Leonardo da Vinci connected painting, anatomy, and engineering through a concrete practice: representing things to investigate them. His notebooks bring together bodies, machines, water, and geometry. For an aspiring polymath, the useful lesson is to examine how a tool from one field reveals relationships in another, while recognizing what an image does not yet demonstrate.
A life across fields.
Leonardo was born in Vinci in 1452 and trained as an artist in Florence. His career moved through courts and workshops, between painting commissions and technical proposals. In Milan he worked for Ludovico Sforza; The Last Supper belongs to that period. The range is clear, but something more precise than the number of interests matters: how studying one thing changed when it encountered another.
His investigation of the body began in connection with painting and developed questions of its own. Meanwhile, other pages recorded balances, shapes, instruments, and moving water. The Codex Arundel preserves material from different decades; the Forster notebooks place calculations and drawings about different subjects within the same physical books. This archive lets us follow unfinished investigations, revisions, and uneven results. The finished image of a genius conceals a more useful learning process: looking, representing, questioning, and looking again.
[2][3][6][7]Their disciplines, in practice.
Art
Painting was a sustained practice of observation, composition, and representation. Leonardo produced works such as The Last Supper and also worked on projects that remained unfinished. His range is best approached through that continuing practice: drawing involved deciding what to show, from which position, and how the parts related. Our reading is that these decisions create a meeting point between making an image and building an explanation.
A CONCRETE WORK OR PRACTICEThe Last Supper: a painting made during his Milanese period.[2]
Anatomy
He investigated bones, muscles, and organs through dissection and drawing. His sheets test multiple viewpoints and ways of representing internal structures. The inquiry eventually exceeded a painter’s practical needs. Errors appear too: some studies of human anatomy incorporate features observed in animals. This combination of discoveries and mistakes gives us an investigative practice to examine, rather than a collection of pages that supposedly anticipated every later medical finding correctly.
A CONCRETE WORK OR PRACTICEAnatomical sheets in the Royal Collection: different views used to investigate the same structure.[1]
Engineering
His notebooks contain studies of mechanisms, weights, balance, and hydraulic systems. The Codex Arundel includes proposals concerning the Arno and water-related devices; the Forster notebooks record investigations of forces and mechanisms. These are working documents, rather than a catalogue of successful inventions. Their usefulness lies in following the distance between imagining a mechanism, representing it, and establishing whether it could solve a particular problem under actual conditions.
A CONCRETE WORK OR PRACTICECodex Forster II: studies of weights and balances alongside other representational problems.[5][6]
How they connected what they knew.
His value in this library lies in transferring methods: a drawing could become a question, an explanation of structure, or a proposal that still needed testing.
The section: from mechanism to body
His anatomical sheets use conventions that also explain buildings and mechanisms: separating components, showing sections, and changing viewpoints. This is a documented connection between practices. A closed body presents a problem of access; a representation can disclose relationships that a single exterior view leaves hidden.
Our editorial application is to treat drawing as an instrument for asking questions. If completing a diagram requires inventing a part, you have located an uncertainty. The transfer becomes useful when it makes that uncertainty visible. You then return to the object or an appropriate source and revise the diagram; visual clarity alone does not confirm an explanation.
[1]The notebook as a place of translation
The British Library describes mathematics, mechanics, architecture, and natural phenomena within the Codex Arundel. Its pages show different languages coexisting: a relationship can be written, drawn, or explored geometrically. Sharing a notebook does not establish that two ideas are connected, however. The relationship must be found in recognizable operations or questions.
For an aspiring polymath, we suggest keeping an index of questions alongside an index of disciplines. An observation about movement can return within a visual project without losing its provenance. Collecting notes creates possibilities; using them in an explanation or object makes their value available for examination.
[3][4]Leonardo worked within networks of workshops, commissions, and patronage. Not all his proposals were built, and his planned anatomical treatise remained unpublished. His errors belong in the archive too. A precise observation, a hypothesis, and an imagined machine are different kinds of work. In this library, his polymathy rests on documented practices; it does not require making him the sole originator of every later innovation that resembles one of his sketches.[1][2][5]
Meta-skills in practice.
Follow these cases to see which skill connects their fields and how you can practice it.
What an aspiring polymath can learn.
These proposals are our editorial reading of the case: ways to bring a connection into your own practice.
Change the representation
An explanation can hide gaps that a section or diagram exposes. This is our practical reading of his pages: change the form of representation to discover a new question.
TRY ITExplain an object in one hundred words, then draw how its parts relate. Record what you could detect only in the second version.
Label what you do not yet know
A convincing image can make an assumption resemble a finding. Learning across fields requires preserving the difference between observing, inferring, and imagining. A notebook can support all three activities when they remain identifiable.
TRY ITMark each note as observed, sourced, or still to test. Choose one item in the final category and find a way to check it.
Give the notebook a destination
Breadth becomes useful when another person can follow the reasoning. We suggest closing one small exploration before opening five more, so that a connection becomes something another person can use.
TRY ITTurn one page of notes into a single-sheet explanation and give it to someone unfamiliar with the subject.
Routine and working rhythm.
While painting The Last Supper in Milan, Leonardo alternated painting sessions with time spent looking closely at the work. Years later, his anatomy studies show a related rhythm. He observed a structure and changed how he drew it until he could explain its parts.
What the sources document.
Paint, then look again · Milan, 1490s
Matteo Bandello recalls days when Leonardo painted from early morning until dusk. On other days, he stood before the mural, examined its figures, and left without adding paint. The account shows him making time both to execute a composition and to judge it while it was still in progress.[1]
Dissection and layered drawing · winter 1510–1511
In Anatomical Manuscript A, Leonardo drew the shoulder with layers removed and rebuilt the hand layer by layer. He applied views from architecture and engineering to bones, muscles, and tendons. Drawing let him relate what a dissection revealed to how the body moves.[2]
Bandello published his recollection decades later. The Windsor drawings document a different period of work. Together, they show how Leonardo approached particular projects, with hours and frequency that varied.
Three blocks for your day.
A practice plan inspired by the case. Give each block a time you can sustain.
Observe · 15 min
Pick an object with moving parts, such as a clothespin. Note what shifts and what stays fixed.
Draw · 30 min
Draw an exterior view and an exploded view. Use arrows to show where force is applied.
Review · 10 min
Look at the object again and mark which relationship each drawing explains best. Pick one detail to verify tomorrow.
A project to begin.
Three views of one question
Can you explain how an everyday mechanism works without relying on its name?
- Choose a hinge, clip, or other simple visible mechanism. Observe what changes when it moves.
- Draw an exterior view, a parts diagram, and a movement sequence. Keep unfamiliar objects intact.
- Use annotations to distinguish observations from assumptions. Consult a technical source to review one uncertainty.
- Ask another person to explain the mechanism using only your sheet, then revise the point where they lose the thread.
One sheet containing three views, one consulted source, and one visible correction.
The explanation should show which part transmits movement and where an uncertainty remains.
Which tool from one of your interests could help you see a problem in another more clearly?
Questions about this profile.
Why is Leonardo da Vinci considered a polymath?
Because works and working documents survive across fields including painting, anatomy, and engineering. Their connections can be examined through representational methods; fame is not the main evidence.[1][2][6]
Were all his drawings functioning inventions?
No. The notebooks contain observations, calculations, proposals, and explorations. A design recorded on a page does not establish that it was built or that it worked. Each case needs examination.[5][7]
What can someone practice without drawing skills?
The sequence of observing, representing, and revising. A simple diagram can reveal important relationships. This page’s exercise asks whether an explanation clarifies a mechanism, rather than whether it imitates Leonardo’s style.[3]
- 01Royal Collection Trust — Leonardo’s Study of Anatomy ↗
- 02Royal Collection Trust — The life of Leonardo da Vinci ↗
- 03British Library Archives — Arundel MS 263 ↗
- 04British Library — The Codex Arundel: mapping the mind of a polymath ↗
- 05Museo Galileo — Optics, mechanics and hydraulics in the Codex Arundel (1503–1506) ↗
- 06Victoria and Albert Museum — Explore Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook, Codex Forster II ↗
- 07Victoria and Albert Museum — Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks ↗
Original synthesis, connections, and exercises by The Polymath. Sources document the works and careers; proposals for the reader are an editorial interpretation.