Temporality, emotion, and gender in Leonardo da Vinci's conceptualisation of natural violence

This chapter explores how the Italian engineer and artist Leonardo da Vinci conceptualised forms of violence in nature, to nature, or by nature. In using the term ‘natural violence’, this chapter aims to capture Da Vinci’s broad-ranging consideration of such violence related to the natural world upon which he reflected across his work and to which he gave varied and ongoing responses over the course of his life. It argues that his perception of temporality, emotion, and gender were important aspects that helped Da Vinci make sense of natural violence. In doing so, the chapter suggests that while Da Vinci may have been radical in some aspects of thinking, in others he was representative of his era, and that investigating his conceptualisation of natural violence brings these distinctions into sharper focus.