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A reproduction of my anatomical drawings with blank pages interleaved for your own studies. I dissected 30 corpses to understand how the body works. You can study from the drawings instead. Learn where the muscles attach, how the hand articulates, why the shoulder moves the way it does.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

🇮🇹 🌐 🇫🇷

Learn to decompose problems into repeatable steps. We start with simple sequences, add loops, add conditionals, and build up to something that could compute Bernoulli numbers -- the algorithm I wrote in 1843. Paper and pencil only. No computers. The machine is not the point. The pattern is the point.

Learn the fundamentals of code-breaking. Caesar ciphers, substitution ciphers, frequency analysis, and the principles behind Enigma. No math degree required -- just patience and the willingness to think backwards.

Learn to play my sonatas. Moonlight, Pathetique, Appassionata, Waldstein, Hammerklavier. We start with the ones you can handle and work up to the ones that break you. The Hammerklavier has destroyed better pianists than you. That's what makes it worth trying.

Learn to write a fugue. Two voices, then three, then four. Each voice independent, all voices together forming something greater than the sum. This is not just music theory -- it's how to think in parallel. Programmers love it. Every thread independent, every thread synchronized.

Tabletop intaglio press for etching, drypoint, and aquatint. Adjustable pressure, steel rollers. I produced 300 etchings on a press like this. Print editions of your drawings, or learn the process from scratch.

Lead white, yellow ochre, raw umber, burnt sienna, vermillion, bone black. The exact palette I used. Six colors. That's enough to paint anything if you understand value. Modern cadmium substitutes included because lead will kill you.

Every play, every sonnet, every poem. Annotated with historical context, word definitions, and stage directions. 1,200 pages. This is the entire human condition bound in leather. Borrow it, read one play, return it. Or keep it for a month and read them all.

Learn to perform Shakespeare without being terrified of the language. We start with the insults (those are the fun part), work through the monologues, and end with a scene. No experience needed. Just a voice and a willingness to look foolish -- that's how all great actors start.

Learn buon fresco: painting directly onto wet plaster so the pigment becomes part of the wall. You have about 8 hours before it dries. No corrections. No undo button. The technique is 3,000 years old and it's still the most permanent form of painting that exists.

Read the Comedy with someone who wrote it. I'll explain the cosmology, the politics, the theology, and the jokes (yes, there are jokes). Also available: Italian language lessons through poetry. You'll learn Italian the way Italians actually feel it.

We read poetry. We sit in silence. We spin. This is not a class -- it's a practice. Bring nothing but yourself. Leave your opinions at the door. The heart knows things the mind will never understand.