Artists’ workshops, especially by the mid-fifteenth century, were full-fledged schools, where one learned the rudiments of every technique known in that era. The mixture of art and technology was a characteristic of this type of Renaissance workshop: here was practised the combination of painting, sculpture, engineering and architecture. For this reason, Leonardo, a self-taught youth without any formal instruction, accomplished notable maturation under Verrocchio’s guidance. His inclination toward nature, and to the study of its phenomena, born as the interest of a young boy who explored the world around him, led him to explore the principles of mechanics and engineering. Undoubtedly, Leonardo had observed and kept in his memory the immense machines used in the building site for the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo of Florence) by Brunelleschi, perhaps the first Renaissance engineer tout court. Brunelleschi was one of the leading exponents of the practice of recovering not only the painting and sculpture of the classical world, but also its engineering and architecture, together with the complexity of the machinery described in antiquity.

This “culture of machines” in Florence actively involved Brunelleschi and consequently a stream of followers. Among the latter was the extremely young Leonardo da Vinci, himself engaged with his master Verrocchio in the task of placing the enormous copper ball at the summit of Brunelleschi’s dome in 1472. Such activity was not, however, a Florentine prerogative. It also developed and found an impetus for innovation in the nearby, rival city of Siena. Here, in the school of the exceptionally refined sculptor Jacopo della Quercia, Mariano di Jacopo, called ‘il Taccola,’ gained his artistic formation. Taccola was the author of the treatises “De ingeniis” (1419-1449) and of “De machinis” (1430-1449). In the first, dedicated to King Sigismund of Hungary, Taccola confronts problems of engineering, in particular those related to war and water, as well as the analysis and techniques of measuring heights and distances. He weaves together his Renaissance systems with the study and recovery of ancient ones. In the second text, he extends and realises projects sketched out in the first one, indeed making experiments with so-called firearms, for the first time.

One of Taccola’s students was Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who attained heights of technological innovation, and profound knowledge of engineering and architecture. For Taccola and Martini, the revival of the ancient arts meant attentively reading Archimedes and Vitruvius, but also Philo of Byzantium and Vegetius, as well as legendary authors and inventors. Once more, as with the liberal arts, it was the study of classical and imperial culture that promoted a re-birth of engineering and architecture. This mixture of professional expertise and scientific investigations encouraged engineers in particular to read Vitruvius’ treatise De Architectura, and in doing so they united purely conceptual training with practical applications, which would become fundamental for Leonardo. As a man of the Renaissance, Leonardo would imagine devices of extreme usefulness for humanity (understood in the full sense of the term), widening the horizon of the concept of engineering during the fifteenth century. Until the middle of that century, the civil engineer’s main task was to devise hydraulic and military machinery. In essence, he would plan extremely useful machines for the survival of his city. Along with the defence of the city in times of conflict, he would constantly maintain its supply of water, which provided not only vital sustenance but also a power source and a means of communication with the outside world.

While Leonardo and his followers were busily at work in the Palazzo Vecchio, painting the frescoes, now lost, of the Battle of Anghiari, he and his entourage continued to reflect on the possibility of enabling human beings to fly. After he had returned to Florence around the year 1504, Leonardo da Vinci dedicated himself to observing the flight of birds, first gaining key insights for studying mechanical wings, then ideas for using the same wings in systems and machines capable of maintaining a pilot in the air. The stroke of genius arrived from above, in the form of a bird of prey: a courser, today a species rarely seen in Italy, whose flight Leonardo could observe during his stay in the hills above Florence at his farm in Fiesole, a place that gave some repose to the master and his assistants away from their ongoing work on the Battle of Anghiari.

At that time, one of Leonardo’s associates was a certain Tommaso Masini, later known as Zoroaster of Peretola, a skilled metal-worker and master of applied arts, who assisted the master in the chemical techniques used for the fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio. Tommaso, however, would enter into the annals of history as the first pilot of a flying machine. Co-designed with Leonardo, who gave his all to the endeavour of constructing a “great bird,” the machine was conceived as capable of floating in the air, like a bird of prey: with only a few beatings of its wings, it was meant to fly high above the city of Florence, causing amazement among the citizens below. To attempt this great experiment, Leonardo chose the date of 17 April, 1506, close to his own birthday, and Easter of that year. The chosen launch site was the Belvedere (today Piazzale Leonardo da Vinci) on Monte Ceceri, in the hills of Fiesole.

For the occasion, Leonardo in fact wrote a glorious epitaph, convinced as he was of the impending success of his enterprise: “The great bird will ascend in flight above his great hill of Cècero, and filling the universe with wonder, will also fill with his fame all future writings, to the eternal glory of the nest where he was born”. Unfortunately, we know how the experiment ended: Tommaso Masini was found tangled amidst the reed struts of the flying machine, a few metres below the launch-site. With the failure of the experiment of human flight, and of the fresco of the Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo left Florence for Rome, followed by a heavily bruised Tommaso Masini who, despite his serious accident, would forever be remembered as the first pilot of a flying machine.