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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which friend of Leonardo's developed the first widely-published system for double-entry bookkeeping?
(a) Corte Vecchia.
(b) Luca Pacioli.
(c) Salai.
(d) Ludovico Sforza.

2. Leonardo followed what type of restrictive diet throughout his life?
(a) Fruitarian.
(b) Pescatarian.
(c) Pollotarian.
(d) Vegetarian.

3. By age five, Leonardo lived primarily with whom?
(a) His father and stepmother.
(b) His grandfather Antonio and his wife.
(c) His uncle.
(d) His birth mother and her husband.

4. Rather than being a surname of Leonardo's, what does the phrase "da Vinci" indicate?
(a) Leonardo's status as his father's firstborn son.
(b) Leonardo's status as a polymath.
(c) Leonardo's illegitimate status.
(d) Leonardo's hailing from the town of Vinci.

5. Leonardo was known to buy birds from the marketplace and do what with them?
(a) Set them free.
(b) Breed them.
(c) Use them in experiments.
(d) Give them as gifts.

Short Answer Questions

1. How old was Leonardo when Salai came to live with him?

2. How soon after Leonardo's birth did his father Piero marry Albiera, Leonardo's stepmother?

3. What was different about Leonardo's drawings of machines than those of his contemporaries?

4. Homosexuality was so common in Renaissance Florence that what word became slang in Germany for gay?

5. What was the fate of Giacomo Andrea, the man who was a student of Vitruvius's works and was like a brother to Leonardo?

Short Essay Questions

1. Which branch of mathematics interested Leonardo above all others?

2. In what way did Leonardo's illegitimacy grant him certain freedoms?

3. How did the books included in Leonardo's personal library inventory in 1492 represent the extreme diversity of his interests?

4. What does Walter Isaacson say was the main lesson he tried to take from Leonardo's life in order to apply it to his own life?

5. What qualities of Leonardo's character are discussed as qualities that would have made him a misfit in any place besides Florence?

6. What language did Leonardo decide to teach himself in the early 1490s and what was the result?

7. How did Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1452 affect Leonardo's life and work?

8. What symbolism did Leonardo see in the reeds he included in his drawing of Pleasure and Pain?

9. What did Leonardo mean when he wrote, "He who has access to the fountain does not go to the water-jar" (176)?

10. What are the reasons that Renaissance Italy has come to be known as "a golden age for bastards" (9)?

(see the answer keys)

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