The Physicist and the Painter: Two Philosophies of Life

W. L. Watkinson, who had a kind of genius for illustration, tells these two incidents which may be worth repeating. First of all, he recalls the story of a famous German physicist who kept two human skulls on his desk, suitably mounted on little pedestals.

He had drilled a hole in each skull, into which he had fitted a candle: and every night as he worked, these candles were lit and shed their dim light on his papers or his experiments. He took great delight when his visitors were shocked at this exhibition, and assured them that he used these grisly emblems to keep himself humble, and to preach to all his friends the final vanity of all human dreams and aspirations.

But there is little doubt that his grim choice of a candlestick was due to his own morose and bitter mind and to a melancholy sense of humour and good taste. The second story is about the famous Italian artist, Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was an illegitimate child, and while he had a fair youth and good training, he had no rights he could call his own, especially no rights of inheritance and favour. At one time it was a question whether he would become a musician or an artist, for he seemed to be equally gifted in music and painting.

In the end, to the world’s eternal gratitude, he became one of the greatest painters of history. But even then — so the story goes — he combined the two great arts: for while he was working on some great canvas, he kept a small harp or lyre beside him.

Whenever he came to a particularly difficult or delicate part of his picture, he would stop, pick up the little lyre in one hand, and begin to play softly on the strings. Sometimes — so his friends have said — he would have his brush in the one hand and the small instrument in the other: and as he filled in a line or a bit of colour here and there, he would strum gently on the strings of the instrument — and so he actually “painted in music.”

Some people might say that the difference between these two great men was merely one of mood or temperament— the one was filled with the gloom of the old Teutonic forests, and the other lived under the charm of the Italian skies. But far more real than any difference of mood or temperament was the difference of an underlying “philosophy” about life and values, a difference which in the last resort is one of oudook and religion!

James Black