Birch copse 1500

This is Leonardo da Vinci's "Birch Copse," rendered in pen and brown ink. The motif of the forest is central, evoking a sense of the wild and untamed. In antiquity, forests were often seen as sacred spaces, homes to deities and places of transformation. Think of the forests in classical myths, where heroes undergo trials and encounter the unknown. Even in more recent times, we see this symbolism persist, in paintings by German Romantic artists, Caspar David Friedrich, where the forest symbolizes the sublime and the spiritual. These are echoes, resurfacings of primal emotions linked to nature. Such images tap into what Jung would call our collective unconscious, a shared reservoir of experiences and symbols. These symbols, like the forest, engage us on a deep psychological level, reminding us of our connection to the natural world and the mysteries it holds. Through this drawing, da Vinci not only captures a copse of birch, but opens a door into the depths of human experience and memory.