Legacy of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci was the ultimate ‘Renaissance Man’. He had a dazzling array of interests, skills, and talents.
As an artist, da Vinci is chiefly known for painting iconic masterpieces such as ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘The Last Supper’. He was also adept in the fields of architecture, bridge design, astronomy, technology, mathematics, water flow, skeletal anatomy, the heart, optics, botany, birds, geology, fossils, horses, weaponry, and map-making!
His insatiable curiousity and fertile imagination about the wonders of nature, combined with his knowledge from studying the overlapping disciplines of art and science, certainly put him in a unique position, well ahead of his time.
With expertise in such diverse subjects, he’d best be summarized as an artist, scientist, engineer, and inventor. His work showed knowledge about the workings of many things that were invented AFTER his death – helicopters, diving suits, crossbows, and armoured vehicles, to name but a few.
He challenged the status quo when it came to spiritual matters as well. The perfectly proportioned ‘Vitruvian Man’ puts humans, not God (or the church’s interpretation of God), in the centre, meaning we are the ‘measure of all things’.
His notebooks, written entirely in mirror script, form about 13,000 pages of sketches, notes, diagrams, calculations, ideas and lists. Since they shed light on his process, ideas and knowledge he’d gained through studies, these notes, in my opinion, are his true legacy.
The background of LEGACY 16 was made by printing this blog in a script font, then transferring it onto the canvas, purposely backwards, so as to mimic the mirror script used by da Vinci.