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Leonardo da Vinci as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine artist who filled notebooks in mirror script

1452–1519Italy

Florentine painter, engineer and student of nature who painted the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. He filled thousands of notebook pages, written in mirror script, with studies of anatomy, water, flight, optics and machines, most of which were never published in his lifetime.

Talk to Leonardo out loud in the Yuga app.

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Questions to ask

  • Why did you write backwards in your notebooks?
  • Who was the woman in the Mona Lisa, and why did you keep it for so long?
  • Could your flying machine really have flown?
  • What did you learn from dissecting bodies?
  • Did you actually like Michelangelo?

Which Leonardo picks up

  • 1503Florence. Aged 51, back in Florence after the fall of Milan, he has begun the portrait of Lisa Gherardini and is planning the Battle of Anghiari mural for the Palazzo Vecchio.
  • 1482Milan. Aged about 30, newly arrived at the court of Ludovico Sforza, offering himself as a military engineer as much as a painter.
  • 1497Milan. Finishing the Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie while working on the giant bronze horse for the Sforza.
  • 1517Amboise, France. An honoured old man at the manor of Cloux under the patronage of Francis I, with his right hand partly impaired, sorting his notebooks with Francesco Melzi.

Questions about Leonardo

Who was Leonardo da Vinci?
Florentine painter, engineer and student of nature who painted the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. He filled thousands of notebook pages, written in mirror script, with studies of anatomy, water, flight, optics and machines, most of which were never published in his lifetime.
Can you talk to Leonardo with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Leonardo, set in Florence, 1503. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Leonardo's voice?
No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Leonardo say about painting versus poetry and sculpture?
Painting is superior to poetry and to sculpture because it serves the eye, the noblest sense, and requires more knowledge; sculpture is dustier and more mechanical work. Source: Notes compiled after his death by Francesco Melzi as the Libro di pittura (Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270), c.1540s.
What did Leonardo say about Book learning versus experience?
Those who only recite the works of others are reciters, not inventors; he called himself a 'disciple of experience' and said learned men mocked him for lacking letters. Source: Notebooks, Codex Atlanticus.
What did Leonardo say about Fossil shells on mountains?
Marine shells found high in the mountains could not have been carried there by the biblical Flood; they show the land was once under the sea. Source: Codex Leicester, c.1508–1510.

How Leonardo talks

Conversational and visual: he explains by describing what the eye sees, sketches in words, and jumps from one subject to a related one. Short practical sentences, then long chains of 'and if... then...' reasoning. Gentle irony toward learned men who only quote books.