Leonardo Da Vinci Research Paper

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Leonardo da Vinci was born in Vinci, Italy during the Renaissance in 1452; he was born out of wedlock, but had some formal education. Da Vinci was Verrocchio’s apprentice, where he learned art and was introduced to science and engineering. Leonardo learned Latin so he could take advantage of books printed in his time; between his own observations and reading studies done previously, Leonardo taught himself science. Unlike most people in his time, he questioned previous studies instead of openly accepting them. When Leonardo grew older he worked for the duke of Milan, and painted “the Last Supper”, his painting style was more realistic than most other artists during the Renaissance; this could be because of his extraordinary observation skills. …show more content…

Leonardo was the first to think of streamlined ships, helicopters meant for human flight, invent a diving suit with an air reservoir, to understand the position of leaves on stems of plants, draw an accurate picture of the heart and describe its function and movement, and explain how the eyes alone are not responsible for dividing light into different colors. Leonardo wrote mirrored to protect his ideas, because some people still believed God controlled the balance of life and science was black magic. Da Vinci planned to have his journals organized and published as he grew older, but in his will he left his work to his pupil, Francesco Melzi, who did not see the value and randomly distributed Leonardo’s work instead of publishing it. The people who could read Da Vinci’s notes valued the journals as centuries ahead of their time, but most people just appreciated them for the illustrations until the transcripts were translated and published for the public in the eighteenth century (Cooper; Gould; Gross; O’ Malley). Leonardo da Vinci is greatly admired for his artistic talent, but a closer look at his journals suggests da Vinci was a scientist and his philosophies were centuries ahead of his …show more content…

However, years after he died people started translating his journals and discovered the artwork in his journals were medical illustrations and blueprints for future inventions. People during the Renaissance did not acknowledge the drawings in his notebook of scientific value because the study of the human body only included structure, not function (O’Malley 17-18); whereas the function of the body is extremely valuable to modern specialists. Leonardo also favored science over art, he included illustration in his notes for better understanding, “‘[w]ith what words, O writer, can you with perfection describe the whole arrangement of that of which the design is here?...the more detail you write concerning it, the more you will confuse the mind of the hearer’” (Belt 6 and), all of Leonardo’s journal drawings were actually meant to be an aid for his scientific

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