A Leonardo sized dilemma for an old hippie

I don't know how to begin squaring the circle on this one. That's how big this dilemma is for the head of the mummymashed old hippie Grit.

Here we are, at the Leonardo exhibition, Hong Kong Science Museum. (Travelling to a venue near you, or just left.) This touring exhibition displays scaled models made by Teknoart of Florence. They've constructed these stunning models from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.

You can read anywhere how amazingly those models are crafted and how enormous is that original imagination.


What I have, is a dilemma in navigating the discussion around these instruments for the greater learning of the little grits.

Like, these models are beautiful! You are right; they are designed to main and kill as many people as efficiently as possible. And Leonardo was a brilliant artist with an unparalleled use of the sfumato brush technique! Yes, the rotating cannon, scythes, armoured tank, castle wall siege kit, spikes, assault weaponry and catapult for superior range missiles can all take your head clean off.




But I am a backsliding weakling. I gloss over the problem, staring me in the face, of the beautiful and the deadly. I skirt round the fact that fantastic creations come from military experiment. I avoid the conclusion that imagination can flower with death at the roots. I do not say that we need human death on a battlefield to inspire human invention. I change the subject when we come close to the business of blood, because inventing military weaponry was Leonardo's day job, after all, and the means to acquire patronage in fifteenth century Italy. I even manage to chart my way round the gore-filled discussion about anatomy, the detailed description I could conjure up with Leonardo poking his fingers through the veins of the human body to further his knowledge of the wondrous human machine.

Nope, I avoid all death-related discussion and hide under comments about how interesting and powerful are gears and pulleys.


I wander off with murmurings about knowledge of forces before Newton, and I say 'Oo look! There's the prototype for a helicopter. Draw that'.


But first join your chums to make a movable bridge from old logs.


That is an excellent design, isn't it? Yes, it was used to enable troops to quickly build a bridge, cross a river, then dismantle the bridge. That way, they could surprise the enemy and slaughter the lot of them. Perhaps we should keep some old logs in the back of the car, then we could give it a go over the River Ribble in Yorkshire.

It was a very good exhibition. Go. You probably won't have my problems. I'm a European gal with an interest in art, taught to fall prostrate on the floor before the imagination of Leonardo, and I'm an old hippie taught that no good comes from war. I simply can't bring those states together, and tell it to the children.

But the robot is excellent.