Leonardo da Vinci at Tech Museum

Thanks to my friend Catherine, I got a discount to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition and visited the Tech Museum today.

This is a replica of the famous Florence Duomo, designed by another Renaissance genius, Filippo Brunelleschi. The dome is double layered so you can climb from the in-between stairs to the top.

The master by himself. Though born in Florence, da Vinci spent a lot of his life in Milan. Unlike his fellow Florentine Dante and Michelangelo, he was buried in France, not Italy, the prodigal son never returned.

Notebooks of da Vinci. To my surprise, those notebooks are all very small: the small one is the size of a pocket Moleskine, the big one is about the size of a 6x9" Moleskine notebook. As you can see, his hand writing was tiny, his drawing had incredible details even in this size. Da Vinci was left handed and over the years he developed a special writing style which made it look like the notebook was up side down. Some said da Vinci was dyslexic, it doesn't look so from his notebooks.

All his life, da Vinci was fascinated by the idea of flying and he spent numerous hours designing a "flying machine" (after dissecting many many birds and comparing human ribs with bird bones). Well, it looks quite like a giant batman suit. No, the lady with a digital camera was not in his original design.

Leonardo da Vinci was a believer of physiognomy and used it a lot in his "last supper". The exhibition also shows the animated movements of the disciples in the fresco based on their postures.

Fascinated by geometric forms, da Vinci drew tons of them in his notebooks. He was also obsessed about the idea of human body as perfect equilibrium of forms. To him, the movement of a perfect body matched the movement of a planet.