Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Engineer, and . . . Anatomist?
Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? Of course you’ve heard of him. Best known as an artist and inventor during the High Renaissance, Leonardo was an Italian polymath who excelled in many subjects. As an artist, Leonardo created some of the most influential paintings in Western art including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. As an inventor and engineer he conceptualized flying machines, armored vehicles, hydraulic pumps and more—many designs of which couldn’t be constructed because the technology of the time made them infeasible. What you may not know, and what Leonardo kept private during his lifetime, were his accomplishments in the field of human anatomy.
Naturally curious, the genius Leonardo da Vinci kept hundreds of pages of notes and drawings. Many of those notes and drawings revolved around the workings of the human body. But Leonardo, who did not consider himself a professional in the field of anatomy, kept his anatomical drawings private where they remained, hidden, long after his death. Somehow those drawings made their way to the Royal Collection in London and are known today as Anatomical Manuscript A and Anatomical Manuscript B. With hundreds of drawings and thousands of notes, the unpublished manuscripts reveal a man who was not only fascinated with the human body, but who had artistic talent to convey it in images and the scientific ingenuity to understand its workings.
The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo, 1490
It’s theorized that Leonardo first gained an interest in human anatomy while working as an apprentice in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. In 1489, while working for Ludovico Maria Sforza, the ruling duke of Milan, Leonardo wrote on the heading a new page in his notebook, “On the Human Figure.” He went on to work with mathematician Luca Pacioli on a geometric design of the male human body. Called The Vitruvian Man the drawing was based on the proportional theories of Vitruvius, the 1st-century-BCE Roman architect, by imposing principles of geometry on the human figure. The drawing reflected Leonardo’s belief that the human body was an analogy for the workings of the universe.
Unlike others of his time, Leonardo studied anatomy by actually dissecting human bodies. Given permission, Leonardo dissected human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. By his own count, Leonardo dissected thirty corpses, many of whom were executed criminals. Nevertheless, the dissections allowed Leonardo to study, understand, and record the human body in a way it hadn’t before. His drawings were remarkably precise and accurate. Leonardo proudly emphasized these drawings, believing they were superior to descriptive words. Not only did Leonardo reveal the inner workings of the human body with his drawings, but he made discoveries well ahead of his time. First, his work preceded that of Andreas Vesalius, considered the father of human anatomy, by over thirty years, and also, his description of what is now called coronary vascular occlusion was recorded centuries before it was discovered by medical science.
Drawings and notes from Leonardo’s unpublished Anatomical Manuscript.
In his novel The King’s Anatomist author Ron Blumenfeld includes a scene where Andreas Vesalius observes Leonardo’s anatomical drawings while visiting the Italian painter Francesco Melzi. Vesalius is mesmerized by the genius of Leonardo, but also recognizes small errors in his work. The encounter, though fictionalized, is a catalyst for Vesalius to publish his own work on the study of the human body—De humani corporis fabrica—a book that changed the study of human anatomy forever. But one is left to wonder if Vesalius' book would have meant so much had Leonardo published his findings first. We will never know. Instead, we can merely look back and marvel at a genius who was ahead of his time.
Sources:
Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich. "Leonardo da Vinci". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Apr. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci. Accessed 26 September, 2021.
Sooke, Alastair. “Leonardo da Vinci’s groundbreaking anatomical sketches.” BBC Culture, 21 Oct. 2014. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20130828-leonardo-da-vinci-the-anatomist. Accessed 26 September, 2021.
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