Ant Farmer's Almanac

Your Every Other Daily Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci:
The Most Interesting Man in the Renaissance...

Until he invented three-point perspective, there were only two dimensions.

Eggs Florentine? His idea.

Painted the Mona Lisa from memory, with his eyes closed, and using his right hand (he was left-handed).

When he was in Rome, Romans did as him.

In his spare time, wrote plays under the pseudonym "Shakespeare".

Bred chickens that had lips.

If he visited the Vatican, the Pope gave him the bedroom and slept on the couch.

The Renaissance was named after his being a Renaissance man, not the other way around.

Had an unlimited line of credit with every merchant in Venice.

Was so far ahead of his time, his inventions were obsolete by the time the technology existed to build them.

 

This moment in Da Vinci History is brought to you by my latest book, The Da Vinci Cold, or Chicken Soup for the Renaissance Man's Soul, from the mighty publishing juggernaut that is the Now What Media empire, and is on sale now at Amazon.com and finally at Barnes & Noble where they're offering it at a pretty sweet discount.

Buy the book and "Like" Now What Media on Facebook because, well, why wouldn't you?

 

 

Your Every Other Daily Da Vinci

Since he also had to keep up at his day job of painting The Last Supper, Da Vinci downed gallons of coffee to stay awake during his all-night chicken soup experiments (this is all explained in the highly entertaining and absolutely worth every penny of the cover price book, The Da Vinci Cold). 

Trying to reproduce his Jewish doctor's recipe was taking more time than he had, leading Leonardo to drastic measures. He concocted a potent enough coffee drink to keep him going day and night without the bother of sleep. This sketch of a lablel for a bottled version of his formula displays his faith in the product's effectiveness.

Legend has it that he gifted a barrel of his Leo's Last Sippa Espresso to a monastery and, when consumed with their morning meal, it caused every last one of the monks to break their vow of silence, yelping, "Yowza! Now that's some coffee!"

This moment in Da Vinci History is brought to you by my latest book, The Da Vinci Cold, or Chicken Soup for the Renaissance Man's Soul, from the mighty juggernaut that is the Now What Media empire, and is on sale now at Amazon.com and finally at Barnes & Noble where they're offering it at a pretty sweet discount.

Buy the book and "Like" Now What Media on Facebook because, well, why wouldn't you?

 

Your Every Other Daily Da Vinci

Prompted by revelations in The Da Vinci Cold that Leonardo spent so much of his time and energy in the kitchen has historians rethinking the true purpose of some his inventions. Previously thought to be his design for a helicopterlike flying machine, this fabric-covered spiral device may in fact have been a smaller-scale multi-tasker cooking utensil; a bottle-stopper or something that could be lowered into a cannister or cookpot as a rotating coffee filter or for rendering schmaltz.  

This moment in Da Vinci History is brought to you by my latest book, The Da Vinci Cold, or Chicken Soup for the Renaissance Man's Soul, from the mighty juggernaut that is the Now What Media empire, and is on sale now at Amazon.com and finally at Barnes & Noble where they're offering it at a pretty sweet discount.

Buy the book and "Like" us on Facebook because, well, why wouldn't you?

Your Every Other Daily Da Vinci

Leonardo Inspired by Chicken Wings?

Through all of his years of testing recipes for the perfect chicken soup (as detailed in my new book The Da Vinci Cold), Leonardo was puzzled by barnyard birds' inability to fly. His conclusion — that despite having wings chickens are just too stupid figure out how to get airborne — may have inspired his design for a proto hang-gliding contraption (pictured above) that would allow humans — whom he optimistically presumed to be smarter than poultry — to go where no chicken had gone before.

This moment in Da Vinci History is brought to you by my latest book, The Da Vinci Cold, or Chicken Soup for the Renaissance Man's Soul, on sale now at Amazon.com and finally at Barnes & Noble where they're offering it at a pretty sweet discount.

 

Your Every Other Daily Da Vinci

Mislabeled Da Vinci Invention Now Correctly Identified as Renaissance Rotisserie

Long thought to be the sketch for some sort of threading device for weaving, in light of recent revelations about Da Vinci's culinary experiments, this drawing is now believed to be Leonardo's design for a six bird at a time-rotisserie, allowing him to slow-roast up to half-a-dozen plucked and seasoned chickens at one time, all while rotating them occasionally to ensure even cooking but at a safe distance from the flames (see the lever at right). Although the rods may seem too close together to accommodate six birds, remember that Renaissance chickens were much smaller than modern poultry, closer to the size of a cornish game hen.

This moment in Da Vinci History is brought to you by my latest book, The Da Vinci Cold, or Chicken Soup for the Renaissance Man's Soul, on sale now at Amazon.com and maybe by now at Barnes & Noble if they ever get their act together and put in up on their damned site.