Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest figures of the Italian Renaissance, was renowned not only for the artistic mastery of his paintings and drawings but also for the richness of his intellect and his insatiable curiosity about all aspects of the natural and man-made world. Leonardo was among the first artists to study human anatomy in great detail, in a period when scientific investigation of the body was severely limited by church doctrine. His anatomical drawings reveal him to be a gifted observer of the human body - studying living men and women as well as cadavers which he dissected to draw every vessel, muscle and organ.