The unbelievable life of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest artists in the history of the world. And he loved understanding how things worked, coming up with designs for helicopters, robots, a self-propelled car, and machine guns centuries before they got made. He was also one wacky guy! 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, you think of Leonardo da Vinci and you
immediately pictured the Mona Lisa, or do you picture a helicopter? Yeah,
there's a reason da Vinci was Steve Job's hero. I'm
Patty Steele, magnificent artist, genius concept guy. Next on the backstory,
We're back with the backstory. Do you know who Apple

(00:23):
founder Steve Job's all time hero was? It was Leonardo
da Vinci. Now think about it. Both of them were
fascinated with both the arts and science, sort of like
Ben Franklin, even Albert Einstein. It's all about design. They
loved beauty so much they became obsessed with understanding it
and how it worked. Da Vinci was, of course one

(00:44):
of the great masters, with paintings like The Last Supper
and really the most famous painting in the world, the
Mona Lisa. Have you ever waited online to see that?
It'sy bitsy work of art. It's only two and a
half feet tall nineteen inches wide, but who doesn't at
least attempt to get a peak if they managed to
get to Paris anyway. Da Vinci was born in fourteen
fifty two, but he was centuries ahead of his time.

(01:08):
I mean this guy created the first prototypes of helicopters,
a self propelled car, scuba gear, robots, machine guns, and parachutes,
and there's a lot more, and the parachutes before there
was anything to jump from. But you know how really
talented people are also sometimes a little wacky. That was Leonardo.

(01:29):
He had a really interesting childhood, born to a very poor,
very young mother. He lived with her until he was
about five years old. Then his wealthy dad took over
and moved him to his home. There he was exposed
to books and especially to his father's art collection. He
explored both and was crazy curious about everything he studied.

(01:53):
Fortunately for him, his dad appreciated his individuality. Now, imagine
what it would be like living in Italy in the
fourteen hundreds and you're illegitimate, you're gay, you're a vegetarian,
And historians agree he was likely ADHD since he was
really easily distracted. Now, on top of that, he was

(02:14):
left handed. Doesn't seem like a big deal, right, Well,
back then it was seen as the mark of the devil.
In fact, the very word sinister is based on the
Latin word for left But Leonardo was also really a
gorgeous guy and He had this big, warm personality as
well as amazing talent. He loved super stylish clothing. He

(02:35):
loved birds and other animals. In fact, he would even
buy caged birds just to immediately set them free. He
was definitely a romantic. By the age of fourteen, he
had been sent to Florence to be an apprentice at
a big time artists workshop, and his career really kind
of took off from there. Legend has it the artist
he worked for was so shocked by Da Vinci's talent

(02:58):
he stopped painting himself because he felt he could never
measure up to this kid. In fact, one of Leonardo's paintings,
Salvatorre Monday, sold in twenty seventeen for over four hundred
and fifty million dollars. That's the most ever paid for
any painting, and they didn't expect to go for anywhere
close to that. So Leonardo's artwork kind of speaks for itself,

(03:20):
I guess. But what really thrilled him was mechanics, how
stuff worked. He could not stop dreaming about what was possible.
Even though he was a really gentle soul, He made
a bundle working for aristocrats and royals like the Medici family,
designing all kinds of devices for military use, including an
armored fighting vehicle that was an awful lot like today's tanks.

(03:43):
He also designed weapons, including that machine gun I mentioned
earlier that was able to rain just a continuous barrage
of firepower. And get this, he also designed a robot
night who knew about robots back then. In addition, he
figured out how to harness concentrated solar power, and he
designed an early adding machine. And on top of all that,

(04:05):
he was fascinated by anatomy. His famous Vitruvian man drawing
is a perfect example of that interest. During his lifetime, hospitals,
such as they were in those days, allowed him to
dissect over thirty human bodies, and he did detailed drawings
of human and animal anatomy that were used for centuries.
His drawings detailed how different organs work in our bodies

(04:29):
and even how the eye processes light. Da Vinci died
in fifteen nineteen while in France working for King Francis,
the First who had become a really close friend. He
was sixty seven years old. What day he leave behind, well,
this is wild. He left over seven thousand pages of
notes and sketches in big journal type books, but they're

(04:51):
almost impossible to decipher. Problem is that wacky Leonardo would
write in what's called mirror script, with every thing in reverse.
It actually wasn't to confuse potential thieves who might try
to steal his ideas, but he mostly did it because
it was easier for him, as a left handed guy,
to write backwards, so he could see what he'd written,

(05:14):
and so as not to smear the ink on the page.
He'd fill these journals with all sorts of scribbles, a
lot of which only he could understand. The world knows
him as one of the greatest artists in history, but
it was his genius for helping us understand how things
work that made Leonardo da Vinci the original renaissance man.

(05:46):
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplify Media. We're out
with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for listening to
the back Story. The pieces of history you didn't know
you needed to know.