Submitted by Pfeffer_Prinz t3_10jfshm in todayilearned
I bet he could’ve done just fine as a Cubist, had the idea ever been introduced to him
da Vinci definitely was the kind of guy you'd only need to explain board game rules to once, forget to mention half of them and he'd still play it better than you.
He’d just castle intuitively. And don’t even get me started on his en passant.
Holy hell
He probably knew il vaticano before everybody else
[removed]
“We apologize for the inconvenience, but you must fill out an application and piss in a cup just like everyone else, ye entitled millennial!”
Millennials are pushing 40 now, can we finally pass the torch of things blamed on us to genZ now?
Either that or work for exposure
You wound me so deeply. And yet, the bitter sting feels like home.
The letter:
> My Most Illustrious Lord,
> Having now sufficiently seen and considered the achievements of all those who count themselves masters and artificers of instruments of war, and having noted that the invention and performance of the said instruments is in no way different from that in common usage, I shall endeavour, while intending no discredit to anyone else, to make myself understood to Your Excellency for the purpose of unfolding to you my secrets, and thereafter offering them at your complete disposal, and when the time is right bringing into effective operation all those things which are in part briefly listed below:
> 1. I have plans for very light, strong and easily portable bridges with which to pursue and, on some occasions, flee the enemy, and others, sturdy and indestructible either by fire or in battle, easy and convenient to lift and place in position. Also means of burning and destroying those of the enemy.
> 2. I know how, in the course of the siege of a terrain, to remove water from the moats and how to make an infinite number of bridges, mantlets and scaling ladders and other instruments necessary to such an enterprise.
> 3. Also, if one cannot, when besieging a terrain, proceed by bombardment either because of the height of the glacis or the strength of its situation and location, I have methods for destroying every fortress or other stranglehold unless it has been founded upon a rock or so forth.
> 4. I have also types of cannon, most convenient and easily portable, with which to hurl small stones almost like a hail-storm; and the smoke from the cannon will instil a great fear in the enemy on account of the grave damage and confusion.
> 5. Also, I have means of arriving at a designated spot through mines and secret winding passages constructed completely without noise, even if it should be necessary to pass underneath moats or any river.
> 6. Also, I will make covered vehicles, safe and unassailable, which will penetrate the enemy and their artillery, and there is no host of armed men so great that they would not break through it. And behind these the infantry will be able to follow, quite uninjured and unimpeded.
> 7. Also, should the need arise, I will make cannon, mortar and light ordnance of very beautiful and functional design that are quite out of the ordinary.
> 8. Where the use of cannon is impracticable, I will assemble catapults, mangonels, trebuckets and other instruments of wonderful efficiency not in general use. In short, as the variety of circumstances dictate, I will make an infinite number of items for attack and defence.
> 9. And should a sea battle be occasioned, I have examples of many instruments which are highly suitable either in attack or defence, and craft which will resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon and powder and smoke.
> 10. In time of peace I believe I can give as complete satisfaction as any other in the field of architecture, and the construction of both public and private buildings, and in conducting water from one place to another.
> Also I can execute sculpture in marble, bronze and clay. Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be.
> Moreover, work could be undertaken on the bronze horse which will be to the immortal glory and eternal honour of the auspicious memory of His Lordship your father, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
> And if any of the above-mentioned things seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I am most readily disposed to demonstrate them in your park or in whatsoever place shall please Your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.
(note: a trebucket is a trebuchet)
A particularly baller resume. And with some baller lines - “ Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be.”
"Especially that bastard Michelangelo"
"I'll paint your church, gonna paint a bunch of dudes with they dicks out on the walls tho."
He doesn't even mention that other than Andreas Vesalius no one else knew jack shit about human anatomy and he's producing detailed drawings that were groundbreaking.
It was highly illegal to dissect and examine the human body in Leonardo’s time. The body was thought to be sacred, and holy, and shall not be messed with. This thinking did not dissuade Leonardo and others to fully examine corpses hidden in the basement...
[deleted]
Eowyn: I am no he.
>5. Also, I have means of arriving at a designated spot through mines and secret winding passages constructed completely without noise, even if it should be necessary to pass underneath moats or any river
What does he mean by this? He builds tunnels without noise?
>And if any of the above-mentioned things seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I am most readily disposed to demonstrate them in your park or in whatsoever place shall please Your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility
Such a nice little paragraph. Highly confident in demonstrating his abilities but commending himself with all possible humility.
Well balanced, Leo.
>He builds tunnels without noise?
Yep. Mining was a widely used siege tactic where you dig a tunnel under the enemy walls and then collapse the tunnel to bring down the wall. However, this activity could be heard from the defenders on the surface who would then dig counter mines to fight the miners.
ok but where does the lack of noise that Da Vinci was talking about come in? That shit doesn't even exist today.
I read it as him saying he had a quiet enough method that it couldn't be (easily) detected. No idea what that method was, though.
Probably something based on his other disciplines, like saturating and collapsing the ground, or a lightweight portable bronze meerkat on a stick to deflect suspicion.
Probably the meerkat tbh
"fun fact! The enemy cannot hear you mining if you simply kill them all first. Allow me to demonstrate! I shall need a volunteer..."
It’s likely to have involved some men aboveground who would, at the opportune moment, clear their throats quite loudly and boisterously - thus masking the sounds of the miners belowground.
This is total speculation, but anyway:
Underground warfare made a brief resurgence in WW1, because the front lines in Flanders were on top of soft chalk and the trench lines meant that the Western Front devolved into siege warfare. Counter-mining was also a serious concern, so the troops digging the tunnels would sometimes drill holes, soak the rock with vinegar to soften it further, then scrape away the top layer and repeat. This was a lot quieter than just hacking away with a pick.
its easy you just put pillows over the rock and the fortress thinks somebody is having a pillow fight instead of invading from underground
[removed]
Salesmanship, probably. His “covered vehicle” designs don’t seem particularly practical either.
I mean he also said he could build cannon proof structures, he is exaggerating.
Or if merely collapsing the mine wasn't enough, they'd pack explosives in it and set them off. It's where we get the word landmine.
One of those held the record for largest non nuclear explosion for most of the 20th century.
In fact, it has a name - sapping and is done by sappers (trench diggers). Digging under enemy fortifications is called undermining and is where that word originated. Neither undermining or taking down walls was used all that often from what I've read - laying siege and starving the enemy was easier and less deadly (and if that fails, salt their fields and poison their wells before you leave...).
Probably well known because it was used in some extremely famous sieges. Constantinople, Siege of Vienna etc
The response:
>Thank you for taking the time to consider Duke of Milan. Our hiring team reviewed your application carefully and we'd like to inform you that we are not able to advance you to the next round for the military engineering position at this time. We wish you the best of luck with your job search.
Then they proceed to hire the worst possible candidate who bs'd the most
> Moreover, work could be undertaken on the bronze horse which will be to the immortal glory and eternal honour of the auspicious memory of His Lordship your father, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
Uh oh
You know what happened to that horse, right?
Yeah. I saw Hudson Hawk.
No, what happened?
Side note: Fuck, Michelangelo was a prick...
Nothing, it was never made
"master of oop"
"Also, if Your Excellency should desire the covert elimination of certain unwanted persons, and without undue resort to sound and fury, I count among my closest associates a certain Signore Auditore, who shall no doubt find it an utmost pleasure to expedite Your Excellency's enemies' journeys to the Lord's side."
Isn’t this a cover letter resume hybrid?
[removed]
I love the humility in the end :)
[deleted]
I would like to know who pioneered the cover letter
You know what I hated when learning english? Motivational letters for pretend job interviews. Who came up with that shit?
"Why do you want to work for our company?"
"You offer an acceptable amount of money in exchange for an acceptable amount of work and acceptable conditions"
But noooo, I had to be passionate about manufacturing cardboard or something.
This is why I have a hard time with job interviews. This sort of honesty is not what hiring managers are looking for
Employers want to know if you're motivated enough to get this job that you'd make up a plausible lie.
Otherwise, what separates you from Rico Pendejo? He likes money too, you should hang out.
If Rico Pendejo is qualified and competent he should be a candidate for the job too 🗿
I did hiring for most of my management career. I never asked these bullshit corporate drone questions. Mine were like "here is a difficult client situation, how would you handle that?" I just want to go home and play video games after work, want to make sure people can withstand the BS I have to put up with in an interview and somewhat have the aptitude to not absolutely hate the work. That's it.
When companies ask that question it's a red flag for me. It means their corporate compensation model is railing the "money isn't how you keep employees" Kool aide and that kind of shareholder capitalism will never get my talent.
Vote with your labor. Don't work for assholes.
“I’ve always been passionate about having enough money to eat”
you know for me i could take it or leave it really
the thing about the cover letters is that every once in a while you end up with somebody who actually IS passionate about manufacturing cardboard and the chance to hire a guy like that akes all the other bullshit worth the time it all took
If your answer is "You offer an acceptable amount of money in exchange for an acceptable amount of work and acceptable conditions" they don't want to hire you.
Why hire someone who will leave as soon as they can? The interview question is doing its job - it is keeping them from hiring you.
People seem to think that the goal of interview questions is to hire them. Whereas the goal of interview questions is almost always to not hire people like them.
Why would I leave as soon as I can? As long as the conditions remain the same(ideally relative to the world around us), I will stay. Obviously.
Hell, I had a job for 6 years, and I hated both it, and my employer after the first 2. But the conditions remained acceptable for another 4 years (and did the job with high enough quality to get commended by higher ups), at which point they went far enough with BS that I left.
Machiavelli, that evil bastard!
[removed]
Satan is a good guess
St Paul?
"It says here on your resume that from 1490 to 1491 you 'crushed it'?"
"That's actually an old resume. It should also read that I crushed it from 1493 to present."
"So are we to understand that you did not 'crush it' in 1492?"
"There was a medical situation preventing me from crushing it to my usual standards. So I had to take some time off until I was able to crush it at 100%, at which point I resumed crushing it full-time."
Lol.
"I hate witches. Do you burn witches in this kingdom?"
"Oh yes, we hate witches here too."
"That's not what I asked. Do you burn witches?"
Leonardo was taken on as a courtier and mainly worked as a painter, stage designer, prop maker, and entertainer. He did not work in an official military capacity until much later in his life and he did not seem to enjoy it and left shortly thereafter (at that later time he worked for Cesare Borgia of all people, yikes). This letter was an attempt by him to branch out and away from painting, but it did not really pan out that way.
At this time, his painting skills were already well-known and he was of aristocratic class, though illegitimate. Beyond painting, he enjoyed experimenting and creating curios. He even used to make fake mythical animals out of other animal parts (and various other things) to wow and amaze people.
Italy at the time, especially Milan, where he was hired in this instance, used art, stage shows, and spectacle to express power and wealth. Leonardo was a useful courtier to have around for the purpose of helping his patrons showcase their sosphistication and nobility. In Italy at the time, the ruling class was intellectual and invested in the arts and learning, so commissioning and funding sources of community pride and respect was a way to gain authority and power. Leonardo was already an accomplished painter and therefore a practical asset to secure.
Milan at the time had a newly installed and wealthly ruling family led by Ludovico Sforza, who needed to consolidate his power, express his authority, and make Milan proud to have him in power. So naturally, he commissioned many works of art and theater—most glorifying his own family and Milan. During these years that Leonardo worked for the Duke of Milan he created stageshows, theater props, portraits, poems, and was even commissioned to make an enormous equestrian statue to honor the family. It was to be the biggest equestrian statue in the world and would have brought great renown. 70 tons of bronze was secured for its construction—it would have been monumental, quite literally. Leonardo worked for a long time perfecting various casting techniques and furnace arrangements that would be needed to successfully mold and pour the statue. He even made a full-size clay model of the statue, which drew crowds from all over Italy. Unfortunately, the lingering conflict with France got worse before its completion and the bronze was used for cannon.
On that note, shortly thereafter the French invaded and captured Milan. Leonardo was friendly with them during their occupation, so before Ludovico Sforza recaptured the city he fled to Venice to avoid his wrath. He then moved around a few times and ended up settling back in Florence, where he had begun his career as an apprentice before starting his employment with Ludovico Sforza. After several years had passed, he moved back to Milan in 1506, now under French influence, where he stayed and worked for some time. Then he moved to Rome in 1513 at the bequest and patronage of the legendary Medici family, who employed him for several years. He finally moved to France in 1516 to live closely with King Francis I, officially as a court painter, but mainly as an advisor, tutor, and friend. King Francis esteemed, adored, and treasured Leonardo and took very good care of him until Leonardo’s death in 1519 at the age of 67.
One part of Leonardo’s life that seems to never be talked about is that he was gay. Not privately either, he was openly gay. Florence and Milan (and other places in Italy and France) at those times were more progressive in many ways than we are today.
I made this comment because it often is said that Leonardo was a military engineer when in truth he rarely worked in such capacities. He was a painter and artist, an impresario, a valued courtier, and a man always esteemed for his great experiential knowledge and abilities of detailed study. His work as a military engineer were mainly a couple stints surveying fortifications, a mere blip in a long life of artistic creation and beautiful academic study.
How was those very catholic city's/states okay with open homosexuality?
With the revival of Greek thought and custom that marked The Rennaissance also came the practice of pederasty, although the full picture is much more complex than just that. The understanding of sexuality was different then, as well as the understanding of masculinity and femininity.
Further, Florence, Milan, and several other city-states were rather progressive and accepting of much, even while the church was not. It was a time of great change and great acceptance. There were traveling foreigners, ideas and goods from faraway lands, many new customs and practices, constantly-emerging inventions and improvements, massive public works projects, and a whole mindset of growth and permissibility. Leonardo himself was a bit of an eccentric dresser and took great pride in his beautiful clothes; it was not a time of timid conservatism.
Also, people like Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael, etc were rockstars. The fact that they happened to have same-sex romances was not a scandal like it would be today (or, say, 50 years ago). People would hear that they had a new painting or sculpture completed, or anything else, and they would come from miles to look at it and be entertained, moved, etc. Punishing them for pursuing same-sex love would be counterproductive and massively unpopular. Although it did happen, just typically not to people with such stature and public admiration. Theater was popular, as was poetry and music, but for the visual arts the best artists were like the celebrities of their day.
So I guess a more concise answer would be that a) the sexual landscape was more complex and not as focused on the whole 1 man and 1 woman thing, b) many powerful Italian city-states weren’t bothered by same-sex relationships, and c) people like Leonardo had a bit of a free pass anyway due to their celebrity status. He used his political connections and clout to secure royal intervention for family members’ financial squabbles even.
I would like to add to this picture that this is not to say that homosexuality wasn’t criminalized. For example in Florence there was a police organization nicknamed “The Office of the Night” whose task it was to find those committing sodomy. However, it seems as though they mainly just issued small fines—many of which were never even collected. It is unclear what the exact climate was in Florence, but it was certainly more libertine than many other places in Europe.
I think they were mad at other things back then
"And what would you say is your biggest weakness?"
"I mean, the Mona Lisa is an overrated piece of shit."
“My pectorals; they are not strong enough to flap.”
cut to sad da Vinci in an ornithopter
"I'm too much of a perfectionist"
She looks like a garbage pail kid.
🎶 Looks like a Garbage Pail Kid! 🎶
I suspect that buried somewhere in the Iraqi desert is a 6000 year old cuneiform resume.
Ea-nasir’s fake-ass resume
"We provide best bronze delivery in this land since the end of the Great Flood. Satisfsction guaranteed"
“I can write!”
"And if you could read, BOY would you be... uh... less impressed by that, I guess? Shit. I think Imma smash this one."
Imagine being a Joe Schmoe trying to find a job in a tough market, only to find out Leonardo da Vinci also applied for it.
and without a CV
That's not true, unfortunately.
This practice existed way before and is called a "theatre of machines" : a book in which you expose your inventions and capabilities, as currently we do with "portfolio".
Konrad Kaiser Kyeser and Hans Tallhoffer are two persons reknown for theirs and they predate Da Vinci by more than a century.
Edit : mistake on Kyeser's name.
oh interesting, I was just going off the article & wikipedia...
Do you have any sources? I googled "machine theatre" (and added "Konrad Kaiser" then "Hans Tallhoffer") but couldn't find any descriptions
Sorry, I wrote "Kaiser" by mistake, it's Konrad Kyeser.
Hans Tallhoffer is most reknown for being a fencing master, so I advise you to add "inventions" in your google search to see his book.
Use quotation marks around the terms, like this : "theatre of machine", so that google looks for exactly this expression, or else you wilm have results like "new machines in theatres around the globe are bla bla bla" that we don't care about.
hmmm... the Tallhoffer search had 0 results:
> Your search - "theatre of machine" hans tallhoffer - did not match any documents.
for Kyeser I found Bellifortis, which wikipedia describes as "the first fully illustrated manual of military technology" ... Is that what you meant? it's cool, but it doesn't mention anything about applying for jobs...
Are there any links you can share for what you mean?
Bellifortis is indeed the theatre of machines of Kyeser. If you didn't find anything on Talhoffer - and I made another mistake, there's only on L - , which seems weird, you can try a video on youtube explaining everything called something like "Talhoffer's weird inventions".
I don't have any ressource at hand in English, unfortunately, but the term isn't that rare, you will find easily.
are you just talking about military manuals... or about job applications specifically?
Both. The theatres of machines were resumes.
You publish the book with pictures and small descriptions of what you devised and let it spread around. You take care to not say everything so that, if someone wants something from the book, they can't do it by themselves and have to call you, because you're the only one who know what the drawings in the book miss.
And there, you have a job. That was the normal way for engineers to get jobs during late Middle-Ages, many did so.
interesting... I guess that's more of "advertising" than an application... like having a website of your work, so people could check it out and then reach out if they need your work.
It makes sense to me that Leonardo's letter would be considered unique from that, since his document was specifically written for someone who was trying to fill a specific position. That's what we still do today with résumés.
of course we also do websites, but that's a separate thing
Indeed, in such case I have no previous occurrence in mind.
when I got my first job, I said the same thing
Well, it was Italy during the Renaissance, you don't keep your power with just paintings and party machines (Leonardo was also a great party organiser), they have much less business value than a giant crossbow.
this is that dwight-schrute-style resume. mostly trebuchets, some talk about how awesome i am
'In painting, I can do everything possible' - definitely underselling himself.
So the reason I have to type-up and format an entire page of bullshit, only to put the exact same bullshit into some online form, is Da Vinci?
Resume has not been topped since.
Fuckin nerd ruined it for everybody.
The number of jobs da Vinci did and excelled at is astounding.
Imagine if they sent a letter saying, "Sorry, requires more experience."
Bullshit. Can he paint with all the color of the wind? Doubtful. If not, then LDV was a hack.
Mr DaVinci, can you tell us what is your greatest weakness?
That was veiled threat, nice move on Leonard part.
It’s not a resume, it’s more of a proposal.l to sell your stuff to the government.
The superior siege weapon
SignificantView1671 t1_j5kawlj wrote
Luckily for him, his employer did not demand at least 4 years of experience with Cubism.