Introduction

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is a famous Italian painter, sculptor, architect, inventor and natural scientist. The book covers all stages of life and reveals the versatility of Leonardo da Vinci's talent. He is the creator of a harmonious image of a person that meets the humanistic ideals of that time. Leonardo was the most universal of modern scientists, and his works contain so many disciplines that, if they had not been hidden for more than three hundred years, the catalog of scientific discoveries during this time would not have been full of names. Leonardo's genius is revealed in different guises: as a painter, sculptor, engineer, anatomist, mathematician and natural scientist. A.K. Dzhivelegov notes the enormous importance of the handwritten heritage of this great man, which only for random reasons remained not fully known to mankind and did not become the beginning of a complete revolution in European science.

Leonardo da Vinci, thinker and artist

Studying the biography of Leonardo da Vinci, it is difficult to believe that this is the story of the life of one person. Nature generously endowed him with various talents: he was an artist and sculptor, architect and engineer, anatomist and musician. Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Anki just near the town of Vinci and received the name Leonardo de Augusta Piero de Antonio, and “da Vinci” simply means “(originally) from Vinci.”

Since childhood, Leonardo showed great ability in drawing and painting. Therefore, when he moved to Florence with his father’s family, he was given a job in a workshop famous artist Andrea Verrocchio, where Leonardo studied from 1469. Three years later, da Vinci became a member of the Florence guild of artists and could open his own workshop, but almost until 1480. worked in Verrocchio's workshop, where he studied the basics of architecture and sculpture.

First famous work Leonardo from the Florentine period of his work is "The Baptism of Christ" (1475-1478). The author of the painting was Verrocchio, and Leonardo painted on it only the background landscape, the figure and head of an angel (on the left). According to a widespread legend, when Verrocchio saw the finished painting, he admitted that he had been defeated by his student, abandoned painting forever, and subsequently worked only on sculpture.

The following works also belong to the Florentine period of Leonardo da Vinci’s work: “The Annunciation” (1472-1475), “Portrait of Ginevre Benci” (1474-1476), “Benois Madonna” (1475-1478), “Madonna with a Carnation” (1478- 1481), “The Annunciation” (1478-1482), “Adoration of the Magi” (1481-1482) and others.

Despite his undeniable talent, Leonardo did not receive recognition in Florence. This is due to the fact that his creative and scientific interests were very diverse, and he did not complete many of the works ordered to him. He became famous as an artist extremely talented, but undisciplined, and therefore, when Pope Sixtus IV invited best artists Florence to work in the Vatican, Leonardo was not on this list. Offended by such neglect, da Vinci moved to Milan in 1482, where he lived and worked at the court of the ruler of this city, Lodovico Sforza.

The Milanese period of Leonardo da Vinci's work (1482-1499) turned out to be the most fruitful. It was here that the versatility of his talent as a scientist, inventor and artist was fully revealed. Here he created such works as “Madonna in the Grotto” (1483-1486), “Head of a Woman” (1483), “Lady with an Ermine” (1485-1490), “Portrait of a Lady (“The Magic Wife of a Farrier”) (1495- 1499) and many others. But the most famous was the fresco “ last supper"(1495-1497), painted for the refectory church of the monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie.

In The Last Supper, Leonardo departed from the traditional interpretation of the Gospel episode and provided an innovative solution to theme and composition. He minimized the interior of the refectory, reduced the size of the table and brought it to the fore, thanks to which he drew attention to the dramatic climax of the event, the contrasting characteristics of people of different temperaments, identifying complex feelings in their facial expressions and gestures. At the same time, Leonardo does not separate the figure of Judas from the other apostles, as the masters did early Renaissance: All 12 disciples of Christ are placed in groups of 3 at a distance from the teacher. In addition, the artist brilliantly solves the problem of the synthesis of architecture and painting: he places the table parallel to the wall on which he creates the fresco, and the perspective reduction of the walls depicted in the fresco seems to continue the real space of the refectory.

The fresco is badly damaged. While working, trying to achieve maximum expressiveness of the painting, Leonardo conducted unsuccessful experiments with paints and primers, which made it very vulnerable to external influences and began to collapse a year after the completion of the work.

When Milan was captured by French troops in 1499, Leonardo da Vinci left the city and traveled for several years: he worked in Mantua, Venice, and Florence.

Leonardo spent the following years in endless travel (Florence - 1500-1502, 1503-1506, 1507; Mantua and Venice -1500; Milan - 1506, 1507-1513; Rome - 1513- 1516; France -1517-1519). In Florence, he worked on the painting of the hall in the Palazzo Vecchio. This work became the beginning of the battle genre in the art of modern times, where madness is shown in the frantic battle of mounted warriors. In the portrait of Gioconda (1503), Leonardo embodied the ideal of femininity and human charm; An important element of the composition of the portrait was the boundless landscape, melting in the cold blue.

The most important source for studying Leonardo is his manuscripts (about 7 thousand sheets), written in colloquial Italian. The Treatise on Painting, compiled after Leonardo's death by his student F. Melzi, had a huge influence on European art and thought of that time. For Leonardo, art and science were connected. He gave the first place among various types of art to painting, understanding it as a universal language (similar to mathematics). While studying architecture, Leonardo developed various options the “ideal” city and the central-domed temple, which influenced further development architecture. As a scientist and engineer, Leonardo enriched almost all areas of science of that time, was a prominent representative new, experimentally based natural science.

He paid special attention to mechanics, because he saw in it the main key to the secrets of the Universe. Leonardo's passion for modeling led him to brilliant constructive guesses that were far ahead of his era (projects for rolling machines, earth-moving machines, submarines, aircraft, etc.). While studying the eye, Leonardo expressed correct assumptions about the nature of binocular vision.

In his detailed anatomical drawings, Leonardo laid the foundations modern sciences. It is customary to remember Leonardo da Vinci when it comes to the possibility of scientific and artistic thinking. For Leonardo, such thinking is a breakthrough in science in the 16th century, since at that time such terminology as scientificity and aesthetics with their specific functions was not used. Leonardo was looking for structure in chaos, but one that was completely aimed at special, infinite details real life. He wrote that painting contains all the components that exist in nature and to which human activity leads.

Leonardo's similar thinking would later be changed to scientific (theoretical) thinking. Analogy provided an opportunity to explain a phenomenon without sacrificing its concreteness at all, leaving it in place, which belongs only to him. For example, Leonardo’s play of analogies is interesting, when human anatomy is compared with the anatomy of a horse, the flow of blood with the flow of water, waves with women’s hair and fields in the wind, and the Earth as a whole with a living organism.

The approach to scientific creativity that Leonardo developed and followed is based on certain principles.

The purpose of natural science is to study the laws of nature. Leonardo writes that science is such a mental action that originates from its last turns, after which nothing can be found in nature that would be part of science. The term "law of nature" did not yet exist in Leonardo's time, so he uses the words "cause", "beginning", "ground", "rule". Leonardo's "rule" is common features, and patterns.

The laws of nature are unchanged. “Nature does not violate its law,” is how Leonardo forms his opinion.

The laws of nature are learned. “The truth does not remain hidden in the end,” writes Leonardo.

The laws of nature must be expressed in the language of mathematics. “No human research,” wrote Leonardo, “can be called true science unless it has passed through mathematical proof.” Therefore, Leonardo was the first naturalist to spread the principle of mathematization scientific knowledge and from these positions assessed the rigor of scientific conclusions.

Research is based on experience, which provides factual material for theory building. “Although nature begins with a cause and ends with experience, we need to take the opposite path, that is, begin with experience and with it seek the cause,” notes Leonardo. His idea of ​​research is not the same as the modern one, when scientific experience is understood as a question that belongs to the natural language of experiment. For Leonardo, contemplation of phenomena in nature comes first.

Achievements in the field of theory are fundamental for the practical use of science. “Science is the commander, and practice is the soldiers,” writes Leonardo.

Ethical principle: science is for the benefit of people; it is better not to talk about a discovery that could harm humanity. It is easy to accuse Leonardo, as the author of military implementations, of violating this principle, but in practice he substantiates this principle with objective and subjective features of a specific situation, including against whom and in what situations the weapons are used.

The general concept of science developed by Leonardo and his scientific method unite a complex of extensive but unfinished research. The main idea of ​​Leonardo's aesthetic system can be reflected in one statement: art is a special kind of science, and artistic creativity - special shape scientific creativity. It is precisely such formulations that are not in Leonardo’s notes. However, they represent the quintessence of his aesthetic system, the analysis of which can be made on the basis of Leonardo's statements about the functions and purpose of painting. For him, art acts as a tool for understanding reality, therefore he defines painting as a subtle image that, with philosophical thinking, considers all the qualities of forms: the sea, terrain, trees, animals, flowers - all this in a circle of shadow and light. Thus, knowledge of reality is a common function of both science and art.

At the end of Leonardo's life, his powerful mind began to be overcome by senile doubts. There was talk that Leonardo, being a supporter scientific knowledge, is not at all an atheist or a heretic. He was seen visiting church service and they said that Leonardo began to diligently ask about Catholic things, about the right path and about the Christian religion.”

On April 23, 1519, he sent for a notary and dictated his will to him. The most important clause of the will was the one according to which all his manuscripts became the property of Francesco Melzi, “a Milanese nobleman,” “as a reward for services dear to him, rendered in the past.” May 2, 1519 - Leonardo died, having received communion, as befits a good Catholic. Two days later he was buried in one of the Amboise churches.

Melzi brought to Vaprio all the papers Leonardo had with him in France. But before leaving for France, Leonardo left some of the manuscripts in Italy, and they were distributed among different hands, probably even before the artist’s death. Melzi carefully kept those that he had until his death (1570). From them he extracted the part related to painting, somehow systematized the scattered notes and published them under the title “Treatise on Painting.”

When Francesco Melzi died, his son Orazio ordered that old manuscripts “belonging to a certain Leonardo, who died fifty years ago,” be taken to the attic. This marked the beginning of the scattering of manuscripts. Some of them were simply stolen, another Orazio first gave to one student, etc.

Conclusion

vinci sculptor architect

So, Leonardo da Vinci began his career as an artist and ended as a scientist. The ideal for Leonardo was Euclid's geometry with its unconditional logic and the derivation of many results from several axioms, but this approach to physical problems raises difficulties due to the level of science of that time. The tragedy of Leonardo's work lies in the discrepancy between his grandiose ideas and real possibilities. In the search for the principles underlying natural phenomena, another feature of Leonardo’s work appears - the desire to systematize these principles. Leonardo planned to create an encyclopedic collection of research results, but, unfortunately, most of the manuscripts have not survived to this day.

The philosophical thought of the Renaissance was closely connected with the development of natural science. The most vivid and consistent expression of a new trend philosophical thought found in the work of one of greatest naturalists Renaissance - Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci (born in 1452 in the town of Vinci, near Florence, worked in Florence, Milan, Rome, last years life - in France, where he died in the castle of Cloux, near the city of Amboise, in 1519) is rightly considered as the most complete embodiment of the Renaissance genius, the realization of the ideal of the “Heroic Man”. For the history of philosophical thought of the Renaissance, the phenomenon of Leonardo is interesting, first of all, as a manifestation of certain trends in its development. Scattered notes of a general philosophical and methodological nature, lost among thousands of equally scattered notes on the most diverse issues of science, technology, art. creativity, were never intended not only for printing, but also for any wide distribution.

The main source of the formation of the scientific and philosophical interests of the young Leonardo was undoubtedly the Bottega workshop. Leonardo's close acquaintance with many of his contemporaries, scientists, mathematicians, craftsmen, builders, doctors, architects, astronomers, combined with an intense interest in the most pressing and important problems of the natural sciences allowed him to keep abreast current state knowledge about the world. Striving to embrace all the richness and diversity natural phenomena in his observations, to understand and analyze everything, without at the same time subordinating them to the usual established scheme, led to the fact that Leonardo did not set himself the task of creating some kind of comprehensive code. To bring together the material he feverishly collected, even a dozen of these richly filled lives of incessant work could not be enough. The main thing in Leonardo's unfinished quest is an attempt to create a new method of cognition.

Declaring that “all our knowledge begins with sensations,” Leonardo decisively rejected knowledge other than that which is not based on the direct study of nature, whether it be obtained from revelation or from the Holy Scriptures. Knowledge that is not based on sensation and experience cannot claim any reliability, and reliability is the most important feature of true science. Theology has no genuine basis in experience and therefore cannot claim to possess the truth.

Another sign of untrue science, according to Leonardo, is a diversity of opinions and an abundance of controversy. Leonardo's position is, in essence, a denial of theology. Knowledge based on revelation, on "inspiration", on Holy Scripture- unreliable and therefore cannot be taken into account; giving his naturalistic explanation of nature human soul, Leonardo speaks disparagingly of the theological interpretation of the “brothers and fathers” - monks and priests. Leonardo also equates false constructions based on what he calls “dreams” to knowledge by inspiration. Leonardo considered “divinatory” astrology (from which he distinguished “observational” astrology in his notes) and alchemy (again highlighting the almost undeniable part of it associated with experiments in obtaining compounds) as false sciences, contrary to experience and not supported by reliable arguments and evidence. natural elements), attempts to create a perpetual motion machine and especially necromancy and different kinds witchcraft based on the use of “spirits”.

Another obstacle to true knowledge is the power of tradition, book learning, which neglects direct observation and experience. Turning to experience as a source of knowledge is not a declaration. Rather, on the contrary, it is the conclusion of the constant and daily practice of Leonardo - an observer, artist, experimenter, mechanic, inventor.

The meaning and greatest value of Leonardo’s legacy for posterity is that it undeniably confirms the limitless capabilities of man, endowed with spirit and reason, to create and continue the process of creating the world. Over his 67 years, he managed to be an artist, architect, and scientist in many fields (mechanics, mathematics, anatomy, astrology, geodesy). Leonardo's scientific interests were limitless. His notes reflect the author's studies in mathematics and physics in its various branches (mechanics, optics, hydraulics), astronomy, geodesy and cartography, botany, physiology and anatomy. Leonardo's era was not ready to use all his insights in the field of technology, but engineering practice 250-300 years after Leonardo's life confirmed the correctness and genius of his developments.

Leonardo da Vinci is inseparable from his homeland - Italy and his historical era - the Renaissance, which became a unique chapter in the history of European and world civilization. The name Leonardo is among the names of those who embodied this era and subsequently became its symbol.

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most multi-tasking and talented heroes of the Renaissance. From the Vitruvian Man and the Mona Lisa to scientific discoveries in anatomy, geology and mechanics, his legacy continues to be explored to this day. At the same time, da Vinci can hardly be called a gloomy genius: he loved to communicate with people, was easily distracted from work and abandoned what he started halfway. How an artist dealt with deadlines, made to-do lists and wrote a resume - T&P collected the most useful productivity lessons from the “all-rounder.”

Be curious

Da Vinci was interested in everything in the world: how birds fly, the glow of the rising moon, how muscles work human face and the structure of the jaw of a crocodile. In the process of constant observation, he formulated new tasks and questions for himself (for example, “describe the language of a woodpecker”) and wrote them down on a kind of to-do list. Da Vinci was not content with obvious explanations and tried to understand the causes of even the most everyday phenomena.

Many of these questions were not directly related to his work and were more reminiscent of childhood curiosity. “For Leonardo, simple observation was the main way to understand the world. He recognized the value of books, but always described himself as an adept of experience,” says Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of art history at Oxford University. Curiosity did not often lead him to great discoveries directly, but it enriched his understanding of the world and helped him look at familiar things from different angles.

Redefine boundaries

Today, da Vinci’s sphere of interests would be called “interdisciplinary,” but he never divided knowledge into important and secondary. Science and art, anatomy and engineering constituted a single field for the thinker, where ideas from one sphere complemented the other. His knowledge of how light interacts with the retina of the eye determined the perspective of the Last Supper fresco, and among Da Vinci's anatomical sketches the first sketch of the Mona Lisa's smile was discovered.

“Good ideas come from interaction. Today we have reached such a degree of specialization of knowledge that we feel the need to return to the exchange of ideas between science and art,” says Francesca Fiorani, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and humanities at the University of Virginia. The author of the biography of da Vinci, Walter Isaacson, in an interview with Bloomberg, notes that his hero is similar to the modern genius Steve Jobs, because both believed in the deep connection between science and art: “Beauty, design and technical developments seemed to them to be part of one whole.”

Play as a team

Da Vinci lived and worked for a long time in Florence, a market and intellectual hub of the Renaissance. Under the patronage of the Medici, Florence became a home for the people of different origins and all kinds of ideas. "The young Leonardo was surrounded by jewelers, tailors, chemists, architects, artists - all working together, learning from each other," writes Walter Isaacson. Da Vinci - illegitimate, slightly awkward and openly gay - joined the urban environment where the most different people- from mathematicians from the East to artisans from Africa.

Having moved to Milan, da Vinci continues to look for interlocutors among the royal court. The artist can hardly be called a solitary genius - for example, his “Vitruvian Man” was inspired by numerous discussions with friends and like-minded people.

Don't get hung up on deadlines

Da Vinci did not complete most of his ideas. Some say he was simply distracted, others believe his ambitions were ahead of his time. Some of the projects turned out to be simply impossible - for example, a flying machine. But this did not stop him from inventing and learning new things. “Sometimes it’s good to make mistakes to learn the limits of your capabilities or analyze why some idea didn’t work. That being said, I'm willing to be wrong, but let me find out why,” Isaacson writes.

According to various estimates, the artist worked on the Mona Lisa for 10 to 14 years and probably did not consider it finished. Some researchers claim that, judging by the techniques used in some parts of the painting, da Vinci completed painting it until his death. Some solutions and projects deserve continuous improvement.

Procrastinate Smarter

When da Vinci was working on The Last Supper, one of his friends wrote to another: “Leonardo doesn’t seem to be going to finish the fresco. Whenever he needs to draw, he thinks about geometry, architecture and anatomy,” writes Ross King in The Fantasia of Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci procrastinated, but in a special way. At this time, he went through all the facts and concepts known to him in his head, trying to create something unique. Da Vinci once told his customer: “Great minds often achieve the greatest results when they work as little as possible. During this time, they think about and refine their ideas.” While working on The Last Supper, he could stare at a fresco for hours, make one small stroke, and then turn around and walk away.

Sell ​​yourself

Write notes

After da Vinci, 7,200 pages of diaries survived. Experts believe that this is one fourth of all his notes. They contained a variety of notes - from a recipe for a remedy for gray hair and discussions about relationships with like-minded people to questions about how circles appear on the water and why shells and remains of corals can be found on mountain tops. In his diaries, da Vinci made calculations (sometimes with arithmetic errors), drew his lovers, created drawings, prepared abstracts for scientific papers, made lists of to-dos and questions of interest to him.

Despite the fact that the notes flash topics from the most different areas knowledge, researchers note their peculiar structure. He often illustrated his thoughts in the margins, creating something like a forerunner. The artist did not part with notebook, although paper was quite expensive at that time. One can only guess what his fate would have been like without such a habit.

Other scientists believe that the issue lies in the peculiarities of the author’s artistic style. Allegedly, Leonardo applied paints in such a special way that the face of Mona Lisa is constantly changing.

Many insist that the artist depicted himself in a female form on the canvas, which is why such a strange effect was obtained. One scientist even discovered symptoms of idiocy in Mona Lisa, citing disproportionate fingers and lack of flexibility in her hand. But, according to the British doctor Kenneth Keel, the portrait conveys the peaceful state of a pregnant woman.

There is also a version that the artist, who was allegedly bisexual, painted his student and assistant Gian Giacomo Caprotti, who was next to him for 26 years. This version is supported by the fact that Leonardo da Vinci left this painting as an inheritance when he died in 1519.

They say... ...that it is the Mona Lisa model great artist owes his death. That many hours of grueling sessions with her exhausted the great master, since the model herself turned out to be a bio-vampire. They still talk about this today. As soon as the picture was painted, the great artist was gone.

6) When creating the fresco “The Last Supper,” Leonardo da Vinci searched for ideal models for a very long time. Jesus must embody Good, and Judas, who decided to betray him at this meal, is Evil.

Leonardo da Vinci interrupted his work many times, going in search of sitters. One day, while listening to a church choir, he saw a perfect image of Christ in one of the young singers and, inviting him to his workshop, made several sketches and studies from him.

Three years have passed. The Last Supper was almost completed, but Leonardo never found a suitable sitter for Judas. The cardinal, who was in charge of painting the cathedral, hurried the artist, demanding that the fresco be completed as soon as possible.

And then, after a long search, the artist saw a man lying in a gutter - young, but prematurely decrepit, dirty, drunk and ragged. There was no longer time for sketches, and Leonardo ordered his assistants to take him straight to the cathedral. With great difficulty they dragged him there and put him on his feet. The man did not really understand what was happening and where he was, but Leonardo da Vinci captured on canvas the face of a man mired in sins. When he finished his work, the beggar, who by this time had already come to his senses a little, approached the canvas and shouted:

– I’ve already seen this picture before!

- When? - Leonardo was surprised. – Three years ago, before I lost everything. At that time, when I sang in the choir, and my life was full of dreams, some artist painted Christ from me...

7) Leonardo had the gift of foresight. In 1494, he made a series of notes that paint pictures of the world to come, many of them have already come true, and others are coming true now.

“People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other” - we are undoubtedly talking about the telephone here.

“People will walk and not move, they will talk to someone who is not there, they will hear someone who does not speak” - television, tape recording, sound reproduction.

“You will see yourself falling from great heights without any harm to you” - obviously skydiving.

8) But Leonardo da Vinci also has mysteries that baffle researchers. Maybe you can solve them?

“People will throw away from their own homes the supplies that were meant to keep them alive.”

"The majority of the male race will not be allowed to reproduce, since their testicles will be taken away."

Do you want to learn even more about Da Vinci and bring his ideas to life?

Leonardo - artist

Leonardo is a versatile genius. From the family of a notary and a peasant woman. He was a brilliant artist, an outstanding engineer ahead of his time, a designer of various machines, an expert in anatomy and physics, a sculptor and architect, a deep thinker and writer. Leonardo is the embodiment of a comprehensively developed personality, its humanistic ideal. The mind of Leonardo da Vinci strived for innovation, a revision of the field of natural sciences, and their symbiosis with art.

Many of his grandiose projects and undertakings were not completed due to high demands on their own creativity and due to unfavorable circumstances of various kinds. So the work “Adoration of the Magi” remained unfinished; the equestrian statue of the Milanese ruler Lodovic Sforza, which Leonardo created in clay and planned to cast in bronze, perished at the beginning of the Italian Wars; The Last Supper fresco in the monastery of Santa Maria in Milan was practically destroyed. From numerous scientific works only scattered notes remained, in which the main ideas, observations, scraps of thoughts and striking drawings were recorded, reflecting the thoughts and brilliant guesses of the scientist.

Leonardo's legacy marked the beginning of the art of the High Renaissance, it includes the “Madonna of the Rocks”, the image of the Mona Lisa - famous painting“La Gioconda”, “Battle of Anghiari”, “Saint Anne with Mary and the Child Christ” and other paintings, as well as models of mechanisms

Many of Leonardo's drawings remain, made in sanguine, crayons and pastels, as well as silver pencil and chalk. Leonardo is considered the inventor of pastels.

Leonardo began writing a Treatise on Painting, worked on it all his life, but never finished it. In this reference book from several volumes, Leonardo described how an artist could recreate on canvas the world, about linear and aerial perspectives, proportions, anatomy and geometry, mechanics and optics, the interaction of colors and reflexes.

Leonardo - philosopher

Leonardo did not receive a humanistic education in his young years. He was alien to book knowledge. He was more attracted to artists, sculptors, and natural scientists. Not being a philosopher, Leonardo tried to comprehend many theoretical issues, showing increased interest in problems of knowledge. He considered experience the main source of ideas about man and the world. He called wisdom the daughter of experience.

Leonardo's views are characterized by a pantheistic tendency. According to his ideas, the rational, divine principle of nature is open to man, since he himself is an integral part of it. He believed in the power of human reason and knowledge, in the creative power of man. Leonardo believed that a human creator could not only compare with nature, but surpass it.

Leonardo considered especially significant the creative capabilities of the painter, who, with the power of his imagination, but on the basis of scientific knowledge, creates new forms and appearances on the canvas. Leonardo managed to discern a scientist in the artist. He considered the painter's eye as a subtle instrument of scientific knowledge and, on the basis of this, created an apology for the capabilities of the eye.

Leonardo - scientist

For his contemporaries, Leonardo was an incredibly bold man in his original judgments, practically a heretic who rejected any authority, including church authority, trusting only thoughts whose truth was confirmed by human practice.

A scientist by vocation, Leonardo once conducted research in the field of aircraft design. In the process of research, he studied the flight and gliding of birds, analyzed the structure of their wings, and on this basis developed an ornithopter - aircraft with flapping wings, but this project was never put into practice. Leonardo da Vinci created a pyramidal parachute, a model of a helical propeller, which is a variant of the modern propeller.

Constant observations of nature made him a true expert in the field of botany. Leonardo was the first to formulate the laws of phyllotaxy on the control of the arrangement of leaves on the stem, as well as the laws of the influence of gravity and the sun on plants, and discovered a method for determining the age of trees by their annual rings.

Leonardo was also an expert in the field of anatomy. He was the first to describe the valve of the right ventricle of the heart, performed anatomy, and created a system for depicting internal organs and the body in cross section.

Note 2

Of particular interest are his researches in the field of geology. It was Leonardo who made the description of sedimentary rocks and explained the marine deposits in the Italian mountains.

Leonardo da Vinci designed canals, dams and locks. He invented shoes for walking on water, a lifebuoy, a device for underwater movement similar to a modern spacesuit, webbed gloves for swimming, a machine for making rope, and a grinding machine.