What they don’t tell you at school about Leonardo da Vinci

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WHAT THEY WILL TELL YOU:

Leonardo da Vinci

  • Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps best known as a painter, with his legendary works including the Mona Lisa, the Vitruvian Man and the Last Supper, among others.
  • Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t just an incredible artist, he was an inventor, scientist, mathematician, engineer, writer, musician and much more.
  • The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most well known painting in the world. It is a half-length portrait of a woman who, along with the composition, background and other details, has been the subject of much speculation and discussion. It is believed that Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa around 1503. It has been on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris for over 200 years.

mona lisa

WHAT THEY PROBABLY WON’T TELL YOU IS THAT HE WAS WIDELY REPUTED TO BE:

Leonardo da Vinci

We know this because Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici (Leonardo’s patron for three years, from 1513 to 1516) financed the explorer Andrea Corsali’s voyage on a Portuguese ship and in a long letter to his patron Corsali made a remark about Leonardo when describing followers of Hinduism:

Alcuni gentili chiamati Guzzarati non si cibano dicosa alcuna che tenga sangue, ne fra essi loro consen tono che si noccia adalcuna cosa animata, come it nostro Leonardo da Vinci.

English translation:

Certain infidels called Guzzarati are so gentle that they do not feed on anything which has blood, nor will they allow anyone to hurt any living thing, like our Leonardo da Vinci.

What a guy! 😉

24 thoughts on “What they don’t tell you at school about Leonardo da Vinci”

  5. I am so glad that they still discuss the amazing life of Leonardo da Vinci in Schools. In fact, I myself have done a book about him published by Jonathan CAPE entitled I,LEONARDO.
    OK

    Ralph

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  8. Thanks for the post Violet, I knew it but maybe it’s because I come from Tuscany and I read a lot about him. There is also a quote by Leonardo himself that make us think that he was vegetarian: “Verrà il tempo in cui l’uomo non dovrà più uccidere per mangiare, ed anche l’uccisione di un solo animale sarà considerato un grave delitto.”
    A time will come when men won’t have to kill anymore to eat and the killing of just one animal will be considered as an evil crime.

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  9. Great post. I love Leonardo, he was such a fascinating genius. My favorite fact about him is that as an ambidextrous and a dyslexic, he could draw forward with one hand while writing backward with the other, producing a mirror-image script that others found difficult to read—which was exactly the point 🙂

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  12. Interesting factoid, Violet! Thanks for the post – I learnt one new thing today, thanks to you 🙂 It is also interesting that Andrea Corsali refers to Guzzaratis in his letter. Gandhi, who was a Gujarati, was also a staunch vegetarian. It is interesting that Gujaratis also travelled in this Portuguese ship during those times. There seems to have been a lot of cultural interaction even during the early 16th century, which is quite interesting to know.

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    • It is fascinating. I recommend ‘Bloodless Revolution’ by Tristram Stuart: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism From 1600 to Modern Times. It’s an extremely well researched book about lots of well known names in history who believed in living with compassion towards other animals. Unfortunately I can’t find my copy 😦 It must be somewhere!

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