Slashdot Mirror
How Accurate Were Leonardo Da Vinci's Anatomy Drawings?
antdude writes "BBC News answers how accurate were Leonardo da Vinci's anatomy drawings — 'During his lifetime, Leonardo made thousands of pages of notes and drawings on the human body. He wanted to understand how the body was composed and how it worked. But at his death in 1519, his great treatise on the body was incomplete and his scientific papers were unpublished. Based on what survives, clinical anatomists believe that Leonardo's anatomical work was hundreds of years ahead of its time, and in some respects it can still help us understand the body today. So how do these drawings, sketched more than 500 years ago, compare to what digital imaging technology can tell us today?'"
You're in a desert, walking along in the sand - it doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely hypothetical. Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself, who knows? - You look down and you see a tortoise, it's crawling towards you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping. This is what it's like when you don't use gamemaker.
Gamemaker offers the best programmer satisfaction! Don't hesitate! Return to gamemakerdom today! I'm glad I did.
This Leonardo must be a genius!
Doh!
Nuff said.
They have mastered the art of human body modification. Just look at how much the local ladyboys (shemales) can alter their body to make them look perfect. I know, I now live here and have a ladyboy girlfriend. In every part she is much better than women too - hard working, seriously cute, nice to be with and honest. On top of that she has a great body and actually takes good care of herself. Once you go ladyboy, you never go back.
.. especially considering he's an anthropomorphised turtle.
He always drew breasts and penises much larger than they could've reasonably been. Some believe this influences today's comic book artists.
Has anyone seen his uncensored drawings? The ones that show human pollination. They are the height of Renaissance kink! I now understand "bees", but where do the birds come in to play?
The biggest insight I gleaned from the article was when the author described da Vinci's approach to anatomy as being that of an engineer's and an architect, and how that perspective allowed him to interpret the body structures he saw. Remember high school biology dissection labs? Or if you studied anatomy in college, remember the profound disconnect between seeing a perfectly laid-out diagram of an organism, versus actually going in and dissecting one in reality? You think that when you cut a creature open, that you'll see some version of those drawings just sitting there in front of you, labeled and color-coded and all structures clearly defined. Instead, I acutely remember my surprise when cutting open a rat, a frog, and an earthworm, that all I really saw at first was a jumbled pink/brown mess of innards. Things moved around, didn't have the shape I thought they would, and if someone hadn't already drawn the diagrams I would've been at a complete loss as to how to describe what I saw, let alone try to make an anatomically faithful reproduction of it.
That should give you a better understanding of just how amazing da Vinci's observational skills were.
But shows how much of science was then under fingertips. He had both the expertise in dissecting bodies and, as one of best painters of all time, ability to capture it accurately on a piece of paper (or whatever he used). That plus a lot of passion and hard work could lead to these fascinating drawings, that are superb even by today's computer imaging standards.
Body for the answer. Could have simplified it and say "he was pretty damn accurate". And save us from clicking a link lol
Yet another demonstration of how an illustration by a skilled artist can explain complex structures, mechanisms, and phenomena that cannot be readily photographed. Even computer rendering rely on modelers, animators,and lighters who can take messy, chaotic 3D scans and mocap data and clean up it , analyze and stylize it into a form that shows what's really vital. DaVinci's high accuracy renderings also serve as a prime example to refute David Hockney's outlandish claim that renaissance artists could not have achieve their results without the aid of optical projection tools.
All this AND he came up with a whole code that 500 years later would make a bestselling book and movie.
AND he helped Ezio Auditore fight off the Templars....
The guy was truly prodigious.
How can i answer? Although i am a Doctor and from what i see in the BBC video and the article, the drawings are agreeably hundred of years ahead of his time. In my humble opinion the work done by Leonardo Da Vinci seeded the understanding of Antomy.
Seems like a lad with a gift like this would've amounted to something.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Seems you can answer headlines starting with "when" with "no" as an answer that makes sense.
Learn to love Alaska
I hate that fucking show, oh it was fine for a couple seasons but now were seeing dead boyfriends and supernatural experiences blah blah blah bullshit
Agreed, but she was talking about the 19th century editions of Gray's Anatomy.
Which is a new spin-off, taking place in a Victorian steam punk universe : They use morphine for almost any operation, but only if they like the patient, sniff cocaine to get rid of the cold, and discuss female hysteria in the break room. Oh and the dresses, you should see the dresses.
.. especially considering he's an anthropomorphised turtle.
Why would anyone mark this offtopic?
I remember watching a British mystery where a little kid told the visiting art expert that he liked Leonardo so much better than Michelangelo or Donatello.
The guy thought that the kid was a genius.
Irrespective of their quality, Da Vinci's drawings did little at the time to challenge the use of Galen's work (which was based on dissection of animals and therefore quite inaccurate). That particular bit of heavy lifting was done by Andreas Vesalius, who not only debunked Galen, but was also the first to publish a comprehensive work on anatomy (De Humani Corporis Fabrica). His work has repeatedly been found to be highly accurate, especially considering the conditions under which it was produced. An amusing side note is that it was so well regarded it was extensively pirated.
;) since Galen studied it.
Vesalius made a lot of enemies by going against what amounted to the medical establishment of the time. After repeated challenges his critics actually resorted to the howler that the human body must have changed (evolved?
Vesalius has always been a personal hero of mine - a guy who developed an interest in an an important area (anatomy), and pursued it, at great personal cost, with as much thoroughness and rigor as could be had at the time.
The drawings of da Vinci influenced our understanding of how the body is put together.
So what they're saying, is that using modern technology, they can confirm that these drawings, long known for their accuracy and detail, are, in fact, accurate and detailed. Amazing.