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Leonardo da Vinci: a True Renaissance Man
    Leonardo da Vinci, a multitalented person, had a great influence on the Renaissance and the world in general. He had many famous works that he created throughout his 60-year life. Leonardo, being a sculptor, geometer, engineer, architect, musician, inventor, anatomist, and painter, was the model of the “Renaissance man”.
    Born on April 15, 1452 to Ser Piero and Caterina, he grew up in the small town of Vinci, Italy. As a child, he had access to the town’s scholarly texts, and early in his life, he was introduced to Vinci’s painting tradition. At the age of fifteen, his father apprenticed him to the workshop of Andrea del Verrochio in Florence. He was better than his master, and so Verrochio resolved to never paint again. After working in the workshop until 1477, he set up his own place to work. In the year of 1482, he started working for the Duke of Milan. He painted, sculpted, and designed weapons, buildings, and other machinery for the Duke.
    While working for the Duke, he accomplished and discovered many new ideas and increased his experience in art and science. He often was attracted to new subjects in the middle of another, so he usually failed to finish what he had started. He recorded his studies of architecture, painting, mechanics, and human anatomy in illustrated notebooks. After spending seventeen years in Milan, he left after Duke Ludovico Sforza fell from power in 1499. He searched for a new patron, thus he traveled around Italy working for many different patrons for sixteen years. He painted many works during that time, such as helping Machiavelli paint the “Battle of Anghiari” and the “Mona Lisa”. From 1513 to 1516, he worked for the Pope of Rome, keeping a workshop and studying human anatomy and physiology. King Francis I of France offered him the title of Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect, so Leonardo accepted the deal and Francis I became his last employer. On May 2, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci died in Cloux, France. Legend says that he was cradled in King Francis’s arms when he died.
    Leonardo had created many works of art--mainly related to science--in his life. One of his most famous secular works is the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in the year of 1503, and ended painting it around 1506. He painted this portrait with his own technique, “sfumato”, which is when one paints with no hard lines or contours. The Mona Lisa was painted in oil, and it contrasts light and dark. Another one of his famous works is The Last Supper. He painted it from 1492 to 1498. The scene in the picture is after Christ tells the apostles that one will betray him. Each apostle has his own emotion in the picture, which was what Leonardo called “motions of the mind”.
    Leonardo da Vinci, not only being a multitalented person, made many contributions to the Renaissance. He invented the technique of “sfumato”, or “smoky” in Italian, for most of the time, the painting looked smoky. He also studied how the body worked, and he contributed to the world’s knowledge of human anatomy, based off of his knowledge off of human dissections. He also did extensive work in geometry, especially arc rupture. He created ornithopters, small flying machines, and designs of helicopters, parachutes, and gliders. He also worked on designs of military weapons such as tanks, catapults, submarines, and other innovative weapons for the Duke of Milan.
    Besides having a great impact on the Renaissance, he also had an impact on the world. He discovered the principle that rocks are formed by sediments depositing by water, while rivers erode rocks and carry sediment to the sea. He also contributed to the scientific knowledge of human anatomy, animal and plant life, the motion of water, and the flight of birds through his drawings and sketches.  He came up with ideas of flying machines, military weapons, and other machines and put them in his notebooks, which later inventors read. His inventions included a parachute, helicopter, and gliders, a machine scientists inferred to be a calculator, and a spring-powered car. He also made majors to contributions to the field of geology. Although Leonardo believed that the earth was different than when it was created, nineteenth-century scientists did not. Only after they read his studies did they change their minds. Da Vinci also created the concept that valleys are carved by rivers, the sea level can change to reveal mountains, and all changes on earth happened over a long period of time, not just 4,000 years as modern scientists believed.
    Being a “Renaissance man”, Leonardo da Vinci accomplished many things throughout his life and contributed to the knowledge of this world. He had a great impact on the entire world, and so he is famous worldwide. Having many professions and being a multitalented genius, he created famous works, studied and contributed to the world knowledge hundreds of years ahead of his time, and interested many scholars and historians to study his life and works.
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