Fables. Legends. Parables

3 hrs. 15 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Leonardo da Vinci

Narrator Alla Chovzhyk

Description

Beautiful and ever young, like spring, the storybook world enchants children and adults alike; and in the faces of kind wise storytellers we find faithful friends. We meet one of them for the first time. His fame thunders across the ages—though it was not fairy tales that made him known throughout the world.

From the school bench, with the greatest respect, we recite the name of Leonardo da Vinci—legendary. Many centuries separate us from the time when the great Italian lived and worked. We judge him by books and films dedicated to his life, and of course by the few immortal works that have survived to our day—so few that they can be counted on our fingers, just like the museums that keep these priceless treasures, the heritage and pride of all humankind. Once someone said that it is especially easy to breathe in front of Leonardo’s paintings. And every one of us who has had the chance to visit the Hermitage at least once and silently stand in a spacious hall before two Leonardo Madonnas will agree. These small-sized paintings, painted on a religious theme, strike with their radiant worldview and deep human content.

But what do fairy tales have to do with it? Any reader who picks up this book may wonder. If such a book existed in Leonardo’s lifetime, it would not surprise his contemporaries at all, because they knew well that the celebrated artist could be playfully, wholeheartedly fascinated by fiction; that he was an inexhaustible maker of inventions, and an entertaining storyteller. The parables and fairy tales he wrote brought him no less fame while he lived than his paintings did. He was a welcome guest and an interesting conversationalist both for ordinary people and for the nobility. People eagerly caught every word, and the entertaining stories he told passed from mouth to mouth and were handed down from father to son, from grandfather to grandson. Even now, in some Italian villages, there are certain fairy tales that have long become folk tales—and many people don’t realize that once they were invented by Leonardo da Vinci himself.