Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Sloan Foundation Film

Release Date

2024

Director

  • Ken Burns

Awards

  • 2023 Sloan Foundation Television Production Award

This two-part, four-hour documentary delves into the world of a 15th-century art titan and unravels their journey while shedding light on their lasting impact on future generations.

    The story of Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, best known as Leonardo da Vinci, a fifteenth-century Italian polymath of soaring imagination and profound intellect, who left behind artistic works of staggering beauty and detailed sketches of futuristic contraptions of warfare and flight that today are marveled at for their technical ingenuity and foresight.

    From his birth out of wedlock to a notary and peasant woman and apprenticeship to a distinguished Florentian painter, to his days as a military architect, cartographer, sculptor and muralist for hire, the film will offer an intimate portrait of a singular visionary whose Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and The Vitruvian Man are among the most celebrated works known to man, but whose artistic endeavors sometimes seemed an afterthought to his pursuits in science and engineering.

    Possible Topics

    • art and artists
    • science and engineering in art
    • connecting the arts to science