Leonardo da Vinci

By TempleofMysteries.com

One of the truly great minds of all time, the 15th-century Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci was uncannily ahead of his time, giving the world not only the Mona Lisa and his other extraordinary works of art, but also designs for a helicopter, military tank, submarine, bicycle - and even the sewing machine - among many other incredibly advanced innovations.

It has also been argued that he may even have been behind the faking of Christianity's most precious relic, the Shroud of Turin through the use of an ingenious form of primitive photography...
Yet despite his genius - and the many dozen of full notebooks he left to posterity - the man Leonardo remains largely unknown: intensely private to the point of secretiveness, there is no way of knowing his innermost thoughts or even what really drove his restless being. Illegitimate and badly educated, he forged his own way through the world with sheer determination and the power of his extraordinary mind, fuelled by an intense curiosity to discover the heart and motion of everything that surrounded him. Always he questioned, ignoring the restrictions on learning instigated by the Church. How does light work? How do we see? How does blood circulate through the body? Is it possible to create truly life-like images using paint or stone? Are there unknown ways of creating such images? Can Man ever fly using some kind of apparatus - or explore the bottom of the sea, while still breathing?

Leonardo the Man: From his illegitimate birth in 1452 in the small Italian town of Vinci through his tumultuous and often dangerous years as artist and resident engineer for great princes, to his death in the arms of the French king in 1519.

Leonardo the Great Scientist and Innovator: His genius as expressed in his curiously advanced dream machines - including military tanks, aircraft, a giant crossbow & breathing equipment for divers. He also drew up elaborate blueprints for town planning, which were never implemented.

Leonardo the Heretic: Was he a devotee of a cult that upheld John the Baptist but despised Jesus and the Virgin Mary?
Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Last Supper: An examination of his most famous works, citing both the traditional view and latest research and ideas.

Leonardo the Photographer: Did he really fake the Shroud of Turin - creating essentially a photograph of his own face?

This eBook is the complete and ad-free written work on Leonardo da Vinci from TempleofMysteries.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: TempleofMysteries.com
• Release date: Jan 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465928467

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Leonardo da Vinci

by

TempleofMysteries.com

Copyright 2012 TempleofMysteries.com

Smashwords Edition

The Heretic

The Engineer, Scientist & Inventor

Leonardo the Man

The Artist

The Photographer

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Introduction

One of the truly great minds of all time, the 15th-century Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci was uncannily ahead of his time, giving the world not only the Mona Lisa and his other extraordinary works of art, but also designs for a helicopter, military tank, submarine, bicycle - and even the sewing machine - among many other incredibly advanced innovations.

It has also been argued that he may even have been behind the faking of Christianity's most precious relic, the Shroud of Turin through the use of an ingenious form of primitive photography...

Yet despite his genius - and the many dozen of full notebooks he left to posterity - the man Leonardo remains largely unknown:  intensely private to the point of secretiveness, there is no way of knowing his innermost thoughts or even what really drove his restless being. Illegitimate and badly educated, he forged his own way through the world with sheer determination and the power of his extraordinary mind, fuelled by an intense curiosity to discover the heart and motion of everything that surrounded him. Always he questioned, ignoring the restrictions on learning instigated by the Church. How does light work? How do we see? How does blood circulate through the body? Is it possible to create truly life-like images using paint or stone? Are there unknown ways of creating such images? Can Man ever fly using some kind of apparatus - or explore the bottom of the sea, while still breathing?

Leonardo the Man: From his illegitimate birth in 1452 in the small Italian town of Vinci through his tumultuous and often dangerous years as artist and resident engineer for great princes, to his death in the arms of the French king in 1519.

Leonardo the Great Scientist and Innovator: His genius as expressed in his curiously advanced dream machines - including military tanks, aircraft, a giant crossbow & breathing equipment for divers. He also drew up elaborate blueprints for town planning, which were never implemented.

Leonardo the Heretic: Was he a devotee of a cult that upheld John the Baptist but despised Jesus and the Virgin Mary?

Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Last Supper: An examination of his most famous works, citing both the traditional view and latest research and ideas.

Leonardo the Photographer: Did he really fake the Shroud of Turin - creating essentially a photograph of his own face?

THE HERETIC

Because he is seen as one of the first true scientists, most people consider that Leonardo da Vinci must have been a materialist, a rationalist and an atheist. Certainly, he is known to have been more than scathing about the Church's corruption in his day, but certain researchers claim to have found extraordinary evidence of Leonardo as an active heretic - a man who had his own strong religious beliefs that shockingly fly in the face of accepted Christianity.

Extraordinary though it may seem today, Leonardo's life was in danger in 15th century Italy simply because he was a vegetarian.  The all-important religious rationale held that because God had given humankind dominion over all the animal kingdom, it was nothing short of blasphemy to refrain from eating flesh. The Church called vegetarian food 'the Devil's banquet', and were quite prepared to have vegetarians burnt at the stake for heresy. Yet somehow Leonardo got away with it, just as he got away with other forms of heresy, both minor and - even to modern eyes - much more extreme and even downright shocking.

Naturally left-handed, the artist taught himself to be ambidextrous, also often committing his more private ideas to paper in mirror writing. But in that time and place to be left-handed was also seen as a sign of the Devil, and once again Leonardo somehow escaped punishment for refusing to forgo writing in the way that came naturally.

He did have a potentially very serious brush with the law, however, when, aged 24, he and some companions were arrested for homosexual activities. Despite the extreme seriousness of the charge (indeed, it was a criminal offence in the UK until the late 1960s), they were freed because influential people came to their aid - perhaps the secret of Leonardo's blithe disregard for society's requirements in other ways.  

One of the Church's most entrenched proscriptions was against the dissection of dead bodies, on the grounds that not only was it blasphemy to destroy God's handiwork, but bodies had to remain whole for the Day of Judgement when they would be resurrected. Yet Leonardo virtually flaunted his nocturnal activities in charnel houses, when he pursued his anatomical research