Leonardo Da Vinci was One of the most Important People

“Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the most important people of our time. His father, Ser Peiro, was a notary and attorney. His mother was Caterina, who was a Pheasant. His parents never married. He was the only child between his father and mother, although his mother went on to start a new family when he was just 5 years old. Da Vinci lived on his father’s family estate in Vinci, near Anchiano, Tuscany, which is modern day Italy. The town Vinci provided us with the surname we know him as today.

During the Renaissance, he was known as Leonardo or as “Il Florentine” since he lived near Florence. Although he was the only child, Leonardo went on to have 17 half-siblings from each parent.

Leonardo’s father respected his artistic talent and apprenticed him when he was 15 to the noted sculptor and painter, Andrea del Verrocchio, of Florence. In his lifetime, designs remained unrealized. Leonardo was always more interested in the theoretical solution of the problem than the full-fledged execution of an idea. His scientific insights, which might be revolutionized anatomy and mechanics, remained locked in his unpublished notebooks. Leonardo has famous drawings of how the proportions of the human figure generate the perfect geometry of the circle and square. He said of his book, Treatise on Painting, “Let no one read this book who does not know mathematics”. His genius astonished his contemporaries as much as it does today, proof in drawings from his Notebooks in 1510.

There was a sfumato technique where shading outlines are slightly blurred. The chiaroscuro technique developed by Masaccio and other early Renaissance masters, Leonardo made his own variation and imitated the effect in his famous painting called was originally called ‘La Gioconda’ and was the only painting that survived from the 15th century. You may now know this painting now as, Mona Lisa, Oil on panel, c.1503-5. It located in The Louvre in Paris, France. Leonardo defended painting as the highest art and claimed that painting permitted unlimited range to the artists’ imagination.

Shortly before the 15th century, Leonardo Da Vinci created the famous works of art like, Madonna on the Rocks, Oil on Panel, c.1485 and The Last Supper in c.1495-8. Leonardo was consumed by an insatiable appetite for knowledge about the world. His notebooks, projects, and paintings, he demonstrated an understanding of the world that still amazes. Western civilization has probably never known a greater or more restless intelligence. His interest in anatomy, mechanics, engineering, and botany was not uncommon for the Renaissance artist, who was expected to be able to design a hoist as readily as to paint a portrait. Leonardo’s imagination allowed him to create, but only on paper, such inventions as the bicycle, the helicopter, and an airplane based on the flying capability and physiology of a bat.

Leonardo was a Renaissance Italian who pursued idiosyncratic and ground-breaking ideas in the arts, science, and mathematics that made him a paragon of Renaissance grace and intelligence. If I could ask him one thing, I would ask him “Leonardo, how come you did not attempt to build your airplane or helicopter and just draw the sketches”? He would answer “I was simply more interested in how things may work but not actually pursuing them. I would love to paint the idea of a helicopter and let someone try to attempt to build it.” Sigmund Freud is to have said “Like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while others were still asleep.””

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