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Jokes and Stories
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Dirty Jokes Leonardo makes several scatological jokes (or jests) in his notebooks. One goes - "A woman crossing a treacherous and muddy place who lifts up her dress both before and behind; she therefore tells the truth when she says 'This is a difficult passage.'" Another joke - "A girl showed the vulva of a goat to a priest instead of her own, and took a grosso [a silver coin] from him, thus fooling him." |
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A Joke Involving the Priesthood The priesthood seem to have been fair game for jokes as per the above and this jest from the Codex Atlanticus - "A priest going the round of his parish on Saturday before Easter, sprinkling holy water in the houses as was his custom, came to a painter's room and there sprinkled water upon some of his pictures. The painter, turning around somewhat annoyed, asked him why this sprinkling had been bestowed on his pictures; then the priest said that it was the custom and that it was his duty to do so, that he was doing good, and that whoever did a good deed might expect a return as good and better; for so God had promised that every good deed that was done on earth shall be rewarded a hundredfold from on high. Then the painter, having waited until the priest had walked out, stepped to the window above, and threw a large bucket of water on to his back, saying: Here is the reward a hundredfold from on high as you said would come from the good you did me and with your holy water with which you have damaged half my pictures." |
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A Journey of the Imagination Around 1484 Leonardo apparently disappeared from
public life in Milan for several years. He says he was sent
on a scientific mission for the governor of Cairo to Asia Minor - to Armenia
- and described the Taurus Mountain and the Euphrates; "The extreme
whiteness of the rock makes it blaze with matchless brilliance....why
does the mountain, whose peak glows splendidly during half or a third
of the night, give the impression of a comet after sundown to those in
the east? |
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