Rare Leonardo da Vinci Sketches on Display in Venice

A true Renaissance man figures in our Geo Quiz.

Leonardo da Vinci.

Some of his pen and ink drawings and charcoal sketches are surfacing for the first time in decades.

One of them is called the Vitruvian Man. 

You might have seen it on teeshirts and posters or on the back the Italian 1-Euro coin.

The drawings are now on exhibit at a famous Italian museum–can you name it?

The other drawings, many fragile works on paper, chart da Vinci’s interest in botony, optics, and warfare.

Nick Ross, a renaissance art historian, says Leonardo’s human drawings catch his eye because they’re exceptionally precise. “When Leonardo approaches the human body, he’s jolly interesting. So anatomically accurate that a modern surgeon would have no problem understanding them today which is pretty fantastic.”

Leonardo’s drawings explore the intersection of art and science and reveal his curiosity about the world.

“I have to say there are probably greater draftsmen in the world but none more well known,” says Ross. “That’s because of his restless inquiry into life. He was interested in everything. He was so like our own inquiries into life today involving DNA and genes. Can you imagine how interested he would have been in all of those things now?”

Leonardo da Vinci – The Universal Man, at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice from ikono tv on Vimeo.