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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. Leonardo's most serious longtime companion held the nickname of Salai, which held what meaning?
(a) Little Devil.
(b) Divine One.
(c) Lover of the Arts.
(d) Prankster.

2. How old was Salai when he came to live with Leonardo?
(a) 18.
(b) 14.
(c) 10.
(d) 21.

3. Leonardo's first studies of flight were completed as a means to create which type of art?
(a) Storytelling.
(b) Drama.
(c) Painting.
(d) Sculpture.

4. What was the fate of Giacomo Andrea, the man who was a student of Vitruvius's works and was like a brother to Leonardo?
(a) He was killed in battle.
(b) He was drawn and quartered by French troops.
(c) He died of old age.
(d) He died of syphilis.

5. Leonardo's memory of a bird hovering above his crib when he was an infant involved what type of bird?
(a) A bluebird.
(b) An osprey.
(c) An eagle.
(d) A kite.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many godparents gave witness to Leonardo's birth?

2. How was the model of Leonardo's horse monument destroyed in 1499?

3. What fraction of Florence's population was literate in 1472?

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

5. What item of clothing did Leonardo insist upon wearing, even though it was antithetical to the fashions of the time?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is chiaroscuro and how did Leonardo employ it?

2. What occasion prompted Leonardo to paint The Last Supper?

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

4. Discuss an example of Leonardo's use of analogies that led him to new scientific discoveries.

5. 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?

6. What were the underlying reasons for Leonardo's vegetarianism?

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

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

9. When Leonardo joined a competition of architects, what was the assigned task for the contest?

10. The essayist Benedetto Dei wrote in 1972 that Florence "has all seven of the fundamental things a city requires for perfection" (26). What were the seven things he named?

(see the answer keys)

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