Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, inventor and scientist of the Italian Renaissance.

Biography

Leonardo da Vinci was born the bastard son of Piero da Vinci and a woman named Caterina on April 15, 1452.

As an artist, his most famous artworks include Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He also created designs for the helicopter and tank, centuries before their actual development, and filled notebooks with engineering drawings, astronomical and anatomical studies, and artistic drawings.

Legacy

In September 1908, in conjunction with a visit to the Louvre and a viewing of the Mona Lisa, Indiana Jones was instructed to write a report on Leonardo da Vinci. Instead, he spent time with his new friend, Norman Rockwell, and the outgoing Pablo Picasso. After escaping from a restaurant brawl, Picasso took the boys to a closed marketplace, and helped Jones with his report, giving him insights into Leonardo's art and art in the general. Sneaking back into his hotel room, Jones hid in his wardrobe to pretend to have been writing his report there and fallen asleep, and was not found by Miss Seymour until morning.

In 1937, the National Museum's branch in Connecticut planned an exhibition entitled "Man in Flight", a history of flying machines through the ages. It included a full size model of flying wings designed by da Vinci. Before the exhibit opened, the thief masquerading as Victoria Keith used the wings to glide out of third story window of the museum after trapping Indiana Jones and stealing the Eye of Shamash.

In 1947, while on a quest to recover the Philosopher's Stone, Jones and Marcus Brody recalled that Leonardo, as an admirer of Albert De Groot, wrote his notes in reverse. This led them to read De Groot's notes with a mirror, helping them determine the locations of the three pieces of the stone.

Two of da Vinci's previously unknown notebooks were later discovered in 1965.