December 3, 2007
Dear Leonardo,
I think the most amazing thing about you is that you never had a limit to your imagination. If I told you to find something that a computer and a pillow have a common, you could probably give me twenty different comparisons. I think your most amazing analogy is between a baby fetus in the womb and a walnut. You really were an amazing person. I can’t really believe such an amazing person could be shunned in school just because of their parents’ decisions.
Now, times are different. I have friends whose parents never married, but teachers treat them the same as those of us whose parents have married. I’m guessing that happened because you grew up in such a strong Catholic community. One of the other things I admire about you is that even though you grew up in such a strong religious time, you went your own way, sort of had your own religion.
When you were a kid, how old were you when you stopped going to school? As a fourteen year old, you were apprenticed to Andrea Del Vorrencio. Did you drop out of school to work for him? If you did, today, in 2007, that would be illegal unless you were homeschooling. You were still in middle school at that time, according to this time’s way of schooling.
Did you draw your first work in 1473, or is that just your first sketch we have record of? Did you draw with a pen or a pencil? Were you ever unhappy with the way that you drew? When you were a kid, did you recognize your artistic talent? In your time period, did you ever encounter another person who was a vegetarian?
You were fifty-three when you died. In my time, that is considered a young death. The dates on your life’s timeline go from the 1400’s to the 1500’s. Now it’s time for me to make a comparison of my own; between me, an eleven year old student who still has tons to learn, and a genus artist and scientist who could make comparison between a baby and a walnut. We both lived through a millennium.
Yours truly,
Francesca
