What/Who influenced Leonardo da Vinci to become a painter and all the other things he did?
Leonardo wasn’t influenced by many at first. What largely inspired him to study anatomy, geology, medicine, engineering, mathematics, botany, etc…. was nature. As a child Leonardo was imensely curious and wanted to learn how nature worked. It was through this that he made many discoveries, for instance he saw a similarity in the way the water would move in a stream as it did in the veins. He noticed that the veins too would biforcate in a manner similar to the branches of a tree. He made many discoveries in flight by placing a flat piece of wood in a stream, when he would position the wood in a certain manner the wood would pass through the water easier. If you read his notebooks he has an enormous respect for nature, and carefully studied every aspect of it. The object he specially revered the most was the eye, he believed it to be the most gracious organ and object produced by nature.
