Google Lets You Into Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mind With Recreations Of Way He Worked

Image via The Keyword

The Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, is just a tiny whisper of Leonardo da Vinci’s brilliant mind. The Italian polymath also dreamed of elaborate inventions and studied the human anatomy, documenting his learnings and conceptions in highly detailed sketches.

Now, 1,300 pages of da Vinci’s notes are ready for viewing in an interactive way that speaks to today’s admirers. Google Arts & Culture—which aspires to preserve and transport precious art into the digital realm—has partnered with 28 cultural institutions, museums, and collections around the world, along with Leonardo expert and art historian Martin Kemp, to dynamically chronicle da Vinci’s body of work. The project, now the largest online showcase dedicated to the great man, is named Inside a Genius Mind.

Image via Google Arts & Culture

Through this destination, visitors can explore some 3,000 drawings from da Vinci’s notebooks that he scribbled into from the age of 26 up till his death at age 67. Many of these pages, split into six volumes called codices, haven’t been digitized before, therefore giving the public a fresh new perspective of how the genius worked nearly 600 years ago.

Rather than simply digitizing his prototypes and musings, Google Arts & Culture translates the magic of da Vinci’s creativity and intellect for modern observers with the help of machine learning and generative artificial intelligence, and animates his works into interactive 3D models—finally putting the artist’s pen to paper.

Image via Google Arts & Culture

“The aim is to let Leonardo speak to us visually over the span of 500 years,” addresses Kemp.

Animation is an apt way to interpret da Vinci’s spirit and thinking style, Kemp tells Smithsonian magazine, as his drawings often appeared to be raring to move. By giving his illustrations the gears of motion, the revitalized images help scratch “an itch [da Vinci] couldn’t scratch,” Kemp reiterates. 

One experience sees users combine two sticky notes of da Vinci’s sketches, called ‘stickies’, on a virtual whiteboard to bring a new invention to life via an AI art generator.

Image via Google Arts & Culture

Another involves visitors sorting floating sketches by selecting tags and themes. For example, entering ‘Bird’ distills the drawings into avian-themed sketches.

There’s also a Street View exploration that reveals surviving structures from da Vinci’s time, and a virtual museum of his art.

Screenshot via Google Arts & Culture

Such uninhibited interactions serve to walk into da Vinci’s free-flowing mind, per the Smithsonian magazine. The polymath worked quickly, rarely dilly-dallying on the same topic. Oftentimes, he’d leave the final details of his ideas unfinished.

“We’ve realized that audiences want different ways to interact with culture,” Google Arts & Culture’s director and founder Amit Sood told reporters at a press conference. “Our objective is to use play as an idea to learn more about things.”

The entire experience scribbles “Leonardo’s work into the current conversation, into the current zeitgeist,” explained Soot.

Enter Inside a Genius Mind by heading here.

[via Smithsonian Magazine, Android Police, The Keyword, images via The Keyword]