1 Leonardo da Vinci: flux, spirals and the aesthetics of destruction. (*) Marcelo Guimarães Lima CEPAOS Research Center, São Paulo, Brazil Post-Doctoral Program Department of Philosophy Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil 1. On water and rocks We star with a drawing by Leonardo as examined by the celebrated scholar Carlo Pedretti in an essay that forms the first chapter of his Leonardo: a study in chronology and style (1973). The chapter is titled The River and opens with a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci: a landscape of the Arno River, the earliest drawing of the artist that we know, according to Pedretti, signed and dated 5, August, 1473. Leonardo was 21 years old when he drew a landscape of rocks and trees on the foreground, opening towards the river valley below, framing the vista of the riverbed, with fields, hills and mountains in the distance. Earth, water and light, complementing each other, are the main elements or subjects in the drawing. As much as the waters of the river, the solid earth is also a mirror of light, as it is the vegetation itself: the foliage of the trees are rendered with short, rapid parallel lines (a Florentine graphic convention of the period, according to Pedretti) conveying the dynamic impression of wind on the vegetation and of light hitting moving branches. Checkered lines of perspective on the distant margin of the river appear to depict regularly partitioned, toiled fields, and a castle sitting on the elevated rock on the left on the viewer's side, also marks