the flourishing of gesture, expression and emotion; liminal places; the brain hemispheres and perspectival depth and space; coming into being; the seat of the soul and the sensus communis, rebirth, beauty and the flourishing of the imagination, the goddess and inspiration.

Some of the works of art we will cover will include – The Virgin of the Rocks; The Last Supper; the Sforza monument; Vitruvian man; anatomical drawings and other drawings; Lady with an Ermine among others.

Week Three – Seeing into the Heart of Things –  the body and the living earth  

Some of the areas we will cover will include – the coming together of imagination, intellect, skill and discovery and common sense (sensus communis); sfumato and the mystical; looking at and seeing through; final years and death.

Some of the works of art we will cover will include – Salvator Mundi; the mystery of the lost frescoes, The Mona Lisa; Leda and the Swan; the Centenarian;  Deluge drawings and more.

This course is sold through the ‘Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred’.
Please click on the following link to purchase: