![]() ![]() But amazingly, a self-taught researcher called Leonardo da Vinci thought through a lot of their key discoveries hundreds of years earlier. When scientific pioneers around 1800 recognised fossils for what they are – traces of ancient animals – and analysed the processes that create and erode rocks, they quickly reached a set of conclusions that led to Darwin's theory of evolution and a crisis of Christianity. It was a scientific problem.Īs a geologist, Leonardo anticipated the scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries who were to prove that the Earth is far older than it says in the book of Genesis. It was not a background feature in his eyes. But Leonardo did not only look at stone from a painter's point of view. The two versions of his picture The Virgin of the Rocks in the National Gallery's exhibition of his art glory in two different imaginary caverns, each with its own rich earthscape of stone perforated and sculpted by wind and water. Rocks pile and gather and disintegrate in mountains, caves, strata and screes in his paintings. He was also a brilliant geologist, as today's latest instalment of our interactive series on his drawings reveals. Leonardo da Vinci was not just a great painter. ![]()
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