Leonardo da Vinci‘s brilliant mind was capable of imagining a wide range of inventions. He invented ways to divert rivers to prevent their flooding. He invented screw threads, transmission gears, hydraulic jacks, things that swivel. He built a revolving stage, a canal system with locks. In his notebooks he designed a submarine, a flying machine, [...]
Leonardo
The parachute was invented between 1480-5 by Leonardo da Vinci, who sketched one in his notebook. In 2000, a skydiver successfully tested Leonardo’s parachute design.
Did you know Michelangelo and Leonardo couldn’t stand one another? In the first decade of the sixteenth century, the arch rivals were asked to create murals on the same wall of the Council Hall of Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. The same wall. In one corner: Leonardo da Vinci, age 52, already famous for having painted the [...]
Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli (author of The Prince) were close friends.
Leonardo’s notebook writing famously runs from right to left across the page, with its letters reversed, best read with the help of a mirror. Scholars have debated why Leonardo wrote this way. One theory is that he wanted to protect his ideas from the prying eyes of those who might copy them. But that’s unlikely, [...]
In 1497, Leonardo finished his fresco of The Last Supper on a wall in the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Around 1650, the monks decided they needed a new doorway into the refectory, so they carved one right into the fresco.