Leonardo Da Vinci Facts

The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off!

Advanced imaging of the Mona Lisa reveals multiple hidden layers underneath the final portrait, showing how Leonardo da Vinci continuously evolved and modified the painting over time, including changes to the subject's pose and features.

Leonardo da Vinci designed solar concentrators around 1515 to harness the sun's energy for industrial purposes, making him one of the earliest visionaries to imagine large-scale solar power.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote most of his personal notes in mirror writing—reversed text readable only when held up to a mirror. As a left-hander, this likely prevented ink smudging as his hand moved across the page.

Leonardo Da Vinci loved animals so much that he used to buy caged animals at the market just to set them free.

Leonardo Da Vinci made a robotic lion in 1515 that would walk, sway, open its mouth and move its tail - it even had a compartment that opened to present flowers.

Leonardo DiCaprio was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when DiCaprio first kicked.

A geologist named Ann Pizzorusso says she solved a 500-year mystery in the Mona Lisa. She matched the rocky landscape behind the subject to Lecco, Italy - the 14th-century Ponte Azzone Visconti bridge, the limestone Alps, and Lake Garlate. Leonardo worked in the Lecco region for years. Not every art historian agrees, but the geological case is hard to argue with.