Da Vinci's Code

• Author: Philip N. Meyer
• Pages: 22-23

Da Vinci’s Code

Lawyers can draw valuable lessons from the master in Walter Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci

By Philip N. Meyer

With winter’s chill now in

full force, I rec all sitting in

a beach chair in l ate August

on a spit of sand on the rocky

Maine coast rea ding Walter

Isaacson’s ma rvelous book

Leonardo da Vin ci. I have been completely

absorbed by the book, and it seem s as if I have

not lifted my head f rom the pages since mid-

day. When I fi nally look up, the su n is setting

beneath the clouds behind me. I lis ten to the

song of the late-summer cic adas set against the lap

of the waves. Shadows sprea d out over the ocean, and the

sunlight ducks below the layer of clouds and cut s in perpen-

diculars, sk imming across the surfa ce of the ocean. As I read

Leonardo and view the repro ductions of his masterpieces,

I seemingly have a heightened vi sual sensitivity, almost as if

nature is attempti ng to convey some unspecifi ed mea ning in

its own shift ing images.

Everythi ng changes as it moves, and—as if adhering t o

Leonardo’s sfumato t echnique—borders between sky, sur-

face and shadow shade g radually into each other. Leonar do

was certa inly right that there are no clear line s of separa-

tion in either nature or in ar t. Unfortunately, however, I am

a lawyer, not an arti st. My professional identity is built upon

drawing separat ions and distinctions, marki ng clear lines

and adher ing to rules and bound aries. And the emot ional

meaning of the unfolding sc ene before me is elusive; it needs

the hand of an art ist, purposely shaping the imager y into an

apparent narrative meaning.

I write out notes and obs ervations in longhand on a legal

pad as I read t hrough the book .

PICTURES THAT TELL STORIES

I have loved Isaacson’s previous book s on Steve Jobs, Ein-

stein and Ben Fran klin. These books provide compelli ng bio-

graphical stor ies. They are also intellect ual biographies that

reveal the genius of thei r subjects in ways that general read-

ers—including law yers—can comprehend a nd appreciate.

But the new book is something more. It is a gorgeous vol-

ume replete with reproduc tions of Leonardo’s masterpieces—

a stunning and v isually compelling book. The pictur es are

abetted by Leon ardo’s own words and illustrations drawn

from more than 7,200 remain ing pages of his

codex (notebooks), supplemented with Isaacson’s

clear-hea ded and jargon-free ex planations of

Leonardo’s art and hi s scientifi c, anatomica l and

naturalistic revelat ions.

The book is a visual pr imer of sorts and sug-

gests how Leonardo se emingly discovered whole-

cloth modernity in v isual representation, artic u-

lating incor porating foundationa l “principles” of

narrative composition into his stor y paintings.

WHY THE ARTIST MATTERS TO LAWYERS TODAY

We are, I believe, now rapidly traveling “ back to the

future.” We are entering what commun ication theorist

Walter Ong predicted in the mid-20th c entury would be a

return to “pos t-literacy.” In Leonardo’s own time of the early

Italian Renais sance, the birth of the printing pres s and a new

print-based tech nology was transformative i n science, art

and the humanities. The new t echnologies of print soon gave

birth to tran sformative forms of story telling, including the

novel, our predominant nar rative form for complex storytell-

ing well into the second hal f of the 20th century.

In our own time, however, the proliferat ion of new visual

and auditory tec hnologies have shifted us away from print ,

away from printed stor ies anyway, especially the complex

narratives of the novel. In s o many ways and for so many of

us, we have returned t o a more unmediated visualit y and

orality—the images a nd sounds dominant in movies and tele-

vision and media-ba sed technologies. Soon, there wi ll be

sense-based simulations, too.

Lawyers, whose pra ctice is in large measure a s torytelling

practice, need t o better understand the import ance of visual

literacy—how to read and c onstruct complex images, supple-

menting analyt ical and critical rea ding skills.

To become more e ective prac titioners of visual story-

telling, we can d raw upon lessons from other master-prac-

titioners of visual n arrative crafts. A nd who better than

Leonardo to tea ch us? Leonardo, who married his a rtistic

genius with an equa lly meticulous and endlessly recur sive

exploration of visual s torytelling, refl ecting analyt ically upon

how his art was i nformed by nature, theater, science and

anatomy. Leonardo, who perpe tually tested his ar t against

“experiment al” data obtained fi rst hand.

22 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019

EDITED BY KEVIN DAVIS,

LIANE JACKSON

Practice

Storytelling

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