Leonardo de Vinci

Born near Vinci, Italy, on April 15, 1452, Leonardo lived through the height of the Renaissance period. Trained in Florence in the shop of artist Andrea Verrocchio, he went on to develop an awe-inspiring range of skills, which, based on his notebooks left behind, have only served to confirm that he was truly a "universal genius" (Brizio and Brugnoli 13). Covering the fields of nature, the natural sciences, painting, inventions, architecture, machinery and weaponry and fortification designs, Leonardo had a taste for the fantastic as well as the modern. Although a rational man, he was always attracted to the irrational. Some of his designs and concepts were too advanced for his contemporaries and it would take two hundred years for them to be appreciated (Brizio and Brugnoli 13).

Leonardo's first drawing was dated August 5, 1478. From there he was commissioned to do several paintings before moving on to Milan where he offered his services to the ruler of the city, Ludovico il Moro, as an engineer, architect, sculptor and painter. Upon finishing one of his greatest works, "The Last Supper," in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa

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studies of human cadavers leading him to cut into the liver and heart and record his discoveries with masterful illustrations and even proceeding to explore possible improvements on the organs. "He had no hesitation about stepping over the line of heresy," says Andrew Robinson of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. "He was actually engaged in competition with God" (Horn 72; Brizio and Brugnoli 16). Leonardo's inventive, imaginative mind created on paper contraptions and gadgets of many kinds. He experimented for years with a moving-wing aircraft called "ornighopters," unaware that humans are not strong enough to flap wings large enough to lift them (Wiley 92). He also invented a series of odometers to measure distance and a transmission system much like that of an automobile today. His plans for a parachute remained unknown until the late 18OO's, not quite a century after the first air-to-ground jump was made. He also improved upon both the idea of an armored vehicle and the Gutenberg printing press. And there is speculation that a drawing of a bicycle found in one of his notebooks is the first of its kind ever, predating the "invention" of the vehicle by centuries (Wiley 92; Brizio and Brugnoli 20). Leonardo w
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Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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