25 Interesting Facts Might Surprise You About Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is honored as one of the most gifted talents the world has ever got and known. By profession, he was an Italian painter, writer, sculptor, architect, and musician. Furthermore, Vinci also studied science, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, geology, and botany. He has also done several inventions using his incredible skills and profound knowledge. 

Here’s what you were missing out about Leonardo Da Vinci

His concepts and accomplishments were great beyond other persons of his time. He is known as a universal genius and holds accountable for most of our technology. The following mentioned points are some interesting & surprising facts about Leonardo Da Vinci that you should know.

1. The complete name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, but he is generally regarded as simply Leonardo da Vinci.
2. Vinci, the Republic of Florence( now, Italy), is the place where he was born on April 15, 1452. His death took place in Amboise, on May 2, 1519.
3. Leonardo was always way ahead of his time and did several inventions. Still, he was primarily famous as a painter.
4. The Mechanical lion and the knight were the first Mechanical Robots, created by him.
5. The first moveable barricades were invented by him to protect a town from any invasion or an attack.
6. The Last Supper is his most famous painting of the 1490s. There are hidden details inside this painting, as claimed by several people.
7. The Arno Valley is said to be his first known drawing, that he made in 1473.
8. Leonardo began performing an act during 1513 and 1516, that was a violation punishable by death. It was the dissection of human corpses that he did in the Vatican. The Vatican had a great depth of catacombs that was a remarkably cold place. He was aware that a body would not decompose because of extremely low temperatures, so he took advantage of the same, and did several dissections.
9. While spending around three years at Vatican City, he prepared well-detailed drafts of several dissections. His records on human body analysis were encrypted using mirror writing to keep it a secret.
10. According to some sources, it was under the nose of the Pope that many autopsies were performed.
11. Most of the weapons that are utilized by our armed forces nowadays were invented by Leonardo.
12. “The Vitruvian Man” is often considered as a cultural icon used in merchandise, coins, and literature, which is one of his most popular drawings. Canon of Proportions is the name given to the depictions of this picture and its text.
13. Leonardo did invent multiple machines and tools. Armored vehicles, flying machines, the adding machine, and the concentrated solar power are some of his significant inventions.
14. He never published any of his papers despite critical discoveries in optics, hydrodynamics, civil engineering, and anatomy.
15. One of his most mysterious paintings is “The Annunciation.” Someone else started painting it, and he only holds accountable for its completion. There is one mystery in this painting that Leonardo painted an Angel, which becomes invisible when examined under x-rays.
16. Without any traces, Leonardo vanished between 1476 and 1478. It is also known as “the gap” of his life, and it was when he just started getting the fame. His whereabouts of this gap were known to no one. 
17. He produced amazingly accurate aerial maps of Italian cities, soon after coming back from his secret trip.
18. He designed the first self-movable vehicle after this period.
19. The facts about Leonardo’s personal life are not much known as he never wrote them. There were just two incidents in his childhood that he did record. The first was when a kite came down from the sky, got stuck on his cradle, and the feathers of the kite’s tail touched his face. The second was while he was wandering in the mountains during which he found a cave and got frightened after thinking that some huge monster might hide there.
20. His greatest obsession was with the painting of “Mona Lisa,” on which he worked for around sixteen years, struggling with every tiny detail. The lady in this painting is said to be the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Lisa Gherardini.
21. It is the British Library where one can find his Codex Arundel that has his manuscripts recorded between 1480 and 1518.
22. He had problems while writing anything as he was left-handed that used to smudge the just written wet text.
23. Leonardo’s Codex on Flight of Birds is amongst his many flight studies of birds. He was intrigued by the concept of flight and had made several drawings of flight machines.
24. He did not invent the parachute despite drawing it. The reason being was that there was already the oldest parachute design in some manuscripts of the 1470s.
25. He was an intern to Andrea del Verrocchio, during which he got formal training in the anatomy of human bodies. Therefore, he was able to write around 13000 words for an anatomy paper and made about 240 drawings.