This, then, is how Leonardo is remembered and valued today. However, an examination of the times in which he lived and worked demonstrates, as a matter of fact, that the Florentine workshop system routinely developed an extraordinary range of skills.

These included painting, sculpture, working precious metals, carving wood, terracotta and mosaic work, the production of ingenious machines, and engineering and architectural design. Competence across several areas was commonplace and excellence in them was quite routine.

To take just three examples, Giotto (1267-1337) was a painter, mosaic worker, architect, and possibly a town planner; Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was a goldsmith, engineer and architect; Michaelangelo (1473-1564) was a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet.

Moreover, much of the underlying practice was not even the product of the Renaissance. The extraordinary flexibility and versatility across disciplines was the result of a continuing medieval craft tradition. The associated industrial and engineering skills sprang from well-established, traditional practices and the general idea that nature could be controlled by artifice. Italy was short of natural sources of energy, which had encouraged the development of many simple machines based on basic components like gears, levers, screws and wedges. Construction yards and foundries, as well as potteries, and agrarian communities, were full of ingenious machinery.

So if Leonardo was fortunate in the circumstances which prepared him for an artist-engineer’s apprenticeship, much of his actual educational experience in industry, engineering, and art was widely shared by those with similar aspirations. Leonardo was not, after all, the unique product of a unique set of conditions.

However, that still leaves the question of his ‘modernity’ and it does seem that he exhibited many traits that would be familiar to modern science and technology. He studied geometry and perspective as a vital first step towards understanding how natural things work, and used them to accurately describe and record observations.

He developed new artistic techniques to record views of the inside of the body; these were realistic enough to communicate scientific ideas with precision. He made protracted investigations into natural phenomena, such as the flight of birds, and formulated conclusions about how these phenomena work. He constructed models in his efforts to understand the underlying principles and frequently suggested practical applications, such as his flying machines and parachute. Sometimes he seems to have produced very modern explanations. Using his knowledge of astronomy and optics he inferred that the slight glow across the unlit part of the moon was reflected light from the Earth’s oceans. From close examination of rock strata and fossils he attempted to disprove the Biblical Flood, arguing that fossils had been living animals and that the strata where they had been deposited had later been raised to form a mountain. He concluded that light has a finite speed. Leonardo was seldom very accurate in his attempts to penetrate the workings of the physical world but it is striking how constantly he used the methods of practical geometry, observation, and even simple experiment in a way that seems entirely familiar to us.

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Content last updated: 07/10/2004

About our expert

Kate Crawley read the History of Science and Technology at the Open University. This was followed by a Ph.D on the metaphysics and methodology of Galileo in the department of the History and Philosophy of Science at University College, London.She teaches history of science and technology courses for the Open University and is involved in course production. She is co-author of the Open University course Perspectives on Leonardo.

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