Leonardo Da Vinci

So Leonardo learned not only to paint, but to model statues, to file, hammer, carve and solder.

How carefully the young apprentice learned drawing we know from his notebooks, five thousand pages of which are still in existence, preserved in libraries and museums. In them we find studies of hundreds of people, with faces of every type and showing every emotion. It is said that when Leonardo saw someone with an interesting face he followed him, studying his expression and putting it on paper.

Florence must have been an interesting place for such an observant young man. At that time Italy was famous for its scholars, painters, poets, architects and sculptors. The Duke of Florence, Lorenzo de Medici, popularly known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, encouraged such men to come to his city. He wanted poets to write verses in his praise, musicians to provide entertainment, architects to design palaces and public buildings, sculptors and painters to decorate them. In Florence, too, were many of the great classical scholars of the time, reading and writing about the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. There was great interest in these old civilizations; buildings were designed in Greek and Roman styles, and many of the statues in the public gardens and on the great buildings were masterpieces from the distant past, or copies of them.

The city also provided many magnificent spectacles. Lorenzo's court was one of the most colorful in Europe, and on important occasions spectacular processions and public entertainments were provided. When, for example, the ruler of Milan visited Florence, the procession included fifty. horses with cloth-of-gold trappings, several carriages drawn by horses draped in silk two hundred baggage mules, five hundred dogs of many different breeds, a forty-piece band, a flock of hunting hawks and two thousand courtiers on horseback.

In time Leonardo became one of Europe's most famous artists.

When he was painting, many people tried to gain admission to watch him, and the news that he could be seen at work usually caused a crowd to gather. Two of his greatest paintings, both done after he had left Florence for Milan, are the "Mona Lisa" and the "Last Supper". If you can obtain large colored reproductions of these two works you will realize his artistic skill.

The "Mona Lisa" is now in the Louvre in Paris. It is the portrait of the wife of a citizen of Florence, shown with a knowing, slightly amused expression. Over the last four hundred years, millions of people have studied that expression, wondering what the woman was thinking and what kind of person she must have been.

The "Last Supper'' shows the scene just after Christ has said to his disciples, "Verily, I say unto you that one of you shall betray me". The disciples, in confusion, are asking who it can be.

Every figure is a masterpiece in itself; Peter has jumped to his feet and whispers excitedly to John; Judas, a picture of fright, grasps a moneybag with his right hand and raises his left as if to stop a blow.

The "Last Supper" was painted on the plaster wall of a convent dining-room. Before many years dampness in the wall had caused it to deteriorate, and later a doorway was cut in the wall. Then French soldiers used it for target practice. Modern artists, however, guided by copies made when the painting was in good condition, and by the sketches made by Leonardo in planning the work, have restored it to what they think is something like its original glory.

Art was only one of the many things in which Leonardo was interested. His painting, for instance, led him to a study of anatomy, for he thought that he could not draw human figures properly unless he understood the structure of the human body. To understand how this happened I want you to conduct a simple experiment. Stand with one arm outstretched, palm downwards, so that the tip of the middle finger just touches a wall. Now turn the palm upwards. The tip of the finger no longer touches the wall; your arm is shorter. In drawing people with arms outstretched, Leonardo noticed that fact, and could not rest until be had found out the reason. There was only one way to do that, namely studying the structure of the bones in the human arm, so Leonardo dissected a human arm. Indeed he went further, and dissected about thirty human bodies, discovering that the heart is really a hydraulic pump, with four compartments, that hardening of the arteries occurs in old people, and many other important facts.

In addition to these activities, Leonardo was renowned for his skill in playing the lyre, was a gifted architect and sculptor, and for many years was employed by the Duke of Milan as a military engineer, designing fortifications and devising ways of capturing enemy strongholds.

Perhaps his greatest ambition was to design a workable flying machine. Throughout his life he observed the flight of birds and studied the construction of their wings. He understood how the slotted effect given to the wings by the feathers helped the birds to rise, and why they took off into the wind.

He studied the different wing positions used in rising, gliding, wheeling and swooping and foresaw the problems which an aviator would face in tail-spins and falling-leaf spins.

From the sketches in his notebooks we can see that his study of birds led him to design a number of flying-machines, most with movable wings like those of birds, but one with a propeller. It was somewhat on the principle of a helicopter, but had the propeller underneath. Actually his only chance of success would have been with a glider; without a light engine he could never have provided the power to raise the machine from the ground.

Leonardo was interested in all kinds of mechanical problems. In his notebooks we find designs for a diving bell, prefabricated houses, a bulldozer, a wind-gauge, a jack with rack-and-pinion gear for raising heavy objects, cranes, mechanical saws and shovels, and a mill for rolling metal into thin sheets. He sometimes asked the ruler of Milan for money to construct these mechanical marvels, but his employer seems to have considered such things a waste of time.

Geology was another of this many sided man's interests. From the discovery of shells in caves far inland he decided that the sea had once covered these regions. He examined fossils, realized that they were the hardened remains of animals, and tried to calculate the age of the rocks in which they were found. The people of his time thought that the earth was only about five thousand years old, but from his study of rocks Leonardo realized, like modern geologists, that it was much older.

Public health, too, claimed his attention. Italian Renaissance cities contained many fine buildings, but they also had great areas of slums. There was no organized water supply, and of course no garbage service; refuse lay in heaps in the narrow alleyways.

In 1484 fifty thousand people died of the plague in Milan. The ladies and gentlemen of the court fled to the country, but Leonardo remained, and drew up plans for a model city in which there would be no overcrowding, and each house would have its own supply of fresh water. The traffic would be handled by two-level highways and the houses would be prefabricated.

The last years of Leonardo's life were spent in retirement in France. He was admired throughout Europe as an artist, but many of his other activities were known to few of his contemporaries. It was only in later years, when his notebooks were studied, that men realized fully his all-round genius.