Rethinking Leonardo
da Vinci’s Studio Praxis Through the Lens of Delay and Prescience
"Science
is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is
the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly."
Leonardo da Vinci
https://www.discoveringdavinci.com/maxims-morals#:~:text=(1148%E2%80%941161),1149.
Leonardo
da Vinci’s notion of studio praxis can be understood as a space in which
prescience—an orientation toward the future—becomes perceptible. For Leonardo,
working in the studio was not merely a matter of technical labour; it was a
mode of thinking. He believed that certain insights could emerge only through
the embodied processes of painting and drawing, insights inaccessible to
abstract reasoning alone.
When an artist develops concepts within
the studio, they are effectively engaging with the future: imagining
possibilities, testing forms, and allowing sensorial experience to shape ideas
over time. This “timeless delay” inherent in artistic practice transforms
future‑oriented
concepts into material works. Once a drawing or painting is completed—such as
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist[1]
—it enters history. Yet the conceptual
energy that generated it remains embedded in the work, creating a continuous
thread from future imagination to historical artifact.
In this sense, Leonardo’s artistic
concepts can be understood as forms of energy that travel from the future into
the present through the artist’s imagination, memory, and perceptual
experience. The artwork becomes the visible trace of this singular source,
carrying signifiers of the conceptual world from which it emerged.
However, Leonardo’s notion of prescience
should not be interpreted as the existence of a fully formed idea prior to its
arrival. Nothing is “pre‑given.”
Prescience becomes real only as it enters the delay of artistic practice. The
future arrives into the present through the temporal processes of painting and
drawing, where ideas are shaped, refined, and transformed. The marks placed on
paper or canvas are delayed traces of this process—scintillations produced by
Leonardo’s synthesis of perception, memory, and technique. These flashes of
insight reflect years of praxis, allowing him to articulate an idea at the
height of its imaginative clarity.
This understanding of delay becomes
especially revealing when we consider Leonardo’s oeuvre. Many of his works
remain unfinished not because of indecision or distraction, but because the
scintillating energy that animated the concept had reached its limit. To
continue beyond that point would have resulted only in technical virtuosity—the
habitual execution of craft—rather than the living presence of delay. For
Leonardo, a work was complete when the conceptual energy had been fully
expressed, even if the surface remained materially incomplete.
We are born with a pulse, not a clock.
What we call “time” is not a sequence of measurable units but the rhythm of
perception unfolding within us. Leonardo’s studio was governed not by
chronology but by this pulse — the living cadence of ideas entering delay,
taking form, and leaving traces. His artworks are not moments captured in time;
they are pulses made visible, the residue of energy moving from potential into
history.
In this sense, the “future” in
Leonardo’s practice is not a distant temporal zone but a field of conceptual
possibility entering the timeless space of delay. Within this space, it is
shaped, influenced, and ultimately folded into material form. The artwork
becomes the final resting place of this movement — a site where potential
becomes presence. Once completed, the work continues its passage forward,
encountered anew by each viewer, each memory, each life.
The river that runs from potential to
history contains no stable present. It offers only the space in which an
artwork is born, received, and carried onward into the unfolding of experience.
We do not live inside time; we live inside the pulse of perception, and art is
the trace it leaves behind.
Charcoal and wash heightened with white chalk on paper, mounted on canvas.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_-_St._Anne_cartoon.jpg
