Leonardo da Vinci

For three years Leonardo da Vinci worked on The Last Supper—and still, to those around him, the painting seemed perpetually unfinished. What could hold a master before his own work, brush in hand, yet keep him from completing it?

In Renaissance Italy, Leonardo was admired as painter, engineer and investigator, but his restless curiosity often pulled him away from the art his contemporaries expected him to finish. In this 1910 essay, Sigmund Freud brings psychoanalysis to the mystery of Leonardo’s character, tracing connections between his childhood recollection, his inner life and the images he made. The inquiry moves from the celebrated artist’s unfinished canvases toward a more intimate question: what did Leonardo’s earliest memories leave behind in his art?

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