Davinci Was HE REALLY A GENIUS?
Flawed inventions and abandoned art: find out why the original Renaissance Man might be overrated
Leonardo da Vinci has captivated the world for centuries, acclaimed as a polymath who produced breathtaking art, engineered fantastic flying machines and uncovered secrets about the body and the wider world. This reputation inspired Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code as well as many other far-fetched theories. This is an incredible legacy for a man who painted no more than 20 panel paintings in his entire career, never completed a sculpture and was slow to find fame in his own lifetime.
He did leave behind a library’s worth of private diaries and notebooks full of his scientific observations and ideas for inventions but few of his contraptions went beyond an initial sketch. Modern-day engineers have also found that more than one of them would never work. So how did da Vinci posthumously earn such high praise — and does he deserve it?
It’s perhaps a sign of our distorted view that we even call the artist ‘da Vinci’ at all. Leonardo was born in 1452, in Anchiano, a tiny hamlet near the small town of Vinci, in rural Tuscany. He was the illegitimate son of a wealthy notary, Ser Piero d’antonio da Vinci, and a woman known as Caterina, believed to have been a peasant and possibly a servant.
Being a ‘non legittimo’ in Renaissance Italy was not a disgrace but the status did carry legal limitations. In particular, he couldn’t take his father’s surname — he was simply Leonardo. As an adult, the artist asked Piero if he could adopt the title ‘da Vinci’ to differentiate himself from other Tuscan artists with the same name.
His father agreed, though ‘da Vinci’ wasn’t his legal name either — his family had adopted the suffix to distinguish themselves from others (in Italian it just means ‘of Vinci’). When
Leonardo went to Milan, he called himself ‘Leonardo the Florentine’ but the old name had stuck.
“This reputation inspired Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code as well as many other far-fetched theories”
Leonardo was fortunate that Piero acknowledged him and his father even brought him to live in Florence with him when the future artist was five. However, the boy’s illegitimacy barred him from becoming a notary like his father, so he was only taught basic mathematics and how to write, rather than given the formal education of higher-ranking children.
Possibly because he’d shown skill at drawing, in 1466, Piero apprenticed his 14-year-old son to Andrea del Verrocchio, a renowned artist patronised by the powerful Medici family. Under his tutelage, da Vinci was given a practical education not only in painting and sculpture, but also metalwork and engineering. The apprentice proved a quick study and began to outshine his teacher. It is said that the angel da Vinci painted for Verrocchio’s The Baptism of Christ was so magnificent that his master refused to pick up a paintbrush ever again.
One of Verrocchio’s most important lessons was that he insisted his pupils paint as accurately as possible. So, under his master’s guidance, da Vinci was introduced to the science of anatomy to better illustrate the human body. Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings are as fascinating as his artwork, full of rich detail, and he analysed various aspects of the human body from the skeleton to embryos.
His sketches of ox and pig hearts and later the heart of a 100-year-old man led to his subsequent observations about the heart’s function that were far beyond medical thinking at the time. For instance, he detailed how it was actually a muscle with four chambers, and that its arterial valves opened and closed through blood flow. His analysis also led him to give the first known description of coronary artery disease, which he suggested could occur if the arteries were to “fur up”.
If there is anything that demonstrates da Vinci’s devotion to his pursuit of knowledge, then it is certainly his anatomical drawings. Not satisfied with just performing dissections on animals, he managed to secure human corpses that he dissected and examined for his research.
At the time there was no real form of preservation in place for dead bodies and so they would have been in a revolting state of decay, with a strong, pungent smell. The fact that da Vinci was willing to go through such a gruesome experience shows how important he considered his research.
However, it is also a reflection of a man whose attention could be easily diverted. His original purpose had been to improve the accuracy of his drawings and yet he became preoccupied with understanding biology instead. It was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout his life, dooming to leave so many projects unfinished. Even his most famous artworks, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, two of the most celebrated masterpieces of all time, took him years to finish.
It is possible to see how da Vinci’s interests changed throughout his life by studying his many codices that still exist today. Comprising his loose papers and drawings, they were eventually gathered and bound centuries after his death.
“If there is anything that demonstrates da Vinci’s devotion to his pursuit of knowledge, then it is certainly his anatomical drawings”
The largest one, the Codex Atlanticus, contains over 1,000 of da Vinci’s papers, musing on a wide range of areas from hydraulics to mathematics to astronomy and botany. “Describe,” he instructs himself in one notebook, “what sneezing is, what yawning is, the falling sickness, spasm, paralysis, shivering with cold, sweating, fatigue, hunger, sleep, thirst, lust.” The codices provide an intriguing insight into the mind of a man who could conceive unique and extraordinary ideas on one page and write his shopping list on the next.
Interestingly, da Vinci was not oblivious to his procrastination, once lamenting to God, “Tell me if anything was ever done.” Undoubtedly, his greatest strength was also the cause of his greatest weakness — a mind that could conceive infinite possibilities but also prevented him from fully achieving them. His desire to pursue knowledge and perfection superseded everything in his life. His work ethic was unusual, spending entire days devoted to his work with no food and little sleep before taking for breaks for days at a time to intensely analyse his work.
Although da Vinci’s interest in anatomy proved to be life-long, he left Verrocchio’s workshop after just over a decade in 1478. Two years previously, da Vinci was charged with sodomy with a goldsmith’s apprentice alongside three other men.
Although they were all eventually acquitted, the artist was certainly arrested for at least a brief time. This was long enough to have considered the punishments, which could vary from a fine to being burnt at the stake. It’s perhaps no shock that the incident is said to have deeply affected him.
Leonardo became a notoriously private man dedicated to his work and developed a habit of buying caged birds only to set them free. Equally, in the coming years he designed a machines specifically for escaping a prison and another for tearing the bars off a window.
Perhaps fearing that his reputation had been blackened in Florence, he relocated to Milan in 1482. Aware Ludovico Sforza, the regent and later Duke of Milan, was in need of a military engineer after years of being under siege from rival powers, he wrote to the noble, detailing ideas for portable bridges, cannons and armoured vehicles. “I have methods for destroying any fortress or redoubt, even if it is founded on solid rock,” he wrote. He only mentioned his skills as an artist and architect as an afterthought.
Sforza became da Vinci’s prolific patron but the duke did not commission any of his military ideas. In fact, his first job was to fix Sforza’s plumbing. After that, he designed pageants for the Milanese court and painted portraits.
While this work was ephemeral, it gave da
Vinci more time to indulge his passion projects, including machinery. As well as considering the relative merits of pistons, pulleys and ball bearings in the Codex Milan, it was during his time that he filled his notebooks with ideas for his most outlandish works of engineering like the armoured tanks and siege weapons he pitched Sforza.
In recent years, engineers have tried to build them and have confirmed that neither would work. In particular, the gears inside the armoured vehicle were designed to work against each other. Some have speculated that such a glaring fault must have been intentional — perhaps it was a means of protecting his intellectual property? An ardent few choose to believe it was an act of self-sabotage by a man who was a pacifist at heart.
However, it wasn’t just the war machines that didn’t work — da Vinci also made several attempts at drawing flying machines. The first of these was the aerial screw, which some describe as Leonardo’s helicopter, from 1483. It would allow for four men to stand at the screw’s base, where they would rotate until it summoned enough power to lift off the ground. The sketches were unclear as to whether the men were supposed to stay on the contraption and ride it like some kind of nausea-inducing fairground attraction.
“Leonardo also made several stabs at drawing flying machines”
Modern engineers have determined that it would have been too heavy to leave the ground.
Another one of these flying machines is from 1485 following months of observing the flight of birds. Known as the orinthopter, its name is a combination of the Greek for ‘bird’ and ‘flying.’
It’s perhaps no surprise that this vehicle required the pilot to lie in the prone position, using his arms and legs to push and pull levers that would operate the wings. It goes without saying that there’s no way this would have worked either.
That’s not to say that all of Leonardo’s designs were bad. He designed a parachute in 1485 with which a man “will be able to throw himself down any great height without suffering any injury.” At first glance, it looks far too heavy, featuring a wooden pyramid frame covered with a sealed linen cloth. However, back in 2000, British skydiver Adrian Nicholas built da Vinci’s parachute true to his design and successfully proved that it did in fact work.
Another of da Vinci’s inventions that showcased his knowledge of mechanical engineering was his knight automaton, fondly known as ‘Leonardo’s robot’ today. It had a pulley and cable system that allowed it to move its arms and head independently, as well as to sit up and down, utilising da Vinci’s mechanical skills.
Unlike most of da Vinci’s ideas, he is believed to have actually built his knight and presented it at a celebration held by Sforza in Milan in 1495. Roboticist Mark Rosheim also built a working replica based on the artist’s sketches in 2002.
In 1499, da Vinci was forced to flee Milan after the French invaded and overthrew Sforza. He ended up in Venice, where he came up with the idea for a scuba diving suit, thinking it would enable underwater attacks on enemies when the city was under siege. He devised a suit with cane tubes, connected to a bell-shaped float that would remain above water, ensuring airflow for the diver. Remarkably similar to those that would appear
“His life was rather solitary but at the same time he earned admiration from some of the most formidable men alive including Sforza”
500 years later, diver Jacquie Cozens proved that the design would actually work in 2003, albeit only in shallow water.
However, it is a mistake to think that da Vinci ‘designed’ these mechanical marvels in a modern sense. He made detailed sketches, which he would annotate with notes, but these were a long way from formal blueprints. Thinking about them in terms of practicality — that is to say whether they worked or not — might also be a mistake.
With the exception of the automaton, da Vinci did not actually try to build any of his sketches. In fact, he didn’t have a workshop and the means to make his ideas concrete. While he observed much during his studies, he lacked an understanding of friction and other principles he would need to make many of his ideas work. Tellingly, he didn’t publish any of his sketches — instead he hid them away in his notebooks for private consideration.
It might be better to think of da Vinci’s ‘inventions’ as a means of recording or making sense of the results of his studies. After all, his armoured tank was based on the shell of a tortoise, while his flying machines were interspersed with his examinations and analyses of bird wings. Even his robotic knight was a logical extension of his detailed anatomical studies.
In doing this, da Vinci was arguably very forward-thinking. Today, the plundering of the natural world for design solutions has a whole field of science devoted to it — biomimicry, where scientists try to solve problems by looking at how solutions have evolved in living creatures over many millions of years.
After Venice, da Vinci flitted between Milan and Florence, during which time he was commissioned to paint The Battle of Anghiari — the famous unfinished artwork that is referred to as the ‘lost Leonardo’ — among other artworks. By 1513, he was living in the Belvedere in the Vatican, Rome, under the patronage of Pope Leo X.
Just two years later, he created another automaton, a lion, to present to King Francis I.
Just like his earlier robotic knight, the lion could move independently, opening its chest to present lilies to the king in reference to the French royal symbol of the fleur de lys.
Francis, who was the king of France, was so impressed that he employed him and he had moved to live near the Château d’amboise in a manor provided for him by 1516. As well as planning court celebrations, Leonardo entertained himself by pondering complex geometric puzzles. As it turned out, the king was to be his last patron as he died in France in 1519. According to legend, the two were so close that Francis cradled his head as he passed away.
The Florentine left the majority of his estate, including his thousands of sketches and notes, to Francesco Melzi, his faithful student. For the rest of his life, Melzi remained determined that his master’s work would be published for all the world to see. Unfortunately, he was unable to completely sort his master’s vast collection of work.
Sadly, after Melzi’s death, his son inherited the papers and failed to realise how priceless they were. Sold off piecemeal, they ended up scattered all over Europe and remained hidden from the public for over 200 years. The flaws in some of Leonardo’s machines aside, this is undoubtedly the main reason why da Vinci had little impact on engineering and natural philosophy.
So, should we consider da Vinci a genius? He certainly revolutionised the way in which pictures were painted, from the soft-focus sfumato of the Mona Lisa to the magnificent The Last Supper in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan that he created with tempera and oil on gesso, pitch and mastic. Through his contribution to the maniera moderna (‘modern style’), he influenced generations of future artists. While Michelangelo strived for ideal beauty, da Vinci aimed to reproduce reality.
Living before a distinction was made between science and art, da Vinci’s keen eye and obsessive curiosity led him to observe facts about the natural world — from the inner workings of the human body to a rudimentary understanding of physics. We remain deeply sceptical about how much he really understood about how things worked. We can also draw the line at calling his sketches ‘inventions’ — although some of them were more developed than others, at best we can call them innovations as they were never actually created. But his capacity to observe the world in such vivid detail is so singular it can undoubtedly only be called genius.
“Da Vinci’s keen eye and obsessive curiosity led him to observe facts about the natural world”