How did a boy from nowhere 500 years ago get to be the artist we all know today? What was it in Leonardo's world that encouraged his ceaseless experiments and scientific investigations? How did his society react to his daring ideas and was there a market for them? How do we rate Leonardo's achievements in science and in art today?

If you are intrigued by Leonardo da Vinci and would like to know more, there is a short Open University course - A178 Perspectives on Leonardo da Vinci - which could take your interest further. The course goes into Leonardo as a 'Renaissance man', and what that means today. It follows his obsessions with such subjects as mathematics, astronomy, engineering, and science in general as well as art as a whole; it shows his desire to question everything in nature so that he could see how it worked; and it brings in the influence on his work of his patrons, battling warlords such as Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. The course discusses Leonardo as a 'modern' man too, in terms of the far-sighted experimental designs he made, anticipating present-day inventions such as the glider or the modern arched bridge, and foreshadowing war machines such as tanks and submarines.

Leonardo's scientific experiments were always dependent on direct observation . For example, he cut up dead bodies so as to see how they worked (and got into trouble for it). This helped him to learn about anatomy so that he could improve on his representations of the figures in his art works. He based his theories about fossils and plants on direct observation and dissection in the same way. He observed the links between things in nature, whether they were to do with water flowing around a post, the use of veins for circulation through the human body, the flight of birds, the movement of foliage in the wind, or the delicate tendrils of hair around a woman's face.

This brings us, of course, to Leonardo the painter. As with science, he constantly experimented with radical techniques which would make his images as life-like as possible - as he said, 'a painting should be indistinguishable from life. The job of an artist is to breathe life into a two-dimensional plane - the way God breathed life into clay…'. But what did 'life-like' mean at that time? The course examines the new science of perspective, based on exact geometrical measurements, with which artists had been creating the effects of space on a flat surface for some years before he was born. Leonardo added a further dimension, blurring the background forms so as to give the same effect as screwing up your eyes when you try to catch a glimpse of a distant detail. Techniques of 'modelling' on a flat surface, giving the illusion of rounded forms, just as in sculpture, were still new and were being taken further by Leonardo (he loved the effects of dark shadows playing around a face coming out of a doorway, for example). Exact observation of textures such as rumpled cloth, flesh, feathers or hair contributed to his new 'realism'.

The course covers Leonardo’s innovations in painting and his experiments with bronze casting for the statue of the Duke of Milan. The influence of designs, such as that for the Galata Bridge, on future engineers is explained and illustrated. How far Leonardo could be called a scientist today is debated. The relationship between his drawing techniques and his interest in geometry is traced. There are analyses of paintings and quotations from his notebooks, showing how he questioned everything. There are no answers, but it's fun to follow his inventive mind looking for them.

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Content last updated: 20/04/2003

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