500 word essay on leonardo da vinci

Leonardo da Vinci Essay Sample

Leonardo da Vinci was a genius. He is widely known for his numerous achievements in diverse areas such as art, science, and engineering. In this essay, we will explore the life of Leonardo da Vinci and how he has influenced our world today. This essay will discuss the role of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper within its historical context.

Essay Example on Leonardo da Vinci

• Thesis Statement of Leonardo da Vinci Essay
• Introduction of Leonardo da Vinci Essay
• Main Body of Leonardo da Vinci Essay

Thesis Statement of Leonardo da Vinci Essay Although art and science were an essential part of Da Vinci’s life, he is most widely known for his numerous contributions in the field of engineering. Introduction of Leonardo da Vinci Essay Leonardo da Vinci needs no introduction to the people because of his popular contribution in every field of life during the period of renaissance in Europe. His marvelous contribution to painting art is unforgettable as the renowned painting Mona Lisa is not lacking its sheen in the modern time even. This shows how popular and admirable Leonardo da Vinci was during his time. He did not show his talent in the single field only as he imparted a great contribution in the world of science, engineering, and literature as well. If we give in-depth care to his works we can see the depth of philosophy in various works of the Vinci in which he worked for the welfare of society. Main Body of Leonardo da Vinci Essay Being a renaissance man he used to be very much enthusiastic about the new things and learning them. Printing press enables him to approach the different writings of the people and their opinions on the subject and that makes out him one of the famous and great jewels of his age. We cannot find people like Leonardo da Vinci in modern times who are equally professional in every arena of life under tough circumstances. Vinci gets most of his admiration for the painting Mona Lisa which holds records and earned the highest price for it. An oil painting that was prepared at that time was popular just because of this person who is the father of many things and invented them for a Nobel cause. Buy Customized Essay on Leonardo da Vinci At Cheapest Price Order Now As far as the success of science and its development is concerned we cannot forget the role of Leonardo da Vinci to start the various new things in science which later evolves out at major discoveries and inventions in the world. In the limited number of sources and tough situations he survived and managed to make a piece of the work which is hard to compare to date to any other piece of art. Many painters are still chasing the perfection that they find in the artwork of Leonardo da Vinci. Although we cannot doubt the modern painters still no one can compete with the person Leonardo da Vinci which had a unique vision for art and was admired across the length and breadth of the globe wholeheartedly. His fans are crazy about the Mona Lisa painting and get it on their favorite bedrooms and other material stuff to show their respect towards the art. Learning from the experiences of Vinci can give a big divert to the lives of people who want to excel in more than one field. But then you have to make sure that each field you are opting for is your hobby and you are doing it for your own interest and not to show others that you are a genius. That is how you can take the benefit of the life experiences of Leonardo da Vinci easily. Have a look: Essay Sample on Franchising Code – Conduct, Competitor And Consumer Act Conclusion If we conclude the essay on Leonardo da Vinci we will come to know that he was not a person having perfection in a single field. Equal professionalism in every side of life can be shown only by a superhuman and Vinci was a real master of the art, science, and other spheres of life which is an undeniable fact. His contribution to society cannot be forgotten at any cost with the passage of time because comparing his art with the modern time would be an injustice to him as he did all this when there was no sign of technology for making beautiful paintings like the one he made during his period of life. Very few people like Vinci take birth on this earth and we cannot skip praising them throughout our life. Hire USA Experts for Leonardo da Vinci Essay Order Now

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Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion?

You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Leonardo da vinci (1452–1519).

A Bear Walking

• Leonardo da Vinci

The Head of a Woman in Profile Facing Left

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio

The Head of the Virgin in Three-Quarter View Facing Right

Allegory on the Fidelity of the Lizard (recto); Design for a Stage Setting (verso)

The Head of a Grotesque Man in Profile Facing Right

After Leonardo da Vinci

Head of a Man in Profile Facing to the Left

Compositional Sketches for the Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, with and without the Infant St. John the Baptist; Diagram of a Perspectival Projection (recto); Slight Doodles (verso)

Studies for Hercules Holding a Club Seen in Frontal View, Male Nude Unsheathing a Sword, and the Movements of Water (Recto); Study for Hercules Holding a Club Seen in Rear View (Verso)

Carmen Bambach Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2002

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. Trained in Florence as a painter and sculptor in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488), Leonardo is also celebrated for his scientific contributions. His curiosity and insatiable hunger for knowledge never left him. He was constantly observing, experimenting, and inventing, and drawing was, for him, a tool for recording his investigation of nature. Although completed works by Leonardo are few, he left a large body of drawings (almost 2,500) that record his ideas, most still gathered into notebooks. He was principally active in Florence (1472–ca. 1482, 1500–1508) and Milan (ca. 1482–99, 1508–13), but spent the last years of his life in Rome (1513–16) and France (1516/17–1519), where he died. His genius as an artist and inventor continues to inspire artists and scientists alike centuries after his death.

Drawings Outside of Italy, Leonardo’s work can be studied most readily in drawings. He recorded his constant flow of ideas for paintings on paper. In his Studies for the Nativity ( 17.142.1 ), he studied different poses and gestures of the mother and her infant , probably in preparation for the main panel in his famous altarpiece known as the Virgin of the Rocks (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Similarly, in a sheet of designs for a stage setting ( 17.142.2 ), prepared for a staging of a masque (or musical comedy) in Milan in 1496, he made notes on the actors’ positions on stage alongside his sketches, translating images and ideas from his imagination onto paper. Leonardo also drew what he observed from the world around him, including human anatomy , animal and plant life, the motion of water, and the flight of birds. He also investigated the mechanisms of machines used in his day, inventing many devices like a modern-day engineer. His drawing techniques range from rather rapid pen sketches, in The   Head of a Man in Profile Facing to The Left ( 10.45.1) , to carefully finished drawings in red and black chalks, as in The   Head of the Virgin ( 51.90 ). These works also demonstrate his fascination with physiognomy, and contrasts between youth and old age, beauty and ugliness.

The Last Supper (ca. 1492/94–1498) Leonardo’s Last Supper , on the end wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, is one of the most renowned paintings of the High Renaissance. Recently restored, The Last Supper had already begun to flake during the artist’s lifetime due to his failed attempt to paint on the walls in layers (not unlike the technique of tempera on panel), rather than in a true fresco technique . Even in its current state, it is a masterpiece of dramatic narrative and subtle pictorial illusionism.

Leonardo chose to capture the moment just after Christ tells his apostles that one of them will betray him, and at the institution of the Eucharist. The effect of his statement causes a visible response, in the form of a wave of emotion among the apostles. These reactions are quite specific to each apostle, expressing what Leonardo called the “motions of the mind.” Despite the dramatic reaction of the apostles, Leonardo imposes a sense of order on the scene. Christ’s head is at the center of the composition, framed by a halo-like architectural opening. His head is also the vanishing point toward which all lines of the perspectival projection of the architectural setting converge. The apostles are arranged around him in four groups of three united by their posture and gesture. Judas, who was traditionally placed on the opposite side of the table, is here set apart from the other apostles by his shadowed face.

Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–6 and later) Leonardo may also be credited with the most famous portrait of all time, that of Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and known as the Mona Lisa (Musée du Louvre, Paris). An aura of mystery surrounds this painting, which is veiled in a soft light, creating an atmosphere of enchantment. There are no hard lines or contours here (a technique of painting known as sfumato— fumo in Italian means “smoke”), only seamless transitions between light and dark. Perhaps the most striking feature of the painting is the sitter’s ambiguous half smile. She looks directly at the viewer, but her arms, torso, and head each twist subtly in a different direction, conveying an arrested sense of movement. Leonardo explores the possibilities of oil paint in the soft folds of the drapery, texture of skin, and contrasting light and dark (chiaroscuro). The deeply receding background, with its winding rivers and rock formations, is an example of Leonardo’s personal view of the natural world: one in which everything is liquid, in flux, and filled with movement and energy.

Bambach, Carmen. “Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/leon/hd_leon.htm (October 2002)

Further Reading

Bambach, Carmen C., ed. Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman . Exhibition catalogue.. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Additional Essays by Carmen Bambach

• Bambach, Carmen. “ Anatomy in the Renaissance .” (October 2002)
• Bambach, Carmen. “ Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function .” (October 2002)

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• Anatomy in the Renaissance
• Architecture in Renaissance Italy
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• Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function
• Antonello da Messina (ca. 1430–1479)
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List of Rulers

• List of Rulers of Europe
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1400–1600 A.D.
• Florence and Central Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• France, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Rome and Southern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Venice and Northern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• 15th Century A.D.
• Biblical Scene
• Central Italy
• High Renaissance
• The Last Supper
• Madonna and Child
• New Testament
• Religious Art
• Renaissance Art
• Scientific Instrument
• Virgin Mary
• Wall Painting

Artist or Maker

• Boltraffio, Giovanni Antonio
• Parmigianino

110 Leonardo da Vinci Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best leonardo da vinci topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 interesting topics to write about leonardo da vinci, 📌 simple & easy leonardo da vinci essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on leonardo da vinci, ❓ questions about leonardo da vinci.

• Leonardo Da Vinci The other great work by Leonardo is the Mona Lisa, which he painted in the 1500s, and it is arguably one of the most famous paintings in the world to date.
• The Vebjorn Sand da Vinci Project The size of the bridge was changed when the Sand-led team finally developed the right version to fit in the current context.
• Leonardo Da Vinci and Galileo Galilei: Art and Science From the art, Leonardo described the wakes’ tricky nature and the vertical up-welling of water in the paths. The case of Galileo is similar to that of Leonardo in terms of influence as art-informed science.
• Leonardo da Vinci Painting “Ginevra de’ Benci” The essay explores the strengths, elements, and styles of the artwork. Leonardo da Vinci uses the best elements of art and principles of design to give the painting “Ginevra de’ Benci” powerful themes such as […]
• Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown After considering the evidence that Brown uses in the ‘Da Vinci Code’, especially the gospel of Philip, I am of the opinion that although Gnostic gospels rejected by the early church portray Jesus as more […]
• Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”: Line, Space, Light, Color When looking at the picture, the variation of colors is such that one can easily identify the background. The ambiguity of the painting is very amusing.
• Da Vinci’s Last Supper: Artwork Analysis Of all famous paintings in the history of humankind, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper takes a very special spot, representing the pinnacle of both Da Vinci’s artistic development and the progress of the Renaissance era.
• Da Vinci’s and Michelangelo’s Paintings Comparison Two of the greatest artists of all time, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo are very much noted as the masters of the two greatest qualities of craft and communication.
• Leonardo da Vinci – Artist, Scientist, Inventor The painting “The Amo Valley” also portrayed some of the best artistic styles. This talent made it easier for Leonardo da Vinci to produce the best paintings.
• Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” and da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” The second image is a piece of Renaissance art entitled The Last Supper and created by Leonardo da Vinci in the 1490s. The postmodern piece questions the norms and conventions of the patriarchal society depicted […]
• Masaccio’s “Holy Trinity” and Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” One of the techniques developed during the early Renaissance period that continued well into the High Renaissance and beyond was the technique of the Illusion of Space.
• Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring Both “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and the “Mona Lisa” are considered masterpieces of their respective periods; both painters were able to capture their subjects in a way that is both realistic and evocative.
• Lippi’s vs. Da Vinci’s Artworks Comparison Hence, within the framework of this work, the works of The Pitti Tondo by Filippo Lippi and Madonna and Child with St.
• Fuseli’s The Nightmare vs. Da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks Paintings The mythical story of a young John the Baptist and Jesus leaving Egypt and meeting in the wilderness is depicted in the painting Virgin of the Rocks.
• Arts of Georgia O’Keefe, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Baca It is interesting to note the latter subject as one of Georgia O’Keefe’s focuses. In contrast, the dark shading in the mural’s bottom parts depicts a dark picture of subordination to one’s culture.
• Leonardo da Vinci: The Outstanding Inventor A razor-sharp mind can be a nation’s best defense mechanism, which is why it is no coincidence that Da Vinci worked in the military field to find ways to increase the chances of success in […]
• Leonardo Da Vinci and His Painting “Last Supper” The lack of obstruction in the picture and the simplicity of the room used in the image depict the drama of the event.
• Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa as a Source of Inspiration In both Mona Lisa and Instafamous, Lisa del Gioconda is at the center of the composition. However, in Mona Lisa, it is Da Vinci’s gaze that determines how she is depicted and perceived, while in […]
• Humanities. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Portfolio He developed ideas by understanding how each part of the existing machines worked and he eventually combined them to come up with new improved machines besides inventions that never existed In 1482 he entered the […]
• Analysis of a Postcard Reproduction of Leonard Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa by Duchamp Taking into account Greenberg’s model and aesthetic criteria for evaluating the works of art, Marcel Duchamp’s reproduction of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa can be defined as a clear representation of kitsch.
• Engineering Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci Among these inventions were the Machine for Storming Walls, the Automatic Igniting Device for Firearms, the Ornithopter Flying Machine, the Stretching Device for a Barrel, the Flying Machine 1488, the Flying Machine 2, the Armoured […]
• Leonardo Da Vinci – The Greatest Artist of Renaissance In the modern day, Leonardo da Vinci is considered by many to be the greatest artist and possibly even the greatest person of all time. The greatness of Leonardo is evidenced by the description of […]
• Style and Composition: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Some artists prefer to use definite colors to identify the mood and the primary meaning of a certain allegory or a set of images in the picture, while others try to compose the same images […]
• The Painting St. John the Baptist by Leonardo Da Vinci The whole construct of this painting is maintained in the nature of Renaissance and glory of antique art. The frontal element of the whole performance is concentrated on the hand of the man.
• Leonardo da Vinci and Andy Warhol It is also to misunderstand Leonardo, for the Mona Lisa’s smile is the supreme example of that complex inner life, caught and fixed in durable material, which Leonardo in all his notes on the subject […]
• “The Da Vinci Code”, “Angels and Demons” and “Deception Point” by Dan Brown All his books invariably deal with plots in the nature of conspiracies in one way or the other and in this regard, his two novels, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons are very […]
• Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci: Two Geniuses The two implications of these is that mannerisms was used to refer to the actual style of the artist, or to acknowledge that the artist had a unique approach that was beautiful in its own […]
• Louvre Museum: Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” The composition is based upon the pyramid of the woman’s body, giving the painting a great deal of stability, as well as the organic curvilinear forms of the feminine. The Louvre is so full of […]
• The Genius and Mysterious Leonardo Da Vinci The techniques that Da Vinci used in his paintings showed his careful studies in anatomy, lighting, and in the juxtaposition of elements in a painting.
• “Leonardo Da Vinci: Homo Minister ET Interpres Naturae” by Walter Pater Pater uses descriptions of Leonardo’s angel in Verrocchio’s Baptism of the Christ to illustrate the early genius of the boy in Florence who seemed to instinctively resent the superficial miniature perfection of the masters of […]
• Michelangelo and Da Vinci’s Art Appreciation It symbolizes the incident of the last supper during the last days of Jesus when he declared that one of his disciples would inform him. The artist did the masterpiece in an attempt to produce […]
• Leonardo da Vinci’s vs. Fra Filippo Lippi’s Paintings The high Renaissance is also characterized by the need to paint ideals of the cosmic world in sculptures and paintings. In the case of the early Renaissance, artists were interested in humanism.
• Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci and Its Interpretations To prove this statement it is possible to introduce the special set of pictures which can serve as the best evidence to the idea of diversity between reproductions and pictures devoted to the same issue.
• Da Vinci’s Painting Last Supper: Art of Being Ahead of Time The Last Supper, for instance, renders the anguish soaring in the air with the help of its spacious elements; compared to the thought provoking empty elements of the picture, the vapid lack of space in […]
• The Portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci Analysis Some people are of the view that the person in the portrait is too old to be Da Vinci. There is great disparity between the age that Da Vinci died of and the age of […]
• The Italian Renaissance: Leonardo Da Vinci It marked the transformation of the continent from the middle ages to the modern era. Leonardo captured the emotion and attitudes of his subject as was expected in the renaissance.
• Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti The same light is used to tell us more about the environment The extreme end of the image which represent the distance between the lady and the landscape is lighter.
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper The painting of the last supper draws the attention of any admirer to the center of the work, which is Jesus Christ’s head.
• Will The Da Vinci Code be still relevant in 2070? The reason why Brown’s novel was able to attain such popularity is that the motifs, contained in it, correspond to the unconscious anxieties, on the part of those for whom it was written the dwellers […]
• The Da Vinci Code As of today, a clear correlation can be seen between the quality of living in every particular country and the extent of citizens’ sense of religiosity the higher are the standards of living, the lesser […]
• Form and Content: Leonardo Da Vinci & Claude Monet What accounts for the earlier mentioned qualitative subtlety of this particular painting is that, while working on it, Da Vinci took a practical advantage of the artistic technique of a linear perspective, which in turn […]
• The Artwork “The Vitruvius Man” by Leonardo da Vinci This drawing is often referred to as the canon of proportion because it was used as the basis for the correlations of human proportions and the reference to geometry as it is illustrated in the […]
• The Life and Times of Artist and Scientist Leonardo da Vinci
• The Early Life, Successes and Influence of Leonardo Da Vinci
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s Impact on the World
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s Painting Techniques through Light and Shadow
• Vitruvian Man and Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci
• Influential Artists Harriet Beecher Stowe, Daniel Defoe, Leonardo Da Vinci and Pablo Picasso
• Mathematical Order in the Artwork of Leonardo Da Vinci
• Symbolism in Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’
• The Creative, Calculative, Coherent Leonardo Da Vinci
• The Achievements of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci in the Renaissance Period
• Portrait Composition: Comparing And Contrasting Leonardo Da Vinci & Rafael Sanzio
• Leonardo Da Vinci And His Famous Depiction Of Classical Learning
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s Inventions and Other Contributions to Civilization
• The Life and Legendary Contributions of Leonardo da Vinci to Science and Art
• The Symbolism of Lord’s Hands in The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci
• The Life of Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance Period for the Scientific Revolution
• The Virtual Characteristics of the Mona Lisa Painting by Leonardo da Vinci
• Leonardo da Vinci and His Influence in the Renaissance Period
• The Life, Works Impact, and Success of Leonardo da Vinci
• Painting at the Court of Milan by Leonardo Da Vinci
• The Effects of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti on the World
• The Similar Lives that Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci Lived
• Leonardo Da Vinci : The Epitome Of A Renaissance Man
• Leonardo da Vinci as the Definition of Renaissance Artist
• Leonardo Da Vinci : The Greatest Of The Renaissance Period
• The Life and Artistic Genius of the Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci
• The Characteristics Of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Dwarf
• The Use of the Iconic Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci in the Twenty-First Century
• The Restoration Issues of The Virgin Child with Saint Anne, an Unfinished Painting by Leonardo da Vinci
• The Differing Geniuses of Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton
• Leonardo Da Vinci ‘s Impact On The World During The Renaissance Era
• Understanding the Man Leonardo Da Vinci and His Scientific Observations
• The Influences of Verrocchio, and the Styles and Characteristics of Leonardo da Vinci in Annunciation
• Leonardo Da Vinci in Milan According to Giorgione Vasari
• The History of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Famous Painting, The Mona Lisa
• The Importance Of Humanism And Leonardo Da Vinci
• Learning Never Exhausts The Minds, By Leonardo Da Vinci
• Life and Works of the Michelangelo, Raphael, Titan and Leonardo da Vinci
• Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci and Their Renaissance Art
• Freeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Fight for the Standard in the Hall of the Five Hundred at Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper And Jacopo Tintoretto’s
• Why Is Leonardo Da Vinci So Famous?
• How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Die?
• Why Leonardo Da Vinci Is a Genius?
• How Old Was Leonardo Da Vinci When He Died?
• How Beloved British Artist Ralph Steadman Illustrates the Life of Leonardo Da Vinci?
• In What Was Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci?
• How Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo Are Alike and Also Different?
• How “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo Da Vinci and “Sistine Chapel” by Michelangelo Are Alike and Also Different?
• What Are Three Facts About Leonardo Da Vinci?
• Did Leonardo Da Vinci Cut Off His Ear?
• How Long Did It Take To Paint the “Mona Lisa” for Leonardo Da Vinci?
• Was Leonardo Da Vinci Left-Handed?
• How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Look?
• What Is the Main Idea of Leonardo Da Vinci?
• How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Inspire Us?
• What Is Leonardo Da Vinci Most Famous for and Why?
• What Can We Learn From Leonardo Da Vinci?
• What Makes Leonardo Da Vinci’s Art Unique?
• How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Impact the World?
• Who Did Leonardo Da Vinci Inspire?
• What Was Leonardo Da Vinci’s Most Significant Achievement?
• What Was Leonardo Da Vinci’s Greatest Invention?
• What Were Leonardo Da Vinci’s Top 7 Inventions?
• How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Change the World With Art?
• What Is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Most Famous and Most Important Work?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Life and Paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci: Essay Example

Leonardo da vinci essay introduction, a great artist and a true legend, painting of a life time – mona lisa, the last supper (1495-1499), illustrations of leonardo – vitruvian man, leonardo’s life, essay on leonardo da vinci: conclusion, works cited.

There are certain individuals in the world that have transformed the word success. They have reached the heights of it and they are known as a legend. Leonardo Da Vinci was among those individuals that are claimed to be the greats of the world. He was a sculptor, a painter, an architect.

His numerous skills have earned him the name of “renaissance master”. In this paper we will highlight the greatness of this legend and we will focus on the masterpieces he has produced. The life of Leonardo and his achievements are discussed in detail.

Leonardo was an epic individual and he was born on April 15, 1452. The place of his birth was Vinci and he was a member of the Tuscan hill town which was located near the Amoco River and was included in the territory of Florence.

His father’s name was Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci. It was quite astonishing that Leonardo doesn’t have any surname and Da Vinci means from Vinci. He was living with his father at the at the age of 5 and his father married a sixteen year old girl who was interested in Leonardo but unfortunately she died in an early age.

Leonardo started training at a very early age and he was apprenticed to one of the best artist of his times Andrea di Cione, who was also known as “Verrocchio” (Phillps, 2008). He slowly and gradually become very experienced and earned a reputation of a legend.

Pablo Picasso was known as the biggest rival of Leonardo Da Vinci in the 15 th century. Leonardo was known as the master of all the fields and arts and science. He is known as one of the most famous painters ever lived in this world. His diversity and his sense of seeing things in an artistic manner was the beauty of this man.

He was primarily known as a painter and his most famous works are “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper”. These two painting are occupy a seniority among all the other paintings of the world and these two paintings are treated as the most parodied and the most reproduced paintings of all times.

His drawing of the Vitruvius Man is also of iconic nature. Leonardo Da Vince developed a huge number of paintings but about 15 (fifteen) of his paintings survived because of his experimentation with new techniques.

The most famous painting of Leonardo is known as the “The Last Supper” and it was actually painted in Milan. The idea that was described in the painting was the last meal shared by the Jesus Christ with all his disciples before his capture and his actual death.

The moment when Jesus said “one of you will betray me.” was displayed beautifully in that monument. The story of consternation was displayed in an effective manner by Leonardo.

He lived for 67 years and experienced a career which was filled with success and fame. At certain times he was also humiliated and casted away. His life experiences affected his work and often his paintings were partially completed.

Although a hefty amount paintings were developed by Leonardo but very few of them remained because some of them weren’t completed and the others were destroyed. A total of 20 notebooks of Leonardo are found which easily depict the quality centered work of Leonardo. These note books are preserved and all of his work in scattered in different areas of the globe.

Mona Lisa of Leonardo di Vinci is the most famous and the most celebrated paintings of all times. The greatness and the mastery of this painting are depicted by its subtle details. The faint smile is the most noticed thing of this painting and this painting at the time of its creation till now is one of the masterpieces of all times.

This work of Leonardo is said to be commissioned by a gentlemen who requested Leonardo to paint the picture of his wife. That’s why the painting of Leonardo da Vinci is also known as the paining of La Giaconda. However, many scholars are not agreeing on this point and they are rejecting this theory.

Besides being the most renowned painting in the world, Mona Lisa is considered to be one of the widely reproduced paintings of all the times. There are many posters, paintings and reproduction available in different hues and different sizes. Many great artists like Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Botero reproduced the work of Mona Lisa in the form of oil paintings, self portraits etc (Heaton, 2001).

The use of this epic painting doesn’t end there and Mona Lisa is used in items like jewelry, clothing and even in the modern day advertising Mona Lisa is used. It is also used as the sign of mockery that Mona Lisa having marijuana, Mona Lisa having braces etc.

Thus, the beauty of this painting will always remain and it can easily be predicted that the epical paintings of Leonardo di Vinci will be reproduced.

The last Super is considered to be one of the masterpieces of Leonardo’s work and historians suggest that it took 3 years of dedicated work of Leonardo to produce this epic painting. About, 500 years are passed yet this painting remains the most studied painting of all times.

The concept of the painting is quite clear and Leonardo beautifies it with his elegant brush work. Leonardo was asked to paint the supper of Christ with his disciples. Leonardo was immensely talented and therefore he chooses to paint the moment when the Christ declared the name of traitor.

The 12 disciples of Leonardo were very cleverly divided into three groups and they were surrounded by Christ. Christ arms were open and they were divided and he was depicting a triangular shape. This triangular shape was expressing the “Divine Trinity” which was quite beautifully displayed by Leonardo. Geometric shapes are used quite effectively in this painting in order to create groups.

Judas was included in the rest of the disciples and in most of the paintings of other artists Judas was separated from the group. This inclusion of Judas in the group makes the painting attractive and people called it a masterpiece because of this. The crystal clear display of the painting and portraying the notion of disciples was quite extraordinary.

This painting of Da Vinci is found in most of the holy institutions and homes around the world. Similarly, the reproduction of these paintings is an effective way to bring Leonardo at home. Although, many paintings of Leonardo are long lasting and they are timeless too, but this painting is chipping way and although people are making efforts to save this real painting and restorations have taken place to conserve this painting.

Besides other paintings and sculptors, Vitruvian Man is considered as the best illustration of Leonardo Di Vinci. He used both the text and the image to present his ideas. This illustration of this great artist praises the divine by properly creating the proportions and measurements of the human body. Different artists prior to Di Vinci have tried a lot to explain this theory but most of them have failed to express the right ideas of Vitruvian Man.

This illustration is a beautiful combination of pen ink drawing of a male whose figure is outstretched and it’s touching the circumference of the circle and the edges of the square. The naval of this individual falls exactly in the centre of the circle. The text surrounds the entire figure and the figure is static in nature but the dynamism of Da Vinci’s art portrays it as a living being.

This illustration depicts the clearness of words and image. The core idea of this illustration is to gather the ideas of architecture, art, anatomy in a single image. The importance of this illustration lies in its clear reflection of ideas.

Leonardo Di Vinci in his early times was asked by his father to paint a round shield. He gathered his thoughts and started to paint a really creepy head. He brought all sorts of lizards, bats etc and started to paint a really disgusting monster that was exhaling poisoned gases. After seeing the painting his father was so astonished that he predicted that his son would definitely be an artist.

He was himself an example of his quote which was “art is never finished, only abandoned (Stanley, 2000).”He was considered to be a castle of knowledge and his realistic attitude was quite evident in every walks of life. He moved from one topic to another and keeps on changing his interests.

Usually when he studied one subject for a long time a questions arises in his mind that he might change his interest. That’s the main reason why he completed only six pieces in just 17 years. He completed his 6 pieces when he was in Milan his masterpieces at that include “The Last Supper” and “The Virgin on the Rocks”. Many projects and paintings were not completed which also includes “Big Horse”.

However, he posses the tendency of not spending the time idle and when he wasn’t painting, sculpturing or involved in any other form of art he was usually studying. His major interests were studying the fields of science which includes anatomy, zoology etc. He has the tendency to spend hours in unlocking year old theories and framing new concepts from his mind.

When Leonardo was in Milan he was constantly occupied by the Duke of that time. He was allotted the work to paint the complete design the festivals of the court. The Duke offered Leonardo to show his talents and he asked Leonardo to design weapons, machinery and buildings. Leonardo was deeply involved in religious affairs and he also designed a number of churches.

All of his ideas were ahead of his time and as an engineer he used to conceptualize a helicopter, a calculator and certain other modern day inventions. Some of his engineered designs can be used at that time and some were constructed too.

But some of his inventions entered the manufacturing arena after a certain time but reports suggest that these inventions and their concept were unfortunately not acknowledged. Besides being a top notch painter he excelled in the field of science and certain ideas of Leonardo Di Vinci revolutionized the fields of optics, hydrodynamics, and anatomy.

At that time those who write with left hands were disgraced and the society didn’t like left handed people. Left hander writers were forced to write with their right hand. At that time Leonardo explained this phenomenon and said that this “difference” is a sign of genius and this is a distinctive feature in them. He was amongst the initiators of reverse writing and his writings can easily be deciphered through the mirror.

Leonardo was informed about the death of his father on July 9, 1504 but due to the evil nature of his step fathers he was not given the share of inheritance. Shortly, after the death of his father he was given the notice about the death of his uncle. He fought with his brothers and then ran with the money and some land that was inherited from his uncle.

He started to work n Rome, with his newly inherited money and he opened a workshop and he was involved in working for the projects of pope. He left France in the year 1516. Leonardo was considered to be the best painter when he was in France. In France Leonardo was working for Francis I and his job was near royal chateau an Amboise.

When Leonardo di Vinci left France he was suffering from paralysis and this affected his right hand. However, he was still working and fulfilling his passion. He continued his paintings and started to teach people who were interested in paintings and arts. Besides, arts and paintings he also started teaching anatomical studies and engineering.

Thus in a nutshell we can conclude that Leonardo Di Vinci was one of the most influential individuals from the field of arts and architecture. He was a true legend and his paintings truly display the element of geniuses in Leonardo. He was undoubtedly one of the most famous personalities in the Italian Renaissance.

He left his marks on all the fields which include arts, architecture, science, anatomy, anatomical studies. His reputation in entire life time was immense and influenced many contemporary artists of that time. He not only influenced great painters of Florentine like Raphael but also impressed the painters of Milan and Northern Italy. His painting of Mona Lisa is considered to be the best among all and it’s the most reproduced paintings of all times.

Heaton, M. (2001). Leonardo da Vinci and His Works. Adamant Media Corporation.

Phillps, J. (2008). World History Biographies: Leonardo da Vinci: The Genius Who Defined the Renaissance. National Geographic Children’s Books.

Stanley, D. (2000). Leonardo da Vinci. HarperCollins.

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Leonardo Da Vinci’s Childhood

This essay about Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood offers insight into the early life of the Renaissance genius, born in Vinci, Italy, in 1452. Highlighting his origins as the illegitimate son of a peasant woman and a notary, it illustrates how Leonardo’s unique social position and his upbringing in the Tuscan countryside influenced his perspective and intellectual curiosity. Apprenticed to Andrea del Verrocchio at 14, Leonardo was exposed to a vibrant cultural and intellectual environment in Florence, where his talents in art and his insatiable quest for knowledge flourished. The essay emphasizes that Leonardo’s early experiences of observation and self-directed learning laid the foundation for his later achievements in art and science, showcasing the importance of curiosity and the pursuit of understanding, regardless of one’s origins. It presents Leonardo’s childhood as a testament to the potential of the human spirit to overcome environmental limitations.

How it works

Leonardo da Vinci, a name that resonates with genius, innovation, and mystery, had beginnings as enigmatic and profound as the works he left behind. Born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, his early years were unlike any other during the Renaissance period, shaping the polymath he was to become. This reflection on Leonardo’s formative years offers a glimpse into the early experiences of a mind that would forever alter the course of art and science.

Leonardo was born out of wedlock to Caterina, a peasant woman, and Ser Piero da Vinci, a notary.

This unconventional start in life placed him in a unique position within the social strata of the time, neither fully accepted by the aristocracy nor entirely part of the peasantry. This in-between state might have contributed to Leonardo’s ability to observe the world from the periphery, seeing beyond the conventional wisdom of his time. His early years in the idyllic Tuscan countryside, surrounded by nature, provided a rich canvas for his inquisitive mind. This connection to nature would later manifest in his detailed studies of plants, animals, and the human body.

Despite the limitations his illegitimate birth imposed on formal education opportunities, Leonardo’s artistic talents were evident from an early age. His father, recognizing his son’s potential, apprenticed him at the age of 14 to Andrea del Verrocchio, one of the most celebrated artists of Florence. This apprenticeship was a pivotal moment for Leonardo, providing him not only with technical skills in painting, sculpture, and metalwork but also immersing him in an environment where intellectual curiosity was nurtured. Here, among the artists and scholars of Florence, Leonardo’s talents flourished, fueled by the vibrant cultural and intellectual revival that defined the Renaissance.

Leonardo’s childhood and adolescence were marked by a relentless pursuit of knowledge. Though he received no formal education in the classical sense, Leonardo was voracious in his self-directed studies. He learned to read, write, and calculate, but his most profound learnings came from observing the world around him. His notebooks, filled with sketches of landscapes, anatomical studies, and mechanical designs, are testament to a mind that sought to understand the complexities of the world in all its forms. These early habits of observation and documentation laid the groundwork for his later works, which seamlessly blended art and science.

Reflecting on Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood, one cannot help but see the early signs of his future legacy. His upbringing, marked by a blend of isolation and exposure to a diverse range of ideas and disciplines, nurtured a unique way of thinking. Leonardo’s early experiences taught him to look closely at the world, to see beyond the surface, and to question the status quo. It was these qualities that enabled him to imagine the unimaginable and bring to life ideas far ahead of his time.

In Leonardo’s story, we find not just the making of a genius but a reminder of the importance of curiosity, of embracing one’s background, however unconventional, and of the transformative power of education, formal or otherwise. His early years remind us that the seeds of greatness lie not in the circumstances of one’s birth but in the passion for learning and the relentless pursuit of understanding. Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood, therefore, is not just a chapter in the history of a remarkable individual but a lesson in the potential of the human spirit to transcend the limitations of its environment.

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Why Leonardo da Vinci’s brilliance endures, 500 years after his death

His creativity and foresight in science, engineering, and the arts continue to surprise and amaze today.

In an instant, centuries collide—a moment unlike anything I have ever experienced. I have come to Windsor Castle to see the queen’s collection of Leonardo da Vinci drawings.

Outside the towering stone walls, tourists snap selfies and rummage through souvenir tea towels. Inside, past an arched gateway bedecked by gargoyles, Leonardo ushers me back to the Renaissance.

I can almost hear whispers of the artist as I gaze at a leather album bound in the late 1500s in the castle’s stately print room. Gold embellishments adorn the volume’s two-and-a-half-inch spine. The cover, stained and worn by the imperceptible fingerprints of generations past, reads: Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci Restaurati da Pompeo Leoni (drawings by Leonardo da Vinci conserved by Pompeo Leoni).

No one knows precisely how this album made its way to England, but its provenance is unambiguous: Leoni, an Italian sculptor, acquired Leonardo’s drawings from the son of the artist’s devoted pupil Francesco Melzi and mounted them into at least two volumes. By 1690, the Leoni binding, as it’s known, had landed in the Royal Collection, teeming with 234 folio sheets and the peregrinations of Leonardo’s inquisitive mind.

As Martin Clayton, head of prints and drawings for the Royal Collection Trust, lays out a selection of the pages—now separated into 60 boxes—the scope of Leonardo’s subject matter soars into view: botany, geology, hydraulics, architecture, military engineering, costume design, geometry, cartography, optics, anatomy. He sketched to make sense of unknowns, probing the enigmas of the universe with ink, chalk, and silverpoint.

The drawings are breathtaking in their lucidity. The most diminutive, a fragment smaller than a thumb, shows a female torso evoked in just a few muted strokes. The most iconic, rendered tenderly in red chalk and curved hatch marks, depicts a fetus curled up in the womb.

Everything is put to the test with visual precision: a study of drapery for the Madonna; mortars bombarding a fortress; the umbra and penumbra of shadow; a skull, a heart, a foot, and the sweep of the human face—from the radiance of Leda to the misshapen features of an elderly man.

For Hungry Minds

“What you get most out of Leonardo’s drawings in some of his sheets is this completely unfettered way of leaping between subject matter,” Clayton says. “There’s something tremendously exciting about seeing a mind working in this incredibly broad way.”

An inherently curious note-taker and truth-seeker, Leonardo pursued knowledge voraciously. His to-do lists included jottings to “construct glasses to see the moon larger” and “describe the cause of laughter” as he sought answers to a cascade of questions: What’s the distance from the eyebrow to the junction of the lip and the chin? Why are stars visible by night and not by day? How do the branches of a tree compare with the thickness of its trunk? What separates water from air? Where is the soul? What are sneezing, yawning, hunger, thirst, and lust?

Although his paintings are far better known, Leonardo’s wealth of manuscripts and drawings lay bare the inner workings of his genius. His fertile mind—the range of hypotheses he tested, the intellectual, scientific, and philosophical journeys he launched—is evoked on every one of the 7,000 sheets preserved at Windsor, in libraries in Paris, London, Madrid, Turin, and Milan, and in the private collection of Bill Gates.

As the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death is commemorated this year, the artist’s notebooks are experiencing a renaissance of their own. Museums are mounting exhibitions of his sketches, and scholars are publishing new analyses, delving ever deeper into the full spectrum of his creations.

Most remarkably, pages from Leonardo’s notebooks are finding their way into the hands of experts in the very fields Leonardo studied, from medicine and mechanical engineering to music. Reaching back centuries, they’re reaping fresh insights, probing Leonardo’s work to inform their own. Even as science, medicine, and technology have pushed past the boundaries of what we can do and how we can do it, Leonardo’s notebooks reveal how much we still have to learn.

In the words of art historian and Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp: “Not one of his predecessors or contemporaries produced anything comparable in range, speculative brilliance, and visual intensity. And we know of nothing really comparable over succeeding centuries.”

Leonardo was born to unwed parents on April 15, 1452, near Vinci, a hill town in the rural Tuscan landscape between Florence and Pisa. Many believe his mother was Caterina di Meo Lippi, a local peasant. His father, Ser Piero da Vinci, held elevated status as a notary—a professional path that Leonardo would have been expected to follow had he not been born out of wedlock.

The town of Vinci proffered an inspiring backdrop for a boy with a capacious vision. From a terrace atop the village’s 12th-century castle, the Tuscan landscape reveals itself today as it would have in Leonardo’s youth: olive groves, dusky hills, and a mountain range off Italy’s west coast.

In Vinci, this vista is known as orizzonti geniali, or “genius horizons,” says Stefania Marvogli of the Museo Leonardiano—an allusion to Leonardo and the geography that saturated his childhood. A patchwork of divergent terrains coming together to form a coherent whole, it reflects the connections Leonardo sought in nature: patterns that unify the cosmos.

Little is known about Leonardo’s childhood. Records suggest that he lived with his grandparents in Vinci, where he received a rudimentary education. Sometime during Leonardo’s adolescence, his father likely recognized his artistic abilities and showed his drawings to a client, the artist Andrea del Verrocchio, who agreed to take Leonardo on as an apprentice in his Florence workshop.

From the beginning, Leonardo upstaged his peers and soon his mentor, with whom he collaborated on religious paintings and on the copper ball that sits atop Brunelleschi’s dome. Leonardo’s earliest known independent work, a pen-and-ink landscape of the Arno Valley, dates to 1473, when he was 21. Within several years, he’d received his first commissions: an altarpiece for a chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria and the painting “The Adoration of the Magi” for a group of Augustinian monks.

Leonardo left few personal reminiscences of his own, but we have glimmers of the man. He was almost certainly gay—his lifelong companions were male, and he was twice accused of sodomy, though charges were dropped in both cases. An animal lover, he bought caged birds at market and set them free. Left-handed and handsome, he wore rose-colored tunics and was admired for his singing voice, generosity of spirit, and social finesse. He would have been a very entertaining dinner guest, says Gary Radke, emeritus professor of art history at Syracuse University. “He wasn’t one of these inscrutable, pondering, grousing geniuses.”

Throughout his 46-year career, spent largely in Florence and Milan, Leonardo willed himself to knowledge, touched by an ever wandering eye and the determination to follow it. He studied Latin, collected poetry, and read Euclid and Archimedes. Where others embraced the perceptible, he scrutinized minutiae—geometric angles, the dilation of the pupil—bounding from one discipline to the next while seeking links between them. He sketched flowers and flying machines, designed war machines for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza, crafted theatrical ornaments out of peacock feathers, and engineered a plan to divert the Arno between Florence and Pisa.

Leonardo documented everything in magnificent detail on the backs and corners of paper with tidy notes written in mirror script, from right to left. Some of these pages exist as loose sheets today; others have been bound into the volumes now known as notebooks or codices. There’s no clear order, even on a single page, and similar themes often appear on different sheets completed years apart. 
All of this makes it hard even for scholars to keep up with the brisk tempo of his mind, Paolo Galluzzi tells me as he thumbs through reproductions of Leonardo’s notebooks with a sense of wonder. Every time he made an observation, a question arose in his mind, which invariably led to another, says Galluzzi, director of Florence’s Museo Galileo. “He went sideways.”

Learn more here about what made Leonardo's painting style unique.

It’s difficult to grasp Leonardo’s unparalleled ability to push past the work of his forebears. He did this by cross-examining his subjects and overturning his own verdicts. In the Codex Leicester, Leonardo investigates how water makes its way to mountaintops, ultimately rejecting his initial conviction that heat draws it upward. Instead, he realizes, water circulates through evaporation, clouds, and rain. “More important than discovering how mountain streams work was discovering how you would discover it,” says biographer Walter Isaacson. “He helps invent the scientific method.”

For Leonardo, the precepts of science—observation, hypothesis, and experiment—were critical to art. He moved fluidly between the two realms, grasping lessons from one to inform the other, says Francesca Fiorani, associate dean for the arts and humanities at the University of Virginia. His greatest gift was his ability to make knowledge visible, she says. “That’s where his power is.”

Leonardo’s drawings

Thousands of sketches, observations, and queries (written in a distinctive backward script) showcase Leonardo’s unceasing quest for knowledge. A vast number of the original pages have been lost. Those that remain, many compiled in notebooks, reveal a fluid interplay between his meticulous scientific studies and his monumental art.

Nowhere is this more vivid than in Leonardo’s study of anatomy. He dissected human cadavers, teasing out underlying musculature in three dimensions to see for himself how a leg bends or an arm cradles. Leonardo’s contemporaries, including rival Michelangelo, studied muscles and bones to improve their artistic representation of the human body. “But Leonardo went beyond this,” says science historian Domenico Laurenza, based in Rome. “His approach to anatomy was that of a real anatomist.”

The scientific data Leonardo collected in his notebooks underlie every stroke of his paintbrush. His anatomical studies drilled down on the biology of facial expressions. Which nerve causes “frowning the brows” or “pouting with the lips, of smiling, of astonishment”? he queried in his notes. His analysis of light and shadow allowed him to illuminate contours with unmatched subtlety. He did away with traditional outlining, instead softening the edges of figures and objects in a technique known as sfumato. Optics and geometry led to a sophisticated sense of perspective, exemplified in “The Last Supper.” Acute observations allowed him to depict emotional depth in the people he painted, who appear sentient rather than stiff.

Leonardo’s inventiveness, however, came at a price. He irked his patrons with incessant delays, and many of his works went unfinished, including “The Adoration of the Magi.” Scholars have attributed this to his exuberance for new subjects and his perfectionism. It was also because the challenge of doing outweighed the expectation of getting it done. For Leonardo, it’s all about process, says Carmen Bambach, curator of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “It’s not really about the endgame.”

Indeed the more knowledge Leonardo acquired through the studies in his notebooks, the more difficult it became to see a finish line in his art. “As he kept painting,” Bambach explains, “he understood that you could create such infinitesimal gradations of tone and transition from the highest, most intense highlight to the deepest shadow.” X-ray analyses of Leonardo’s work reveal copious revisions, known as pentimenti. Infinity became a very real concept that took on practical implications: There was always more to learn. “In many ways, intellectually, this is an unending process,” she says.

This may help explain why Leonardo never published his notebooks. He intended to complete treatises on many subjects, including geology and anatomy. Instead his sketches and manuscripts were left to his faithful companion Melzi to sort through. In the decades after Leonardo’s death, two-thirds to three-quarters of his original pages were likely pilfered or lost. It was not until the late 18th century that most of the surviving pages began to be published—more than 200 years after he died. As a result, Laurenza says, “we know very little about Leonardo’s legacy as a scientist.”

Leonardo’s inquiries, postulations, and discoveries were entrusted to those who followed. Centuries later we’re still catching up with him.

The legacy of Leonardo’s notebooks is palpable today. J. Calvin Coffey, foundation chair of surgery at the University of Limerick’s Graduate Entry Medical School in Ireland, was conducting research a number of years ago when he made an astounding discovery: An observation by Leonardo, circa 1508, confirmed a theory he was trying to validate. Coffey studies the mesentery, a fan-shaped structure that connects the small and large intestines to the back wall of the abdomen. Since the publication of Gray’s Anatomy in 1858 (then called Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical), students have been taught that the mesentery is composed of several separate structures. But while performing an increasing number of colorectal surgeries, Coffey had begun to suspect that the mesentery was one continuous organ.

As he and his colleagues homed in on the structure’s anatomy to prove this hypothesis, Coffey found a drawing by Leonardo depicting the mesentery as an uninterrupted structure. Coffey remembers the moment distinctly. Initially, he glanced at it and turned away. Then he looked again.

“I was absolutely astonished at what I saw,” he says. “It correlated exactly with what we were seeing. It’s just an absolute masterpiece.”

In one overview of his team’s findings, published in 2015, Coffey included Leonardo’s drawing and credited him in the text: “We now know that da Vinci’s interpretation was correct.” Coffey shows a slide of Leonardo’s sketch in his scientific presentations, marveling at his ability to dissect the organ in its entirety, a feat complicated by the complex layering of the structure. “He was so honest in his interpretation of nature and biology,” Coffey says. “Even today, you will have surgeons who will not be able to replicate what he did.”

Leonardo’s visual acuity was driven by his abiding faith in nature’s design, whether a tree root or a hippopotamus. Human ingenuity, he wrote, “will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous.” Every artery, every tissue, every organ existed for a purpose—a revelation that changed the course of Francis Charles Wells’s career.

Wells, senior cardiac surgeon at Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, happened upon an exhibition of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Piccadilly neighborhood of London in 1977. The entry fee was one British pound; the payoff, immeasurable. “It just blew me away,” he says.

Wells was stunned by the scope of the artist’s investigations. After dissecting the body of a 100-year-old man, Leonardo presented the first description of atherosclerosis in medical history. “This coat on the vessels acts in man as it does in oranges,” he wrote, “in which as the peel thickens so the pulp diminishes the older they become.”

His research on heart valves, Wells’s specialty, was just as prescient. To understand how they work, Leonardo designed a glass model of the aortic valve filled with water and grass seeds, allowing him to conceptualize patterns of blood flow and how the valves open and close, details of which were finally confirmed in the 1960s.

More than anything, Leonardo’s sketches opened Wells’s eyes to the exquisite logic of the heart’s structure and mechanics—not just what the organ looks like but also why it evolved the way it has. One autumn morning Wells stands over a patient’s open chest in his Papworth operating theater and motions me closer.

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“See it? It’s astonishing,” he says, pointing to the mitral valve. “Think of the complexity that the body has to go through to make this valve.” Wells’s surgical approach is guided by the maxim he learned from Leonardo: Each part of the valve’s complex makeup—its leaflets, cords, and papillary muscles—is meant to be there, designed to sustain the forces thrust upon it.

An eye for engineering

This has fundamentally shaped the way Wells fixes ailing valves. “You see that little thing in my forceps? That’s the ruptured cord,” he says. “That’s the source of the problem.” Wells could opt to remove the entire valve and replace it with an artificial model, an approach favored by many surgeons.

Instead I watch as he painstakingly replaces every cord with Gore-Tex sutures, preserving as much of the original structure as he can. Leonardo could not predict a surgical approach, but he taught Wells to look carefully, to stop and think, and to fully embrace the valve’s inherent and masterful ability to do its job, a capability Wells seeks to retain in every cardiac operation he performs. “That was the paradigm shift,” says Wells, who collected his insights in a 256-page book, The Heart of Leonardo.

A continent away, Leonardo’s Codex on the Flight of Birds has permeated the Stanford University Bio-Inspired Research and Design (BIRD) lab of David Lentink, a biologist and mechanical engineer. When I visit, Lentink hands me a piece of paper with queries explored by Leonardo that he and his 10 graduate students are still trying to answer: How does wing motion in air result in thrust? How do birds’ muscles control the flapping of their wings? How do birds glide? “All his questions are still relevant,” Lentink says.

Lentink and his team have access to high-tech tools that even Leonardo couldn’t have dreamed up. Sensors and high-speed photography allow them to measure the amount of lift that birds generate in flight. A nearly six-foot-long test section of a wind tunnel, which Lentink custom designed, simulates smooth air as well as turbulence, providing clues about how birds’ wings change shape during vastly different wind conditions.

One of the lab’s standout projects is a mechanical bird called PigeonBot, which has feathered wings crafted by Laura Matloff and a radio control system run by fellow grad student Eric Chang. Matloff used an x-ray microscope, capable of measuring one-millionth of a meter, to determine the characteristics of the feather surfaces and interactions between adjacent feathers. The skeleton and pin joints, which attach the feathers, were made on a 3D printer. PigeonBot is equipped with an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a barometer, an airspeed sensor, a GPS, compasses, and radio transceivers that transmit flight information to a laptop.

I meet the pair one cloudy morning in the hilly brush near Stanford for a test flight. As Chang says, “Ready!” Matloff thrusts the robot into the air; we watch it fly at about 10 meters a second until Chang brings it in for a landing. PigeonBot isn’t just for show. Reverse engineering a bird allows scientists to study flight mechanics in a step-by-step process and better understand the function of each body part—something Leonardo couldn’t do. Modern engineering may one day reward Leonardo’s ardent curiosity with answers to the mysteries he pursued. “I think we’ll get there,” says Lentink.

Just as Leonardo’s notebooks brim with bursts of clarity, they also include more tentative musings that flicker with possibility. Drawings contained in the Codex Atlanticus and several smaller notebooks prompted Polish pianist Sławomir Zubrzycki to investigate. He hungered to hear Leonardo’s music.

Among his many pursuits, Leonardo improvised melodies on the lira da braccio, a Renaissance-era stringed instrument, and studied the intricacies of acoustics and musical design in his notebooks. In 2009 Zubrzycki found himself transfixed by sketches for a viola organista, a keyboard instrument with bowed strings. Captivated by the possibility of one instrument fusing two musical families, Zubrzycki set out to build it.

None of Leonardo’s drawings offer a detailed blueprint. For four years Zubrzycki spent five hours a day researching and formulating his design. He tested wood samples, resolved that he needed 61 keys, and puzzled out how to build four circular bows covered in horsehair that could rub against strings to create music. As he brought the instrument to life, Zubrzycki drew on the same vital force that drove Leonardo: his imagination.

The result is spectacular. Painted in vivid blue with a red interior, Zubrzycki’s gracefully crafted viola organista combines the polyphonic capacity of a keyboard—allowing it to play multiple melodies at once—with the sensitivity and emotive range of strings. In music, as in everything else, Leonardo was never satisfied with the norm.

“He was interested in looking for the next possibility,” Zubrzycki says.

One summer evening, dressed in a formal waistcoat and polished black shoes, he sits down to play a concert of Renaissance music at Kalmar Castle on the southern coast of Sweden. Although his viola organista looks like a baby grand piano, it performs like a full-bodied string ensemble. Resounding and joyful, the rich complexity of its sound evokes the luminescence of Leonardo’s paintings—a musical sfumato with soft edges and lingering tones.

Leonardo ranked music as second only to painting, higher even than sculpture, describing it as “figurazione delle cose invisibili,” the shaping of the invisible. For the hundred-plus people in Zubrzycki’s audience, such an exalted moment occurred in a castle as the sun began to set over the Baltic Sea, when a few scribbles in Leonardo’s notebooks morphed into music.

Ute Goedecke and Per Mattsson, Swedish Renaissance musicians, were deeply impressed and moved by Zubrzycki’s performance. Leonardo “would have loved to see that somebody took his idea to the next stage,” says Goedecke, “and made something real out of it.”

Leonardo’s final foray, in the fall of 1516, took him to Amboise, France, where King Francis I, an enthusiastic admirer, offered him a stipend and the freedom to create whatever he wished. At 64, Leonardo moved into a modest château, now known as Clos Lucé, with his many drawings and the three paintings he never parted with—“Saint John the Baptist,” “The Virgin and Child With Saint Anne,” and the “Mona Lisa.”

From his bedroom window, Leonardo could see the king’s castle. Outside, the colors and light of the Loire Valley echoed the vistas of his childhood. During his years at Clos Lucé, Leonardo designed hydraulics for the kingdom, sketched plans for a new royal residence, and staged joyful celebrations for the king. Amid it all, he enjoyed simple pleasures: He ate soup.

Before he died on May 2, 1519, at the age of 67, Leonardo completed a series of deluge drawings, depicting cataclysmic billows of wind and water. Rampaging vortices, executed mostly in black chalk, they surge with urgency and tumult. In the end Leonardo turned his eye, as always, to nature.

Today Clos Lucé is a living monument to Leonardo, set in a sprawling park filled with sage and other plants Leonardo sketched. Children play on a parabolic swing bridge and a tortoiseshell-like armored tank, derived from Leonardo’s notebooks. Walking the grounds one sunlit day, François Saint Bris, Clos Lucé’s director, says he hopes the place where Leonardo spent his final years will inspire next generations.

It’s a goal many share. New research is providing fodder for future scholars. Laurenza and Kemp have collaborated on a fresh analysis of the Codex Leicester, which reveals that it may have influenced the birth of modern geology. And after more than two decades of meticulous research about Leonardo’s life and work, the Met’s Bambach is publishing a four-volume opus, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered.

Leonardo’s notebooks are starting to make their way to the greater public too. Galluzzi is spearheading an elegant searchable database of the Codex Atlanticus, the largest notebook. Isaacson imagines a day when all of them will be fully translated and digitized by a single international consortium. “Then we will see Leonardo in all of his glory,” he says.

Just as Leonardo saw no end to his pursuit of knowledge, his notebooks are poised for rediscovery and posterity.

“I keep thinking I’ve finished with Leonardo,” says Kemp, who has studied and written about him for five decades. “He keeps coming back.”

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In His Own Words: Leonardo da Vinci 500 Years On

500 years to the day after the passing of Leonardo da Vinci, we dive into his sketchbooks and notebooks for wit, wisdom, and thoughts on art

May 02, 2019

May 2nd 2019 marked 500 years since the death of Leonardo da Vinci , perhaps the greatest artistic and scientific mind the world ever knew. We dive into Leonardo’s sketchbooks to see how their ideas have remained relevant for a half-millenium, and what he can teach us about the value of art.

Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomical Man (1500) 

“In erudition and letters he would have distinguished himself, if he had not been variable and unstable,” Giorgio Vasari, that diligent and fanciful chronicler of Renaissance artists, said of Leonardo da Vinci. The writings and sketches of Leonardo are a treasury of wit, wisdom, design, and insight, showing the multi-directional brilliance and earnest endeavour of perhaps history’s greatest genius.

Leonardo da Vinci, Flower Study (15th century) 

500 years after his death, Leonardo remains a relevant and beloved figure, and he’s cherished as a man of a peculiarly modern temperament. In so many ways, the myth of Leonardo the man has begun to align itself with contemporary attitudes to everything from religion to politics to animal rights. He was apparently an openly homosexual man, was an atheist to the point of devotion, and is supposed by some to have been a committed vegetarian (he is sometimes credited with the phrase, “The day will come that will be judged crime to kill an animal as a time to kill a man”).

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Last Supper (1495 and 1497) 

Re-casting Leonardo as a sort of proto-Millennial half a millennium after his death may smack of pop revisionism, but there are plenty of substantial ways in which his thought and his work remains as relevant now as it was at the end of the 15th century. Art in its modern conception, the positions it occupies in society, and the things we hope for it to achieve, would be unrecognizable without his influence.

Leonardo da Vinci, Superficial Anatomy of the Shoulder and Neck (1510) 

He believed that art was nothing less than the very expression of the human soul and spirit, and yet it was also a science, a question of observation and technique. He knew that artistic observation can teach us about our bodies and also about our souls, that the tension of line and form and muscle and universe was all one interconnected thing. His atheism, in his writings, translates to a sort of pantheism, a belief in the value, beauty, and connectivity of the entire material universe. He believed, above all, in balance and unity - what he referred to as “proportion” - and it was his work in the visual arts (and writing about the visual arts) which brought this belief its highest expression.

Leonardo da Vinci, Profile of Man and Study of Two Riders (1490 and 1504) 

In his notebooks, Leonardo wrote from right to left in a coded mirror-script. Even when translated and made legible, the texts retain an air of a deep and discovered truth. His thoughts rove widely, but are always cogent and meticulous. Often, passages teaching the technical rubric of painting will flourish into profound philosophical declarations about the physical and mental world, in a style that is as poetic as it is pointed. Here, from his own writings, are some of his most lasting, potent, and beautiful words on the arts.

“The sense waits on the soul, and not the soul on the sense.”

“painting extends over all the ten functions of the eye; that is, darkness, light, body, colour, shape, location, remoteness, nearness, motion, and rest. my little work will be woven together of these functions, reminding the painter according to what rules and in what fashion he should imitate with his art all these things, the work of nature and ornament of the world.”, “the air is full of an infinite number of images of the things which are distributed through it, and all of these are represented in all, all in one, and all in each.”, “from painting which serves the eye, the noblest sense, arises harmony of proportions; just as many different voices joined together and singing simultaneously produce a harmonious proportion which gives such satisfaction to the sense of hearing that listeners remain spellbound with admiration as if half alive.”, “every part of the whole must be in proportion to the whole… i would have the same thing understood as applying to all animals and plants.”, “the cause which moves the water through its springs against the natural course of its gravity is like that which moves the humours in all the shapes of animated bodies.”, “the lover is moved by the thing loved, as the sense is by that which it perceives, and it unites with it and they become one and the same thing. the work is the first thing born of the union; if the thing that is loved be base, the lover becomes base. the artist’s course of study 169 when the thing taken into union is in harmony with that which receives it, there follow delight, pleasure, and satisfaction. when the lover is united to the beloved it finds rest there; when the burden is laid down there it finds rest. . .”, “proportion is not only found in numbers and measurements but also in sounds, weights, times, spaces, and in whatsoever power there may be.”, “just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air; so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself.”, “a good painter has two chief objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul.”.

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Leonardo da Vinci

100 Words Essay On Leonardo Da Vinci In English

The full name of Leonardo da Vinci was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. A man well-known and studied worldwide. He was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. He enjoyed spending his time outdoors and was a very observant person. This can be seen in his journals. He liked to dissect corpses.

Something about his writing that stood apart was the fact that Leonardo da Vinci wrote in reverse and this was seen in his 6000 pages of journals that were left behind after his death. The world’s most famous artwork by Leonardo da Vinci is the painting Mona Lisa which draws thousands of visitors back then and to date.

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The J. Paul Getty Museum

Leonardo da Vinci

Figurative art never looked so rebellious. Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Art Critic

To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death (on May 2, 1519 in Amboise, France), this display presents the Museum’s two drawings by the artist. Incorporating studies for paintings, sculpture, machinery, and human physiognomy, along with da Vinci’s characteristic “mirror-writing,” the two sheets present a fascinating glimpse into the mind of this celebrated Renaissance polymath.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Writers — Leonardo Da Vinci

Essays on Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance and is widely regarded as one of the greatest artists and thinkers of all time. Writing an essay on Leonardo Da Vinci is important as it allows us to delve deeper into his life, work, and legacy, and to gain a better understanding of his impact on art, science, and society.

When writing an essay on Leonardo Da Vinci, it is important to consider the following tips:

• Research extensively: Leonardo Da Vinci had a multifaceted career, excelling in various fields such as painting, sculpture, engineering, anatomy, and architecture. It is important to conduct thorough research to gather comprehensive information about his life and work.
• Organize your thoughts: Before starting to write, make sure to organize your thoughts and create an outline for your essay. This will help you structure your essay and ensure that you cover all the important aspects of Leonardo Da Vinci's life and contributions.
• Focus on key accomplishments: Leonardo Da Vinci's contributions to art and science are vast, but it is important to focus on his key accomplishments and their impact. Whether it's his iconic paintings like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, or his groundbreaking scientific observations and inventions, make sure to highlight the most significant aspects of his work.
• Provide critical analysis: In addition to presenting factual information, it is important to provide critical analysis of Leonardo Da Vinci's work. Discuss the significance of his art and scientific discoveries, and explore how they have influenced subsequent generations and continue to inspire people today.
• Conclude with a reflection: Finally, conclude your essay with a reflection on Leonardo Da Vinci's enduring legacy and the lessons we can learn from his life and work. Consider the relevance of his ideas and innovations in the modern world and their lasting impact on art, science, and human creativity.

Best Leonardo Da Vinci Essay Topics

• The Influence of Leonardo Da Vinci's Inventions on Modern Technology
• The Mona Lisa: Unraveling the Mystery Behind the Painting
• Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus: Decoding his Manuscripts
• The Last Supper: A Masterpiece of Perspective and Composition
• Leonardo Da Vinci's Flying Machines: Ahead of his Time
• The Vitruvian Man: Exploring the Ideal Human Proportions
• The Legacy of Leonardo Da Vinci's Scientific Discoveries
• The Artistic Techniques of Leonardo Da Vinci: A Study in Mastery
• Leonardo Da Vinci's Anatomical Studies: Pioneering the Science of Human Anatomy
• The Role of Mathematics in Leonardo Da Vinci's Art and Designs
• The Lost Works of Leonardo Da Vinci: Uncovering Hidden Treasures
• The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci: A Multifaceted Renaissance Man
• The Artistic Rivalry Between Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo
• Leonardo Da Vinci's Engineering Marvels: Designing the Unthinkable
• The Mona Lisa: A Symbol of Beauty and Mystery
• The Scientific Mind of Leonardo Da Vinci: Exploring his Observations and Experiments
• Leonardo Da Vinci's Legacy in Art and Science: A Lasting Impact
• The Codex Leicester: Leonardo Da Vinci's Scientific Legacy
• The Drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci: A Window into his Creative Process
• The Vitruvian Man: Examining the Intersection of Art and Science

Leonardo Da Vinci Essay Topics Prompts

• Imagine you have the opportunity to interview Leonardo Da Vinci. What questions would you ask him and why?
• Create a fictional dialogue between Leonardo Da Vinci and a contemporary artist or scientist. How would their conversation unfold?
• Write a persuasive essay arguing why Leonardo Da Vinci's contributions to science are as significant as his artistic achievements.
• If Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today, what modern-day problems or challenges do you think he would be most interested in solving and why?
• Choose one of Leonardo Da Vinci's inventions or artworks and write a detailed analysis of its significance in the context of his time and its relevance today.

Leonardo Da Vinci: The Renaissance Master

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Leonardo Da Vinci: Life, Art and Inventions

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Analysis of The Paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci and Their Impact on The World

Leonardo da vinci and his masterpieces, the secret of mona lisa by leonardo da vinci, the life and contributions of leonardo da vinci, drawings of future possibilities by leonardo da vinci, da vinci and michelangelo – geniuses from the italian renaissance, the principles of true art, the golden spiral unveiled: the beauty of the fibonacci sequence, if you could talk to anyone in history, who would it be, leonardo da vinci: the master of art and science.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci[2]14/15 April 1452Anchiano, Vinci, Republic of Florence (present-day Italy)

2 May 1519(1519-05-02) (aged 67)Clos Lucé, Amboise, Kingdom of France

Painting, drawing, sculpting, science, engineering, architecture, anatomy

• Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483–1493)
• Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–1491)
• The Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)
• The Last Supper (c. 1492–1498)
• Salvator Mundi (c. 1499–1510)
• Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1516)

High Renaissance

15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper (1495–98) and Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance.

“Battle of Anghiari”, “Last Supper”, “Leda”, “Mona Lisa”, “Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci”, “St. Jerome”, “The Benois Madonna”, “The Virgin of the Rocks”, “Treatise on Painting”, “Virgin and Child with St. Anne”

Among the qualities that make da Vinci’s work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, his use of the human form in figurative composition, and his use of sfumato. Leonardo was also a master at “chiaroscuro," an Italian term meaning “light/dark."

Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance. Despite having many lost works and less than 25 attributed major works — including numerous unfinished works — he created some of the most influential paintings in Western art. His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work and often regarded as the world's most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon.

Leonardo is sometimes credited as the inventor of the tank, helicopter, parachute, and flying machine, among other vehicles and devices, but later scholarship has disputed such claims. Nonetheless, Leonardo’s notebooks reveal a sharp intellect, and his contributions to art, including methods of representing space, three-dimensional objects, and the human figure, cannot be overstated.

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” “A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.” “Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”

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