The bridge between art and science

Whenever someone mentions Leonardo Da Vinci, the first thing that comes to many people’s minds is his accomplishments as an artist. Rightly so, as a child Leonardo was put under the apprenticeship of one of the finest painters and sculptor in Florence, Verrocchio, and was trained in a vast range of technical skills. As we can see from his notable works such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, Leonardo was able to show his mastery in producing these hyper realistic paintings. However, it was only recently that Leonardo began to gain fame and renown as an inventor, architecture and engineer.

               It is very fascinating to see Leonardo’s work on human anatomy and his many inventions. While there may be many other spectacular scientists during the Renaissance era, the only ones that made it to this modern era was Leonardo. It is due to his ability as a painter and artist, was he able to depict and transcribe his ideas into an accurate physical form which could be retained and passed on.

These sketches of the human body and head shows his skill in accurately reproducing what he saw. This was quite a remarkable skill that would be priceless in an era without photographic technologies. While many scientists may be able to write and describe anatomical functions of a body human, a well-represented sketch could document and show much more than a thousand words could describe. Thus it could be said that art and science in history could actually be much more intertwined and dependent on each other much more than we realized, one is used as a medium for the other while the other could be used to innovate new methods of representation.

Another good example would be his robot knight sketches (the one above is part of it), it were so well done and accurate that we were able to reconstruct its complete form today which remains fully functional as a moving robot.

References

 "Leonardo Da Vinci - The Complete Works." Leonardo Da Vinci - The Complete Works. Accessed October 4, 2015.

 "Leonardo Da Vinci's Robots - LEONARDO3 - Leonardo Da Vinci | BOOKS - LIBRI." Leonardo Da Vinci's Robots - LEONARDO3 - Leonardo Da Vinci | BOOKS - LIBRI. Accessed October 4, 2015. 

 "Leonardo Da Vinci." Wikipedia. Accessed October 5, 2015.