World News for Students of English

12-02-2016 15:00

This eerie costume is a 15th century diving suit designed for sabotaging enemy ships. It was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, renaissance man.

A man ahead of his time – about five centuries ahead as a new exhibition shows. The artist who gave us the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper in the nineteenth century seems to transform into a scientist and inventor in the 20th century. Neglected notebooks show he made pencil sketches of parachutes and helicopters four centuries before they became a reality.

“The models that you’ll see here are from 1952 in Milan and 1952 in London and we have a story then of a culture of appreciation of Leonardo which has the mechanical aspect of Leonardo’s genius at the centre ,but in fact, what you find is the same imaginative impulse, the same creativity, the same convincing liveliness in the creation is there in the machines, where you maybe don’t expect to find them, as you find in the painting.”

His drawings have been turned into three-dimensional models and are on display in the Science Museum in London during February where you could gain a new insight into Leonardo’s mind by seeing some of the inventions he created on paper.

Difficult words: eerie (strange and frightening), sabotage (to destroy), neglected (not receiving proper attention; “forgotten”), appreciation (thankfulness), aspect (a part), convincing (powerful), gain (to get), insight (a deep understanding of something).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com