Leonardo was a Renaissance man, gifted in numerous diverse disciplines. He was a painter, an architect and even worked on mechanical props for theatrical productions.
The illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl, Leonardo learned reading, writing and arithmetic at home. He then apprenticed with the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, refining his painting and sculpture skills and learning mechanical engineering.
Life
The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the mathematically precise anatomical study, Vitruvian Man, are amongst Leonardo's most famous works. But this remarkable genius also made important contributions to mathematics, architecture and the sciences. His yearning for new knowledge saw him experiment with flying machines, create a number of practical inventions and make discoveries about the human body.
Throughout his life, Leonardo kept notebooks with detailed illustrations and densely-penned commentary, some of which (thanks to his left-handed "mirror script") were virtually indecipherable. These are now part of the Science Museum collection and have helped to reveal more about his work process. Often described as "secret books of wisdom", they cover four broad themes: painting, architecture, the elements of mechanics and human anatomy.
He was an obsessive, a perfectionist and a self-taught individual. His notebooks are a record of his quest for understanding and provide a unique insight into the way the world worked at that time. He was a vegetarian and didn't have close relationships with women, although he did tutor and care for two pupils, Salai and Melzi, for the rest of his life. He spent a great deal of time watching and listening, travelling to battle fields and battlefields, talking to builders about their techniques, studying the mechanics of cranes and observing how birds flew.
He spent a lot of time in Florence and Milan and, later, Rome. He was commissioned by numerous patrons, including Duke Ludovico Sforza and King Louis XII of France, but he failed to complete a significant number of paintings. He had a reputation for being unreliable and over-ambitious, with his patrons doubting whether he would be able to follow through on projects. His scientific experiments and mechanical prototypes interfered with his artistic commissions and he was always working on something else. Despite this, he was very popular and attracted an enormous following of admirers. He is considered to be one of the most influential artists in history.
Art
As well as being a brilliant painter, Leonardo was also an accomplished architect and engineer. His detailed drawings of the human body – such as this study of the spine, which shows a double S-shape because of the way the ribcage and pelvic bone meet – were groundbreaking for his time. He was also the first to describe how the inclination of the spine varies depending on whether a person is sitting or standing.
Leonardo's artistic skills brought him world-wide acclaim and his paintings of the enigmatic Mona Lisa, the religious fresco of The Last Supper and his mathematically precise anatomical drawing, Vitruvian Man, are among the most iconic works in history. His fascination with the structure of the universe and the natural world also gave him a unique ability to capture movement, convey emotion and delve into the human soul.
Although he never finished this ambitious painting, its sketchy nature reveals some of his key characteristics as a painter – slowness, intellectualism and hesitance – while demonstrating the scope of his imagination in its images of wondrous broken architecture, horsemen fighting on a distant plain and hollow-eyed Magi who look like they've seen it all before.
Like much of his work, the Virgin of the Rocks challenges Christian convention. There was no tradition of depicting Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist in a rocky grotto, and Leonardo's invention of this surreal geological landscape reflects his lifelong interest in believably representing three-dimensional space on a flat canvas. It also illustrates his mastery of aerial perspective, where he painted the distant rocky formations in blue-gray, while keeping the foreground in full detail. The painting's most famous feature is, of course, the enigmatic smile of the sitter, which may appear engaging or mocking, but which viewers have debated ever since for its true meaning. The exquisitely portrayed folds of her clothing and the strands of her hair are testament to the meticulous research Leonardo carried out before beginning this challenging piece. As a result of his studies, he was able to bring out the sitter's inner energy and free spirit, which shines through in her guileless face and unwavering gaze.
Science
Leonardo was a painter, but he was also an engineer, anatomist, geologist, botanist, musician and inventor. His ability to look at the world around him and see the possibilities in it, was the epitome of a Renaissance man. He understood how science, art and technology could work together to create the perfect life – the ultimate combination of beauty and function.
From an early age, he was drawn to science and studied the natural world with great curiosity, sketching rock formations, caves and fossils. As a young artist, he was able to use his scientific studies of light and shadow to help enhance his paintings. Later he was able to translate these ideas into new inventions, such as an invention for painting on water and a self-cleaning mechanism for brushes.
He kept detailed notebooks on everything from geology to the human body, studying anatomy and physiology in particular. He was one of the first to observe and record how the human heart functions, dissecting bodies and completing layered drawings of internal organs. He was also the first to identify the location of the sensus communis, which Medieval belief had placed at the base of the skull. He even studied the lungs, mesentery and reproductive organs, being the first to draw a scientific representation of the female cervix.
Aside from his artistic and scientific pursuits, he was a great innovator in mechanical design. He conceived of, and designed, many futuristic inventions, including a double-hulled catamaran, a helicopter and a tank. His designs were often complex and impractical, but the level of detail in his work was unparalleled at that time.
In addition to his technical prowess, Leonardo had a deep spirituality. He believed that all things have a divine beauty, and that if you looked hard enough, you could see the soul of an object. He had a profound appreciation for the interconnectedness of nature and mankind, a view which is echoed in modern biomimicry. He believed that the beauty of the natural world was a gift to be protected and appreciated, and that it must never be spoiled by greed or ignorance.
Inventions
Leonardo da Vinci was not only an artist and scientist; he also designed machines and conducted dozens of carefully thought out experiments. His futuristic inventions were a hundred years ahead of their time.
Many of the devices he described in his sketches and notes were mechanical in nature, involving gears and pulleys and inspired by his studies of human anatomy. For example, his robotic knight—an armour-clad automaton that could sit up and move its head—was operated through a system of pulleys and levers that mimicked the movement of a real knight’s muscles. While a complete drawing of the knight does not survive, American robotics expert Mark Rosheim was able to construct a working replica in 2002.
He also envisioned a hydraulic crane, an ornate double-hulled boat and a self-propelled cart. He had a keen interest in water, its power and energy, studying the way it eroded rocks and reduced mountains to a flat plane. In addition, he worked on devices to divert and control water, including locks, canal systems and mills for flour and silk-spinning.
Da Vinci was a pioneer in the field of optics, creating and describing a range of complex lenses that could magnify objects several times, and even bend light in various ways to create different effects, such as the reversal of shadow and highlight. His treatment of light in paintings such as The Virgin of the Rocks and The Mona Lisa was revolutionary, and changed forever the way artists treated light in their work.
While few of the larger machines he sketched were ever built, that wasn’t because they weren’t practical; it was often simply because the technologies and resources required to build them were not available at the time. However, his simpler inventions—such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the strength of wire—did become reality.
For all his technical genius, Leonardo was a deeply humane man, showing a profound respect for life. He was a vegetarian and a great admirer of animals. His scientific principles were always guided by ethics, and he believed that the study of nature could lead to better understanding of humanity.
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