Steampunk Da Vinci Cupcake

Hold on to your monocle and top hat, Steampunk lovers! Mike's Amazing Cakes baked up this idea of bringing Leonardo da Vinci's drawings into cupcake form, sprinkled with a little steampunk magic. Between the Pages blog has more pics:
Link - Via; Nerdcore and Nerdalicious, Via: Neatorama

Leonardo Da Vinci Guitar

(YouTube link)

The Martin Guitar Company marked the milestone of its 1.5 millionth guitar produced by making it a one-of-a-kind Leonardo Da Vinci special edition -with a mosaic inlays of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa and other reproductions of Da Vinci art. The company unveiled the guitar at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show in Anaheim. -Thanks, Stratoblogster! Via: Neatorama

The Artist Who Solved The Riddle of Earthshine

Leonardo Da Vinci is primarily associated with his artistic creations and his oddly inspired mechanical contraptions. However many people are unaware of his astronomical endeavors, more importantly his discovery of earthshine.

Already during the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci had correctly gathered enough information and drawings to explain the nature of earthshine. In Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, published in the early 16th century, he states his belief that the Moon possessed an atmosphere and oceans, and that it was a fine reflector of light because it was covered with so much water. He also speculated about how storms on Earth could cause the earthshine to become brighter or dimmer, which is indeed observable with modern instrumentation.

Link, Via: Neatorama

New da Vinci Discovered Thanks to Hunch and A Fingerprint

This painting, which was sold in auction as "German, Early 19th Century" has gone from being worth $19,000 to millions overnight. The new owner who won it decided to give the painting a thorough checkup, whereupon a fingerprint was found. It matched another found on a confirmed da Vinci portrait.

Peter Silverman, the Canadian-born owner, thought there was more to it and decided to get the drawing checked out after buying it in 2007.

His hunch appears to have paid off.

A Paris laboratory discovered that a fingerprint from the tip of an index or middle-finger, found on the top left of the picture, was "highly comparable" to one found on da Vinci's work St Jerome, which he painted early in his career when he did not have assistants, according to the Antiques Trade Gazette.

Link, Via: Neatorama

Top Twenty Leonardo Da Vinci Paintings

A take on what Leonardo da Vinci's top paintings are... enjoy. LINK: Youtube

Ten Drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci

Go to this LINK to see the rest of the drawings and to see where the exhibition will be shown.

Leonardo da Vinci self portrait discovered hidden in manuscript

The faint pencil sketch has emerged after being hidden for 500 years in one of the Renaissance genius’s most famous manuscripts, the “Codex on the Flight of Birds”, written between 1490 and 1505.

It is thought that Leonardo first made the drawing in the 1480s, then later reused the same piece of paper when he came to write his codex - a Latin term for manuscript - on bird flight. LINK