Leonardo Da Vinci
5 Amazing Facts About Leonardo Da Vinci
It is pretty much difficult in this day and age to find anyone who has never heard of Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci is more than just the famed Renaissance man who took the world by storm by painting the ultimate portrait, the “Mona Lisa,” which draws millions of people to Paris each year to the Louvre Museum in Paris. Although you may be one of the several tourists who vacation in France just to take selfies with the painting, Leonardo Da Vinci was a polymath, with a vast arsenal of knowledge about different subjects, and many achievements under his belt. Here are some other fun facts about Da Vinci that prove what a real badass he was.
His Father Owned His Mother?
Da Vinci was born in 1452 near Vinci in Italy, which is now called Tuscany. His father, Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonia da Vinci was a notable landlord in the area who met a local peasant named Caterina. They never married each other, and many people believed this may have been because Caterina was a slave of possibly Arab descent. Da Vinci was considered an illegitimate child who lived with his mother for 5 years before settling with his father.
The Mysterious Mona Lisa
Although this is arguably the most famous painting in the world, many mysteries still hover around the Mona Lisa. Many people are unsure if she is smiling, whether she was a man and one of his lovers, whether he painted himself as a woman, and why she never makes eye contact. Several controversies make the painting so exciting, and it has been trending throughout our history. Mona Lisa has been the subject of many caricatures, films, books and so much more.
The Last Supper
This mural which can be found in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy is one other very famous, very recognizable painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, It is an epic mural showing Jesus’ final meal with his disciples and it depicts their expressions at the very moment he announced that he would be betrayed by one of them. It is a miracle this painting has survived so long because it was significantly damaged from bombings and environmental factors during World War II. However, it was restored to its’s former glory and is still one of the most scrutinized paintings in the history of art. This painting like many of Leonardo’s works has also inspired many modern memes.
His Notebooks About Everything
Da Vinci handwrote around 28,000 pages of sketches and notes about things that interested him. He wrote from right to left as the Arabic style, with letters inverted back to front. He combined words, invented new ones, rarely used punctuations, and loved throwing in shorthand symbols and contractions. This made some experts believe he was both left-handed and dyslexic, but others think he did it on purpose to keep his notes private.
Human anatomy
Being a successful artist, Leonardo was authorized to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at other hospitals in Milan and Rome. Leonardo made over 240 detailed drawings about the human anatomy, you can imagine how important these drawings were to the medical field at that time. Leonardo’s drawings of the human anatomy were very extensive, covering the skull, skeleton, muscles and various organs in the body.
Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.