HISTORY79 - The Science of Leonardo da Vinci
I will start with short
introduction, then discuss Leonardo’s scientific investigations and ideas by
discipline, and end with conclusions about his scientific legacy.
My principal sources include:
“Science and Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci,” Wikipedia.com; “Leonardo da
Vinci’s Scientific Studies, 500 Years Later,” forbes.com; “Leonardo da Vinci:
how science shaped his art,” vox.com; “Leonardo da Vinci Science,”
Leonardo-da-vinci.net; plus, numerous other online sources.
Introduction
As a scientist, Leonardo da Vinci had
no formal education beyond elementary school.
While greatly influenced by the
writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Leonardo, unlike many of his
contemporaries, saw the limitations of seeking the truth solely in those
writings or the Bible. Instead, he took
the approach of actually observing nature and asking deceptively simple
scientific questions like, "How does the human body work?"
To create his detailed and
realistic paintings, Da Vinci invested a lot of time in scientific study. His emphasis on empirical observation helped him improve his
art. First, he was able to use what he
learned from looking at nature to paint and draw. His studies of the human body, animals,
motion, shadow and light, and perspective and proportion helped him better
understand what he was seeing in front of him, and render it in art more
accurately and finely than anyone else of his time.
Da Vinci blended his own
observations with experimentation. He
recorded his observations, looked for patterns among them, and then tested
those patterns through additional observation and experimentation. The result was volumes of remarkable drawings
and notes, collected in notebooks, on a variety of scientific topics.
Because of the delay in publishing Leonardo da Vinci’s
notebooks after his death in 1619, the full extent of his scientific studies
has only become recognized in the last 150 years. The tragedy is that much of Da Vinci’s
scientific work was re-discovered at a time when science had already embraced
many of his ideas. (For centuries after his death, Leonardo was known
only as a painter.) There is
little doubt that had his scientific work been publicized in the Renaissance
era it would have advanced the knowledge of the time.
The scope of Da Vinci’s scientific
investigations is enormous, including human anatomy, comparative anatomy, perspective
and geometry, light and optics, botany, geology, hydrodynamics, architecture,
and astronomy.
The following sections detail some of Leonardo da Vinci’s
scientific investigations and thinking.
Human Anatomy
Leonardo started his study of the anatomy of
the human body in the 1470s under the apprenticeship of his teacher
Verrocchio, who demanded that his students develop a deep knowledge of the
subject. He drew many studies
of muscles, tendons and other anatomical features.
As his sharp eye uncovered the
structure of the human body, he sought to comprehend its physical working. Over the following two decades, he did work
in anatomy on the dissection table in Milan, then at hospitals in Florence and
Rome, and in Pavia, where he collaborated with the
physician-anatomist Marcantonio della Torre.
By his own count Leonardo dissected 30 male and female corpses of
different ages in his lifetime. Leonardo
made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words on human anatomy.
Among the detailed images that
Leonardo drew are many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, and of
muscles, and sinews. He was the first to describe the double S form of
the backbone. He also studied the
inclination of pelvis and sacrum, and stressed that sacrum
was not uniform, but composed of five fused vertebrae. He studied the mechanical functions of the
skeleton and the muscular forces that are applied to it in a manner that
prefigured the modern science of biomechanics (study of the movement of
living organisms).
Da Vinci also studied the anatomy of
the human foot and its connection to the leg, and from these studies, he was
able to further his studies in biomechanics.
Leonardo also studied internal organs,
among them he probed most deeply into the brain, heart, and lungs as the
“motors” of the senses and of life.
He dissected and drew the human
skull and cross-sections of the brain.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing of a human brain. |
He documented that it was the heart
that defined the circulatory system.
Leonardo studied the vascular system and drew a
dissected heart in detail. He
correctly worked out how heart valves control the flow of blood, yet he did not
fully understand circulation, as he believed that blood was pumped to the
muscles where it was consumed.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing of a human brain. |
Da Vinci was the first to draw human
lungs, the appendix, urinary tract, reproductive organs, the
muscles of the cervix, and a detailed cross-section
of coitus. He was one of the first
to draw a scientific representation of the fetus in the womb.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing of a human fetus in womb. |
He was the first to
define atherosclerosis and liver cirrhosis.
Leonardo’s sketches and diagrams
indicate that he perhaps did the most detailed study of the human body
before the 20th century.
Leonardo's observational acumen,
drawing skill, and the clarity of depiction of bone structures reveal him at
his finest as an anatomist. However, his
depictions of the internal soft tissues of the body are incorrect in many ways,
showing that he maintained concepts of anatomy and functioning that were in
some cases millennia old, and that his investigations were probably hampered by
the lack of preservation techniques available at the time.
The wealth of Leonardo’s anatomical
studies that have survived forged the basic principles of modern scientific
illustration. It is worth noting,
however, that during his lifetime, Leonardo’s medical investigations remained private. He did not consider himself a professional in
the field of anatomy, and he neither taught nor published his findings.
The drawings and notations are far
ahead of their time, and if published in a timely manner would undoubtedly have
made a major contribution to medical science.
Comparative Anatomy
Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting
dogs, cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and compared in his drawings
their anatomical structure with that of humans.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing comparing legs of a man and a dog. |
He also made a number of studies of horses. On one page of his journal Leonardo drew five
profile studies of a horse with its teeth bared in anger and, for comparison, a
snarling lion and a snarling man.
He studied the anatomy of a bear in detail, making many drawings of its
paws. There is also a drawing of the muscles and tendons of the bear's hind
feet. Other drawings include the uterus of a pregnant cow, the hindquarters of
a decrepit mule, and studies of the musculature of a little dog.
Perspective and Geometry
The art of perspective makes what is
flat appear in relief and what is in relief flat.
By the 1470s, a number of artists were
able to produce works of art that demonstrated a full understanding of the
principles of linear perspective.
Leonardo studied linear perspective
and employed it in his earlier paintings. His use of perspective in his Annunciation
painting is daring, as he uses various features such as the corner of a
building, a walled garden, and a path to contrast enclosure and
spaciousness.
 |
| Da Vinci’s Annunciation painting (1472-1476). Completed while he was an apprentice in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio. |
In the large fresco of The
Last Supper, Christ’s head, at the center of the
composition, is masterfully the vanishing point toward which all lines of the
projection of the architectural setting converge.
While in Milan in 1496, Leonardo met a
traveling monk and academic, Luca Pacioli. Under him, Leonardo
studied mathematics. Pacioli
collaborated with Leonardo in the production of a book in 1509 about
mathematical and artistic proportion.
Leonardo prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal
form to be engraved as plates.
 |
| The rhombicuboctahedron as published in the joint Pacioli-Da Vinci book in 1509. |
Light and Optics
For an artist working in the 15th
century, knowledge of the nature of light was essential.
Starting from an interest in
perspective, Da Vinci moved on to a study of optics and light. How does a light source in one location affect
shadows, for example, or the shades of colors further from the light source? He realized through experimentation that what
the eye sees is somewhat subjective, and depends on light and surroundings.
 |
| Leonardo study of the graduations of light and shade on a sphere. |
His extensive study of light made Da Vinci
an expert in the art technique of chiaroscuro, the use of light and dark shades and colors to create
a sense of depth and structure in a two-dimensional drawing or painting. It’s a common technique used during the
Renaissance period, but Da Vinci was among the first to master it.
At the time when Leonardo commenced
painting, it was unusual for figures to be painted with extreme contrast of
light and shade. Faces, in particular,
were shadowed in a manner that was bland and maintained all the features and
contours clearly visible. Leonardo broke
with this. In the painting generally
titled The Lady with an Ermine (about 1483), he sets the
figure diagonally to the picture space and turns her head so that her
face is almost parallel to her nearer shoulder.
The back of her head and the further shoulder are deeply shadowed. Around the ovoid solid of her head and across
her breast and hand, the light is diffused in such a way that the distance and
position of the light in relation to the figure can be calculated.
 |
| Da Vinci painting of The Lady with an Ermine. |
Leonardo's treatment of light in
paintings such as The Virgin of the Rocks and the Mona Lisa was
to change forever the way in which artists perceived light and used it in their
paintings. Of all Leonardo's scientific
legacies, this is probably the one that had the most immediate and noticeable
effect.
Botany
Leonardo’s studies of plants look very similar to drawings
done by early botanists. But while
botanists rely on their artistic skills to convey scientific ideas, Da Vinci
did the opposite: He studied plants so that he could create more accurate art.
Leonardo's study of plants, resulting
in many detailed drawings in his notebooks, was as an artist and observer to
record the precise appearance of plants, the manner of growth, and the way that
individual plants and flowers of a single variety differed from one another.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing of two sedge plants. |
One such study shows a page with
several species of flower of which ten drawings are of wild violets. Along with a drawing of the growing plant and
a detail of a leaf, Leonardo has repeatedly drawn single flowers from different
angles, with their heads set differently on the stem.
Apart from flowers, the notebooks
contain many drawings of crop plants, including several types of grain and a
variety of berries, including a detailed study of bramble. There are also water plants such
as irises and sedge. His
notebooks also direct the artist to observe how light reflects from foliage at different
distances and under different atmospheric conditions.
A number of the drawings have their
equivalents in Leonardo's paintings. An
elegant study of a stem of lilies may have been for Leonardo's early Annunciation
painting, carried in the hand of the Archangel Gabriel. The grass is dotted with blossoming plants. (See above, in Perspective section.)
The plants which appear in The
Virgin of the Rocks reflect the results of Leonardo's studies in a
meticulous realism that makes each plant readily identifiable to the botanist.
 |
| Da Vinci painting The Virgin of the Rocks (1483-1493). |
Geology
Leonardo's earliest dated drawing (1473) is a study of
the Arno valley, strongly emphasizing its geological features.
In the early 1490s, Leonardo twice headed north into the
Italian Alps. There he examined fossils
and land formations, and he made some of the first modern scientific
speculations about geology and natural history. His drawings of cliffs show clearly the
strata from different geological epochs.
And most dramatically, he speculated about a much older origin for the
Earth than the conventional view.
It had been observed for many years
that strata in mountains often contained bands of sea shells.
Conservative science said that these could be explained by the Great
Flood described in the Bible. Leonardo's observations convinced him that
this could not possibly be the case.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing of mountain strata. |
Leonardo had a breadth of understanding
of geology, including the action of water in creating sedimentary rock,
the shifting of the Earth’s surface (tectonic action) in raising the sea bed, and the action
of erosion in the creation of geographical features.
His
notebooks contain landscapes with a wealth of geological observation from the
regions of both Florence and Milan, often including atmospheric
effects such as a heavy rainstorm pouring down on a town at the foot of a
mountain range.
In Leonardo's earliest paintings, we see the remarkable
attention given to the small landscapes of the background, with lakes
and water, swathed in a misty light. The
characteristic of vertical strata can be observed in several paintings by
Leonardo, and closely resembles the mountains around Lago di
Garda and Lago d'Iseo in Northern Italy. It particular notable
in the painting of The Virgin of the Rocks (see above), which also
include caverns of fractured, tumbled, and water-eroded limestone.
Hydrodynamics
Among Leonardo's drawings are many
that are studies of the motion of water, in particular the forms taken by
fast-flowing water on striking different surfaces.
Many of these drawings depict the
spiraling nature of water. The spiral form had been studied in the
art of the Classical era and strict mathematical proportion had
been applied to its use in art and architecture. An awareness of these rules of proportion had
been revived in the early Renaissance.
In Leonardo's drawings can be seen the investigation of the spiral as it
occurs in water.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing of water flow. |
There are several elaborate drawings
of water curling over an object placed at a diagonal to its course. There are
also several drawings of water dropping from a height and curling upwards in
spiral forms. One such drawing, as well
as curling waves, shows splashes and details of spray and bubbles.
Leonardo drew streams and rivers, the
action of water in eroding rocks, and the cataclysmic action of water in floods
and tidal waves. The knowledge that he
gained from his studies was employed in devising a range of projects,
particularly in relation to the Arno River.
None of the major works was brought to completion.
Through experimentation, he developed
ideas about natural fluid flows which were innovative for his time
though not always aligned with findings of modern fluid mechanics.
Architecture
Leonardo was concerned with
architectural matters all his life. But his effectiveness was essentially
limited to the role of an adviser.
His claim to being a practicing
architect was based on sketches for representative secular buildings:
for the palace of a Milanese nobleman (about 1490), for the villa of the French
governor in Milan (1507-08), and for the Medici residence in Florence
(1515). Finally, there was his big
project for the palace and garden of Romorantin in France (1517-19). Especially in this last project, Leonardo’s
pencil sketches clearly reveal his mastery of technical as well as artistic
architectural problems; the view in perspective gives an idea of the
magnificence of the site.
Da Vinci devised an ideal city; his
aim was to put an end to health problems, create clean urban spaces, and
facilitate the transport of goods. For Da Vinci, the ideal city should
have "high, strong walls,” as well as "towers and battlements of all
necessary and pleasant beauty", a sacred temple and "the convenient
composition of private homes.” Da
Vinci's sketched his idea of the ideal city in some of his notebooks.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing a central church for his ideal city. |
But what really characterized and
immortalized Leonardo’s architectural studies was their comprehensiveness; they
range far afield and embrace every type of building problem of his time, and even
involved urban planning. He
wanted to collect his writings in a manuscript on this theme, including
important individual elements (for example, domes,
steps, portals, and windows), but never completed it.
Astronomy
Leonardo da Vinci had a
great appreciation for the moon and was captured by its mystery. He conceptualized the telescope, to discover
more about the moon. His notebooks
describe the telescope as being able to “magnify the moon” and he even wrote
specifics about the dimensions, for example the thickness of the glass he would
use to look through.
 |
| Da Vinci drawing of features on the moon’s surface. |
Leonardo da Vinci’s
fascination with space was not limited to the moon, or even a specific
celestial body. While da Vinci had a
keen interest on the moon and focused quite heavily on its physical properties
and features, he devoted time to exploring the movements and nature of the
solar system we reside in. His immense
amount of intellectual curiosity led to one of his most significant
discoveries, the lack of movement of the sun.
He stated in one of his notebooks, “the sun does not move.” In addition to this statement, he concluded
that the Earth is not the center of the circle of the Sun, nor is it the center
of the universe.
Conclusions
For
the most part, Leonardo da Vinci dissected, analyzed, and experimented with a
clear goal in mind: to make better art - in which he gloriously succeeded.
Leonardo
didn’t see art and science as distinct areas of activity. He trained as a painter, and he soon came to
the conclusion that painting was essentially a scientific undertaking; that a
painter should understand the physical structure of the Universe, the laws
within which the Universe operated, the visual effects we can see, and that a
painting should encapsulate all of those.
A painter should therefore understand light, color, perspective,
proportion, and anatomy, and all these different fields to be able to paint
works that were true to life.
If you look at his
works, particularly anatomy, he was one of the great Renaissance scientists. He made observations in many disciplines of a
level of detail and insight that no other person of the period was doing.
However, he found it
difficult to bring his work to a conclusion, so he never published his
scientific investigations.
Because of the long
delay in publishing his notebooks, it would be 400 years before his scientific
work was generally known, and by then, any power that those drawings and notes
may have had to influence their discipline, had pretty much gone. The science had moved on.
Personal notes:
1.
It is really a tragedy that Leonardo
da Vinci’s scientific work was not published in a timely manner. Renaissance science would certainly have
benefited! And who knows how science
would have progressed from there?
2.
Leonardo apparently was a very private
person, and regarded his work as private.
Why else use mirror-image writing in his notes; that must have greatly
complicated and delayed the eventual publishing of his notebooks. Da Vinci generally didn’t collaborate in his
scientific studies and was not known to share his scientific work with others.
3.
Da Vinci’s personal characteristic of
not being able to finish his works was of course evident in his painting. Several of his paintings, including the Mona
Lisa, begun years earlier, were unfinished at his death. In fact, his
legacy comprises fewer than 20 completed paintings. Leonardo
left behind countless works of art, many of which remain unknown, and
forgotten.
4.
The scope of Da Vinci’s scientific work is
truly astounding. Is it possible that it
was too broad, too varied, thus keeping him from completing projects?
5.
Recently, some
psychologists have suggested that the best explanation for Da Vinci’s chronic
inability to complete projects, was attention deficit and hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD). People with ADHD struggle with sustained attention and have
difficulty staying on task, leading to a pattern of starting projects, but not
completing them. They may also have trouble with organization, forgetfulness,
and procrastination. There is unquestionable evidence that Leonardo was constantly
on the go, keeping himself occupied with doing something, but often jumping
from task to task. Historical records show that Leonardo spent excessive time
planning projects, but procrastinated and lacked perseverance to complete them.
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