Leonardo certainly had an uncanny ability to observe nature and record it. And to this he added a preternatural, even spooky determination. The first biographer of Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Giovi, wrote in 1520: "in the medical faculty he learned to dissect the cadavers of criminals under inhuman, disgusting conditions...because he wanted [to examine and] to draw the different deflections and reflections of limbs and their dependence upon the nerves and the joints. This is why he paid attention to the forms of even very small organs, capillaries and hidden parts of the skeleton." Read the passage above aloud and with expression. What is the tone of the piece?
