243 things from this book went into her brain. Here are the first 6.
Richter observed that a hard task can still be mastered with practice and patience, even when the method looks awkward or backwards at first.
Leonardo da Vinci worked as an enquirer, testing things one by one through detailed research. He never gathered his findings into order, which left his notes in confusion.
Leonardo da Vinci held that each observation should be finished on the page where it began. Richter notes that a clear final arrangement can still be built from scattered material if each part is well defined.
Leonardo's notebooks can be put in order by their dates and page layout, and a numbered index lets a reader trace each passage back to its place in the original. Checking where a note came from keeps the record trustworthy.
Copies made from copies drift away from the original, and a compiler who leaves the order unsettled hands the mess on to every later editor. Go back to the source where you can, and do not adopt someone else's arrangement without checking it.
The editor gained access to the original manuscripts by asking owners and institutions directly and thanking them for their help. Careful research depends on patient requests and on being open about who helped you.
Leonardo's genius is judged to lie in his restless curiosity across many fields, not in a squandering of effort. The editor argues that his studies needed centuries of work just to begin to explain them.
Leonardo's principles often agreed more with later science than with his own contemporaries. Good thinking can be ahead of its time and be recognised only when others catch up.
Leonardo meant to arrange his scattered notes by subject before publishing them. The notes were a working collection, and the job of sorting them was a discipline in its own right.
Leonardo held that a painter needs theoretical knowledge of how the eye works, not just skill with the brush. Understanding the reasons behind what you see makes the craft sounder.
Leonardo da Vinci treated careful observation as the basis of skill, testing how distance, light and shade change the way things look before drawing them.
Leonardo da Vinci studied nature closely, noting how light, shade and wind change a tree, so that his work rested on watching the real thing.
Leonardo da Vinci held that an artist must work with industry and thoroughness, and that a painter should learn anatomy and study widely rather than only one narrow skill.
Leonardo da Vinci advised a student to choose his company carefully and to plan his time for study, so that daily habits support the craft.
Leonardo da Vinci held that a useful science should always include its application and use, so that the knowledge does not end up useless.
Leonardo da Vinci admitted that his notes were a disordered collection, and he meant to sort them later by subject, so a messy first draft is fine if you plan to tidy it.
Leonardo da Vinci separated theory from practice when arranging his work, so each proven principle came first and its practical uses followed, keeping the whole coherent.
Leonardo da Vinci ordered his teaching from simple cases to complex ones, starting with simple beams before moving to supported and suspended ones.
Leonardo da Vinci held that a man of wisdom values the food of the mind above material riches, and that the soul's possessions outrank those of the body.
Leonardo da Vinci held that experience, rather than borrowed words, is the true mistress of those who write well, so he would rely on observed evidence over quotation.
Leonardo da Vinci held that inventors and interpreters of nature deserve more esteem than those who only repeat the works of others, and that trusting pure experience beats deferring to reputed authority.
Leonardo da Vinci held that the certainty of mathematical demonstration lifts the mind, and he planned to set out his ideas in short, ordered steps that move from causes to effects and back again.
Leonardo da Vinci held that a picture needs both convincing depth and varied, purposeful action in its figures, so that the people shown do not all look alike.
Leonardo da Vinci held that practice must be founded on sound theory, since a painter who works by eye alone without reasons is like a sailor with no rudder or compass.
Leonardo da Vinci held that knowing your own mistakes lets you correct them and avoid repeating them, and that sound judgment grows from clear understanding built on tested experience.
Leonardo da Vinci held that we should not accept old authorities on matters that can be checked, and should test claims against our own careful observation and experience.
Leonardo da Vinci held that painting rests on the attributes of sight, such as light, shade, colour, form, position, distance and motion, and that a painter must master these to imitate nature. Looking at a thing closely and carefully is the basis of good work.
Leonardo da Vinci noticed that a flat picture seen with one eye can look like real relief, while seen with both eyes it does not. The lesson is that how you look at something changes what you perceive.
Leonardo da Vinci observed that a shadowed place looks darker when you step in from bright light, because the eye adjusts to the light it has just been in. Judge a thing by what you see after your eyes have adjusted, not by the glare you came from.
Leonardo da Vinci noticed that the eye takes time to adjust when moving between bright and shaded places, so it cannot see well right away. He learnt this from a painting he had made of an eye.
Leonardo da Vinci suggested a simple test: hold a candle near a star and lower it slowly, and the star seems to fade as the light grows. The point is that what we see depends on the light around us as well as the thing itself.
Leonardo da Vinci held that perspective is the best guide to painting, and that it makes flat things look raised and raised things look flat. Good work starts with understanding how the eye actually sees.
Leonardo da Vinci used the camera obscura to explain how the eye forms images, which gave painters a way to build a true picture of depth from observation rather than guesswork.
Leonardo built his account of perspective on the basic terms of geometry: point, line, angle, surface and solid. He insisted that a point is not part of a line, so the simplest parts must be clear before the harder problems can be solved.
Leonardo held that a line has no substance and is closer to an imagined idea than a physical thing. Study the outline of every object closely, noting whether its curves are arched convexities or angular concavities.
Leonardo advised painters not to surround bodies with hard lines, since outlines blur at a distance and the parts of small objects vanish. Show edges through light and shade rather than drawn borders.
Leonardo described perspective as a reasoned way of showing that every object sends its image to the eye through a pyramid of lines converging at one point. Bodies of equal size look smaller as they recede because their pyramids shrink.
Leonardo da Vinci held that the eye takes in an object clearly only when its image lies along the central line of sight, so we must turn the eye from letter to letter to read a row of them.
Leonardo da Vinci argued that every visible object sends its lines to the eye in a pyramid meeting at one indivisible point, so a tiny object seen from afar keeps its size rather than shrinking into a speck.
Leonardo da Vinci observed that the eye is a poor judge of distance between objects of equal size, and that a vertical plane, the standard of perspective, is needed to judge them correctly.
Leonardo da Vinci taught that the nearer a cut is made across the pyramid of sight, the smaller the image of the object appears, which is the basis for drawing true size on a flat surface.
Leonardo da Vinci held that the eye judges both how far away an object is and in which direction it lies, and both must be read together, kept on the same level. Objects on a flat ground seem to rise toward the eye with distance but never rise above the eye's own level.
Leonardo da Vinci suggested a simple test of perspective: walk beside a ploughed field and watch the straight furrows seem to draw together toward a point in the distance. That meeting point is the vanishing point that moves as you move.
Leonardo da Vinci showed that you can measure distance by sliding a rod back and forth until its ends line up with a tower's ends, then noting how the image shrinks as the rod is brought nearer the eye. Judging size by comparison with a known object works without any instruments.
Leonardo da Vinci held that every body fills the surrounding air with images of itself, so each small part of the air carries the whole form of the object it comes from.
Leonardo da Vinci's method was to test a claim against a concrete example, such as a light between two mirrors, before trusting it.
Leonardo da Vinci observed that two facing mirrors reflect each other endlessly, a small example of how many images can share the same space without mixing or blocking one another.
Leonardo da Vinci reasoned that the eye sends its own image out to the objects in front of it while taking in their images, which is why seeing is a two-way exchange through the air.
Leonardo da Vinci observed that images of objects spread through the air in every direction, so that every point of a scene is present in every part of the air. He tested this with pinholes in a dark chamber.
Leonardo da Vinci argued that the eye does not send out a visible ray to reach the sun, since such a ray would take time to travel and would be bent by the wind. Seeing happens instantly and undisturbed, so the eye must receive images rather than project them.
Leonardo da Vinci reasoned that if objects sent their images to the eye, they would shrink as they lost material. He proposed instead that the air itself draws in the images of things, like a loadstone, and so the nature of the medium matters as much as the object.
Leonardo observed that a small hole in a wall lets light from a sunlit scene project an upside-down image onto the opposite wall. Every point of the scene reaches every part of that wall, so the picture is complete in each small piece.
Leonardo held that the eye works like a darkened chamber with a small opening, where images cross and arrive upside down. He tested this by letting sunlit objects pass through a pinhole onto white paper inside a dark room.
Leonardo noted that light bends when it passes from thinner air into denser water or glass, so objects seen through water appear out of their true place. He used this to explain why the eye's judgment of position can mislead.
Leonardo da Vinci reasoned from experiment: if you shift one edge of a small hole in a dark room, the image moves, because light travels in straight lines and each edge decides which rays get through. Careful observation of how a simple setup behaves can reveal how light works.
Leonardo da Vinci held that every point of a line can be treated as a point, so a whole circle's image can meet at one point without the rays getting in each other's way. Working through a problem by breaking it into its simplest parts can make a hard idea clear.
Leonardo da Vinci argued from first principles that a line has no thickness, so two sides of it cannot cross each other. Testing an idea by moving the parts in your head and checking what must follow is a sound way to think.
Leonardo da Vinci observed that the narrower the opening, the closer to the opening the light rays cross each other. Small changes to the size of an opening change the whole pattern, so look closely at how each part of a system shapes the result.
Leonardo da Vinci observed that an image cannot be seen between the object and the opening that admits its light, since the air there is not visibly lit. He also noted that where images overlap they look darker.
Leonardo da Vinci described perspective as seeing objects through a flat transparent plane, such as glass, and drawing what the eye sees on it. Each object is traced along lines running to a single point in the eye.
