10 facts about leonardo da vinci childhood

Leonardo da Vinci — was an Italian polymath , regarded as the epitome of the "Renaissance Man", displaying skills in numerous diverse areas of study. While most famous for his paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper , Leonardo is also renowned in the fields of civil engineering , chemistry , geology , geometry , hydrodynamics , mathematics , mechanical engineering , optics , physics , pyrotechnics , and zoology.

While the full extent of his scientific studies has only become recognized in the last years, during his lifetime he was employed for his engineering and skill of invention. Many of his designs, such as the movable dikes to protect Venice from invasion, proved too costly or impractical. Some of his smaller inventions entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.

As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptually inventing the parachute , the helicopter , an armored fighting vehicle, the use of concentrated solar power , the car and a gun, [ 1 ] a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics and the double hull. One of Leonardo's drawings, the Vitruvian Man , is a study of the proportions of the human body, linking art and science in a single work that has come to represent the concept of macrocosm and microcosm in Renaissance humanism.

25 facts about leonardo da vinci for kids

During the Renaissance , the study of art and science was not perceived as mutually exclusive; on the contrary, the one was seen as informing upon the other. Although Leonardo's training was primarily as an artist, it was largely through his scientific approach to the art of painting, and his development of a style that coupled his scientific knowledge with his unique ability to render what he saw that created the outstanding masterpieces of art for which he is famous.

As a scientist, Leonardo had no formal education in Latin and mathematics and did not attend a university. Because of these factors, his scientific studies were largely ignored by other scholars. Leonardo's approach to science was one of intense observation and detailed recording, his tools of investigation being almost exclusively his eyes.