Leonardo da Vinci and the Development of Mechanics

Art is an important carrier of history. Through understanding art, scholars can know the ideas and theories of the people at that time and make all kinds of correlations and inferences. Leonardo da Vinci, a famous artist of the Renaissance era, has many surviving paintings and notebooks that contain a great deal of knowledge related to mechanical theories, and the topic of this paper is the relationship between Leonardo da Vinci’s works and the development of mechanics. This paper uses the method of literature analysis to read and find the relevant literature and makes the final conclusion: the science involved in Leonardo da Vinci's paintings has played a leading role in the development of some of the later mechanical development in both direct and indirect aspects, but at the same time it needs to be clear that the theories written in the notebooks and whether they are practically correct are irrelevant, and it is necessary to make a practical model of the theories before concluding Leonardo’s influence.