COVE

This schematic from Leonardo da Vinci's notebook illustrates his coined "Rule of Trees" (Eloy 25) which suggests that if you fold all the branches of a tree upward, they will combine to create a continuation of the trunk with the same surface area. Modern publications have proven the validity of da Vinci's rule, even though da Vinci did not collect experiemental data (that is known of) to formulate this hypothesis. The bottom right sketch elucidates da Vinci's thoughts on tree branch directionality and size relative to their parent branch (83).

Leonardo da Vinci's interest in tree...

The images here show Da Vinci's bridge designs in some of Leonardo's original sketches  of the design and a permanent version of the design that is used as a foot bridge in Denmark. The permanent design is to give a better idea of what it might look like in actual use and to more clearly see the geometries used by Leonardo.

“Leonardo Da Vinci: Self-Supporting-Bridge.” Leonardo3, Leonardo Museum, www.leonardo3.net/en/l3-works/machines/1355-self-supporting-bridge.html.

Sniderman, Debbie...

This is a sketch done by Leonardo da Vinci to record how Verrocchio went about creating the bronze ball.  Mirrors were used to reflect solar rays on the pieces of metal to fuse them together.  The metal was also hammered so mercury guilding could be used.  This method was adopted to prevent the issues the first artist had when creating his palla.  It is not confirmed, but widely thought that the issue must have been with the guilding of the palla and not the hammering of the metal itself.  Unfortunately, the original palla was damaged when it fell and no longer rests atop the lantern....

In 1482, Leonardo Da Vinci started plans to create the world's largest equestrian statue. In order to plan his statue, Leonardo studied horses and made sketches of them in his notebook as seen in the photo.

“Study of Horse - by Leonardo Da Vinci.” Study of Horse - by Leonardo Da Vinci, www.leonardodavinci.net/study-of-horse.jsp.

The Baptism of Christ was a piece originally intended for the monks of San Salvi, a Catholic monastery in eastern Florence. Verrocchio's brother was an abbot here, meaning he was the head of the monks at San Salvi. The Baptism of Christ painting was a commission and was used as an altarpiece. The painting was kept in this location from approximately the 1470's until 1530, after the monastery was destroyed. The painting was moved to Santa Verdiana, another monastery, and in 1919, was rediscovered and moved to the Uffizi gallery, where it has remained ever since.

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Leonardo da Vinci included a sketch of the viola organista in his Codex Atlanticus, but never got around to creating it. His idea with the viola organista was to combine the fingerwork of playing an organ, with the sustained sound produced by stringed instruments. However, not even string players can create the continuous sound Leonardo aimed for in his ideas for the viola organista, for players sometimes pause briefly to change bow direction or pluck. The idea’s sketched out in the Codex Atlanticus were for a mechanical instrument that creates continuous polyphonic sounds, played using...

Roman architect and engineer, Vitruvius, wrote and published the treatise on architecture entitled de Architectura, now known as The Ten Books on Architecture, circa 30 to 15 BCE and dedicated it to the emperor of Rome of the time, Caesar Augustus. It is the only surviving document on Classical architecture and heavily influenced the Renaissance period as well. 

Throughout the treatise, Vitruvius exemplifies his three ideals of architecture, utility, strength, and beauty. Book I describes architecture and civil engineering as a whole. Book II delves into the specifics of...

This image is a drawing of a basilica that da Vinci created. After he read The Vitrivian Man when visiting Pavia in 1490, he was inspired to create buildings that were like that of a human and being connected to its surroundings. The use of geometric shapes like circles and squares have an element of humanism to them because they were used in the drawing of The Vituvian Man, where it depicts the human being inscribed in a circle and a square. This implies that the church, like the human, fits in a certain ratio that is universal in nature.

Source: Craven, Jackie. “Hidden...

This sketch is one of the many sketches within the Codex on the Flight of Birds that attempt to translate the anatomy of birds to a mechanical device. Although it is not known if any actual prototypes were attempted, Leonardo’s sketches show that careful consideration was paid to devise a mechanically sound machine that mirrored the method’s used by birds to achieve flight. Leonardo’s theoretical flight machine used a combination of stirrups, levers, and pulleys to allow a human to manipulate the mechanical wing device to move in a way similar to the flapping of a bird’s wing. The sketch...

As Leonardo da Vinci began to research geology and landscapes, and as other artists of the time began to develop, his landscapes began to have much more detail.  Around 1483 this painting was commissioned for the church of San Francesco Grande, Milan for a group of religious followers devoted to the Immaculate Conception. In this artwork, there is so much detail in the background of the image in the rocks. The colors in the background are much darker than typical for depicting the Virgin Mary which could be to bring the focus into the bright colors around the Virgin Mary, and it could also...

In one of his manuscripts, Leonardo records his experimentation with how different sounds are produced depending on the hardness and softness of objects. Leonardo was also focused on the time after a blow that a sound is produced, and concluded that a blow can always be seen before it is heard. Leonardo made many other notes of how size, length, shape, and speed have an effect pitch. His observations included studying the speed of wind passing through a reed instrument to conclude that high speeds produce high sounds, and slower wind speeds produce lower sounds. With his knowledge about...

Leonardo's double hull design merely appears as a drawing on the side of a page in the Paris Manuscripts. Drawn in a manuscript that describes war machines, the double hull was probably a way of protecting against Leonardo's own designs, as a second hull provides extra protection from outside damage, such as enemy attacks or submerged objects. However, the double hull would not appear in an actual ship for another 370 years. As for the reason, double hulls are more expensive and very difficult to build. Going by deductive reasoning, without modern technology, the double hull likely only...

Much of the knowledge and focus of astronomy during Leonardo’s time was on the Sun and Moon. Regarding the Sun, da Vinci spent much of his time attempting to define its characteristics through his knowledge of optics. Using his principle that stars gained their light by reflecting the sun’s light, Leonardo proved that the sun was not a foot in length (as previously suggested by Epicurus), as he roughly knew the size of the Earth, and inferenced that a small sun would mean that very few stars would receive sunlight outside the shadow of the Earth, leaving the night sky mostly black. This...

This picture shows an example of one of the modern technologies used to examine and restore The Last Supper, the infrared reflectoscope.  Imperfections such as hidden, microscopic damage, and potential inscriptions can be detected using this process because infrared penetration causes the additional paint layers to slowly become transparent.  This method allows for the identification and chemical properties of inorganic pigments found within the painting.

Source: Karagiannis, G., et al. “Nondestructive Multispectral Reflectoscopy between 800 and 1900nm: An Instrument for...

Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch of water exiting a square hole into a pool was “perhaps the first use of visualization as a scientific tool to study turbulent flow” (Gad-El-Hak). In the modern era, flow visualization is an entire industry, in which complex models and computer programs are used to simulate flow patterns. For example, in the field of computational fluid dynamics, NASA uses computer programs to visualize how modifying structural geometries impacts stresses, deformations, and velocities that a material must endure (ANSYS). However, in the Renaissance, the only interpretations of...

The tiburio is a structure located on the Milan Cathedral in Milan, Italy. It is most notable for being the first construction project Leonardo da Vinci took part in. While the style of the tower is Gothic, the methods used in its design are Renaissance. The challenge was to create one that would stand over the cathedral's crossing area. da Vinci proposed a design that was in the shape of a square, stating that it would be much stronger than that of an octagon. He drew a system of buttresses that would hold the tower and strengthen the building's infrastructure. His design would be change...