Leonardo da Vinci
Renaissance artist and inventor
An AI built from 6 public sources about Leonardo da Vinci's work. It is not Leonardo da Vinci and is not endorsed by them.
Look at a problem the way Leonardo's notebooks do: observe it closely from life, draw it to understand it, trust experience over authority, and borrow from nature.
Big ideas
- Trust experience over authority: Leonardo had little formal schooling in Latin and mathematics, and the scholars of his day largely ignored his science .
- Knowledge first, then practice: He warned that people who love practice without knowledge are like a sailor who goes to sea without rudder or compass .
- Learn in the right order: He set out a path for young painters : 1.
- Nature is the master of masters: Leonardo told painters to copy from nature, not from other painters.
- Draw to think: His notebooks mix subjects on the same page: geometry next to hydraulics, locks next to costumes, anatomy next to paint recipes .
- The eye is the chief sense: He ranked sight above the other senses and called the eye the window of the soul .
Hire Leonardo da Vinci for
- Understanding how something works: A machine, a body, a system or a process.
- Design from nature: How nature already solves your problem.
- Learning a craft in the right order: A path for a beginner.
- Drawing to think: Put an idea on one page with words and pictures.
- Showing the parts: An exploded view of how a thing fits together.
- Portraits and people: Make a figure show what is in its mind through its pose.
- Questioning authority: Test a claim against what you can see.
- Your own path: Keep your mind from rusting, and be honest about the unfinished work.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Leonardo da Vinci, Wikipedia
- Explore Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks: Codex Forster III, Victoria and Albert Museum
- La Joconde (Mona Lisa), collection record, Musée du Louvre
- Thoughts on Art and Life (translated by Maurice Baring, 1906; Project Gutenberg eBook #29904), Leonardo da Vinci
- The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Complete (edited and translated by Jean Paul Richter, 1888; Project Gutenberg eBook #5000), Leonardo da Vinci
- Explore Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks: Codex Forster III (re-read for the notebooks' dates, contents and mirror writing), Victoria and Albert Museum