Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci is best remembered as the painter of the
Mona Lisa (1503-1506) and
The Last Supper (1495). But he's almost equally famous for his astonishing multiplicity of talents: he dabbled in architecture, sculpture, engineering, geology, hydraulics and the military arts, all with success, and in his spare time doodled parachutes and flying machines that resembled inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries. He made detailed drawings of human anatomy which are still highly regarded today. Leonardo also was quirky enough to write notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick which kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death.
Extra credit: Leonardo da Vinci means "Leonardo from the town of Vinci," and thus he is generally referred to in short as "Leonardo" rather than as "da Vinci"... He received a fresh burst of public interest in 2003 with the publication of The Da Vinci Code, the bestselling thriller by author Dan Brown.
Leonardo da Vinci joins U.S. president James Garfield in our loop Upside Down and Backwards.
Other multi-talented types include Michelangelo, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Edison and Bucky Fuller.
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