What is significant about Leonardo Da Vinci?

Question

What is significant about Leonardo Da Vinci?

Answer 1

Other than the fact that he was an amazing artist (rivaled only by Michelangelo), he really helped shape Italy as the heart of art at the time.

Plus, he did EVERYTHING. He was a Jack-of-all-Trades, the true "Renaissance man". He was a a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.

As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualising a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.