L EONARDO DA V INCI

A BOUT L EONARDO  Occupation: Artist, Inventor, Scientist  Born: April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy  Died: May 2, 1519 in Amboise, Kingdom of France  Famous works: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man

H IS N AME Different to a typical surname you might think of today, "da Vinci" simply means "of Vinci", the Tuscan town where he was born.

W HO WAS L EONARDO Leonardo d Vinci is perhaps best known as a painter, with his legendary works including the Mona Lisa, the Vitruvian Man and the Last Supper, among others. He was an inventor, scientist, mathematician, engineer, writer, musician and much more. The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most well known painting in the world.. It has been on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris for over 200 years.

T HE FAMOUS M ONA L ISA

H IS INVENTIONS His drawings included plans for musical instruments, war machines, calculators, boats and other ideas. Flight was of particular interest to da Vinci. He studied the flight of birds and created plans for flying machines that resemble hang gliders and helicopters. Many of Leonardo da Vinci’s machines have since been built and tested, to varying levels of success.

H IS DRAWINGS

He became an expert in the human body, studying it in detail and creating hundreds of drawings to help explain his thoughts. The Vitruvian Man is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci that describes the relationship between human proportions and geometry. Da Vinci wrote in the opposite direction to what is normal, meaning you’d need a mirror to read it properly.

V ITRUVIAN MAN

T HANKS M IREILLE P ERINI Info entists/leonardodavinci.html rmation taken from website: entists/leonardodavinci.html