leonardo da vinci self portrait

leonardo da vinci self portrait
Madonna Litta
madonna with the yarnwinder painting
Mother and Child
It was an old settler's saying that you could burn your eyes out faster by staringstraight and hard at the sun-scorched flatlands of Tatooine than by looking directly atits two huge suns themselves, so powerful was the penetrating glare reflected fromthose endless wastes. Despite the flare, life could and did exist in the flatlandsformed by long-evaporated seabeds. One thing made it possible: the reintroductionof water. For human purposes, however, the water of Tatooine was only marginallyaccessible. The atmosphere yielded its moisture with reluctance. It had to becoaxed down out of the hard blue sky—coaxed, forced, yanked down to the parchedsurface. Two figures whose concern was obtaining that moisture were standing on aslight rise of one of those inhospitable flats. One of the pair was stiff and metallic—a sand-pitted vaporator sunk securely through sand and into deeper rock. The figurenext to it was a food deal more animated, though no less sun-weathered.
Luke Skywalker was twice the age of the ten-year-old vaporator, but much lesssecure. At the moment he was swearing softly at a recalcitrant valve adjuster on thetemperamental device. From time to time he resorted to some unsubtle pounding inplace of using the appropriate tool. Neither method worked very well. Luke wassure that the lubricants used on the vaporator went out of their way to attract sand