When you think of Leonardo da Vinci, you think of The Mona Lisa, perfection on canvas.
Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the most famous artists in the world. But he is much more than that. The reason his artworks are so realistic and detailed is that he invested much of his time in the study of science.
Da Vinci, the illegitimate son of a farmer’s daughter and a prominent lawyer, was born in a small village near Vinci a town outside Florence, in 1452. Although he didn’t receive any formal education, his artistic abilities were clear from a very early age. He was barely 15 when he started studying under an acclaimed artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. Da Vinci helped Verrochio paint an angel in the “Baptism of Christ”, the story goes that his version was so much better than his master’s that Verrochio vowed never to pick up a paintbrush again. Da Vinci was a slow painter and many of his works were never finished, only about two dozen survived, a drop in the bucket as compared to other artists. Da Vinci wasn’t really interested in how the human body or nature looked on a canvas. That mysterious look on the perfect face of Mona Lisa was because Da Vinci studied all the muscles involved in smiling. He devoted a tremendous amount of time to studying human anatomy and the outcome is well known to the world.
Learning human anatomy in the 1500s was a tough row to hoe. There were no medical textbooks and searching an image on google was far beyond anyone’s imagination. So he studied the only way he could - by examining corpses. Hospitals were keen to support his artistic research and gave him access to cadavers. He dissected over 30 bodies in his lifetime and filled thousands of pages with notes and detailed drawings. Most people have trouble reading his work, it’s because Da Vinci had a habit of writing backwards. He liked to go from right to left as he was left-handed. So some have speculated this would have stopped his ink from smudging. His writing can be read only if viewed in a mirror. He wouldn’t have done so if he had any intention of publishing his notes. His depictions of the body were astonishing and accurate. So accurate that professors can actually use his drawings to teach anatomy. One of his most famous works that illustrate the fusion of art and science is the Vitruvian man who depicts the proportions of the human body as depicted by Vitruvius - The Roman architect. The man’s outstretched arms are equal to his height, which is true for most people. He was particularly obsessed with the heart which he described as a “...wonderful instrument invented by the Supreme Master". Many of his medical conclusions about the heart have turned out to be accurate. He was the first to describe the heart as a muscle, that it has four chambers, and that the arterial valves opened and closed to let blood flow around the organ. He was also the first to recognise coronary artery disease. Around 1506, he saw a 100-year-old man die. He dissected his heart and discovered that his arteries had narrowed. He deduced this was what killed him. He was far ahead of his time. Coronary artery disease wouldn’t be described by a physician until more than 150 years later. It’s a mystery why he never published any of his work. His notes were not discovered until the late 18th century - more than 250 years after his death. Had they been known during his lifetime, they could have had a profound effect on the understanding of the human body and, helped physicians find ways to heal certain ailments. In the same way that he studied the body to improve his paintings and then became obsessed with anatomy, he studied plants to improve his art and then became obsessed with botany. He drew most of his delicate works with red chalk. His sketches of plants were so accurate they could have been considered scientific studies. In the Study of the Star of Bethlehem, the swirls of leaves are similar to the movement of water - another one of his obsessions. Da Vinci dedicated a lot of time to trying to understand the flow of water. Most of his 72-page scientific diary called the Codex Leicester is dedicated to studying the motion of water in sea, rivers, and canals. Da Vinci also invented the lock that almost any canal or waterway you visit uses to this day. The lock was made in such a way that two parts met at 45-degree angles with each other at a point. His contribution to engineering extended from the waters to the skies. Da Vinci sketched out this flying machine that he called the Aerial Screw while he was employed as a military engineer by the Duke of Milan in the 1490s. The device was meant to be powered by four men who would push the four wooden shafts in a circular motion. Da Vinci believed this would generate enough force to lift it off the ground. Had he actually attempted to create a real-life model it would have been too heavy to lift. But the basic principles of lift-off provided the earliest foundation for modern helicopters.
He also made sketches of a parachute, speculating that if a person had a tent made from linen that matched their proportions, they would be able to jump from any height without being injured. Once again, he didn’t make a real-life model. But a British skydiver did use Da Vinci’s idea 500 years later, in 2000, and it worked, in practice. Da Vinci had confidence in his own designs and had done some mathematical equations.
The Last Supper, one of the most recognisable works in the world, is a prime example of the use of the mathematical principle of perspective. Jesus is sharing a final meal with his 12 disciples before his crucifixion. All the lines in the painting converge in one place, known as the vanishing point so that the focus is on Jesus. This was done to emphasise the importance of Christ. He wasn’t afraid to try new things.
The traditional Florentine way of painting was to outline an image, giving it a crisp appearance. Instead, he perfected a new technique, sfumato, which means “vanished” or “evaporated” in Italian. It gets rid of hard edges by blending everything without lines or borders. The Mona Lisa is a classic example of the use of sfumato, particularly in the shading around the eyes. He also began to experiment with new materials for painting. Renaissance period artists were moving away from egg tempera paint - which was pigments mixed with egg yolk and water to oil paints, which allowed for more vivid colours and greater contrasts. However, oil paints were complicated to make and the quality fluctuated. So, Da Vinci put on his chemistry hat and cooked his own pigments in linseed oil at a low temperature and added about 5% of beeswax which prevented the paint from darkening on the canvas. Da Vinci’s art was a confluence of biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and physics. He employed all these skills when King France, Francis the first appointed him as ‘the first painter, engineer, and architect of the king’ when he was already in his sixties. His final work was not a painting but a party he threw in the summer of 1518 at his residence at the Château du Clos Lucé, the king’s summer castle, in Central France, to thank him for his generosity. There was a spectacle at the party where players dressed up as planets surrounded by the sun and the moon. Da Vinci was the first to explain why you can see light between the two points of a crescent moon. He figured out it was due to sunlight hitting the Earth and reflecting onto the moon called Earthshine. This was an outlandish theory at the time. Most people didn't even know that Earth orbited the sun! He was, once again, far, far ahead of his time.
When Da Vinci passed away at the chateau on May 2, 1519, he left behind thousands of pages of notes and drawings for future generations. But what is still unknown is whether Leonardo Da Vinci was an artist or perhaps the greatest genius ever born.
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