Leonardo da vinci

“Experiment & experience.” “Describe the tongue of a woodpecker.”

Born in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo’s routes stretched across Florence, Milan, and eventually France. His notebooks carried observations of rivers, mountains, and seasonal skies — geography as muse. He studied how spring floods shaped landscapes, and his dissections of nature were tied to the rhythms of Italian seasons.

"Ideas are a natural function of the mind as breathing is a function of the lungs.”

“People who pay quickly pay twice.”

Florence and Rome defined his path, with marble from Carrara’s quarries (routes up the Apennines, winter roads frozen, summer paths heavy with dust). His frescoes reflect timeless devotion but also the physical geography of stone, scaffolding, and light.

Amsterdam’s canals and the low Dutch skies were his theatre. The Golden Age merchants timed their commissions with spring voyages and winter markets, embedding geography and seasonal commerce into his portraits.

The painter of light worked in Normandy, Paris, and Giverny, his routes tied to the Seine and its shifting moods. His haystack series tracked the time of year — morning frost, late summer haze, autumnal burn.

From Amsterdam to Paris to New York, his grids mirror urban geography and the rhythm of 20th-century movement. His inspiration was not seasonal but rooted in the geometry of cities and modern transport.

Catalonia’s coast shaped his surreal landscapes. The cliffs of Cadaqués, the Mediterranean glare of summer, the dry fields of August — these are the geography of his dreamscapes.

Wyoming roots, New York routes. His canvases were maps of energy, seasons of chaos, action painting echoing the frontier’s wide geography.

Spain to Paris to the world. His Blue Period carried winter melancholy, his Rose Period spring warmth, his Cubism a timeless architecture of perspective.