LEONARDO DA VINCI "ARTIST & ANATOMIST"

BIRTH PLACE

• Born in 1452.
• In Vinci, Italy on April 15th.
• Lived on his father's family estate.
• Learned to appreciate nature from beloved uncle who helped raise him.

THE STUDY OF ANATOMY

• At age 15 was apprenticed to Verrocchio, an Italian sculptor.
• Learned about art and form.
• One of his greatest achievements is his study of anatomy, based on the human
• body.
• His drawings consist of drawings of muscles, tendons and the human skeleton.

DISSECTION ANATOMY

• Da Vinci conducted 30 human dissections in his life time, including a one hundred year
• old man.
• He created many notebooks as a result of a number of dissections he made.
• People thought that Leonardo's work of anatomy was "sloppy business," but this did not deter
• his work.

SCALPEL OBSERVATIONS

• The church banned human dissections during the Renaissance.
• Animal dissections became more reliable for Da Vinci.
• One of his notebooks the "Anatomical Manuscript B,"
• holds several sketches of the human skull.

THE HEART

• All of Da Vinci's life he focused on the structures of the human body, including the heart.
• Toward the end of his life he was focused on the functions and the
• embryology of the human heart.
• He constructed a glass model of the heart, to have a better understanding
• of how the aorta pumped blood throughout the body.

CONSTRUCTING A MODEL

• He pumped grass seeds along with water
• and noticed circular ventricles called the "Sinus of Valsalva."
• This is also called the "roots of the aorta."
• He figured out with blood flowing the vorticles play a role of the aortic valve
• closing.

CONCLUSION

• Leonardo died in the year 1519.
• 6,500 of his anatomical drawings and notes were scattered.
• They remained unpublished until the late 19th century.
• His anatomical drawings/sketches of the human body had no impact on the history of science.
• However, his achievement remains as a true "Renaissance man."