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Editor's note
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It is 500 years since the death of Leonardo da Vinci, surely history’s greatest polymath. His eye, his imagination and his lust for knowledge meant he was equally at home as an artist, sculptor, mathematician, scientist and engineer. For your bank holiday reading we’ve put together a smorgasbord of articles by some admiring experts whose studies have all benefited in one way or another on being able to stand on Leonardo’s shoulders.
In 26 codices, his “Notebooks”, you’ll find ideas that are so far ahead of their time they must have seemed uncanny to his contemporaries: his designs for flying machines; blueprints for safer, cleaner and more efficient cities; experiments with music and acoustics. His ability as a draughtsman meant he was able to combine form and function, to bring art and science together in a way that few others have matched, before or since. The ultimate Renaissance man.
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Jonathan Este
Associate Editor, Arts + Culture Editor
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Model of Leonardo da Vinci’s helicopter from the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci - Scientist and Inventor”, Sofia, 2007.
EPA/Krum Stoev
Jonathan Ridley, Solent University
Leonardo's range of knowledge fascination with flying led directly to the development of modern aircraft, nearly four centuries later.
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Larger than life even 500 years ago, Leonardo’s legend has grown over the centuries.
Hunter Bliss Images/Shutterstock.com
Richard Gunderman, Indiana University
Dead five centuries, Leonardo retains a rock star's fame, well known around the world by just one name. Here, some facts about the man and his legacy.
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Leonardo da Vinci had a seemingly inexhaustible imagination for innovation.
Hywel Jones, Sheffield Hallam University; Alessandro Soranzo, Sheffield Hallam University; Jeff Waldock, Sheffield Hallam University; Rebecca Sharpe, Sheffield Hallam University
Engineer, artist, mathematician, thinker: Leonardo da Vinci was all these and more.
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Marcantonio Raimondi’s 1505 engraving may show Leonardo da Vinci playing an instrument called a lira da braccio.
Cleveland Museum of Art.
Tim Shephard, University of Sheffield
A lot has been said about Leonardo and music, much of it speculation. But what do we know for sure?
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‘Design for a giant crossbow.’
Leonardo da Vinci
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
As Leonardo da Vinci found centuries ago, scholars of art, design, engineering and science can work together for mutual benefit.
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Ferrara, Italy bears some resemblance to da Vinci’s design.
hectorlo/Flickr.
Alessandro Melis, University of Portsmouth
Leonardo da Vinci's ideal city contained design features and engineering works not realised until hundreds of years after he died.
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Old man (possible self-portrait) and water studies, c 1508-9.
Wikimedia Commons
Susan Broomhall, University of Western Australia; Greg Ivey; Nicole L. Jones, University of Western Australia
Leonardo's obsession with water flowed through his technical work, his art and his scientific ideas.
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Featured events
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Henley Business School, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, Reading, RG6 6UD, United Kingdom — University of Reading
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East Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB11PT, United Kingdom — Anglia Ruskin University
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St Helens Road, Ormskirk, Lancashire, L39 4QP, United Kingdom — Edge Hill University
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Berrill Lecture Theatre, Walton Hall, The Open University, MK6 7AA, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK6 7AA, United Kingdom — The Open University
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