The greatest inventor, Leonardo da Vinci.
- Leonardo da Vinci’s full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci.
- Leonardo da Vinci was the son of a lawyer and a peasant woman, and was born on 15 April 1452, in Italy and died at the age of 67 on 2 May 1519 in France.
- Leonardo da Vinci is known as a ‘polymath’, a person who has significant ability and knowledge in a wide variety of fields, with skills in art, mathematics, engineering and science, such as human anatomy, botany and geology.
- Leonardo da Vinci became an apprentice under Verrocchio (Andrea di Cione) the artist, at fourteen years of age and became a qualified master artist at the age of 20.
- Leonardo da Vinci is often thought to be one of the most outstanding painters in history and the most remarkable polymath of all time.
Self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci
Image courtesy of Erik Drost/Flickr
- Leonardo da Vinci created notable invention concepts for vehicles, such as helicopters and bicycles, calculators and concentrated solar power.
- On 5 August 1473, Leonardo da Vinci created an artwork named ‘Arno Valley’, with pen and ink mediums and this is his earliest known drawing.
- Leonardo da Vinci was left handed and mostly wrote in mirror reversed cursive writing, and during his life-time he wrote and recorded 13,000 pages of notes and complex diagrams.
- Leonardo da Vinci is known as an artist throughout the world for his famous paintings like the ‘Mona Lisa’, ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’.
- Some of Leonardo da Vinci’s machine designs were physically constructed and tested for a documentary for the Channel Four British television station in 2003.
Bibliography:
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), 2013, BBC, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/da_vinci_leonardo.shtml>
Leonardo da Vinci, 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci>
