Da Vinci
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The Life and Works of Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Ashley Loveland
Carlos Cruz
Melissa Carrillo
Sean D Allen
Salt Lake Community College Physics 1010
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Da Vinci
Abstract
Leonardo Da Vinci was a man of many talents. With the aid of his upbringing he was
able to excel in the arts along with scientific fields such as physics. Da Vinci was a talented
artist that could paint anything he set his mind to, like the beautiful Mona Lisa. He recorded
many of his scientific theories of which over 4000 pages have survived. One of his greatest
contributions to science was his idea of a parachute to reduce a person's terminal velocity and
make a long fall survivable. Da Vinci’s progress in science still has an influence today. His art
work is also admired today. His most famous pieces reside in one of the most well know
museums in the world, the Louvre in Paris France.
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Introduction
Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452. He was a renowned renaissance artist
whose paintings still hold great significance today. Da Vinci was not only a painter but he was
also a creator, engineer, inventor, architect, scientist, sculptor, overall, a well-rounded
intelligent genius being. Even though, Da Vinci sketched a lot of his ideas and inventions, they
were not necessarily successful or “constructed” in his lifetime. Da Vinci was an inventor and
therefore created many ideas that would have major influence in later fields of science. The
proceeding years after Da Vinci’s life were influenced by him, due to the incredible basis he
gave us for scientific fields such as, anatomy, astronomy, civil engineering, and even
anticipating modern technology.
Leonardo Da Vinci, although a great inventor and artist, had a life of his own. The
journey before he became so well-known was a quite fortunate one. Considering that he began
his first apprenticeship at age fourteen under Andrea Del Verrocchio. For Da Vinci being so
young, it perhaps allowed him the advantage of a growing, creative mind that only the youth of
any generation has. In using his skills of painting, drawing, and sketching, he was able to put
most, if not all his inventions and ideas on paper. As a result of this, it allowed for extremely
well documentation that could later be viewed and used for later influences in our modern
world.
Da Vinci
Early Life and Background
(Figure 1: Portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci)
Leonardo da Vinci (Figure 1) was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Tuscany, during the
time called the Renaissance. His full birth name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci meaning,
Leonardo, son of Messer Piero from Vinci. He was the son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio
da Vinci, a Florentine notary and Caterina, a peasant whom in rumor may have been a slave
from the Middle East. Leonardo da Vinci was the first child of Ser Pier, but Ser Piero didn’t
marry Caterina. He married his first wife Albiera in the year Leonardo was born. Ser Piero died
on July 9, 1504. It is believed that Leonardo spent his first years of childhood with Caterina in
Anchiano, Italy. Catarina married some years after the birth of Leonardo to a man from Vinci
named Acattabriga di Piero di Luca.
(Figure 2: Da Vinci’s home in Anchiano)
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Little is known about Leonardo's early life. It is said that he spent his first five years in
Anchiano (see figure 2) with his mother, and then lived with his father, grandparents and uncle,
in the small town of Vinci. Leonardo received education in Latin, geometry and mathematics.
In later life, Leonardo only recorded two childhood incidents. “One, which he regarded as an
omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers
brushing his face. The second, occurred while exploring in the mountains, he discovered a cave
and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there and driven by curiosity to find
out what was inside” (Leonardo Da Vinci).
At the age of fourteen, Leonardo was a learner to Andrea di Cione, known as
Verrocchio, who was one of the most successful artists of his day. Verrocchio’s workshop was
at the center of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an
education in humanities. Much of the painted productions of Verrocchio’s workshop were
done by his employees. Leonardo worked together with Verrocchio on his Baptism of Christ
painting (see figure 3).
(Figure 3: Verrocchio’s “Baptism of Christ”)
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Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio, which were
the bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the Archangel Michael in Tobias and the Angel.
At age twenty, Leonardo was eligible as a master in the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and
doctors of medicine, but his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to
collaborate with him. Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of the
Arno valley, drawn on August 5, 1473 (see figure 4).
(Figure 4: Da Vinci’s “Arno Valley”)
Leonard da Vinci: The Artist
Leonardo Da Vinci has many painting and illustrations that he drew in his lifetime. He is
well known for many of these art pieces however, what some may view as the “Big 3”: Mona
Lisa, The Last Supper, and Vitruvian Man, are all pieces of which, helped to shape and form
history. Da Vinci was a man of great intelligence that could accomplish anything he set his mind
to, hence, his significant influence throughout history.
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(Figure 5: Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”)
Mona Lisa was one Da Vinci’s great art pieces. When Da Vinci was painting this portrait
(see figure 5), it took him four years to complete. It is believed that this was a painting of a
young woman named Mona Lisa del Gioconda, however there are also underlying beliefs that
this is not a portrait of a young woman; but rather a portrait of himself. Although extremely
valuable today, within Da Vinci’s lifetime this portrait was never sold. Ironically, years later in
the 1900’s the Mona Lisa was not only stolen (1911) but damaged due to an acid attempt that
critically damaged the lower portion of the portrait. However, due to some stroke of luck, after
many years, it was restored.
(Figure 6: Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”)
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“The Last Supper” painting (see figure 6) was not something that Leonardo would’ve
painted at his own leisure. This was a painting that the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza,
requested that he paint. The Duke of Milan wanted this painting to represent a rather
significant religious event. This painting was meant to be a representation of an event
chronicled in all four of the gospels; Jesus’ famous “Last Supper” with his disciples before being
crucified. This large 15x29 feet painting took Da Vinci a total of three years to paint.
(Figure 7: Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”)
Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” (see figure 7) was a drawing modeled after the
famous Roman architect, Vitruvius, and his idea and philosophies. Vitruvius believed that the
human body is the model of perfection. Vitruvius believed that if the human body were to be
extended (with arms and legs respectively) that it should fit into geometric forms such as the
circle and square. However, after his attempt to draw this, with the beginning of a perfect
circle and square, the end result was catastrophic. The picture depicted was the most
disproportioned figures of the Renaissance, with legs and arms too long and hand s too big.
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However, with the genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, he was able to prove Vitruvius’ theory as
correct. Da Vinci figured that if the man were to be drawn first, in proportion, the circles and
squares can be found rather easily.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Physicist
Leonardo was and is best known as an artist, yet Leonardo was far more than a great
artist: he had one of the best scientific minds of his time. He made painstaking observations
and carried out research in fields ranging from architecture and civil engineering to astronomy
to anatomy and zoology to geography, geology and paleontology. In the words of his
biographer Giorgio Vasari:
“The most heavenly gifts seem to be showered on certain human beings. Sometimes
supernaturally, marvelously, they all congregate in one individual. . . . This was seen and
acknowledged by all men in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, who had. . . an indescribable grace in
every effortless act and deed. His talent was so rare that he mastered any subject to which he
turned his attention. . . . He might have been a scientist if he had not been so versatile“(1550).
Leonardo's scientific and technical observations are found in his handwritten
manuscripts, of which over 4000 pages survive, while many more were lost to time. It seems
that Leonardo planned to publish them as a great encyclopedia of knowledge, but like many of
his projects, this one was never finished. The manuscripts are difficult to read: not only did
Leonardo write in mirror-image script from right to left, but he used unusual spellings and
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abbreviations, and his notes are not arranged in any logical order. Da Vinci drew sketches and
diagrams of his inventions, which he preserved in his notebooks, but either he lost interest in
building them or was never able to convince one of his wealthy patrons to finance construction
of his designs. As a result, almost none of da Vinci's inventions were built during his lifetime.
And, because he never published his diagrams, nobody else knew about them until his
notebooks were discovered long after his death.
This is unfortunate, because da Vinci's designs were spectacularly ahead of his time. If
they had been built, they might have revolutionized the history of technology, though many of
them may have been impossible to build with the tools available in the 15th and 16th centuries.
(Figure 8: Modern Parachute)
(Figure 9: Da Vinci’s Parachute Design)
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Leonardo was always interested in flight and often dissected birds to find out how they
were able to fly. Many of his writings and sketches are of gliders, helicopter-type “aerial
screw”, flying machines and even parachutes. Modern day parachutes (see figure 8) are very
similar to Da Vinci’s design (see figure 9), which was nearly 300 years before the modern day
invention. Da Vinci knew the speed at which a body falls depends on two factors: the force of
the gravity pulling it downward and the resistance of the atmosphere through which it is falling.
If there were no atmosphere, a falling body would simply accelerate to higher and higher
speeds until it hit a surface, but air tends to slow it down until it reaches its terminal velocity.
Different objects have different terminal velocities. The terminal velocity of a human being
falling through the earth's atmosphere -- a skydiver with an unopened chute, for instance -- is
about 120 mph (193.1 kilometers per hour). That's surprisingly slow, but still fast enough that a
person falling from an airplane would sustain heavy injury or even death, which is most likely,
upon hitting the ground. The idea of a parachute is to reduce a person's terminal velocity and
make a long fall survivable.
(Figure 10: Adrian Nicholas uses Da Vinci’s parachute design)
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Da Vinci, who was fascinated by the idea of human flight, conceived his parachute as a
way for people to drift gracefully through the air. Its pyramid-shaped framework was draped
with cloth. As da Vinci wrote in his notebooks, it would allow a man "to throw himself down
from any great height without suffering any injury” (Leonardo da Vinci). Leonardo da Vinci was
proved right on Monday, June 26, 2000, some 500 years after he sketched the design for the
world's first known parachute. A British man, Adrian Nicholas, dropped from a hot air balloon
3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above the ground using da Vinci’s design (see figure 10). He even
went as far as to only use materials that would be available in medieval Milan. This resulted in
the device weighing a hefty 85 kilograms (187 pounds). Mr. Nicholas commented the ride was
smoother than modern day parachutes.
While Da Vinci frequently wrote he detested war and
blood shed, many of the wealthy patrons supporting Da Vinci paid
for him to design war machines, including siege weapons, antisiege weapons, redesigned catapults, giant crossbows, multibarreled machine guns, and even an 8-man armored tank (see
figure 11). None of these designs were built or tested, and many
of the designs included fatal flaws in da Vinci’s notebooks. Da
Vinci was way too smart to make these mistakes and it is
commonly believed he included these flaws on purpose in case his
notebooks were ever seized or captured by the enemy.
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He also designed machines that were fun and entertaining. The most popular being one
of the few designed he was believe to actually build. This design is known as a robotic knight
(see figure 12), and was a real 15th century C-3PO. Da Vinci was fascinated by human anatomy
and spent long hours dissecting corpses in order to figure out how the human body worked.
This gave him an understanding of how muscles interacted with bone. He reasoned that these
same principles could be applied to a machine.
(Figure 12: Da Vinci’s Robotic Knight)
Da Vinci's robot has not survived and no one knows exactly what it was capable of
doing, but apparently it could walk, sit down and even work its jaw. It was driven by a system
of pulleys and gears. In 2002, robotics expert Mark Rosheim used da Vinci's notes to build a
working model of da Vinci's robotic knight and some of the concepts behind it have
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subsequently been used by Rosheim for the design of planetary exploration robots to be used
by NASA. So after half a century of space exploration, da Vinci's designs have finally made it
into outer space.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Legacy
As you have read above Da Vinci made a huge impact in his time. It is said that, “His depth of
understanding across a broad range of disciplines sets him aside from his contemporaries. Even by
today's standards it would be difficult to find an individual who embraced Anatomy, Biology,
Engineering, Architecture, and Science in addition to being one of the greatest painters of all time. ("Art
and Science. The Da Vinci Legacy.")” Although he changed the way of thinking in his time he also left an
unforgettable legacy that still challenges modern philosophy.
(Figure 13: Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”)
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Leonardo Da Vinci is most remembered for his art work. He changed the world of art with his
mathematical theories and his new ideas of proportions of the human body. People from all around the
world gather at the Louvre in France to admire his art work. “There are 6 of his paintings in the Louvre:
Mona Lisa, Virgin of the Rocks, John the Baptist, La belle ferronière, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne,
Bacchus.” ("Leonardo Da Vinci Biography.") His most well-known being Mona Lisa (see figure 13).
Leonardo Da Vinci captured a pure beauty in his paintings that made them so desirable that even today
observers are stunned by their beauty.
Leonardo Da Vinci was not given the praise he should have during his lifetime. “The tragedy is
that much of his scientific work was not published in his lifetime, and was only re-discovered many years
after his death at a time when science had already embraced many of his ideas.” (Art and Science. The
Da Vinci Legacy.") As with many artists their talent remains unappreciated until long after their death.
Da Vinci made discoveries that surpassed the understanding of his time and could not fully be
appreciated until many years later. Now many scientists fully embrace his ideas.
Conclusion
Leonardo Da Vinci’s creations of art and advancements in science not only are better than those
of his time, but have contributed to the fundamentals of modern day technology and are the greatest in
history. Many of Da Vinci’s paintings are proof of his pioneered techniques, brilliance, and talent. Even
though Da Vinci has missed a great deal of the recognition he deserves for his discoveries. He
represents the ideal engineer because his inventions dealt with theories that had not been addressed
during his lifetime. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “renaissance
man” as “a man who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and
the sciences.”, and Leonardo Da Vinci was the quintessential Renaissance man.
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Works Cited
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the World Wide Web: http://www.leonardoda-vinci.org/biography.html
Lampton, Christopher. "Top 10 Leonardo da Vinci Inventions" Retrieved March 21, 2012, from the
World Wide Web: <http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/famous-inventors/10leonardo-da-vinci-inventions.htm>
Lord, West. Leonardo da Vinci Family Tree. Retrieved March 21, 2012, from the World Wide
Web: http://www.westlord.com/leonardo-da-vinci-family-tree/
Place, Robert M. "Vitruvian Man." The Alchemical Egg Introduction. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
http://thealchemicalegg.com/VitruviusN.html
Vasari, Giorgio (1550). "Life of Leonardo da Vinci", in Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects, translated by Gaston DeC. De Vere
"Art and Science. The Da Vinci Legacy." Leonardo Da Vinci Legacy of Art and Invention.
\Web. 17 Mar. 2012. <http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/da-vinci-legacy.html>.
"Facts About Mona Lisa." Facts About the MONA LISA ***. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://www.factsabout.org.uk/famous-people-artists-mona-lisa.htm>.
"Leonardo Da Vinci - The Last Supper." About.com Art History. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
<http://arthistory.about.com/cs/leonardo/a/last_supper.htm>.
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"Leonardo Da Vinci Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television. Web. 19 Mar.
2012.<http://www.biography.com/people/leonardo-da-vinci-40396?paidlink=1>.
"Portrait Mona Lisa." Web. 20 Mar. 2012. < http://www.beso.com/portrait-mona-lisa/search?rf=gbs >
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