Cool Facts About Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo Da Vinci was born near Florence in Italy in 1452.
Leonardo’s parents were not married. His father, Ser Piero, was a wealthy Florentine lawyer and his mother, Caterina, was a young peasant girl. He spent his early years with his mother but then lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle. His father went on to marry four times!
Da Vinci was a huge animal lover. He even chose to be a vegetarian, something that was very unusual in those days. He was said to buy animals from the market just so he could set them free from their cages!
Leonardo was left handed. But as well as using his left hand to write, he wrote back to front, from right to left across the page which meant that, for many years, people were unable to understand his notes. This kind of ‘mirror writing’ led people to believe that Da Vinci wanted to keep his ideas secret!
Leonardo obviously had an amazing mind but believe it or not he never went to school! Instead he was taught reading, writing and maths at home.
The Mona Lisa is a portrait of the wife of a Florentine official. Apparently he ordered music to be played at every sitting so the lady’s smile would remain! Little did Da Vinci know that this was to become arguably the world’s most famous painting!
One of today’s most successful figures, Bill Gates, the man behind Microsoft computers, was obviously inspired by Leonardo’s mind. He paid a cool 30.8 million dollars for a 500-year-old manuscript written by Da Vinci.
Leonardo’s surname Da Vinci simply means ‘of Vinci’, a Tuscan village not far from Florence, which is where his father’s family took their name.
There are actually two versions of Da Vinci’s famous painting The Virgin of the Rocks. The first, which he began painting in 1478, hangs in the Louvre. He later painted another version which is in London’s National Gallery.
Leonardo was tall, at least 5 ft 8, athletic and handsome! As he grew older he wore his hair long, grew a beard down to his chest and wore brightly-coloured clothes, which was very different to other men of his time.
Leonardo Da Vinci never married or had children (which is probably why he had so much time to dedicate to his incredible drawings, ideas and inventions!).
He apparently could draw with one hand and write with the other – imagine how useful that would be at school!
Da Vinci was the brains behind the bicycle, the aeroplane, the helicopter and the parachute – amazingly he drew designs for all these machines about 500 years before their time!
Leonardo is commonly known as the ‘Renaissance man’. Renaissance is actually a french word meaning ‘rebirth’ and it describes the time in history which began in Italy in the 14th century when there was lots of excitement about art, science and architecture.
Unlike many well known artists, Da Vinci was actually famous for his paintings when he was alive but it was only much much later that people realised that he was such a talented scientist and inventor too.
The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by a former employee who felt the painting belonged in Italy. He actually walked out of the gallery with the painting under his clothes and it was two years before the painting was returned safely!
The Mona Lisa was one of Da Vinci’s favourite paintings and he apparently carried it with him until he died.
By studying the human body in so much detail, Leonardo became rather an expert in anatomy (how the body is made up). The Vitruvian man is Da Vinci’s famous pencil drawing of a man with ideal human proportions and it's reproduced on Italy's 1 euro coin.
'Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind."