Da Vinci's Rigor
If you open Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, you’ll find a phrase scattered throughout the thousands of pages: “ostinato rigore.” Persistent rigor. Relentless precision. Stubborn thoroughness.
If you open Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, you’ll find a phrase scattered throughout the thousands of pages: “ostinato rigore.” Persistent rigor. Relentless precision. Stubborn thoroughness.
Most people interpret this as da Vinci’s personal motto, though historians note it wasn’t formally adopted as such. But whether it was an intentional mantra or not doesn’t matter. The phrase captures what separated da Vinci from everyone else around him. Look at the Mona Lisa. Started around 1503, da Vinci worked on this single painting for over 15 years, until he died in 1519. Giorgio Vasari, a contemporary biographer, described how da Vinci would sometimes spend an entire day just observing the painting, add a single brushstroke, and consider it a day’s work. His peers thought this was madness. But da Vinci understood something fundamental about excellence: greatness lives in the microscopic details others are unwilling to pursue.
This wasn’t a one-off approach. It was his standard operating procedure. When da Vinci studied human anatomy, he created over 240 detailed drawings based on actual dissections. While other artists learned just enough anatomy to make their figures look right, da Vinci mapped entire vascular systems, documented muscle attachments, and measured proportional relationships with scientific precision. Most stop at “good enough.” Da Vinci didn’t.
In 1503, when commissioned to divert the Arno River, da Vinci produced topographical maps so accurate they astonished modern historians. He calculated water volumes and flow rates with painstaking detail. Historian Carlo Pedretti later called it “the most thorough study of a river conducted up to that time.” Da Vinci wasn’t just doing the job; he was redefining what the job could be. His bird flight studies reveal the same pattern. Hundreds of detailed observations about wing movements, air resistance, and balance fill his notebooks. “The bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law,” he wrote, followed by calculations that wouldn’t be fully understood until centuries later, when modern aerodynamics emerged.
What’s particularly revealing is that da Vinci pursued this level of excellence largely for himself. Many of his most thorough studies remained hidden in private notebooks. His commitment to understanding wasn’t performance art for others; it was his internal standard. Francesco Melzi, da Vinci’s assistant who inherited these notebooks, described how his mentor would revisit ideas repeatedly, refining them until he had explored every aspect of a problem. Da Vinci’s few students often complained about his methods, finding them frustratingly slow. He would insist they master fundamental techniques through endless repetition before advancing. This commitment came with tradeoffs. Da Vinci completed remarkably few paintings compared to other artists like Raphael. Yet his works have endured for 500 years, while thousands of “more efficient” creations from the same era have been forgotten. Most people never reach excellence because they’re unwilling to tolerate the thousands of tiny iterations required to get there. They want the outcome without the process. Da Vinci’s life demonstrates that genius isn’t a moment of inspiration; it’s a lifetime of attention to details others ignore.