1When you think of Leonardo da Vinci, you probably think of the Mona Lisa.
2Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous artists in the world.
3But he is much more than that.
4Indeed he never thought of himself as an artist.
5When he sent a letter to the ruler of Milan describing his strengths when he was looking for work,
6he listed 10 different skills.
7And almost as an afterthought, he mentioned he could also paint.
8The reason his artworks are so realistic and detailed is that he invested much of his time in the study of science.
9da Vinci was born in a village near Vinci, just outside Florence, in 1452.
10The illegitimate son of a farmer's daughter and a prominent lawyer.
11Although he didn't receive any formal education, his artistic ability was clear from a very early age.
12When he was 15, he studied under the acclaimed artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence.
13When da Vinci helped Verrocchio paint an angel in the "Baptism of Christ",
14the story goes that his version was so much better than his master's that Verrocchio vowed never to pick up a paintbrush again.
15da Vinci was a notoriously slow painter and many of his works were never finished.
16Only about two dozen survive.
17A drop in the bucket compared to other artists.
18Van Gogh left more than 2,000 works.
19da Vinci wasn't just interested in how the human body or nature looked on a canvas.
20He wanted to know why they appeared as they did.
21He was able to give the Mona Lisa that mysterious look on her face
22because he studied all the muscles involved in smiling.
23If you wanted to learn about the human anatomy in the 1500s, there was no easy way to do so,
24no medical textbooks, of course, no way to google search an image.
25So he studied the only way he could - by examining corpses.
26Hospitals were keen to support his artistic research and gave him access to cadavers.
27He dissected over 30 bodies in his lifetime and filled thousands of pages with notes and detailed drawings.
28If you're having trouble reading this, it's because da Vinci had a habit of writing backward.
29He also liked to go from right to left.
30He was left-handed. So some have speculated this would have stopped his ink from smudging.
31As a result, his writing can only be read normally in a mirror.
32He probably wouldn't have done this if he had any intention of publishing his notes.
33His depictions of the body are beautiful. And for the most part, accurate.
34So accurate that professors can actually use his drawings to teach anatomy.
35One of his most famous works that perfectly illustrates the fusion of art and science is the Vitruvian man
36which depicts the proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius - a Roman architect.
37The man's outstretched arms are equal to his height, which is true for most people.
38He was particularly obsessed with the heart which he described as a "...wonderful instrument invented by the Supreme Master".
39Many of his medical conclusions about the heart have turned out to be stunningly accurate.
40He was the first to describe the heart as a muscle, that it has four chambers,
41and that the arterial valves opened and closed to let blood flow around the organ.
42He was also the first to recognize coronary artery disease.
43Around 1506, he witnessed a 100-year-old man die suddenly.
44He dissected his heart and discovered that his arteries had narrowed.
45He deduced, this was what killed him.
46He was far ahead of his time.
47Coronary artery disease wouldn't be described by a physician until more than 150 years later.
48It's a mystery why he never published any of his work.
49His notes were not discovered until the late 18th century - more than 250 years after his death.
50Had they been known during his lifetime, they could have had a profound effect on the understanding of the human body
51and, perhaps, helped physicians find ways to heal certain ailments.
52In the same way that he studied the body to improve his paintings and then became obsessed with anatomy,
53he studied plants to improve his art and then became obsessed with botany.
54He drew most of his delicate works with red chalk.
55His sketches of plants were so accurate they could have been considered scientific studies.
56In the Study of the Star of Bethlehem, the swirls of leaves are similar to the movement of water - another one of his obsessions.
57da Vinci dedicated a lot of time trying to understand the flow of water.
58Most of his 72-page scientific diary called the Codex Leicester
59is dedicated to the study of the motion of water in seas, rivers, and canals.
60Bill Gates bought it for nearly $31 million - making it the most expensive book ever sold.
61da Vinci also invented the lock that almost any canal or waterway you visit uses to this day.
62The lock was mitered - as in - two 45 degree angles meet each other at a point.
63His contribution to engineering extended from the water to the skies.
64Da Vinci sketched out this flying machine that he called the Aerial Screw
65while he was employed as a military engineer by the Duke of Milan in the 1490s.
66The device was meant to be powered by four men who would push the four wooden shafts in a circular motion.
67da Vinci believed this would generate enough force to lift it off the ground.
68Had he actually attempted to create a real-life model it would have been too heavy to lift.
69But the basic principles of lift-off provided the earliest foundation for modern helicopters.
70He also made sketches of a parachute,
71speculating that if a person had a tent made from linen that matched their proportions,
72they would be able to jump from any height without being injured.
73Once again, he didn't make a real-life model.
74But a British skydiver did use da Vinci's idea 500 years later, in 2000, and it worked, in practice.
75da Vinci clearly had confidence in his own designs and had done some mathematical equations.
76He applied math to his paintings.
77The Last Supper, one of the most recognizable works in the world,
78is a prime example of the use of the mathematical principle of perspective.
79Jesus is sharing a final meal with his 12 disciples before his crucifixion.
80All the lines in the painting converge in one place, known as the vanishing point
81so that the focus is on Jesus.
82This was done to emphasize the importance of Christ.
83And he wasn't afraid to try new things visually.
84The traditional Florentine way of painting was to outline an image, giving it a very crisp appearance.
85Instead, he perfected a new technique, sfumato, which means "vanished" or "evaporated" in Italian.
86It gets rid of hard edges by blending everything without lines or borders.
87The Mona Lisa is a classic example of the use of sfumato, particularly in the shading around the eyes.
88He also began to experiment with new materials for painting.
89Renaissance period artists were moving away from egg tempera paint -
90which was pigments mixed with egg yolk and water to oil paints,
91which allowed for more vivid colors and greater contrasts.
92However, oil paints were complicated to make and the quality fluctuated greatly.
93So, da Vinci put on his chemistry hat and cooked his own pigments in linseed oil
94at a low temperature and added about 5% of beeswax
95which prevented the paint from darkening on the canvas.
96da Vinci's art was a confluence of biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and physics.
97He employed all these skills when France's King Francis I appointed him as 'the first painter, engineer, and architect of the king'
98when he was already in his sixties.
99His final work was not a painting but a party he threw in the summer of 1518
100at his residence at the Château du Clos Lucé, the king's summer castle, in Central France, to thank him for his generosity.
101There was a spectacle at the party where players dressed up as planets surrounded by the sun and the moon.
102da Vinci was the first to explain why you can see light between the two points of a crescent moon.
103He figured out it was due to sunlight hitting the Earth and reflecting onto the moon called Earthshine.
104This was an outlandish theory at the time.
105Most people didn't even know that Earth orbited the sun!
106He was, once again, far, far ahead of his time.
107When da Vinci passed away at the chateau on the 2nd of May in 1519,
108he left behind thousands of pages of notes and drawings for future generations.
109He may be best known for his art.
110But clearly, he was a Jack of All Trades and the Master of Them All.