Leonardo da Vinci: a Glimpse Into Why He Was The Ultimate Renaissance Man

Leonardo da Vinci was a man way ahead of his time. A man of vast knowledge, he delved into various fields and helped define the Renaissance. Monalisa and The Last Supper are just a fragment of the genius that made him legendary.

Asides from being one of the greatest painters of all time, he was an architect, engineer, scientist, inventor, cartographer, anatomist, botanist, and writer. He wasn’t just a jack of all trades; he was a master of all.

In simple terms, he was the ultimate renaissance man and here a good number of reasons why:

An understanding of the human body that was leagues ahead of its time

For someone who had no formal education in Latin or Mathematics, Leonardo da Vinci had an impressive body of scientific works that prove he knew a lot about the human body. He composed comprehensive notes about the human foetus and the movement of the arm. One look at these notes and drawings below and you would agree that they correspond to modern-day discoveries made in the medical field.

The First Person To Come Up With The Concept Of The Helicopter

Although he didn’t invent the helicopter, Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to ever conceptualize it in diagram form as early as the fifteenth century. He was thrilled by the prospect of people soaring high in the sky and thus, he made aviation one of his prime areas of study. By studying the flight if birds as well as their structure, he came up with several drawings of flying objects which influence modern aviation.

An Impressive Knowledge Of Civil Engineering

Leonardo da Vinci was no simple inventor. He combined his knowledge of hydraulics, pulleys, momentum, mechanical designs, cantilevers, and incorporated them in his inventions. As a military engineer, he developed plans for weapons such as the armoured tank, machine, machine gun, mortar, the guided missile, and submarine.

He Made Contributions to Mathematics and Adopted Its Principles

It is rare to come across artists that employ mathematical ideas to create masterpieces. Both the Monalisa and The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci’s best-known works, incorporate the mathematics of perspective and the golden ratio.

He also attempted to solve the geometric problem of “squaring of a circle” through his most famous drawing “Vitruvian Man”.

A Prolific Cartographer

Having served as a military engineer to some of the most powerful men of his time, Leonardo da Vinci created several plans and topographical maps to aid in warfare. He designed his best known cartographical work, an ‘iconographic’ map, in 1502.