Light, in its various forms, has confounded inquisitive minds for millennia. Is it a particle, a wave, or both? Leonardo da Vinci worked tirelessly to understand the complexities of light to better know the world. Throughout his life, his exploration of understanding light and optics is displayed in his various notebooks.
“How to make a beautiful and large light.”
Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, 0034 r
Leonardo da Vinci viewed the study of light and optics as the science of painting. A meticulous observer and inventive thinker, he thoroughly studied human sight and perception. By dissecting the eye, he better understood the mechanism of human sight. Leonardo concluded from the flipped images seen in camera obscuras that the human eye functioned similarly. His in-depth examinations of how water, air, and distance can bend light and transform its subject captivated his interest in the nuances of sight. These observations not only shaped his art but also left an enduring impact on our understanding of light and optics today.
Light entering the eye flips at the lens and projects to the optic nerve upside down.
Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, 0921 r
Light pervades from the minuscule to the grand. From buzzing photons facilitating photosynthesis to the faint glow of distant planets, light is an omnipresent medium.
Venturing into the darkest places on Earth, light persists. Bioluminescent creatures glow in the depths of the oceans. On land, light falls as rays through windows and trees, casting shadows behind it. Above, Earth’s skies host a myriad of optical phenomena—from rainbows formed by sunlight refracting through rain to magnetic fields creating auroras at the poles. Mysteries of light exist beyond our atmosphere.
"It often happens that the shadows in the shadowy bodies are not companions in the colors of the lights, or the shadows will be green and the lights red, even if the body is of the same colour. This happens that the light will come from the east onto the object, and will illuminate the object with the color of its splendor, and from the west another object will be illuminated with the same light, which will be of a different color than the first object, so that with its reflected flares it stands out towards the east and strikes with its flares the part of the first object facing it and there its flares are cut off and remain still together with their colors and splendor.
I have often seen red lights and bluish shadows on a white object; and this happens in the snow mountains, when the sun sets and the horizon appears fiery.”
Leonardo da Vinci, Book of Paintings, 0075 r
Traveling at 299,792,458 meters per second, light reveals details about our neighboring planets in the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond. Leonardo was one of the first to conceive that the light from planetary bodies was a reflection of the Sun. He used light to consider the way planets move, observed the moon’s ashen glow, and was fascinated with the map of stars in the night sky.
