Imagine a man in the 1500s, crouched beside a lifeless body in a candlelit room. One hand sketching detailed notes, the other pulling back the folds of human anatomy. That man was Leonardo da Vinci—and he wasn’t just painting masterpieces. He was rewriting human understanding from the inside out.
The Artist Who Opened the Human Body
Most people know Leonardo da Vinci as the man behind the Mona Lisa, but fewer know he was also one of the world’s earliest anatomists. Between 1507 and 1513, da Vinci dissected more than 30 human corpses in hospitals across Italy, including at Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and medical institutions in Milan and Rome.
These weren’t just surface-level studies. He carefully examined every vein, nerve, and organ—drawing what he saw with a precision unmatched for his time. His goal? To understand how the human body really worked, not through philosophy or assumption, but through direct, often grisly observation.
He sourced bodies legally, often from hospitals and occasionally from graveyards, especially unclaimed bodies. Working at night to avoid public outrage (dissections were taboo), da Vinci treated each body as a gateway to universal truth.
The World’s First Real Human Anatomy Diagrams
Leonardo’s anatomical sketches were more than just diagrams—they were art and science combined. His notebooks show over 200 detailed illustrations of the human body:
- The spinal column with its natural S-curve
- Cross-sections of the brain and heart
- Muscles flexing and relaxing
- The fetus inside the womb
- Even the first accurate sketches of coronary arteries
And he didn’t stop at bones and muscles. Da Vinci dissected eyes to understand vision, brains to explore memory, and lungs to study breathing. Incredibly, he even poured hot wax into ox brains to create molds of the human ventricular system—a technique that prefigured modern 3D imaging.
These drawings, found in the Codex Windsor and other manuscripts, are now considered the first modern biological diagrams of the human skeleton and internal organs.
A Brain Divided: Writing with One Hand, Painting with the Other
One of the many reasons da Vinci’s work still stuns the world today is his dual-brain genius. It’s said he could write with one hand while drawing with the other. Ambidextrous and intensely focused, he created intricate anatomical cross-sections while simultaneously composing research notes in reverse mirror writing.
This wasn’t just a party trick—it allowed him to process complex ideas visually and verbally at the same time, something that neurologists today believe is extremely rare and cognitively demanding.
Mona Lisa: The Painter Behind the Billion-Dollar Smile
While he sketched organs and dissected cadavers by night, by day, da Vinci painted what would become the most famous portrait in human history: the Mona Lisa.
Often considered priceless, the painting was insured in 1962 for $100 million—which adjusts to over $1 billion today, making it one of the most valuable artworks in existence. However, Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, sold for $450 million in 2017, currently holds the record for the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.
But da Vinci’s real value may lie not on canvas, but in the pages of his hidden notebooks.
Lost for Centuries, Revered Forever
Tragically, most of Leonardo’s anatomical discoveries weren’t published in his lifetime. Religious and political conservatism suppressed his work, and it wasn’t until 1680—more than 150 years later—that his anatomical studies were rediscovered and finally printed.
Had they been made public earlier, experts say modern medicine could’ve advanced by centuries. In fact, many of his findings—like the function of heart valves or the layering of muscle fibers—were confirmed only through 20th-century medical science.
Why It Still Matters Today
Leonardo da Vinci didn’t just paint the human body—he decoded it. His work laid the foundation for modern biology, surgery, and physiology. Today, his anatomical sketches are taught in medical schools and marveled at in museums. They remain a breathtaking blend of observation, imagination, and precision.
He wasn’t a doctor. He didn’t have a lab coat. But in many ways, Leonardo da Vinci was the first biological scientist of the human body—centuries ahead of his time.
Final Thought
In an age where cutting open a corpse was punishable by law, da Vinci dared to question, explore, and document life from the inside out. He gave us more than paintings—he gave us a mirror into the machinery of life itself.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) | National Gallery