Artist Research - Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Theres an old joke which I always think of when Da Vinci is mentioned, it’s regarding how long people spend in the Louvre in Paris. Supposedly a few years ago the Louvre did a study on how long people spend in the Louvre and discovered the majority of people spent about half an hour, twenty-five minutes of which was getting the ‘Mona Lisa’ and five minutes was spent looking at it. With this in mind I’m going to reference Da Vinci’s work without discussing the ‘Mona Lisa’ because theres nothing new to say about it. Instead for the purpose of this project I want to look at da Vinci’s numerous sketchbooks which show his genius for invention. When Da Vinci died in 1519 he was known as a great painter but his skill for anatomy, science and engineering were almost completely unknown. The many notebooks he created probably had their origins in the drawings he did of dissections and as a way to explore human anatomy, which he studied avidly to improve his drawing. What interests me is his many design drawings for the many machines he invented, by the time all these inventions where revealed other people had thought of them however so he doesn’t get as much recognition he perhaps deserves. The sketchbooks were given to his favourite apprentice Francesco Melzi when he died who kept them until he died in 1579, after this the sketchbooks where broken up into pages and sold or given away all over Europe. In 1630 a Spanish sculptor named Pompeo Leoni attempted to collate and organise the pages by subject into codices.

My interest in Da Vinci spawned when I was only eight, as child I was heavily dyslexic (before it was cool) and wrote backwards, called mirror writing this is common in many left handed and dyslexic people. My mother told me that it was fine, lots of people are dyslexic, even Leonardo Da Vinci and that he wrote backwards. Researching this project I found this fact was true, Da Vinci wrote much of his notes in his sketchbooks backwards which was another reason he was uncredited for his inventions because nobody could read all the notes he made about them. Many mysteries remain surrounding the sketchbooks and this is in no small part due to the massive quantity of material there is, for this project I’ll focus on only a two of the codices that most relate to invention and art.

Codex Atlanticus

One of the largest codices is the Codex Atlanticus, it is 1119 pages over twelve volumes, it contains some of Da Vinci’s most famous drawings of bird like flying machines. He studied birds to learn how they flew and replicated this in technical drawings, he stated:  "the bird is an instrument functioning according to mathematical laws, and man has the power to reproduce an instrument like this with all its movements." According to his notes he did create a flying machine however the details of how well it worked remain unknown. Also in the codex are several drawings and studies on war machines including a giant crossbow.

Codices of the Institute of France

The twelve documents which make up this codex cover a variety of subjects including hydraulics, military war machines, military tactics, optics, geometry and bird flight as well as one of Da Vinci's most well-known-designs, a primitive helicopter. The primitive helicopter used a spiral instead of the modern aerofoil blades, the design he drew up worked in theory but no engine powerful enough existed in his time period.

Other than these major codex there are numerous more which feature, tanks, studies on celestial flight, submarines and several other areas of engineering. The question now is how any of this relates to my project, bear with for I shall elaborate. The relation to this project is Da Vinci’s appreciation for the relationship between art and science, also the fact he was clearly an inventor and engineer as well as being one of the most famous artists to have ever lived.  When looking at him I’m not looking at the relationships between people like with Wyeth or at the relationships between artists and their art like with Jansen, but the relation between art, science and engineering which is what I wanted this project to be about.