Leonardo da Vinci Trivia Quiz

Answer: Vinci, Italy

Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 15th, 1452. It was on a Saturday, at ten-thirty at night. He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero d'Antonio (a notary) and Caterina, a peasant and quite possibly a barmaid or slave. Leonardo was baptized and accepted into the father's home as any legitimate child would have been, according to notes left by Leonardo's grandfather.

Answer: No one knows for sure

Leonardo was quite quick at learning, and showed an interest in it at a young age. He could sing well, played the lyre, and drew pictures of animals and plants. He was also very good at mathematics.

Although no one knows for sure of what painting was Leonardo's first, it is widely accepted that it is "Annunciation", completed in 1473. It is displayed in the Uffizi gallery, in Florence, Italy.

Answer: False

Actually, Leonardo da Vinci never married. He led a life with few close friends and social interactions. A majority of the people he did spend time with were men, leading many people to assume he was a homosexual. That very well may be true (he was arrested for sodomy at age twenty-four), however, he also spent a majority of his time on his work, which were types of work that women did not participate in in those days.

Answer: Less than four years

Although popular rumor suggests that da Vinci spent ten to twelve years alone painting Mona Lisa's mouth, the entire painting was actually completed in about four years, according to scholars.

Leonardo da Vinci began painting The Mona Lisa in 1503, and carried it around with him for most of the rest of his life. He sold it to King Francis I in 1516 for 4,000 ecus, roughly 100,000 US dollars.

Answer: Jesus and the twelve disciples

"The Last Supper" is an illustration of the disciples reaction in this Bible verse (Matthew 26);
"Now when the eve was come, he sat down with the twelve. And as they did eat, he said, 'Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me'. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, 'Lord, is it I'?
And he answered and said, 'He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me'."

The large mural is 15 × 29 ft (460 × 880 centimeters) and is located in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. Contrary to popular belief, "The Last Supper" is not a fresco - it was painted onto a dry stone wall, rather than onto wet plaster, using tempera.

Answer: A poet

Leonardo da Vinci had many occupations other than art, such as being a scientist, musician, botanist, inventor, and writer, amongst other things. He dissected human bodies with permission given by the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence, Italy, and drew many sketches of the human anatomy.

He also drew pictures of a helicopter, for an invention, hundreds of years before the helicopter was made!

Answer: True

Leonardo da Vinci loved animals quite dearly, and mused in one of his notebooks that "If you are as you have described yourself the king of the animals -- it would be better for you to call yourself king of the beasts since you are the greatest of them all! -- why do you not help them so that they may presently be able to give you their young in order to gratify your palate, for the sake of which you have tried to make yourself a tomb for all the animals?".

He did not see eating animal flesh necessary to be health, and consequently stopped eating meat.

Answer: He wrote the letters backwards, and from right to left

There are many theories of why Leonardo da Vinci wrote the way he did. Some say it was to keep prying eyes from stealing his ideas, others say that it was to keep the church from finding out his ideas, as many of his ideas disagreed with what the church said (and disagreeing with the church was quite an offense in those days). Most likely though, da Vinci wrote that way simply because it was easiest for him to, and the ink did not smudge as it would if he wrote the proper way.

This contributes to the theory that Leonardo da Vinci had autism.

Answer: King Francis

According to legend, when Leonardo da Vinci died at the age of sixty-seven, the king was there with him, cradling da Vinci's head in his arms. As dramatic as that sounds, it is not true; the king was not present and was celebrating the birth of his second son at the time.

Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2nd, 1519 and was buried at the Church of St Florentine.

Answer: His fingerprint

Anthropologists pieced together Leonardo da Vinci's left index finger. They had about 200 fingerprints to work with, on 52 sheets of paper that Mr. da Vinci handled in his life. Leonardo da Vinci was known to eat while working, so Anthropologists hoped to find out what kind of food he ate, and perhaps some of his heritage, to make the Renaissance man seem more 3-D to people.