Carnegie Science Center celebrates ultimate Renaissance man da Vinci.

500 YEARS AFTER LEONARDO DA VINCI’S DEATH, MANY OF THE CONCEPTS HE DEVELOPED ARE STILL BEING USED

Leonardo da Vinci inspired centuries of wonderment with the mysteries painted into Mona Lisa’s smile. We sing songs about her and brave huge crowds to be near her.

But what makes her creator the Renaissance Man to beat all others — sorry, you Michelangelo fans out there — are the prophetic ideas he put to parchment.

His drawings, from the intricate to the doodles of a genius — include what amount to origin stories of the helicopter, the parachute, the odometer, a revolving bridge, movable cranes, self-propelled vehicles, weapons of mass destruction, the flow of blood through the heart … it’s enough to make this fangirl swoon.

Case in point: the rendering known as “Vitruvian Man” (you know, the one in the circle and square) that represents an architectural ideal of the perfectly proportioned man — a superman, perhaps?

Leonardo died at age 67, on May 2, 1519, and 500 years later to the day, we celebrate his mind-boggling legacy.

In Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Science Center is home to “Da Vinci: The Exhibition” through Labor Day, and as an add-on, has activities for all ages and an unveiling Thursday through Sunday for the Da Vinci 500 Weekend.

The exhibit takes a precious few of drawings from the tip of Leonardo’s stylus and builds them into scale models for the first time. Most had remained on the page these hundreds of years past.

Dennis Bateman, director of exhibits and experience for the Science Center, noted that a few of the sketches illustrate know-how we use today — some of the gears and weighted pulleys on display in the engineering section of the exhibition are similar to those used in the workings of the center’s Miniature Railroad, he said.

Leonardo, though, was no Thomas Edison. He didn’t change the world in real time. For his long-lasting appeal, think “Star Trek” — bear with me, please — and the ideas that were presented as “futuristic” that are now part of our daily lives, such as handheld devices with screens.

Unlike those television pioneers, Leonardo — I feel I know him well enough to be on a first-name basis — was creating at the same time Co

lumbus landed in what is now the Bahamas, and he died just 45 years before the birth of both Shakespeare and Galileo, who was considered to be the father of observational science.

The ideas that flowed from Leonardo, primarily using observation, stretched from the sky to beneath the waves. (Example: Air pumped into and trapped in a mask could allow a diver to breathe underwater.) He even drew plans for the ideal Italian city, with an emphasis on sanitation.

Mr. Bateman noted that Leonardo landed in the right place at the right time to be the poster boy for the Renaissance.

He was born in 1452, after the worst of the Black Plague, in a village in Tuscany. His artistry and inventiveness took him from the wealthy patrons of Rome to work for Francois I as the king’s “First Painter, Engineer and Architect,” and he is buried in a chapel in France.

And all the time, Leonardo observed and he drew. It’s all right there, in his trademark backward text, or mirror writing. More than 7,000 pages have survived.

It is said that his text was to hide his ideas from the long arm of the Roman Catholic Church, because much of what he observed was at odds with the church’s teachings. No subject was off-limits.

He is so well known for his inventions that he is often cited as the inventor of scissors, even though the tool in its rudimentary form was found to be used in ancient Rome and Egypt. Certainly, Leonardo improved on the design.

Many of his notebooks were passed along to collectors through the ages, and some were not rediscovered until the 1950s. Many of these codices have changed hands over the centuries. In 1994 Bill Gates bought the Codex Leicester for $30 million, and in 1997, he lent the work to the Seattle Art Museum as part of a seasonlong celebration and exploration of Leonardo’s genius.

On this Da Vinci 500 Weekend, the Carnegie Science Center continues to offer new insights to the work in the exhibition. There are student guides and activities and even pop culture deep dives, referencing the likes of Andy Warhol’s “continued manipulation of ‘Mona Lisa’s’ image in the 1950s.” And don’t get me started on the Starz series “Da Vinci’s Demon,” which depicted the artist as a swashbuckling stud, more MacGyver than one of the most accomplished men of his age.

The newest addition to the center — unveiled Wednesday at the entrance to the exhibition — is the most direct link to Leonardo, the artist. The “Horse and Rider” sculpture is cast from the original mold that includes what is believed to be a thumbprint of the master.

The reality can be found in the paintings and drawings that still fascinate us 500 years after his death.

Carnegie Science Center Long lost to the public eye, this find-of-a-lifetime sculpture was created as a maquette in 1508 and is the only three-dimensional sculpture known to have been credited as a Leonardo da Vinci work of art. A cast of “Horse and Rider,” which features a thumbprint believed to be Leonardo’s, is on display at the Carnegie Science Center, North Shore.

Lake Fong/Post-Gazette Addison Baker, 6, of Bear, 6, of Beaver picks a crayon for coloring while her mom, Amy, looks at the replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Suppe Last Supper.” See video at post-gazette.com.

Lake Fong/Post-Gazette A hygrometer, an instruman instrument for measuring the humidity of the air or a gas, is disengineering section of “Da Vinci The Exhibition” at the Carnegie Science Center.

Lake Fong/Post-Gazette Dennis Bateman, senior director of exhibits and experience at the Carnegie Science Center, talks about Leonardo da Vinci’s work to discover the secret of flight.