Leonardo da Vinci only slept 20 minutes every 4 hours.
Leonardo Da Vinci saved 13,000+ pages of notes and drawings on anatomy, physiology, engineering, mechanics, geometry, mathematics, bird flight, flying machines, botany, proportions, topology, weaponry, musical instruments, art, and more, all in mirrored shorthand written from right to left.
Leonardo da Vinci designed a robotic knight operated by cables. When modern engineers built a replica based on the designs, it was functional.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” as it exists today is largely a modern reconstruction. The painting was already severely deteriorated within sixty years of being painted, and has since suffered flooding, bombing, French revolutionaries, a scratchy curtain and use as a prison cell.
Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli once plotted to steal the Arno River from Pisa when the city was at war with Florence.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote “all the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk”. In 2011 Christophe Eloy investigated and found that trees that followed Leonardo’s rule would be the best at resisting wind-induced fracture.
Leonardo Da Vinci fully intended for his works to be published and left them to his pupil, who couldn’t get through the writing and only managed to compile a treatise on painting in his lifetime, with the rest of his papers sold off by disinterested heirs.
Ginevra de Benci is the only Leonardo da Vinci painting to be located in the Western Hemisphere (in Washington DC).
Leonardo da Vinci never had a last name because he was born out of wedlock, thus leading to his “last name” being da Vinci (of Vinci) because the town he was born in was called Vinci.
Leonardo Da Vinci once conducted an experiment to understand the flow of blood through the valves of the heart, by pouring hot wax into one, making a mold of thin glass from the cast, and then pumping water mixed with seeds through it. He saw how a heart actually regulates itself.
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” was sold at auction in 1958 for £45, and again in 2005 for under $10,000. In 2011, it was authenticated as a Leonardo original. It was then sold in 2013 for $75 million, sold again for $127.5 million, and later sold at auction in 2017 for $450.3 million.
The most expensive manuscript in existence is the Codex Leicester, a notebook written by Leonardo Da Vinci. When adjusted for inflation, it is worth $53 million and is currently owned by Bill Gates.
Adoration Of The Magi is an unfinished work by Leonardo da Vinci commissioned by a Florentine monastery in 1480. Consistent with his proneness to abandon projects, he eventually grew bored with it, simply left, and moved to Milan. The monastery paid Filippino Lippi to complete it instead.
Despite being one of the leading artists of the High Renaissance, only fifteen of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings have survived. The small number of surviving paintings is due in part to Leonardo’s frequently disastrous experimentation with new techniques and his chronic procrastination.
Leonardo da Vinci was a wedding planner before becoming famous as a painter. The Last Supper’s table layout was originally a layout he designed for the Duke of Milan’s 1491 wedding.
In 1998, the City of Des Moines, Iowa rejected a pedestrian bridge design for being “too modern.” The design was based on plans made by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1504.
Leonardo DiCaprio was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when he first kicked.
Leonardo Da Vinci etched his initials into the Mona Lisa’s right eye
One of the few references that Leonardo Da Vinci made to sexuality in his notebooks states: “The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.”
Early Italian renaissance people, such as Leonardo da Vinci, never saw or tried tomatoes in their lives.
A pupil in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop, Leonardo da Vinci was asked to paint an angel in his work, The Baptism of Christ. Verrocchio, on seeing the beauty of the angel that his young pupil had painted, never painted again.
Leonardo Da Vinci ‘could write, draw and paint with both hands.’
Leonardo Da Vinci’s last words were: “I have offended God and Mankind, by doing so little with my life.”
Leonardo da Vinci used to buy caged animals at the market just to set them free.
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the terminator did the same but not for painting...
That's not 100% accurate. He, and many before him dating back to Polykleitos of Classical Greece, studied the the aspects of proportion in nature (and the human body) to find the most perfect balance for art, architecture, and engineering.
The Vitruvian Man was an attempt to correct the inaccuracies of the calculations of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius.
The calculations were used to create paintings and sculptures of the "perfect" human form, but not solely for that purpose.
I think you split the hair too fine. "Only" was an indirect reference to enhance the skill, not an imperative sigular aspect.
This is correct. Opinionated, but correct.