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Artist, scientist, polymath — a new documentary uncovers the real Leonardo da Vinci
People watch a hologram called “Studio di uomo barbuto” (study of bearded man) during a Leonardo da Vinci multimedia installation in Milan in 2019.
Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images
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Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images
More than half a millennium after his death, Leonardo da Vinci is still one of the most well-known artists in the world. The rare artist who, when you name some of his most iconic paintings, most people will immediately picture the artwork in their minds: the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, his Vitruvian Man notebook sketches.
We have a lot of labels for da Vinci — artist, scientist, polymath — but a new documentary seeks to understand da Vinci as a person.
Documentary filmmakers Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns, and her husband, David McMahon, are the co-directors of a new two-part miniseries called Leonardo da Vinci.
Ken and Sarah Burns sat down with All Things Considered host Scott Detrow to talk about what they learned about the human experience from studying da Vinci.
The trailer for the new PBS documentary, “Leonardo da Vinci.”
YouTube
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Scott Detrow: Ken, I want to start with you. You have made a career out of telling American stories. What was it about Leonardo da Vinci that made you want to step outside that lane that you have carved so well?
Ken Burns: Sarah and Dave. I was an old dog that needed to be reminded that I could still learn a new trick. I’d had this sort of sense that I only did American topics. I think the rest sort of plows from that. They moved to Italy for a year to work on this, and sort of realize that this person is one of the most extraordinary gifts to humanity that we’ve ever had, arguably the person of the last millennium. And lots of people could make a run for that statement, but Leonardo is a hugely inspirational figure.
(From left) David McMahon, Sarah Burns and Ken Burns arrive at the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner in January 2013 after co-directing the documentary “The Central Park Five.”
Evan Agostini/AP
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Evan Agostini/AP
Scott Detrow: There are so many different elements of da Vinci that I think fascinate us 500-plus years later. What to you is his most remarkable aspect? What to you is the draw that makes you go, like, “I can’t I can’t believe he did that”?
Sarah Burns: I think it’s really his curiosity, and that’s what leads him to want to explore everything. He’s obsessed with nature and knowing everything there is to know about it, and that’s what leads him down all of these different paths that, to him, are entirely connected. He does not see boundaries between these disciplines that today we would say, “Art is over here and science is over here.” It’s all part of this grand experiment to try to understand the world. And so for him, it’s all process. And that’s the amazing thing about him is that he is looking at all of these things, and in each case, pushing it further, wanting to know more, asking more questions, rejecting authority in many cases on a subject, in order to figure out what the reality, the truth of this thing. And it’s extraordinary to see that.
Ken Burns: I think Sarah is right that this focus on nature and relentlessly questioning everything, it makes him see that it was necessary to know everything about the human body, the circulatory system, the skeletal system — the everything — in order to paint the Mona Lisa, and vice versa for these other things. So what happens is that what Leonardo leads you to is the essential essence of the human project. What is the nature of this universe? Why are we here? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where am I going? These are essential questions that our daily life distracts us from. I mean, left us no kind of diaries of what he felt, but he left us thousands of pages of what he thought.
The Virgin of the Rocks at the National Gallery in London in 2019.
Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images
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Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images
Scott Detrow: One of the most interesting things about da Vinci is the fact the guy was kind of a procrastinator. So many of these great paintings weren’t finished. So many of these commissions took a very long time. What do you make of that aspect of it?
Ken Burns: I think procrastination isn’t quite the right word. I think it’s really this relentless questioning of the universe, as Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker, says in our film. So you see in a great painting like the Adoration of the Magi — that is an abandoned work — that perhaps the questions that he is asking have not been answered or won’t be answered by this particular project, and he’s moved away. So he’s not in the business of art. He has to survive, he has to get commissions, he has to live — but he’s about these higher pursuits. So he’ll walk away because he’s either satisfied or he’s not satisfied and needs to turn his attention to something else; to study water dynamics or to study the flight of birds, or to understand things about gravity or anatomy, or all of these things that he’s constantly pursuing. And he didn’t invent the helicopter or the submarine or these things, but he, in his drawings, prefigured our own pursuits later on. And that makes him incredibly modern.
Documentarian Ken Burns conducts a question and answer session in June in College Park.
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John McDonnell/AP
Scott Detrow: I want to pause from the Renaissance for a moment and talk about current events. Because, Ken, we talked about the fact that this is a non-American subject that you tackle, but you have been telling the story of America throughout your career. And I have to ask, a week after this presidential election, what do you think the story of America over the past decade is? What is the story that’s happening right now, in the middle of the moment, at least? How are you thinking about the currents that we’re seeing and the choices the American people are making?
Ken Burns: The first thing is that you want to make sure that you don’t superimpose a story. You don’t want to tell people what it is. You have to let the story emerge. The other thing is that human nature never changes. So these are not unfamiliar events. Historians are, for the most part, happy because we know that there is existing precedent, and we know that people get through things and that there are challenging times and there’s unexpected parts. This is why documentary, to me, is so much more fruitful than making stuff up. And so I have to wait and give some distance. And so I think that what you have to do is exhale a little bit, and we cannot look away. We have to dedicate ourselves to telling complicated stories. And when you do that, then you’ve got the tools. I mean, there’s no greater teacher than the history you don’t know, and that allows you to meet a moment with a little bit more courage and a little bit more purpose and determination.
Scott Detrow: Let’s end on Renaissance Italy. And I want to end this interview by asking what your favorite work of art by Leonardo is, and why? Now this project is done and about to be shown to everybody, what are you still thinking about?
Sarah Burns: The one that moved me the most, I think just standing in front of it, was his Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. It’s larger than I had realized, and it’s been restored within the last decade or so, and so the colors are vibrant in a way that we unfortunately don’t always get with these paintings. I was stunned standing there. And we were lucky to get to go there and film overnight at the Louvre when it was empty, and sort of just experience it on our own, which was a really moving thing to be sort of up close and personal with that one.
A visitor takes a picture of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre in 2012.
Philippe Huguen/AFP via Getty Images
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Philippe Huguen/AFP via Getty Images
Ken Burns: For me, I have an experience where I was scouting in advance of Sarah’s filming in 2019 and in an empty Louvre with the paintings going up, and I passed by this thing called the Virgin of the Rocks. And, you know, I read the thing, I went, “Huh.” You know, “Another great background and whatever.” And then, in our film, through an interview that Sarah and Dave did with Monsignor Timothy Verdon, a Catholic priest but also an art historian, he narrates a version of this painting that is new to me. And it woke me up from the person who saw it, that basically this woman who knows through all time that she is to bear the son of God who must die. Her maternal instincts in this painting, she’s trying to restrain John the Baptist. She’s trying to reach her son, but an angel isn’t there. And so you have, as he says, this larger purpose of drawing. You’re seeing a mother with the natural maternal instincts. And not just the people in three dimensions, but the intentions of their mind — what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking. And that, to me, is just what we’re all here about, all of us.
Hungarian director Béla Tarr at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011.
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Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
Béla Tarr, the Hungarian arthouse director best known for his bleak, existential and challenging films, including Sátántangó and Werckmeister Harmonies, has died at the age of 70. The Hungarian Filmmakers’ Association shared a statement on Tuesday announcing Tarr’s passing after a serious illness, but did not specify further details.
Tarr was born in communist-era Hungary in 1955 and made his filmmaking debut in 1979 with Family Nest, the first of nine feature films that would culminate in his 2011 film The Turin Horse. Damnation, released in 1988 at the Berlin International Film Festival, was his first film to draw global acclaim, and launched Tarr from a little-known director of social dramas to a fixture on the international film festival circuit.
Tarr’s reputation for films tinged with misery and hard-heartedness, distinguished by black-and-white cinematography and unusually long sequences, only grew throughout the 1990s and 2000s, particularly after his 1994 film Sátántangó. The epic drama, following a Hungarian village facing the fallout of communism, is best known for its length, clocking in at seven-and-a-half hours.
Based on the novel by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year and frequently collaborated with Tarr, the film became a touchstone for the “slow cinema” movement, with Tarr joining the ranks of directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Chantal Akerman and Theo Angelopoulos. Writer and critic Susan Sontag hailed Sátántangó as “devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours.”
Tarr’s next breakthrough came in 2000 with his film Werckmeister Harmonies, the first of three movies co-directed by his partner, the editor Ágnes Hranitzky. Another loose adaptation of a Krasznahorkai novel, the film depicts the strange arrival of a circus in a small town in Hungary. With only 39 shots making up the film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime, Tarr’s penchant for long takes was on full display.
Like Sátántangó, it was a major success with both critics and the arthouse crowd. Both films popularized Tarr’s style and drew the admiration of independent directors such as Jim Jarmusch and Gus Van Sant, the latter of which cited Tarr as a direct influence on his films: “They get so much closer to the real rhythms of life that it is like seeing the birth of a new cinema. He is one of the few genuinely visionary filmmakers.”
The actress Tilda Swinton is another admirer of Tarr’s, and starred in the filmmaker’s 2007 film The Man from London. At the premiere, Tarr announced that his next film would be his last. That 2011 film, The Turin Horse, was typically bleak but with an apocalyptic twist, following a man and his daughter as they face the end of the world. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
After the release of The Turin Horse, Tarr opened an international film program in 2013 called film.factory as part of the Sarajevo Film Academy. He led and taught in the school for four years, inviting various filmmakers and actors to teach workshops and mentor students, including Swinton, Van Sant, Jarmusch, Juliette Binoche and Gael García Bernal.
In the last years of his life, he worked on a number of artistic projects, including an exhibition at a film museum in Amsterdam. He remained politically outspoken throughout his life, condemning the rise of nationalism and criticizing the government of Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán.
California’s wet winter continued Sunday, with the heaviest rain occurring into the evening, and more precipitation forecast for Monday before tapering off on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
A flood advisory was in effect for most of Los Angeles County until 10 p.m.
Los Angeles and Ventura counties’ coastal and valley regions could receive roughly half an inch to an inch more rain, with mountain areas getting one to two additional inches Sunday, officials said. The next two days will be lighter, said Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist at the weather service office in Oxnard.
Rains in Southern California have broken records this season, with some areas approaching average rain totals for an entire season. As of Sunday morning, the region had seen nearly 14 inches of rain since Oct. 1, more than three times the average of 4 inches for this time of year. An average rain season, which goes from July 1 to June 30, is 14.25 inches, officials said.
“There’s the potential that we’ll already meet our average rainfall for the entire 12-month period by later today if we end up getting half an inch or more of rain,” Munroe added.
The wet weather prompted multiple road closures over the weekend, including a 3.6-mile stretch of Topanga Canyon Boulevard between Pacific Coast Highway and Grand View Drive as well as State Route 33 between Fairview Road and Lockwood Valley Road in the Los Padres National Forest. The California Department of Transportation also closed all lanes along State Route 2 from 3.3 miles east of Newcomb’s Ranch to State Route 138 in Angeles National Forest.
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials say beachgoers should stay out of the water to avoid the higher bacteria levels brought on by rain.
After storms, especially near discharging storm drains, creeks and rivers, the water can be contaminated with E. coli, trash, chemicals and other public health hazards.
The advisory, which will be in effect until at least 4 p.m. Monday, could be extended if the rain continues.
In Ventura County on Sunday, the 101 Freeway was reopened after lanes were closed due to flooding Saturday. But there was at least one spinout as well as a vehicle stuck in mud on the highway Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. The freeway was also closed Saturday in Santa Barbara County in both directions near Goleta due to debris flows but reopened Sunday, according to Caltrans.
Santa Barbara Airport reopened and all commercial flights and fixed-wing aircraft were cleared for normal operations Sunday morning. The airport had shut down and grounded all flights Saturday due to flooded runways.
In Orange County early Sunday afternoon, firefighters rescued a man clinging to a section of a tunnel in cold, fast-moving water in a storm channel at Bolsa Avenue and Goldenwest Street in Westminster, according to fire officials.
A swift-water rescue team deployed a helicopter, lowered inflated firehoses and positioned an aerial ladder to allow responders to secure the man and bring him to safety before transporting him to a hospital for evaluation.
Heavy rains continued to batter Southern California mountain areas. Wrightwood in San Bernardino County — slammed recently with mud and debris — was closed Sunday except to residents as heavy equipment was brought in to clear mud and debris from roadways, the news-gathering organization OnScene reported.
After canceling live racing on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day due to heavy showers, Santa Anita Park also called off events Saturday and Sunday.
After several atmospheric river systems have come through, familiar conditions are set to return to the region later this week.
“We’ll get a good break from the rain and it’ll let things dry out a little bit, and we may even be looking at Santa Ana conditions as we head into next weekend,” Munroe said. The weather will likely be “mostly sunny” and breezy in the valleys and mountains.
Millie Bobby Brown in the final season of Stranger Things.
Netflix
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Netflix
After five seasons and almost ten years, the saga of Netflix’s Stranger Things has reached its end. In a two-hour finale, we found out what happened to our heroes (including Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard) when they set out to battle the forces of evil. The final season had new faces and new revelations, along with moments of friendship and conflict among the folks we’ve known and loved since the night Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) first disappeared. But did it stick the landing?
To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy.
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