101 Things You Didn't Know About Da Vinci

101
THINGS
YOU DIDN'T
KNOW ABOUT
Da Vinci

The Secrets of the World's Most Eccentric
and Innovative Genius Revealed!

SHANA PRIWER
&
CYNTHIA PHILLIPS, PH.D.

Adams Media
Avon, Massachusetts

To our children, Zoecyn, Elijah, and Benjamin

Copyright © 2005, F+W Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by Adams Media, an F+W Publications Company
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322
www.adamsmedia.com
.

ISBN: 1-59337-346-5

Printed in Canada.

J  I  H  G  F  E  D  C  B

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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Contents

I
NTRODUCTION

Part 1:
I
N THE
B
EGINNING
…

1
. Where it all began: Vinci, Italy

2
. The mamas and the papas, and everyone in between

3
. “Current events” in fifteenth-century Italy

4
. The life you're born into

5
. Siblings of a genius

6
. It's all relative

7
. Youthful adventures

8
. Get to work! Leonardo's early training

9
. What did they do before there were bookstores?

10
. Apprenticeship, or learning from your elders

11
. Turning dust into gold: Early painting experience

12
. Getting off to a good start

13
. The Company of Painters: Membership has its privileges

14
. Striking out on his own

15
. The rebirth of Italy

16
. Renaissance religion

17
. Don't forget the golden oldies

18
. Show me the money!

19
. The importance of being sponsored

20
. The Lorenzo the Magnificent

21
. Playing up to the duke

22
. Look out, it's Cesare Borgia!

23
. The best of the Louis

24
. Don't mess with the pope

25
. François I, King of France and friend of Leonardo

26
. Da Vinci University

Part 2:
T
HE
B
EST OF THE
B
EST OF THE
B
EST

27
. Early sculpture: A celebration in three dimensions

28
. Form, function, and the whole nine yards

29
. A horse is a horse, of course, of course

30
. Draw up a chair!

31
. The scene behind the scene

32
. Finish that painting! Leonardo and the fine art of completion

33
. Building the scene-scape

34
. An architecture of the imagination

35
. It's all in the details

36
. Monks and lawyers and artists, oh my!

37
. The life and times of
The Last Supper

38
. There's something about Lisa

39
. Oldies but goodies

40
. Building the Renaissance

41
. The Milan dome

42
. Order in the Church!

43
. San Giovanni Church: Closer to heaven

44
. Build it and they will come: Designs for other public structures

45
. Military architecture, the design of defense

46
. He built this city

Part 3:
W
HAT
I
T'S
A
LL
A
BOUT

47
. Observe and understand

48
. Love that body!

49
. From the inside out: Studies of human systems

50
. Fawning over flora

51
. The perfect man

52
. Getting physical with science

53
. It's all in the circle game

54
. Before planes, trains, and automobiles

55
. War games

56
. Building a better … cannon?

57
. Leonardo's robot

58
. Chutes (we already covered ladders)

59
. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a flying machine!

60
. Leonardo's whirlybird

61
. The world before Xerox

62
. Under the boardwalk, down by the sea

63
. Containing the forces of nature

64
. Harnessing the power of water

65
. The ocean liners of the future

66
. Around and around we go

67
. Gone with the Schwinn

68
. A coach fit for a king

Part 4:
W
RITING
, D
RAWING, AND
M
USIC

69
. The Leonardo diaries

70
. Every binder needs a few dividers

71
. And the lucky winner is …

72
. Decoding the codices

73
. Say cheese!

74
. It's like looking in a mirror

75
. Write to the point

76
. Bringing down the house

Part 5:
W
HO
, W
HAT
, W
HERE, AND
W
HAT
E
LSE

77
. Michelangelo: The Renaissance's “other great artist”

78
. The young master Raphael

79
. Botticelli on a half-shell

80
. Titian: His own personal giant

81
. Machiavelli: The literary prince of the Renaissance

82
. Talking about a religious revolution

83
. Center of the universe

84
. Leonardo on the analyst's couch

Part 6:
T
HE
W
RITING ON THE
W
ALL

85
. Vegetable soup for a gentle soul

86
. Highly personal accusations

87
. Amigos, compadres … lovers?

88
. Let's talk about sex

89
. Warning: Genius at work

90
. Minor errors of a major genius

91
. Why be normal?

92
. Crazy like a fox

93
. More than meets the eye

94
. “R-e-s-p-e-c-t”

95
. Sincerest form of flattery

96
. A horse of a different color

97
. In the beginning, there was religion

98
. It's all in the name!

99
. In sickness and in health

100
. Leonardo da Vinci: The Renaissance man

101
. The real deal on
The Da Vinci Code

W
ORKS
C
ITED

Introduction

Everyone's heard of Leonardo da Vinci—he painted the
Mona Lisa
, he was the first Renaissance man, and didn't he write in some kind of code? But there's much more to Leonardo than that! Did you know that he was one of the first people to make detailed anatomical drawings? Or that he designed one of the first robots? Leonardo da Vinci was not only an amazing artist, he was also a talented scientist, inventor, and musician. Was there anything he wasn't good at? Indeed, Leonardo rarely failed at anything—except he did have a problem finishing what he started!

Leonardo came from less than extraordinary beginnings. He was born in 1452, to a young unmarried couple in the Tuscany region of Italy. Both his parents married other people and eventually had seventeen more children, but none of Leonardo's half siblings went on to become particularly famous. Clearly, Leonardo was special.

By the time he was sixteen, Leonardo's artistic talents were becoming obvious, and his father apprenticed him to a leading artist in Florence. When Leonardo painted a small angel in one of his boss's paintings, he did such a good job that his master supposedly took one look and swore he'd give up painting forever! Leonardo certainly knew how to make an impression.

Throughout his long career, Leonardo worked for everyone from kings and dukes to warlords. He wasn't just a painter, either—he traveled as a military engineer with the infamous Cesare Borgia, using his genius to create machines of war. During more peaceful times, Leonardo was fond of making mathematical discoveries, investigating the secrets of the human body, and inventing parachutes. In his spare time, he even came up with plans to divert an entire river!

In spite of these endeavors, Leonardo is mostly famous today for his paintings, though only a handful of his finished works survive. Leonardo started countless projects, but finished only a few. Even the paintings he did manage to finish suffered from his constant innovation. In fact, most of Leonardo's inventions weren't ever built—he would come up with an amazing design, work on it for a while, and then when he was satisfied that it might work (or was just plain bored), he'd move on to something else. Luckily for us, Leonardo wrote about these unfinished projects in his detailed notebooks.

Even during the Renaissance, it was clear that Leonardo was a genius. But when we look at his accomplishments today, the breadth of his talents is even more remarkable. Not only did he paint one of the most amazing and talked-about paintings of all time, the
Mona Lisa
, he came up with designs for a helicopter, a mechanical loom, a car, a bicycle, and a multi-barreled gun!