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Freud's work, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci (1910)—Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1911)—has been criticized on the ground that a large part of his conclusions are invalid because he makes a clear mistake in translating the Italian word nibbio (kite) to Geier (vulture). For this reason, researchers have often regarded Freud's study of Leonardo da Vinci as no more than a curiosity.
This article establishes that Freud did not, in fact, make a mistake, since Geier was a correct translation in terms of German usage in the early 1900s. Furthermore, I will show that Freud's interpretation of Leonardo's childhood memory can be elaborated and supported by elements such as Renaissance knowledge of Egyptian mythology, of which Freud may have been unaware. Philological research is brought to bear, and a story
Quotations in English from Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1911) are taken from volume 11 of the Standard Edition of Freud's works. Quotations from the original German text of this work, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci (1910), are taken from volume 10 of Studienausgabe.
Dr. Nielsen is a graduate of Aarhus University, Denmark.
from Egyptian mythology, relevant to Freud's interpretations of Leonardo, is reexamined.
The paper's conclusions revalidate Freud's work on Leonardo, so that it can now be read without its conclusions being discounted in advance.