Leonardo and Anatomy

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of my favorite Renaissance artists, hands down. I know he's very well known and that's a very standard choice, but I really don't care. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more brilliant, if flighty, mind anywhere. His anatomical sketches and studies have always been the most fascinating to me; this brilliant man rending apart the mysteries of the human body and replicating his findings in such a detailed manner in his books has always been a wonderful sort of image for me. A bit romanticized, but still wonderful.

I believe that the church held issue with his anatomical studies at the time, stating that the mysteries of the body were only for God to know, or some nonsense. Whatever. You can't halt learning, I say, and this dissent didn't halt Leonardo by any means. I believe that his dissections and sketches were originally done as a means to further his ability to portray figures in his art, but eventually developed into an entirely separate area of study for him, but you can still see that an artist captured these forms. He was a confident artist and a brilliant scientific mind, and his anatomical sketches furthered study of the human body and set a standard for all artists studying the human body to come. You go, Leonardo, you go.