A biography of Leonardo da Vinci. A project made by students.

1. We were asked to make a project about a person that we
believed made a difference for the society .
The person we choose is the famous painter sculptor ,
architect , musician , mathematician , engineer , inventor ,
anatomist , geologist , cartographer , botanist , and writer.
Our final decision on the painter is because we want
people to know , that even though Da Vinci being famous
as a painter he made a big difference through his curiosity
based actions and graced mankind with a new knowledge
without greed for money and fame .
LEONARDO DA VINCI

2. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci is famous for being talented in many
fields
The article that follows is a list of Leonardo’s most creative ideas.
We hope that this will be a good motive for people, to learn more
about the great man.
N. 1: Mirror writing
was it ploy to thwart Renaissance copycats peeking at his notes , or
just a way to avoid the inky mess of writing left-handed ? Whatever
his motives , Da Vinci sure liked mirror writing: most of his journals
are scrawled in reverse.
N. 2 : Scuba Gear
Da Vinci's fascination with the sea spurred many designs for aquatic
exploration. His diving suit was made of leather, connected to a
snorkel made of cane and a bell that floated at the surface.
Proving the artist was also practical, the suit included a pouch the
diver could urinate in .

3. • N. 3 : The Revolving Bridge
Always a fan of the quick getaway , Da Vinci thought his revolving bridge
would be best used in warfare . The lights yet sturdy materials , affixed to a
rolling rope-and-pulley system , allowed an army to pick up and go at a
moment’s notice.
• N. 4 : The Winged Glider
Da Vinci's imagination was full of ideas for flying machines, including several
gliders equipped with flappable wings. This open-shelled model , fitted with
seats and gears for the pilot, did not include a design for a crash helmet.
• N. 5 : The Aerial Screw
Modern scientists agree it may never have lifted off the ground, but Da
Vinci's "helicopter" design is still one of his most famous. The curious
contraption was meant to be operated by a four-man team and could have
been inspired by a windmill toy popular in Leonardo's time.

4. • N. 6 : The Triple-Barreled Cannon
More a thinker than a fighter, Da Vinci's distaste for conflict didn't stop him
from dreaming up designs for more efficient cannons like this one. His
jacked-up triple-barrel would have been a deadly weapon on the battlefield,
fast and light with lots of extra fire power.
N. 7: The Ideal City
Living in a Milan wrought with plague, Da Vinci envisioned a more efficient
city he’d be proud to call home. His architectural draughts are highly
detailed and even include horse stables with fresh air vents. To the
bewilderment of modern Milanese, he did not make room for a soccer
stadium.
N. 8 : The Self-Propelled Car
It's no Ferrari, but Da Vinci's designs for a self-propelled vehicle were
revolutionary for his day. His wooden "car" moved by the interaction of
springs with geared wheels. Scientists at one museum in Florence built a
replica in 2004 and found it worked as Da Vinci intended.

5. • Number 9 : Geologic Time
Plate tectonics? No sweat. While most of his contemporaries explained
inland, mountain-top mollusk fossils as leftovers from the Great Flood, Da
Vinci thought otherwise. He supposed (right) that the mountains must once
have been coastline before many years of gradually shifting upwards.
Number 10 :The Vitruvian Man
Da Vinci modeled his perfect human form after the proportions laid out by
Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect. The angry-looking man drawn by Da
Vinci has reason to smile - he's now considered one of the most
recognizable figures on earth.
Rather than writing the list of Leonardo’s characteristics that made him a
person who made a difference through social movements, we preferred to
make a list of his most creative and revolutionary ideas that could
change/changed the world and helped humanity towards knowledge.
Leonardo’s inventions were ahead of his time and that was the only obstacle
from making them real , but if the machines were build it could dramatically
change that era’s technology and maybe mankind would evolve quicker and
better .

6. • Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci 15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an
Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor,
anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist , and writer. He is widely
considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most
diversely talented person ever to have lived.His genius, perhaps more than
that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo
has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man of
"unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". According to
art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without
precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man
himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much
speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather
than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for
his time .

7. • Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman,
Caterina, in Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the
studio of the renowned Florentine painter Verrocchio. Much of his earlier
working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later
worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice , and he spent his last years in
France at the home awarded him by Francis I.
• Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works,
the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last
Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame
approached only by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Leonardo's
drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon being
reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts.
Perhaps fifteen of his paintings have survived, the small number because of
his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new
techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works,
together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams,
and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later
generations of artists rivalled only by that of his
contemporary, Michelangelo.
• Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying
machines, an armoured vehicle, concentrated solar power, an adding
machine, and the double hull, also outlining a rudimentary theory of plate
tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even
feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an
automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of
wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. He made important
discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he
did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science

8. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci
I
t
h
I
t
h
It had long come in my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them .
They went out and happened to things
Leonardo da Vinci

9. Nothing
strengthens
authority as much
as silence
Leonardo da Vinci
The greatest
deception men
suffer from their
own opinions
Leonardo da Vinci

10. I have been impressed with the
urgency of doing. Knowing is not
enough. we must apply. Being
willing is not enough. we must do
Leonardo da Vinci
He who loves practice without
theory is like the sailor who
boards ship without a rudder
and compass and never knows
where he may cast.
Leonardo da Vinci

11. The human foot is a
masterpiece of engineering
and a work of art.
Leonardo da Vinci
You can have no
dominion greater or less
than that over yourself.
Leonardo da Vinci

12. Where there is shouting, there
is no true knowledge.
Leonardo da Vinci
The
noblest
pleasure
is the joy
of
understan
ding.
Leonardo
da Vinci

13. Presentation by : Helen Hasioti & Joanna Ploumistou
6th
junior high school of Larissa Greece
class : c’5
Theme : Heroes in history
Subject : Social Studies Activity
Date : January of 2015