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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath born on April 15th, 1452. His works included painting, sculpting, architecture, inventing, science, music and many more. He was most well known for Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Around the age of 14, da Vinci began an apprenticeship with the noted artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. His earliest known dated work was a pen and ink drawing of a landscape in the Arno valley sketched in 1473.
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At the age of 20, Leonardo qualified for membership as a master artist in Florence’s Guild of Saint Luke and started his own workshop. After leaving Verrocchio’s studio, Leonardo's Teacher whom he apprenticed under in art, he received his first independent commission in 1478 for an altarpiece to reside in a chapel inside Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.
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Leonardo was one of the first Europeans interested in a plausible solution to flight. He designed a plethora of mechanical flight devices, such as the parachute, and often studied the flight of birds. In 1485 he drew the first plans for a human powered ornithopter, a wing flapping device intended on flight.
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The Ornithopter was designed to mimic the flapping patterns of a birds wings. The special wings not only generate lift but also thrust.
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