Leonardo Da Vinci the Designer

The famed artist Leonardo Da Vinci was a man who wore many hats over the course of his life (1452-1519).  In addition to being a painter and sculptor, Da Vinci worked as an inventor, a scientist, an architect, an engineer, a writer, a musician and even a fashion designer.  After months of meticulous research, scholars have now reconstructed some fragmented drawings of a unique hand bag designed by this Renaissance genius around 1497.  Called "Pretiosa," (meaning "precious" in Leonardo's time) the bag has finally been brought to life by the renowned Florentine fashion house Gherardini.   The finished recreation will be presented in a world premier tomorrow at the Pitti fashion show in Florence. It will then go on show in a related exhibition at the Academy of the Arts of Drawing


Made of refined leather,  the bags shape recalls the lectern in "The Annunciation," painted by Leonardo in the workshop of Verrocchio, and its patterns feature the same rotating spirals and floral motifs, scrolls and foliage seen in metamorphosis,  Boasting a unique closing system, the bag was designed at the end of Leonardo's first Milanese period, around 1497. At that time, the artist was painting the tapestries in the Last Supper and knots designs in the Sala delle Asse in the Castello Sforzesco.