THE GENIUS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

Artist, scientist, inventor, engineer – this Renaissance man was truly one of a kind

HE’S best known for his art, including two of the most famous paintings in the world, but Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) also excelled in other areas and had a wide range of interests. In this way he embodied the term “Renaissance man”.

Da Vinci was fascinated by the world around him and had an insatiable curiosity about how things worked. He used his artistic abilities to chronicle what he saw and filled dozens of notebooks with sketches of anatomy, architecture and natural processes such as the flow of water and the flight of birds. His scientific knowledge made his art lifelike and three-dimensional, and inspired him to invent machines deemed way ahead of their time.

While he was lauded as a great artist in his lifetime, his contemporaries didn’t fully appreciate his intellect and imagination.

Da Vinci pioneered two painting techniques: Chiaroscuro – a stark contrast between darkness and light that gave a three-dimensionality to Da Vinci’s figures. Sfumato – a technique in which subtle gradations, rather than strict borders, infuse paintings...