Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Leonardo was renowned in his lifetime as a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, and cartographer, but the degree of awareness of his anatomical work among his contemporaries is a mystery. Almost everything that we know today about his researches is contained in 200 sheets of drawings and notes housed in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.
As a young artist in Florence, Leonardo absorbed the prevailing theoretical interest in a quasi-scientific basis for painting. This included the study of superficial anatomy, through life drawing and attendance at the public dissections that were occasionally held by the medical schools. There is no evidence that he was interested in deep anatomy until the late 1480s, by which time he had moved to Milan. There he outlined a plan for a treatise on the human body, covering not only anatomy but also conception, growth, proportion, the emotions, and the senses. A number of sheets from around this date comprise syntheses of animal dissection, surface observation, and traditional beliefs, though Leonardo does not seem to have pursued his studies systematically. He reportedly compiled a manuscript treatise on the anatomy of the horse, now lost; his human material was primarily skeletal, most notably a series of highly accurate drawings of the skull, sectioned in an attempt to locate the sites of the mental faculties.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/leonardo-da-vinci#ixzz2uJxcUfG6