The outlines and form of any part of a body in light and shade are indistinct in the shadows and in the high lights; but in the portions between the … - Leonardo da Vinci

The Medici created and destroyed me.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Up Lake Como towards Germany is the Chavenna Valley where the River Mera enters the lake. Here are barren and very high mountains with large rocks ... In these mountains the water birds called maragon. Here are born firs, larches and pines, fallow deer, ibexes, chamois and terrible bears. It cannot be mounted except by walking on all fours. There go the mountain men in snowy weather with great ingenuity to bring the bears down the mountains. These narrow mountains have the river in between. They are left and right for a space of 20 miles all like this.