Why Leonardo da Vinci was a Scientist, not an Artist

When you think of Leonardo da Vinci,  you probably think of the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci is one of the  most famous artists in the world. But he is much more than that.

Indeed he never thought of himself as an artist. When he sent a letter to the ruler of Milan  describing his strengths when he was looking for work, he listed 10 different skills. And almost as  an afterthought, he mentioned he could also paint.

The reason his artworks are  so realistic and detailed is that he invested much of his  time in the study of science. da Vinci was born in a village near  Vinci, just outside Florence, in 1452. The illegitimate son of a farmer’s  daughter and a prominent lawyer.

Although he didn’t receive any formal education,  his artistic ability was clear from a very early age. When he was 15, he studied under the acclaimed  artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. When da Vinci helped Verrochio paint  an angel in the “Baptism of Christ”, the story goes that his version was  so much better than his master’s that Verrochio vowed never to  pick up a paintbrush again.

da Vinci was a notoriously slow painter  and many of his works were never finished. Only about two dozen survive. A drop in the bucket compared to other  artists.

Van Gogh left more than 2,000 works. da Vinci wasn’t just interested in how the  human body or nature looked on a canvas. He wanted to know why they appeared as they did.

He was able to give the Mona Lisa  that mysterious look on her face because he studied all the  muscles involved in smiling. He devoted a lot of his time  to studying human anatomy. If you wanted to learn about human anatomy  in the 1500s, there was no easy way to do so, no medical textbooks and, of course,  no way to google search an image.

So he studied the only way he  could - by examining corpses. Hospitals were keen to support his artistic  research and gave him access to cadavers. He dissected over 30 bodies in his lifetime and filled thousands of pages with  notes and detailed drawings.

If you’re having trouble reading this, it’s  because da Vinci had a habit of writing backward. He liked to go from right to left. He was  left-handed.

So some have speculated this would have stopped his ink from smudging. His writing  can be read normally only if viewed in a mirror. He probably wouldn’t have done so if he  had any intention of publishing his notes.

His depictions of the body are  beautiful. And for the most part, accurate. So accurate that professors can  actually use his drawings to teach anatomy.

One of his most famous works  that perfectly illustrates the fusion of art and science is the Vitruvian man which depicts the proportions of the human body  according to Vitruvius - a Roman architect. The man’s outstretched arms are equal to  his height, which is true for most people. He was particularly obsessed with  the heart which he described as a “.

. . wonderful instrument  invented by the Supreme Master.

” Many of his medical conclusions about the heart  have turned out to be stunningly accurate. He was the first to describe the heart  as a muscle, that it has four chambers, and that the arterial valves opened and  closed to let blood flow around the organ. He was also the first to  recognize coronary artery disease.

Around 1506, he witnessed a 100-year-old  man die suddenly. He dissected his heart and discovered that his arteries had narrowed.  He deduced, this was what killed him.

He was far ahead of his time. Coronary  artery disease wouldn’t be described by a physician until more than 150 years later. It’s a mystery why he never published any  of his work.

His notes were not discovered until the late 18th century - more than 250  years after his death. Had they been known during his lifetime, they could have had a profound  effect on the understanding of the human body and, perhaps, helped physicians  find ways to heal certain ailments. In the same way that he studied the body to  improve his paintings and then became obsessed with anatomy, he studied plants to improve  his art and then became obsessed with botany.

He drew most of his delicate works with red chalk. His sketches of plants were so accurate they  could have been considered scientific studies. In the Study of the Star of Bethlehem,  the swirls of leaves are similar to the movement of water - another one of his obsessions.

da Vinci dedicated a lot of time  trying to understand the flow of water. Most of his 72-page scientific  diary called the Codex Leicester is dedicated to the study of the motion  of water in seas, rivers, and canals. Bill Gates bought it for nearly $31 million -  making it the most expensive book ever sold.

da Vinci also invented the lock that almost any  canal or waterway you visit uses to this day. The lock was mitered - as in - two 45  degree angles meet each other at a point. His contribution to engineering  extended from the waters to the skies.

Da Vinci sketched out this flying machine  that he called the Aerial Screw while he was employed as a military engineer  by the Duke of Milan in the 1490s. The device was meant to be powered by four  men who would push the four wooden shafts in a circular motion. da Vinci believed this would  generate enough force to lift it off the ground.

Had he actually attempted to create a real-life  model it would have been too heavy to lift. But the basic principles of lift-off provided  the earliest foundation for modern helicopters. He also made sketches of a parachute,  speculating that if a person had a tent made from linen that matched their  proportions, they would be able to jump from any height without being injured. 

Once again, he didn’t make a real-life model. But a British skydiver did use da Vinci’s idea 500  years later, in 2000, and it worked, in practice. da Vinci clearly had confidence in his own designs  and had done some mathematical equations.

He applied math to his paintings. The Last Supper, one of the most  recognizable works in the world, is a prime example of the use of the  mathematical principle of perspective. Jesus is sharing a final meal with his  12 disciples before his crucifixion.

All the lines in the painting converge in  one place, known as the vanishing point so that the focus is on Jesus. This was done  to emphasize the importance of Christ. And he wasn’t afraid to try new things visually.

The traditional Florentine way of  painting was to outline an image, giving it a very crisp appearance. Instead, he  perfected a new technique, sfumato, which means “vanished” or “evaporated”  in Italian. It gets rid of hard edges by blending everything without  lines or borders.

The Mona Lisa is a classic example of the use of sfumato,  particularly in the shading around the eyes. He also began to experiment  with new materials for painting. Renaissance period artists were moving away from  egg tempera paint - which was pigments mixed with egg yolk and water to oil paints, which allowed  for more vivid colors and greater contrasts.

However, oil paints were complicated to  make and the quality fluctuated greatly. So, da Vinci put on his chemistry hat and  cooked his own pigments in linseed oil at a low temperature and added about 5% of beeswax which  prevented the paint from darkening on the canvas. da Vinci’s art was a confluence of biology,  chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and physics.

He employed all these skills when France’s  King Francis I appointed him as ‘the first painter, engineer, and architect  of the king’ when he was already in his sixties. His final work was not a painting but  a party he threw in the summer of 1518 at his residence at the Château du Clos Lucé, the king’s summer castle, in Central France, to thank him for his generosity. There was a spectacle at the party where players dressed up  as planets surrounded by the sun and the moon.

da Vinci was the first to explain why you can see  light between the two points of a crescent moon. He figured out it was due to sunlight hitting  the Earth and reflecting onto the moon called Earthshine. This was an outlandish  theory at the time.

Most people didn't even know that Earth orbited the sun! He was,  once again, far, far ahead of his time. When da Vinci passed away at the  chateau on the 2nd of May in 1519, he left behind thousands of pages of  notes and drawings for future generations.

He may be best known for his art. But clearly, he was a Jack of All  Trades and the Master of Them All. If you’d like to master STEM  subjects, just like d a Vinci, Brilliant can help and it’s FREE to sign up.

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