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September 2008

Da Vinci copied Chinese art, says British historian.

By Raman Jokhakar, Tarunkumar Singhal, Chartered Accountants
Reading Time 2 mins
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62 Da Vinci copied Chinese art, says British
historian.


Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of machines are
uncannily similar to Chinese originals and were undoubtedly derived from them, a
British amateur historian says in a newly-published book.


Gavin Menzies sparked headlines across the globe in
2002 with the claim that Chinese sailors reached America 70 years before
Christopher Columbus.


Now he says a Chinese fleet brought encyclopedias
of technology undiscovered by the West to Italy in 1434, laying the foundation
for the engineering marvels such as flying machines later drawn by Italian
polymath Leonardo.

The 70-year-old sold more than a million copies of
his first book, “1421”, which argued Chinese sailors mapped the world in the
early 1400s before abandoning global seafaring.

To support his argument, Menzies publishes drawings
of weapons, mills and pumps from a 1313 Chinese agricultural treatise, the Nung
Shu, and from other pre-1430 Chinese books, next to apparently similar
illustrations by Leonardo, Di Giorgio and Taccola. “By comparing Leonardo’s
drawings with the Nung Shu we have verified that each element of a machine
superbly illustrated by Leonardo had previously been illustrated by the Chinese
in a much simpler manual,” he says.

(Source : The Times of India, 30-7-2008)

 

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