Da Vinci- The Renaissance Man

During the Renaissance as many would know, new ways of thinking were introduced by great minds that saw beyond what any of us could. They emerged to be the best.

One man that was definitely considered an honorary Renaissance man was Leonardo Da' Vinci. Leonardo was an exceptional man with various grounds of talents, such as being a brilliant scientist, a great artist, an effective engineer, and even an amazing inventor. Even in the beginning, where Leonardo was an apprentice rather than an official painter, he was able to use his genius and paint better than his master, Verrocchio. Later as well, Leonardo greatly influenced art in the Renaissance after the Mona Lisa and her smile was painted. Over the course of Leonardo's life, he was able to incorporate artistic views with mathematics and really go into realism unlike the medieval paintings. Along with painting, Leonardo's genius made him both an excellent scientist who unraveled many secrets of the universe, and a skillful engineer that helped create new machinery for wars and self-defence against enemies.

All in all, Leonardo proved to be an exceptional Renaissance man with a variety of skills and grounds where he mastered and rose above all.

Creative Leadership

During the Renaissance, many artists emerged through patronage, to share their brilliance with the world. Amongst these many talented and creative thinkers was Filippo Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi was one of the most well known artists of his time, but to be this successful with his creations such as the dome, it took a little more than just talent to convince people to believe and see his way of thought.

With the creation of the dome, Brunelleschi was not given the commission straight away. Not only did he have to show his talent when presenting the thoughts about how to build the dome, but he needed to have creative leadership in order to guide people through his strategies and techniques with creativity. People might think that talent is enough for grasping the attention of the world but, without the leadership to show your willingness, no one will trust or rely on you. This is exactly what Brunelleschi did in order to convince the patrons and commissioners of this project that his theory of building a dome without scaffolding would work. With the egg, Brunelleschi demonstrated leadership in creativity with organizing his ideas in a such a way, that people would follow them and won't doubt them. Without this creative leadership that Brunelleschi possessed, he would be yet another brilliant mind that was left named as a crazy because he or she didn't show the huge imagination and creativity they had through leadership.

This also shows that the actions and decisions that people make, can really effect change. With Brunelleschi, his decision to go for the commission of this dome allowed change to happen because without this action perhaps the dome would never be finished since no other person at the time could figure out the mysteries of the dome. Not only that, but without patrons like the Medici family believing and trusting such artists as Brunelleschi, there wouldn't be any new art and ways of thinking. Without the patrons at that time no artists, good or bad, would be able to share their perspective of the world.

Where do new ideas come from?

New ideas come from our brain's inspirations. Every person's brain is thinking of new ideas at every single second we live. Whether it is as simple as a new combination of foods, such as ketchup with rice, or as complicated as the next great invention that would change mankind. We are all creating new ideas. From where though? Where are we getting these new ideas that can be both meaningless or valuable? There are many reasons our brain has created such ideas. They could be our past, present, future, from our home, relatives, knowledge, loved ones or even strangers. The point is, all of our ideas have inspirations and thoughts linked to them that caused them to be created.

Favorite Short Story

My favorite story from our short story is "Lamb to the Slaughter." I liked this story the most because it not only showed a really good example of good characterization but also had a quite interesting story plot. The story is mainly about a woman that commits a murder on her husband, and has to save herself and her child from jail by hiding her murder. The very interesting part of the story that I thought was cool, was the weapon used for the murder was a frozen lamb leg that Mary Maloney (the protagonist) cooks and feeds the lamb to the detectives after she uses it for the murder. Not only that, but this story had a nice element of suspense and mystery because you never know if Mary will actually get away with the murder or not. As a whole, the story "Lamb to the Slaughter" has both good characterization with the main characters and plot elements that lead to a good climax.