Renaissance Man

A "renaissance man" is a common term that refers to a person who is interested in many fields of work and knowledge. The term comes from the seeminly great number of activities famous renaissance masters were involved in. For instance, Leonardo de Vinci was an expert of art, mathematics and engineering including many others. Also, a gentleman or courtier of that era was expected to speak several languages, play a musical instrument, write poetry and so on.

The term most often comes into use when bemoaning the fact that there are no renaissance men left in the world. This claim in fact illustrates a lack of knowledge on the part of the speaker -- it was easy to be a an expert in all fields during the renaissance as the total sum of knowledge could fit onto a few bookshelves. Today a single day's worth of book publishing covers considerably more knowledge, broad coverage at any sort of expert level is simply impossible. Similarly, in education there is the trend towards specialisation rather than a superficial knowledge of many fields.Leonardo da Vinci is known as the Renaissance master, this means that he excelled in a number of areas and increased world knowledge. A Renaissance man lived between 1400 and 1600AD; this time was called the Renaissance and it reached its peak in Italy. He excelled in painting, sculpture, architecture, engineering and as a scientist.

Leonardo was a very skilled painter. One of his most successful pieces of artwork was the ‘Mona Lisa’, he painted this piece of artwork between 1503 and 1514. The particular painting was so successful because the eyes of the woman in the painting followed you wherever you went and she was painted with no eyebrows. Nobody can identify the woman in the painting but some people think she was Leonardo’s cousin but nobody has proof. The ‘Mona Lisa’ is a priceless piece of artwork and is kept at a very high tech security museum called the Louvre museum in France. Another well known painting was ‘The Last Supper’, this painting was painted between 1494 and 1498. This was such a famous piece of art because the lines where the roof and the walls meet in the painting all point to Jesus in the middle of the painting.

Another talent of Leonardo’s was sculpturing and architecture. None of Leonardo’s sculptures were ever completed, but the Sforza came close. Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned 500 years ago to construct an enormous bronze horse for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. It was to be the largest realistic statue of a horse to ever be built, standing 24 feet high. Leonardo's full-scale clay model was destroyed by the French in war and the bronze horse was never constructed.

Leonardo was also very good at engineering and planning. He kept a notebook where he sketched all his ideas written backwards. He sketched the first parachute, first helicopter, first aeroplane, first tank, first machine gun, swinging bridge, paddle boat, the very first motor car and mechanical bows capable of hurling flaming missiles over a great distance, he also designed an assault craft. He began progress on many of his inventions including the flying machine (he was the first person to study the flight of birds, which helped him create the flying machine) the scythed chariot and the armored car. He also made designs for weapons to increase the range of fire catapults and other war weapons even though he didn’t like war. He thought of making military bridges, forts and defensive works, floating battering rams, diving suits, and a machine for destroying enemy ships by hitting them under the water line.