FRANCE: Leonardo Da Vinci's mechanical lion comes to life after 500 years

Record ID: 818694

  • Title: FRANCE: Leonardo Da Vinci's mechanical lion comes to life after 500 years
  • Date: 16th August 2009
  • Summary: TOURISTS WALKING
  • Embargoed: 31st August 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Science / Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVABELJ04SMH5YEEIYD4ZBA7TDM1
  • Story Text: Leonardo Da Vinci's invention, a mechanical lion, was recreated in a French museum dedicated to the Italian artist.
    A mechanical lion invented by Leonardo da Vinci to entertain the King of France has sprung back to life in the Renaissance genius's last home.
    Da Vinci's original automation is lost but the animal has been recreated at the Chateau du Clos Luce, in the Loire Valley town of Amboise in France, where the master lived for the last three years of his life and where he died in 1519.
    Known around the world for the Mona Lisa and Last Supper paintings, Leonardo was also a prolific inventor who envisioned flying machines including a forerunner of the helicopter.
    The President of the Chateau du Clos Luce, Francois Saint Bris, said Da Vinci was not more than just an artist and an engineer.
    "Leonardo, as you know, was an organiser of events, a master of ceremonies, a master of special effects before George Lucas himself and he rejoiced the court with his absolutely prodigious inventions," said President of the Chateau du Clos Luce, Francois Saint Bris, referring to the creator of the Star Wars movies.
    Da Vinci left no plans or sketches of the mechanical lion, although he did leave detailed drawings of mechanisms that give insight into how he may have made it work.
    Using those drawings as well as the written descriptions of the lion, master maker of automations, artist Renato Boaretto recreated the animal for the Chateau du Clos Luce.
    Boaretto's lion, which is life-size, weighs 100 kgs and is made of wood and paper-mache. It is wound up by hand like an old-fashioned clock for it to be set in motion.
    A secret mechanism is built into its mane so that when a particular spot is stroked, a trapdoor swings open on the lion's flank and several fleur de lys pop out.
    "The reconstruction of this lion is a reconstruction we did according to the witness accounts but also according to the mechanisms that the engineer Leonardo had invented, the pulley, the weights, the spring," Saint Bris said.
    The lion is part of a larger Da Vinci exhibition that lasts until January 31, 2010.
    Visitors are delighted.
    "He is really a crazy and exceptional genius. As for the lion and the mechanism, it needed to be thought over. It's really extraordinarily made, it looks like as if the lion was really walking," said Joelle, a visitor at the Chateau.
    "I find that for that time, it's grandiose because to be able to make things of this exceptional size, and automated, is incredible," said another visitor, Benedicte.
    Eye witnesses from Da Vinci's time said a mechanical lion that could walk was presented to King Francois I by the Florentine community in the French city of Lyon in 1519, to celebrate a new alliance between Florence and France.
    The symbol of Florence was a lion, and when the king lashed the mechanical beast three times with a small whip, its breast opened to reveal a fleur de lys, emblem of the French monarchy.
    Invited to France by King Francois I, who was a great admirer of his work, Da Vinci designed palaces and canals, sketched plants and animals and organised royal festivities.
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