Leonardo da Vinci and Mount Etna. What does it mean? Has the great Florentine genius ever really been to our volcano to the point of studying it and being fascinated by it? It must be said right away that Leonardo, precisely because of the genius that he was, ALSO studied the energies of the earth, geology itself – when it wasn’t even called geology yet! He was very curious about the “tremors”, the “fire-breathing mountains” and the charm of the rocks. But was there an encounter between the great Leonardo and the great Etna?
Leonardo and Sicily
No, Leonardo da Vinci never happened to be in Sicily. But he never missed an opportunity to read material about this island and “its mountains of fire”. As the greatest Da Vinci scholars say, Leonardo read the Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder, the Acerba by Cecco d’Ascoli, the Metamorphoses by Ovid and of course the Divine Comedia by Dante.
During a conference at the University of Catania, Professor Vecce – a great expert on the scientist – debunked every myth: though Leonardo never came to Sicily, however, he studied its volcanoes. How? By imagining everything he had previously read and trying to delve deeper with other readings.
Leonardo “saw” Etna through the eyes of others
Pietro Bembo, a great friend of Leonardo’s, traveled to Sicily and climbed Etna, recording his impressions in the treatise “De Aetna” (1493) in which, through dialogues, he even tells of an excursion to the top of the volcano during an eruption. Leonardo read that book and probably had the opportunity to ask the author questions, given their friendship. And that “Mongibello when the sulphurous flames, being enclosed, forcefully break and open the great mountain, blasting stone and earth through the air, together with the exiting and vomited flame” will conquer him.
He imagined Etna almost as a living being and, even if he can’t know it, this is very close to the idea that the inhabitants of the volcano have of it. In fact, people see it as a god, or as a father … or rather, a mother!
Etna in Leonardo’s paintings
Since he had never seen Etna, Leonardo could not reproduce it. But through the stories and readings he had of those landscapes and those rocks, he puts himself to the test by reproducing a certain type of “volcanic material” in some paintings, such as the “Virgin of the Rocks” but also in the very famous “Mona Lisa”.
Falling in love with nature
Loving Etna means loving nature and even without having ever seen it live, Leonardo managed to “see” with the eyes of a lover the wild nature of this volcano of ours. This article published by IL VULCANICO by volcanologist Salvo Caffo also tells us in detail what geology was for the genius Da Vinci.
What can we say? If even a genius like Leonardo loved and dreamed of Etna, we – who have the chance to living it closely and truly – cannot help but consider ourselves lucky.