No Mona Lisa?

Often, I speculate on what the world would have been like, if a certain Leonardo hadn’t been born in the town of Vinci, Tuscany, in 1452. By then, the Renaissance had sprung into being under the auspices of artists like Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Verrochio. Without Leonardo, it would have been carried along by Michelangelo Buonarotti and Raphael Sanzio.
The world would not lack the helicopter, nor the submarine. Engineering teams in universities and in the better class of workshop would have subsequently developed these technologies. Nor did we need that vast collection of notebooks. William Harvey had laid down the human circulatory system by 1628 and in the following decades, Isaac Newton was busily unravelling the rainbow. On the balance, I would say the march of scientific discovery was not going to be hampered by lack of another genius. But, oh, what about Leonardo’s paintings?
Can you imagine a world without the Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile? No generations of tormented men, no Nat King Cole hit song, no mysterious face drawing hordes of visitors to the Louvre museum – and without Leonardo slinking about Florence, Michelangelo would have been even more insufferably arrogant than he was, believing himself to be the only artist of note, in the universe. (The reader must refer to Vasari here.) In short, the scientific principles Leonardo happened upon would have been uncovered in the longer term, but the world would be greatly impoverished without his art. Even so, the multitude of drawings in his notebooks have inspired artists from Liechtenstein to Picasso – ah, there is another artist we could never have done without. Watch this space.