Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Robert Howson
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Perhaps it was his desire to be free from the bonds imposed by gravity, or maybe it was simply his yearning to experience the beauty shown in flight, but Leonardo de Vinci was long fascinated with the flight of birds. It’s unlikely he observed the Caspian Tern in flight as it lived east of him on the Caspian Sea, but he probably watched some of the smaller terns whose flight is even more buoyant. His fascination with flight became almost an obsession and he recorded over 35,000 words on the topics of flying machines, qualities of air, and the flight of birds. While scattered throughout his writings, the most concentrated work on the subject entitled Codex on the Flight of Birds was compiled around the same time as he painted the Mona Lisa.
His close observation of nature caused him to realize the limited muscle power of man and his lack of endurance, compared to his avian subjects, would be a limiting factor in human flight. But that did not prevent him from seeking solutions. As he said, “I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.”
Balance that with the implied limitations placed upon man found in Job 39:26 where God asks Job a question to help him recognize his own inadequacies: “Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south?” (NIV) It’s a wise man that can seek to expand his horizons, to achieve new and wonderful accomplishments, while at the same time remaining humble before the limitless power of his Maker.