Renaissance Man Leonardo Da Vinci Essay Example
The Renaissance was a European intellectual and social movement beginning in the trading hub of Florence, Italy and gradually expanded to encompass the whole of Europe. People of the Renaissance age were interested in the Classical works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, they wanted to improve their lives with technology and better understand the natural world. The perfect Renaissance man was said to appreciate multiple fields of study, and examine the world with a technical and scientific mind. Leonardo (di ser Piero) da Vinci is considered by many to have been the finest example of the Renaissance man due to his extraordinary understanding of numerous subjects. Leonardo was known for his unequivocal genius in the fields of mathematics, architecture, engineering, anatomy, and art to name a few. Leonardo was born in 1452 in the small village of Vinci, Italy. Early on in his life he was apprenticed to a great artist in Florence named Verrocchio, where he learned to paint and sculpt, and was exposed to the many great minds that passed through the Verrocchio studio. In the Verrocchio studio he would gain some of the skills and discover the talents that would make him the most renowned painter in the Renaissance age. Anatomy was one of many significant achievements by Leonardo. His extensive drawings and notes on the internal organization, structure, and function of the bodily systems led him to discover the shape of the backbone, skull, and urinary tract. Throughout his life he was able to physically examine human cadavers and dissected at least 30 deceased men and women. He believed that the ultimate way of gaining understanding of the human body was to take it apart. During his lifetime Leonardo discovered not only the placement, but also the function of many organs. He was the first to have ever recorded the existence of the appendix, and is largely credited with the first drawing of the fetus, along with the discovery of capillaries. His Vitruvian Man