Leonardo da Vinci was an extraordinary and incredibly accomplished individual. Most famous for his painting the Mona Lisa, people around the world marvel at this artwork. In addition to his genius as an artist, he was also a sculptor, engineer and architect.
What some of us may not know is that for him, anatomy and science were central to his drawings, and he has been deemed “one of the great scientists of the renaissance, at least the equal of his status as a painter […] and he could and should have been one of the great figures in the history of anatomy (but he ended up being) essentially, just a footnote”1.
The drawing shown below, although of a woman (containing breasts and the female reproductive organs), is based on a dissection of a 100 year old man2 that da Vinci carried out a few years before putting pen to paper. He compiled all of his understanding of the human viscera and we can see some pathological features here:
An enlarged spleen
Cirrhosis of the liver
The umbilical vein opening up due to portal hypertension
The hepatic vessels unusually prominent
Additionally, there are only 2 chambers of the heart - he had not discovered the atria yet. There are some bovine elements, for example the symmetrical aortic arch and the ligaments extending sideways from the uterus. The uterus is also compartmentalised into 7 chambers here - a belief passed down from Aristotle, “the first genuine scientist in history”3.
Da Vinci had many such drawings - he wanted to publish them but when he died in 1519, they remained in his private studies and were essentially lost. He had approximately 600 drawings bound together and in 1690, these mysteriously ended up in the Royal Collection - there is no documentation about how this happened4.
His combined work and intuition as a sculptor, engineer and architect meant that when he dissected a human body, he understood it differently to others, in a fluid way that helped him see how different organs and systems worked. We can all probably appreciate the simple yet alluding nature of his artwork, and his knowledge and talent shines through, even years after his death.
In 1510, he collaborated with a professor of anatomy - Marcantonio della Torre, in Italy. The drawings below contains some of his work on the nerves and muscles of the face - we can identify the structural elements quite well. His writings around his work noted things he wanted to look up and learn more about - a humble great too?
Da Vinci discovered something vital about the human heart that cardiologists agreed with only in the 20th century. His studies on an ox heart allowed him to discover the function of the sinus of valsalva. He injected molten wax into the the aorta and could see a bulb shape when he dissected this away, and this led him to create a glass model around this wax model. He pumped water through this and observed the vortices created - he theorised that this had a crucial role in the opening out of the cusps of the valve after each pump of the heart5.
Finally, let us illuminate his most famous work - the Mona Lisa. This is a “quiet, contemplative painting”6 that he worked on for 16 years. It has been described as the greatest psychological portrait ever painted, and his complementary science and art disciplines greatly contribute to its appeal. He uses soft tones, with no defined edges (with a few techniques he invented and/or refined) which distinguish his work from other artists during his time.
His aforementioned studies on the muscles and nerves of the face helped him analyse every possible movement of each part of the face, and he was able to reveal the mechanisms involved in the transmission of emotions into facial expressions. This was highly important for all of his work, but unequivocally so for the Mona Lisa. When he was perfecting her smile, he was spending countless nights in the morgue - the equivalent of our today’s dissection lab. He peeled the flesh off cadavers, to better expose and visualise the underlying facial structures.
The Mona Lisa has a blurry/fuzzy facial expression so when we look at her, we perceive the expression in different ways - this brings her to life. One of the reasons she is so fascinating is the fact that she constantly changes, through optical and perceptual illusions - this “allows us to look at a painting the way our eyes work”7. Leonardo studied the 11th Century Islamic physicist Ibn Al-Haytham’s pioneering theories on the psychology of perception, and from this developed his own work and ideas.
He knew the way that light hits the retina and utilised this - Mona Lisa’s smile changes because of how our visual system works. Our central vision focusses on her eyes, and our peripheral vision on the shadows on her cheeks and lips. This gives the illusion that she is smiling, then she is not - her expression changes continually, wherever we look.
500 years ago, da Vinci understood the way we see and “art and science are perfectly blended in a single work”8.
There are many other examples of his genius, but I hope I have shown you a glimpse of just how great da Vinci was, not only in his knowledge and pioneering ideas and theories in the realms of science, anatomy and medicine that we still refer to today, but also in the way he was able to translate these ideas into beautiful artwork, like the Mona Lisa, that we will appreciate for years to come.
- Mahdiyyah Osman, 3rd Year Medical Student
Marton Clayton, Senior Curator of the Royal Collection
Marton Clayton, Senior Curator of the Royal Collection
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle
A Rare Glimpse of Leonardo da Vinci’s Anatomical Drawings by Maria Popova
Boon B. Leonardo da Vinci on atherosclerosis and the function of the sinuses of Valsalva. Neth Heart J. 2009;17(12):496-499. doi:10.1007/BF03086311
James Payne, Great Art Explained
James Payne, Great Art Explained
James Payne,Great Art Explained
https://www.rct.uk/collection/912281/the-cardiovascular-system-and-principal-organs-of-a-woman
https://flashbak.com/body-maps-leonardo-da-vincis-anatomical-drawings-394761/
https://www.rct.uk/collection/919012/the-skeleton-recto-the-muscles-of-the-face-and-arm-and-the-nerves-and-veins-of-the