"Leonardo was born in italy over 500 years ago, he's best known as the painter of the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world." "But he was also an extraordinary engineer inventor and medical pioneer" "He was the first person to draw the developing human embryo and made discoveries about the workings of the human body that would not be duplicated till the 20th century." "300 years before it was finally done he suggested ways of taking man to the bottom of the sea and he designed a type of hand glider a stunning 490 years before its successful reinvention." "onight we'II building and testing for the first time these and other amazing inventions." "We'II also learn why so much of what he discovered had to be rediscovered long after his death." "And by using his own writings get inside the mind of one of the greatest geniuses of Western civilisation" "people have asked me over and over is this the greatest genius of all time" "And I say yes he is the greatest genius of all time and they're, what about Newton or what about Einstein, well it's easy to point out that" "Newton's genius was in a particular area." "That Einstein's genius was in a particular area but there's nobody like Leonardo." "Think of every area to which he turned his attention and how every one was so beautifully created, constructed and conceived of." "That has to be the furthest reach, I believe that mans mind has ever attained." "In 1 499 Leonardo Da Vinci was 38 years old and enjoying a golden period in his life." "He'd recently finished painting a scene from the Iast supper for his powerful patron Sforza Duke of milan." "The painting which captures the moment when Jesus tells his disciples that one of them would betray him, added to his growing reputation as one of the greatest painters of his time." "But then at the moment of what must have seemed his greatest artistic triumph it all went terribly wrong" "The French invaded milan," "Leonardo's patron was imprisoned and Leonardo was forced to leave milan in search of work and money." "This is how fortune works alive." "The wheel turns and those who are briefly at the top are flung again to the bottom." "The Duke has lost his estate, his fortunes, his freedom, but you know what they say he turns not back who is bound to a star." "Leonardo needed a financial backer, someone who would allow him to develop his extraordinary even visionary ideas." "So he decided to head east to Venice" "In 1 500 Venice was one of the richest cities on earth" "Venice's vast wealth was based on trade." "It sat right in the middle of the world's busiest trade route" "Venitian's were busy importing goods from the Orient and selling them to the rest of Europe." "But this wealth also attracted enemies like the Turks who were in the middle of an epic expansion" "When Leonardo arrived in the City their giant fleet lay in wait out in the Venice harbour." "With the threat of a Turkish invasion hanging over them, it seemed to Leonardo the perfect opportunity to find a buyer for a very unusual weapon" "So he came here to the council of Venice, not as a painter, but as an inventor." "The Venetian counciIors were the real power behind the ruler, the Doge." "The scheme Leonardo outlined to them for sinking the Turkish fleet must have seemed the most bizarre they'd ever heard" "gentlemen you live in a city of water and that water is your greatest asset." "It's my opinion that the italians will never defeat the Turks fighting with them in a conventional manner." "But with these designs you can create a new kind of army." "An underwater army." "Men as agile as fish with armour adapted to underwater travel and with a constant supply of fresh air such as this." "These designs will enable your army to approach the enemy from beneath the water, to drill great holes in the bottom of their ships, sinking their ships withdrawing and thus the battle is over with minimal casualties." "I'm always fearful describing my methods." "Men will rush to make the ocean floor yet another field of battle." "So why do you go before the council" "Turkish fleet lies just off the Venetian coast what is one to do." "Try some bolder scheme." "I doubt it." "They'II probably think I'm quite mad." "There's no doubt that Leonardo's idea of a crack squad of underwater divers was pretty far fetched and full of practical problems." "But if it had have been tried, might it just have worked." "could Leonardo have mastered the problems of underwater diving hundreds of years before anybody else?" "We decided to find out" "We 've asked US Army Counter Terrorist Expert" "Scot castle, to build Leonardo's diving apparatus, testing it will be Jackie Cousins who comes with fearless credentials." "Her hobby is swimming with man eating squid" "This first one is the;" "K skin which is attached to the front of some guy presumably he wants to use it like a scuba tank and he's gonna breathe off it" "Its kind of like getting into a beach ball under water and breathing on it after a while you're gonna lose all the oxygen and pass out." "Yeah absolutely." "And this one is supposed to be just the old snorkel isn't it, the guys breathing off it, you can go to coz you wouldn't be able to go very deep" "No if you ever have cut off a garden hose and tried to breathe out of it under the pool you can only get about a metre and after that you're not gonna inhale its just too hard" "So I, I Iike the idea of being able to walk under the bottom of the sea, drill a hole in the boat and have it sink, but I'm not absolutely convinced we'II be able to do it." "There's no reason that this can't work, providing we can find all the clues" "No it'II be great, if we could actually get in the water and make sure these things work, it'II be fantastic" "A diving suit based on Leonardo's design is being stitched together using traditional materials." "Pigskin leather has been treated with fish oil to make it water resistant." "The water just beads right off of there." "If you go ahead and do a dip test you'II see what I mean." "Ok, so we could actually make the whole suit out of this if it's got good er, waterproof properties." "absolutely." "A reinforced helmet is needed to prevent the mask from squeezing and bruising Jackie's face as the water pressure increases the deeper she goes." "The hood will need glass lenses, a material Leonardo would have had easy access to because Venice was the world capital of glass production in 1 500." "Leonardo's plan was to breathe through a Iong snorkel made from hollow pieces of bamboo." "Above the surface of the water emerges the mouth of the tube by which the diver draws breath." "Supported upon wineskins or pieces of cork." "The lengths of bamboo are joined together with a pigskin sheath but had Leonardo considered the effects of water pressure." "As I inhale a little bit which simulates the outside water pressure, watch what happens." "It just" "You're gonna suffocate." "Or I'm gonna suffocate." "Ok." "The drawing shows that" "Leonardo understood enough about water pressure" "To place a spring inside the pigskin sheath to stop it collapsing." "But could his grasp of physics in the 1 500's really enable him to design an entire underwater breathing apparatus." "Now when I inhale, go a head and plug the side for me, Right, ok, so it's keeping it open and giving the flexibility as well." "Yeah, so it didn't fully collapse which means that perhaps" "Leonardo had more interest and more knowledge in water pressure than we thought." "Leonardo's diving suit is now ready." "Jackie is testing it first in the safety of the swimming pool" "A hollow cork float holds the bamboo snorkel out of the water." "But a snorkel device such as this won't allow Jackie to go very deep before the water pressure makes breathing uncomfortable." "That was amazing." "That was completely amazing." "I was really enjoying that." "It was good until, but then when you get to a certain level suddenly its really hard, you're like really struggling and the pain in your chest just here and it's like you know, you start to get really hard but er, you know just a couple of inches," "moving up a couple of inches makes all the difference and you can breath really easily." "Leonardo's scribbled instructions for all his devices are chaotic and fragmentary perhaps they're also deliberately misleading." "He may either have been protecting his intellectual copyright or trying to stop his designs from being misused" "I have many times been asked to describe my methods of remaining under water without sustenance but I've always refused on account of the evil nature of man who could practice assassination at the bottom of the seas." "Scott and Jackie are now going to test the diving suit in the Venetian lagoon where Leonardo intended it to be used 500 years ago" "We know the concept as he sketched it is limited and dangerous" "So Scott has had to work out what Leonardo didn't tell us" "The float, you know the cork float, it's way too complex for just being a cork float." "There, there has to be something more to it and as I was looking at the sketch I started to realise that" "I think that he actually er," "Leonardo Da Vinci actually put some stuff on the drawing that wasn 't correct." "I think he was trying to hide something else and I'II tell you what I got." "These holes up there are from the top, up here, the holes I don't think they were up here." "I think the holes were down lower because if they were down low like this we have a massive air chamber inside here now and the diver, you still use it as a snorkel, they can also grab hold of it" "and he can pull it down eventually you know, gas always goes to er, the least amount of pressure right." "So it turns into a compressed air diving suit system." "Jackie now feels more confident and gets ready to take the plunge." "It's very snug around the hips." "You lifted me right up" "If Scot is right this could make it possible for her to walk across the seabed." "So all I've got to do is get hold of these ropes and then pull it down." "I'm gonna get this big load of fresh new air into the hood." "Then I was looking through some other pieces of paper here, he had this bellows right here and there's a flexible hose coming off of it so I'm thinking that if he were to use the bellows you're actually giving compressed air to the diver." "So Jackie takes the plunge into the depths of the Venetian lagoon." "But could she fulfil" "Leonardo's dream of walking along the seabed." "The diving suit is a triumph." "Jackie is able to walk along the seabed just as Leonardo described." "An underwater Army." "Men as agile as fish with armour adapted to underwater travel and with a constant supply of fresh air such as this" "As a weapon of war it wouldn't have been wildly practical, but as an early diving suit it is very impressive, particularly when you realise that no one else would get close to doing this until 300 years after Leonardo's death" "unfortunately for Leonardo the suit was never built and his revolutionary plans were never tested" "Attacked in another part of their empire the Turkish fleet turned around and sailed away without a fight" "and the Venetian's sent Leonardo away without a single ducket for his pains" "But Leonardo didn't give up, he went right on inventing, in his surviving notebooks alongside the diving suit are" "1 00's of eclectic ideas which seem to span outside his time" "CatapauIts, printing presses, spring driven motors and windmills, artillery designs more 1 9th century than 1 5th." "His deadly looking fin missiles," "look more like the high explosive shells of modern times." "And his notebooks also show another preoccupation, money." "alongside the incredible inventions and drawings are shopping lists notes of the cost of food and clothes for his household." "detailing his permanent cash flow problems." "His need to earn a living meant he often had to keep very strange company indeed" "Leonardo frequently mentions his horror of war and man's inhumanity to man." "But his ambition brought him in the winter of 1 502 to the door of one of the most brutal and bloodthirsty tyrants ever known." "At this time, the rulers of the various italian states were engaged in a violent battle for power, but there was one man who's ruthlessness and brilliant military cunning they all feared," "Chesuri Borger." "Leonardo was very pragmatic." "Leonardo wanted to be free to be Leonardo." "And the only way he could do it was to have money so he took commissions he didn't really want." "Often he wouldn't finish them." "He got involved with some pretty bad people er, the worst was er," "Chaseri Borger who was an absolute monster." "The son of a pope he was the most hated and feared and man of his day." "Cheseri Borger murdered his brother, had incest with his sister and he'd regularly poison or garrotte his dinner guests." "So why did Leonardo go and work for such a monster" "Borger I think is an interesting character because I think he's very much like Leonardo." "Um, I think that he's a charismatic figure, he's very ambitious." "Um, he knows where he wants to go and I think that Leonardo is fascinated by that." "My men fear me Da Vinci." "But they also love me." "And yet how many of them know me." "No really." "What kind of man I am." "well what do you think." "He smiles but I've come to realize with men like that that it's bad when they're hostile and worse when they're friendly." "So why do we stay." "We stay cause we have to eat." "You especially have to eat." "Borger made Leonardo his Chief Engineer, he gave him a unique level of power and his own personal protection." "Leonardo carried out epic projects of civil engineering for him." "The draining of huge tracks of land, the fortification of towns, he was even planning to re-route the river that goes through France" "It gives him a freedom to order people about frankly." "To say move that river here." "Let's do this city this way because he's got a single mind to work with." "Now we may say" "Cheseri Borger was a twisted mind but at Ieast for Leonardo he was a guy who could get things done." "But he was still Cheseri Borger." "What happened next isn't clear." "It seems that Leonardo may have become friends with one of Borger's lieutenants," "Vito Lotso, who'd fallen foul of his unpredictable Lord." "Vito Lotso is himself, apparently if I were to agree to see him personally he could justify himself absolutely and make me understand that past actions are not meant to offend me." "So Vito Lotso was invited to dinner and told he would be made very welcome." "Leonardo went back to florence two months later." "Whether his friend's death had persuaded him to leave Borger's service we just don't know but it must have seemed a good moment to leave" "Back in florence he claimed to be weary of the brush, but he did start to paint a housewife called" "Lisa DeIjia Conda, the painting which he would take over 1 0 years to complete would also in time become the most famous painting in the world," "the Mona Lisa" "One reason he took so long was because as ever Leonardo was pursuing a whole range of obsessions including the great obsession of is life, flight" "Another bird." "Some people would think you mad." "Oh, no no no." "He's been paid what he asked for the birds." "A bird should be able to do what it's nature dictates, which is to fly." "So should a man if he has a mind to take wing." "Once you have tasted flight you will forever walk the world with your eyes turned skyward for there you have been and there you will always long to return." "Leonardo envisaged a number of designs for flight including an aunitopter a machine powered by man flapping great wings like a bird." "But could he possible achieve flight with any of his designs." "There are pages packed with research and ideas" "One of Leonardo's concepts is said to have inspired ... to lead the world in helicopter design." "And it seems Leonardo did have a fantasy of one day trying out these machines for himself" "But perhaps the most achievable at the time was this intriguing design" "From what is apparently the world's first controlled glider" "But would it have worked." "Had Leonardo really designed a practical flying machine hundreds of years before anyone else." "We've asked designer and inventor" "Simon Sanderson to build the glider for us." "I'm pretty certain that we can get this to fly, the main question is how stabIeIy we can get it to fly" "And risking his neck will be Robbie WittIe a former world paragliding champion" "I'd Iike it to fly and I'd Iike it to be able to er, well at Ieast live my dream which is to fly a machine that was designed 500 years ago" "There's a basic flaw in Leonardo's design, he seems to have it back to front, by the way he suggests, you'd break your neck" "So what they're really saying is that this is actually the front of the glider which it definitely isn't" "If I'm not mistaken didn't he write in a kind of code so therefore there's another decoy effectively he switched the sums around, because I can't imagine anybody thinking that that could possibly be the front" "We've got another decoy here just to make sure that we don't manage to force some flight off" "That we did get it wrong" "Simon presses ahead with building a 1 0th scale model of the glider, the right way round" "But when he takes the glider out for its first test flight the results are hardly encouraging" "We're looking for a little bit of modification, but we're getting some half decent flight once in a while when there's no turbulence" "Simon and Robbie need to know if the glider really will fly," "so they've brought the model to the university of liverpool to be tested in a wind tunnel by aerospace engineer Gareth PatfieId" "We're looking for evidence of lift as the oncoming air collides with the glider." "It looks encouraging as a vortex spirals upwards from the wings." "A phenomenon Leonardo was well aware of." "The bird will rise on high by means of a circular movement in the shape of a screw." "Can you see the smoke flow showing the strong vortex and then you have a higher pressure underneath than you have over the top, a Iow pressure on top and a high pressure underneath." "The airflow wants to go from the high pressure under surface to the Iow pressure upper surface, it wants to come around the tip" "I wasn't expecting to see it quite so easily as we can with the..., its quite impressive really" "Yes it is impressive." "You know Da Vinci had some good ideas about aerodynamics and a I think a tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci's innovation that here we have a device that is actually relatively safe to fly" "Now Simon can start work on the full size model." "He's building the framework out of bamboo as Leonardo suggests." "The first challenge is to bend the bamboo into the curved shape of a glider" "which he does by steaming and twisting it." "As the glider takes shape it looks like no other aircraft," "would something so long and narrow actually want to take off" "well it felt pretty good the glider supported itself and generated a bit of lift." "Hmm, I think its all gonna fly" "The next stage is gonna be the test rig, we bolt the glider onto it and start adjusting the angle that the glider is to the air so we can see how it performs at ah, different angles of attack" "What Robbie and Simon are planning to do is extremely dangerous so the glider has to go through rigorous tests" "The glider does not look happy as its driven in the wind and we're only going at 25 kilometres an hour" "Have a look at the results now" "Negative its all below the line" "Its a negative pitch at the moment and that means that the glider would want to pitch down in flight" "Which is obviously dangerous, so that's obviously quite serious as far as Robbie's concerned, because that would be a vertical dive, essentially." "This says be very careful" "If Robbie files the glider too fast there's just a chance that it will suddenly dive out and hit the ground." "I think we can fly em, but it has to be in a very controlled way, probably going to take another look at these results to try and fully understand them" "After a few further tests they take the glider to italy to the hills where Leonardo hoped to see it launched" "1 2 3" "It's a dangerous business testing untried flying machines even from low hills like these." "If Robbie crashes from as little as 1 0 metres off the ground he risks serious injury." "It's known in the trade as a dead mans curve." "I've crashed it again." "The glider was definitely unstable." "So Simon went back to Leonardo's notes for inspiration." "Look at how birds fly." "How they use both their wings and their tail to stop them falling." "We could get a little tail just put it on the back here just stick that on there and that would just keep it in a straight line" "And that will then give us the directional stability so hopefully stopping it just hitting that edge in." "So I think we're gonna have some flight." "But would this new tail make the crucial difference?" "It was now all or bust." "Robbie's raised the stakes." "He's going to fly off a much steeper hill." "It'II give him more chance of getting airborne." "But if he crashes this time the consequences will be grave." "It's the first time ever one of Leonardo's flying machines has successfully taken to the air." "A triumph." "I couId see you just start to go one way and I couId see the look on your face thinking is this going to be the death trial" "believe you me I was concentrating." "That was good, that was very good" "Yeah, quite incredible, 500 years ago" "exactly" "And I'm sure in a couple of weeks..." "Leonardo's career in florence in the early 1 500's however, wasn't exactly flying." "He'd had some success" "With this cartoon for the virgin and child with St. Anne which he would eventually turn into a beautiful painting" "A great dream like image of maternal love." "And he was still slaving away on the Mona Lisa" "He would work and rework it obsessively for the rest of his life, taking it with him wherever he went." "With time on his hands Leonardo immersed himself in his life's other great project, his work as a scientist." "Over the next decade he ranged across anatomy, geology, botany, medicine, geometry, apparently trying to master them all," "learning and absorbing everything and drawing it." "And yet he had a reputation as a flake." "But his reputation as a flake was" "That, it's almost a surgical mind." "The thing is right in front of you, you're totally focussed, that's the most important thing in the world." "The moment it's over it's over and the next thing becomes the most important thing in the world." "It's a free associating mind." "Here is work that fascinated me." "I will work with it till it stops fascinating me," "I'II stop and I'II go to another thing that fascinates me." "And of course over short periods of time you don't get much done but over a Iong period of time you get a great deal done" "Now he would turn his attention to a whole new area of investigation and again it wouId require him to break the rules." "It was at this hospital in the monastery of Santa Maria Nuovo in the early 1 500's" "That Leonardo took the first steps towards a truly groundbreaking discovery." "A discovery that medical research would only catch up with in the mid 20th century." "When he started studying anatomy" "It was only so that he could understand muscle and muscle movement and all of this but he soon became intrigued by what went on deeper than the layers of the muscle" "And in fact became the very first person to dissect the organs of the body." "At this time anatomical dissections were occasionally allowed by the church." "They would make available the bodies of convicted criminals and these were dissected by surgeons who were watched by artists and students." "Given the conditions of the time, few would have been willing to do the gruesome work that" "Leonardo now carried out." "I want to go home it's freezing." "Come here." "Dissecting rooms were very grim places" "Oh it's dreadful in the dissecting room." "There was no way of preserving bodies at the time." "Within 48 hours there was a tremendous stench." "Pieces of the body were decaying." "The most important instrument that one had was one's bare hands with long finger nails that were used to do a Iot of the sharp dissecting." "Why must we spend our night in the company of corpses?" "well most men can't make the journey they need to take to find out the truth." "The stench of death turns their great stomachs and they 're sickened by the blackened organs." "But if you want to follow where the light of truth leads you have to get through all this." "The bodies come back and haunt me in my sleep." "His dissections were convincing him more and more that man is a wonderful piece of machinery." "He conceived of the bones of the arms and of the legs as levers." "And lines of force, namely the muscles, worked on the levers so he was," "He could demonstrate exactly how you turned your arm and why you were able to turn your arm." "This lead him to his most extraordinary conclusion, that he could create an automated machine with a life of it's own." "Leonardo combined his fascination for anatomy with his passion for mechanics to create the world's first humanoid robot." "Robots are the passion of American inventor" "Mark Rossime he has been obsessed with them his whole life and now designs them for NASA" "For more than 1 0 years he has been researching Leonardo's robot knight and is amazed by Leonardo's 500 year old design and ingenuity." "Now for the first time since the 1 5th century Mark is about to try to build it" "Hi I'm Mark Rossime and I'm here to build Leonardo's robot" "He's come to the BBC's visual Effects studio in West London" "Mark starts building the Robot's body parts, wooden play wheel for the joints a steel frame for the skeleton and cable for the tendons," "but how was it powered?" "We don't know exactly what Leonardo used," "I mean he shows lots of mechanical systems driven by counter weights, he uses cranks, he could have used water power, there's lots of drawings of water wheels and so forth, so he might have tapped into em, you know a river" "or some you know moat that's going around the castle." "That part of the puzzle we don't quite know." "Em, we're gonna be operating this particular one with Iynches hand operated but it could have been automatic, it could have been fully automatic" "Fantastic, well ahead of his time" "The robot was designed to stand up, sounds simple but it actually involves a sophisticated balancing act" "Leonardo faced a big problem and that was the problem of balance, he understood that the centre of gravity had to always be over the feet otherwise you'd fall over." "So the centre line is always in line, the ankle the hips shoulders are all in line." "If you don't do that you can't stand up, you go like that." "only recently have robots evolved a slight where they can walk and that's with the help of computers and giroscopes and quite a bit of programming" "The body has to be perfectly co-ordinated." "Its a big challenge to a robot builder" "Our first pulleys broke under stress and they cleaved in 2 under the..., the cabaIIing has been a nightmare." "Its been very difficult" "The robot was originally designed for one of the Duke of milan' s spectacular parties." "These events were meant to impress and often featured elaborate entertainment's which reflected glory on the Duke and his court." "It may later have been placed in a grotto so we took our robot to a grotto to see it in a similar setting" "really delved deeply into how the human joints worked." "You can see how the joints were driven by the muscles and its a modern concept, its just amazing stuff." "Its what we use to create a robot for NASA" "Perhaps the greatest testimony to Leonardo's vision is that his robot has made his mark on the space age." "Some of the hi-tech robots used on NASA space stations today are indeed directly inspired by Leonardo's 500 year old drawings." "Leonardo would certainly have enjoyed the thought that his anatomical studies would inspire work being done in the heavens because down on earth he believed he could discover nothing less than where man's soul might be found, but he was as ever running out of patrons and out of money." "In 1 51 3 however his luck seemed to change, he was suddenly summoned to travel to Rome to work for a new Pope Leo the 1 0th" "unfortunately the invitation came not from the Pope but from his brother." "Leo the 1 0th himself did not have a great opinion of Leonardo" "This is not the time to bring to the Vatican this painter who has a reputation for never finishing anything he starts." "He's asked for an assistant, choose him well." "Leonardo was provided with a studio but it seems no serious work and the German assistants he was given appeared to have been spies." "He describes the wickedness of the German deceiver who spreads rumours about him throughout the Vatican and his insistence on continuing his studies of anatomy were giving his enemies plenty of grounds for suspicion." "He's in and out of the hospital constantly." "I fear he is dissecting also good Christian people." "The old man told me he's lived for over 1 00 years and that he's had no bodily ailments apart from weakness." "And then with nothing apparently amiss he died." "The sweetest death." "So he looked at the old mans vessels and realised that the inner part of them was obstructed." "It was like shale inside of a pipe and he reasoned that that's why old people die slowly and why their extremities shriveI because the blood isn't getting to them." "well at about the same time, by coincidence, he dissected the body of a 2-year-oId boy and not to his surprise found that those arteries were straight and soft and nothing was obstructed." "So he said that's the reason people die of old age." "That the arteries are becoming closed off and obstructed." "In other words he discovered, in the early 1 6th century what we call hardening of the arteries, or arterial sclerosis." "well then he said but why does this happen." "Something is happening over time and then he lit on it." "He said there's too much nutrition in the blood." "There's something in the blood that precipitates out, that comes out of the blood and deposits itself on the inside of the arteries." "Except for the word cholesterol he had made a 20th century discovery." "Given the controversial nature of Leonardo's work, his enemies had no trouble finding evidence to condemn him." "The drawings were proof enough and the fact he wrote backwards suggested he had things to hide to those who were out to denounce him" "He's not only dissecting the bodies of the dead." "Even that of a woman with child and this writing which can be only read with a mirror." "You think this is to conceal the true nature of his work?" "We are fearful of Necromancy." "There is no limit to the investigations of the florentine" "Fetch Leonardo Da Vinci" "His holiness requires your presence." "Your holiness" "You have been accused of witchcraft and necromancy." "You spend your nights with the dead." "I will not tolerate the Vatican being used as a charnel house." "Leonardo Da Vinci you will not continue your unholy practice." "You will not bring shame on the Vatican, on the name of God." "He had by now completed an incredible amount of work which he describes with pride." "1 20 chapters composed by me will give judgement in which I've been impeded either by avarice nor by negligence but only by time." "farewell." "tragically even his anatomy would be another heroic failure." "Like so much of his work, it was never published." "The documents lay undiscovered for centuries while the rest of the world caught up with Leonardo Da Vinci." "His contribution has no significance because it was lost." "Because it affected nobody and nothing and when it was rediscovered his contribution in anatomy, all of these things had been identified anyway." "Around this time he wrote in his notebooks." "tell me have I done anything of worth." "tell me if anything was ever done." "But unknowingly he'd already provided the world with his legacy." "He took her with him as he left Rome." "She accompanied him for the next 1 5 years and she was beside him when he died." "And after all the world had forgotten him, it wouId be the Mona Lisa who would cause him to be rediscovered." "She would carry his name through the centuries to a new audience for whom curiosity was not a crime and where freethinking was applauded." "It would be her inexplicable smile that would him at the mysteries Leonardo had uncovered in his search for everything."