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HEAL THE INNER CHILD

The child is in me still... and sometimes not so still.

—FRED ROGERS

here was always something childlike about Leonardo da Vinci.
Indeed, this is what made him such a brilliant artist—his
mischievousness, his curiosity, his fascination with inventing and
creating. But behind this playfulness was a deep sadness, pain rooted
in the events of his early life.
Leonardo was born in 1452, an illegitimate son from a prosperous
family of notaries. Though in time his father would invite his bastard
son to come live with him, and would help secure Leonardo’s first
artistic apprenticeship, a distance between them never closed.
At the time, it was customary that the oldest son of a prominent
tradesman like Leonardo’s father would be chosen to take up his
father’s profession and eventually take over his business. While the
notary guild technically did not recognize non legittimo heirs, it’s
surprising that Leonardo’s father never even attempted to appear
before a local magistrate and present a petition to legitimate his son.
Leonardo’s father would go on to have twelve more children, nine
of whom were sons. When he died, he left no specific will, an act that
for a notary, familiar with the law, meant one thing: He was legally
disinheriting Leonardo in favor of his “real” children. As Leonardo’s
biographer Walter Isaacson would later write, by excluding Leonardo
and never fully accepting him, Piero da Vinci’s “primary bequest to