Léonard de Vinci
Exactly five hundred years after his death, Léonard de Vinci still fascinates. For the French, it is through the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, and the spectacular inventions presented at the Clos Lucé castle in Amboise. Artist, engineer, scientist, this brilliant Italian scholar crossed the Alps to end his days in the Loire Valley. His close connection with Luca Pacioli, a mathematician who founded accounting, led Léonard toward a mathematical approach. His drawings of polyhedra transform geometric figures into works of art. In a world emerging from the Middle Ages, well before René Descartes, his mastery both theoretical and practical of perspective led him to understand, through the close connection that exists between painting and mathematics, the importance of the scientific approach.
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The artist as geometer
Artist, genius and gifted inventor, Leonardo da Vinci was a visionary. In a world only just emerging from the Middle Ages, and long before René Descartes, he understood the importance of the scientific method and the role of mathematics in understanding the world.
Luca Pacioli, Leonardo's mathematician friend | Tangente
Luca Pacioli would play a major role in the life of Leonardo da Vinci, who used his mathematical knowledge both to depict polyhedra and to improve techniques of perspective drawing.
Leonardo da Vinci: various perspectives | Tangente
Among Leonardo da Vinci's many talents, his ability to reveal the many facets of perspective—all explored in his work—was by no means the least. Having mastered vanishing-point perspective, he went on to explore atmospheric perspective and then the technique of sfumato.
World harmony dictated by mathematics | Tangente
Beginning with painting, Leonardo da Vinci developed a vision of world harmony governed by mathematics.
Pythagoras: Leonardo's proof | Tangente
Leonardo da Vinci was not strictly speaking a mathematician, but the subject interested him, as it did many educated men of the Renaissance. We owe him an elegant proof of the Pythagorean theorem.
Leonardo da Vinci, master of polyhedra | Tangente
Leonardo da Vinci studied mathematics with Luca Pacioli, the greatest mathematician of the age. But the pupil soon surpassed the master! The artist-geometer's depictions of polyhedron nets upend some firmly held beliefs about the Renaissance.
Did Leonardo da Vinci invent the drone? | Tangente
Taken together, several studies and inventions foreshadow the advent of drones in aerial photography.