History of World Art II: Day 34 - The Quintessential Renaissance Man

A Renaissance man, to me it is the artist who is able to mesh art with science, psychology with atmosphere, and all the other manifestations creativity with that of science; and to do this expertly is the key. To me the absolute best example of the Renaissance Man is Leonardo da Vinci. He is still regarded by many as one of the greatest masters of art to ever live. His painting were sublime but he produced relatively few during his lifetime. His most fascinating artworks were from notebooks: his sketches for artwork, ideas, scientific observations, and inventions (many of them designed to be used as or in weaponry). So many of his sketches and ideas have been invented, it is unbelievable that these ideas were dreamed up so long ago - tank, gun, cluster bombs, helicopter, cross-bow, etc. It is also amazing that he was able to get such creativity and detail into such fantastical creations.

Leonardo used Empirical Methods of observation that were far ahead of his time. He was interested in observing the world as it was and was interested in everything about it: painting, anatomy, weaponry, engineering, mathematics, light on landscape, aging, astronomy, etc... It seems his interests were insatiable and he drew on whatever was the most interesting to him at the moment. These thoughts, theories, and sketches were on countless pieces of paper of different sizes and were collected into notebooks that were distributed amongst his friends after he died.

His anatomical drawings were not always accurate, as he was probably theorizing about human anatomy based on his other empirical observations such as animal anatomy. Some of them seem as though he was looking right at them, which is true since he was allowed by various hospitals in Florence and Milan to dissect corpses. Much of our early understanding of anatomy is drawn from his sketches.