Leonardo Da Vinci and his contributions in the Renaissance
Known as one of the best artists of all time, Leonardo Da Vinci was undoubtedly the most prominent figure of his time. Prominent in areas of architecture, engineering, archeology, among others;He was always more recognized for his work as a painter, who has transcended until now and has been studying for many years. Despite this, the field of science that most caught Leonardo’s attention was the anatomy of the human body and spent years of his life developing it and investigating it. His scientific studies were as important to him as his work as an artist. His studies on the human body cover from a fetus in the uterus to the spine, with the sole objective of recreating exactly every change and movement that occurred in the human body. His investigation went further until he compared the human body with the anatomy of animals, which also led him to dissect animals to reflect in his drawings his similarities and differences with respect to the anatomy of man. The fruit of his investigations could be carried out through the meticulous dissections of human bodies he made;In this way he was able to capture even the slightest detail of nerves, muscles and bones to reflect through his paintings the perfection of the anatomy of the human body according to his vision and interpretation. He drew the way from his art to an experimental observation, guiding him to mark a before and after in the field of anatomy as he is currently known. Leonardo Da Vinci laid the foundations of scientific anatomy in the period of the Renaissance by dissecting human bodies and expressing in his drawings the real form of the different organs of the body.
It is well known that the Renaissance was mostly highlighted by the rise of art and discovery that came to light at that time. When this discovery was in its splendor its main approach was based on the figure of a man, and to determine it correctly, the artists had to know their figure and structure perfectly. But could it transcend beyond art said approach? Leonardo Da Vinci was an artist who sought and analyzed everything that was around him with the aim of taking his art beyond only paintings, that is why he decided to study perfectly what for many was unknown. The revelation of Leonardo da Vinci’s general laws on the structure of the human body, topographic relationships between organs and the identification of functional and structural relationships converted empirical anatomy into a scientific one and made it the founder of systemic, plastic anatomy, topographic and functional (reference). Anatomy ceased to be a belief or an experience to be an object of scientific study that eventually resulted in the basis of all knowledge about the human body.
Several studies conducted to all the works and research of Da Vinci prove that the artist began analyzing the positions and gestures of the bodies of men, but only with the aim of recreating the figure of a man as he was for artistic purposes. His intentions changed later, it was then that he decided to take his deepest studies to an illustrated treatise on anatomy. These research were transferred from generation to generation to generation by the artistic and educational value they present. This led him to do his first exams of the mechanical instruments responsible for these gestures and attitudes;And so, he dissected the human body, not only to reveal the shapes of his muscles, but also to track the source of his forces to the spinal cord and the brain (reference). It is said that he had the help of professionals such as Marcantonio Della Torre, who was anatomist and through which he had access to the first bodies to carry out his research. His first dissections were made in the powers of Medicine to criminals to capture the various joints and muscles as they extended over time (reference). These artist’s actions show that his desires for knowledge and curiosity, which made him highlight in those times, were the ones who determined before and after in his career and in science.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s obsession to discover the mysteries of the human body led him to study his internal parts separately;and have a better understanding of their functions and be able to capture all its details. The anatomical beginnings of the individual union in the individual parts of the body as the main motor source were the basis of modern scientific illustration. Due to his philosophical beliefs and roots, Vinci decided to link these beliefs with his studies on the anatomy of the human body and, therefore, decideda certain way the engines of the senses and life (reference). His representative drawings in an abstract and natural way his vision at the dissection table and his ability to take every detail of his drawings with greater precision. Leonardo da Vinci, when doing the autopsy of the bodies, made a detailed and exhaustive description of the anatomical structures, immediately drew everything, complemented with measurements. Injected vessels, brain ventricles and created organ models to understand its function.
It can be rightly said that Leonardo Da Vinci was the first to study the functional anatomy of the motor apparatus. ‘Leonardo was the best anatomist of his time in the world’, this is how the distinguished English medical, surgeon and anatomistThey appreciated their personality (Capra 63). Leonardo Da Vinci made sections of a stereometric body formed by regular pentagons, and every time he received rectangles with the appearance relations in the golden division. Therefore, he gave this section the name of Golden Section, which is still considered the most popular. To fully appreciate the importance of Da Vinci’s anatomical works, one must understand that science in his time was limited by the deeply rooted scholasticism and mysticism. With his clear thoughts, free of prejudices, the scientist was far ahead of his contemporaries.
Their anatomical sketches in their precision and ability surpass not only their contemporary works, but also many later. Leonardo described and drew many muscles, bones, nerves and internal organs. An example is the sketch of the fetus position in the uterus with anterior buttocks. In Da Vinci’s drawings, for the first time, an image of the frontal, sphenoid and maxillary breasts, Sesamoid bones of the foot was provided. It was the first to correctly determine the number of vertebrae in the sacrum of a person five (previously, it was believed that the sacrum consists of three vertebrae), correctly described the lordosis and the kyphosis of the spine, the angle of the sacrum (previously, previously,The sacrum was considered straight, hence the name of the rectum) (Pevsner 217-219). He tried to study the structure of the muscles and joints in a close and loading relationship, proposed a classification of the muscles according to the size, strength, shape and nature of the tendons and the method of union of bones to theSkeleton, expressed innovative ideas about muscle antagonism.
Leonardo da Vinci paid great attention to the quality of anatomical drawing, which should be as informative and understandable as possible. For the first time, the image of bones was offered at different angles and projections, and then began to be used by other anatomists, and this principle underlies modern tomography. The artist’s drawings reflect the techniques and assumptions that are compared today with techniques as advanced as 3D scanners. One of his most outstanding works was the anatomical manuscript A, in which each bone of the human body and each muscle group of the same is specifically observed. Another of his studies was conducted with an old man and it was a post-mut exam;that he intended to have an image of how the body appears with the deterioration of time. In this study, the exact conditions of the changes in the body suffering from liver cirrhosis are accurately demonstrated, this being the first exact description of the disease. Another detail of his research was the study of the arteries, which reveals the precursor character of Leonardo da Vinci with respect to the time he lived. The ‘Vitruvio man’ was another of his most outstanding works in which he exemplifies the harmony and perfection of the human body.
After the death of Leonardo da Vinci, all notebooks and manuscripts encrypted with a volume of approximately 7 thousand sheets were inherited by their student, friend and partner Francesco Melzi, who systematized only what related to art. The rest of various ways fell into private collections and libraries in Italy and other Western European countries and for a long time it was not published (Capra 79). Over time, Leonardo’s manuscripts began to be collected, investigated and systematized, and in the second half of the 17th century, 13 volumes were compiled from their notes and drawings. Therefore, Leonardo da Vinci’s works on Anatomy gained fame only in the 18th century (in the light of the fundamental work of A. Vesalius), and they were published even later. With these documents being published for the first time it was coming to light that the understanding of the anatomy had been discovered centuries earlier, maybe not totally true, but with such precision that it resembled the current moments.
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