Leonardo: The Man Who Saved Science is a documentary film which premiered on US television (PBS) in 2017.
It is an episode of the long-running program Secrets of the Dead (S16E04).
Leonardo da Vinci is known as an artist, an engineer, an inventor, and a scientist. This film does not focus on the artist. In this film, the focus is on Leonardo as an engineer and an inventor.
The purpose of this film is to investigate how original his inventions were. Did he come up with all these ideas by himself? Or was he inspired by other people?
Did he borrow some ideas from people who lived before his time? This film has a question: Was Leonardo a copycat?
Here is some basic information about this film:
** Writer and director: Mark Daniels
** Narrator: Jay O. Sanders
** Language: English
** Subtitles: English
** Run time: 55 minutes
Several historical experts are interviewed in the film.
Here are the names of the participants
(listed in alphabetical order):
** Salim Al-Hassani – emeritus professor of mechanical engineering
** Andrea Bernardoni – a historian – senior researcher at the Galileo Museum in Florence
** Fritjof Capra – author of The Science of Leonardo
** Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan – professor of history at the University of Paris-Sorbonne
** Toby Lester – author of Da Vinci’s Ghost
** Charles Nicholl – author of a biography
** Mario Taddei – co-founder of the Leonardo3 Museum in Milan
Several historical moments are reconstructed by actors. These moments show Leonardo and some of the people around him, at first in Florence, later in Milan.
Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452. He is named after the small village in which he was born: Vinci, which is located ca. 40 km from Florence.
When he grew up, his father sent him to Florence where he became an apprentice in a workshop owned by the famous Italian artist Andrea del Verrochio (1435-1488) who took the young man under his wings.
At that time, Florence was an independent city state which was ruled by the Medici family for many years.
When his time as an apprentice was over, Leonardo was looking for a wealthy person who would like to be his sponsor and support his work as an artist.
Since he knew the Medici family were not going to hire him, he tried to contact the Sforza family who were the rulers of Milan.
He sent a job application to the Sforza family in Milan, and he was in luck. He was hired to work for this family for a while.
As explained in this film, his job application has been preserved until our time. It is perhaps the oldest job application preserved from the past.
In this application, Leonardo claims to have experience and knowledge which he did not have. He claimed for instance that he knew how to build military fortifications.
In other words: he lied on his application, but the lie worked. He was hired!
When Leonardo died in 1519, he left behind numerous notes and drawings. When the historical experts begin to study these notes and drawings, it is clear that some of them do not represent original ideas.
They are, in fact, inspired by other people. It seems Leonardo did, in some cases, borrow ideas from some people who lived before his time.
But when something like this happened, Leonardo was often able to improve the original version of the invention. He might for instance add some detail which would improve the quality of the invention.
Leonardo left numerous notes and drawings behind. Did he ever try to build a full-scale version of his inventions? We do not know. If he did, they were not preserved.
Perhaps he never managed to do this. Perhaps there was no time to do this. Perhaps he was suddenly caught up in another product.
In our time, scholars have often worked with artisans to build a full-scale version of an invention made by Leonardo. In this film, a few examples are shown.
Leonardo was a man of many talents. He was an artist, an engineer, an inventor, and a scientist.
If he sometimes was inspired by other people, he did not do something wrong.
If he sometimes borrowed ideas from people who lived before his time, he did not do something wrong.
In the past, there were no laws or rules about copyright. A scientist did not have an obligation to declare:
“I borrowed this idea from a scientist who lived before my time.”
We can still respect Leonardo as one of the most important representatives of the renaissance.
What do reviewers say about this film?
Here are two answers
On IMDb it has a rating of 70 percent, which corresponds to a rating of 3.5 stars on Amazon.
On Amazon Prime Video there are at the moment five ratings of this product; two of them with reviews.
The average rating is 4.4 stars, which corresponds to a rating of 88 percent.
In my opinion, the rating on IMDb is too low, while the rating on Amazon is too high.
I want to find a position between the two. I think this film deserves a rating of four stars (80 percent).
REFERENCES
# 1. Books
Leonardo da Vinci:
Flight of the Mind –
A Biography
By Charles Nicholl
(2004 = hardcover)
(2005 = paperback)
The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance
By Fritjof Capra
(2007 = hardcover)
(2008 = paperback)
Da Vinci’s Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
By Toby Lester
(2012)
Leonardo da Vinci
By Walter Isaacson
(2017 = hardcover)
(2018 = paperback)
This book is a New York Times bestseller. On Amazon, it has at the moment more than 10,000 ratings; more than 1,900 of them with reviews. The average rating is 4.5 stars, which corresponds to a rating of 90 percent
The Robots and Android of Leonardo da Vinci
By Mario Taddei
(2022)
Leonardo da Vinci and Virtual Reality
By Mario Taddei
(2022)
# 2. Film and video
Leonardo da Vinci:
The Universal Man
Run time = 52 minutes
(2019)
Leonardo:
The Works
Exhibition on Screen
Run time = 102 minutes
(2019)
*****
Vitruvian Man
This drawing was made by
Leonardo da Vinci around 1490
A man is inscribed in a circle and a square
at the same time
*****
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