Leonardo da Vinci briefly studied geometry with Franciscan friar, Luca Pacioli (ca. 1445-1509) who is best known for his compendium of fifteenth century mathematics, Summa de arithmetica, geometrica, proportioni et proportionalita (1494).

Being an artist, Da Vinci had chosen to focus mainly on the shape, size, and descriptive features of objects specifically, those illustrating the sphere, cone, cylinder, pyramid, and the five Platonic solids rather than their theoretical foundations. He created sixty plates geometric sketches for the work of Leonardo da Vinci’s Geometric Sketches (Divina proportione).

The following images are facsimiles of several of these plates.

Symbols - Leonardo da Vinci’s Geometric Sketches

SOURCE:

Maa.org- Frank J. Swetz (The Pennsylvania State University), “Leonardo da Vinci’s Geometric Sketches – Introduction,” Loci (June 2010), DOI:10.4169/loci002559

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