SOURCE: “The Dream of Leonardo da Vinci,” in Artibus et Historiae, Vol. XIV, No. 27, 1993, pp. 185-98.

In the essay that follows, Beck describes Freud's essay on Leonardo as a “brilliant psychobiography”; however, he focuses his discussion not on the merits or flaws of Freud's analysis, but on the implications of Leonardo's dream itself, as recalled in his journals.

The scope of Leonardo da Vinci's intellectual inquiry was arguably more prodigious than that of any of his contemporaries in the fine arts or other fields—it may even have been the most sweeping in history. Only Leon Battista Alberti, although he belonged to the previous generation and served as a model for Leonardo, can be considered a worthy rival. However, he was essentially an amateur, and Leonardo, of course, not only conjectured on the theoretical nature of painting, sculpture, and architecture, but produced unchallenged masterpieces, at least in the...