Walking through Florence’s Museo Leonardo da Vinci is a mixture of excitement, awe, and a bit of overwhelmed angst. The institution has taken the drawings of the Renaissance’s perhaps most iconic figure, drawings representing inventions ranging from a helicopter to a tank and all things between, and built them. Some are small models and others life-sized. Some may have worked and others obviously wouldn’t. Some are simple machines based on the work of Archimedes and some are outrageously complex. But here in a small building north of Florence’s Duomo, those ideas have come to life, 500 years after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance’s true genius.

The word Renaissance literally means renewal or rebirth. It marked a return to a world reminiscent of Ancient Rome or Athens, one of public art, of major building projects, of scientific breakthroughs, and of philosophy more independent of religious influence. And it began here in Florence. From 1434 through the next two hundred years, the Renaissance would sweep from this relatively small city in northern Italy, and would envelop the world.

Leonardo was born in the small town of Vinci, part of the Republic of Florence, in 1452. He apprenticed here in the city with the master Andrea del Verrocchio, intending to pursue a career as a painter and sculptor. And, for a while, he was, first working with his master on projects and then with his own studio. However, there are fewer than twenty paintings that survive that can definitively be attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which makes him rather elusive to study.

In Florence, in a single room at the magnificent Uffizi Gallery, one can find three works of Leonardo da Vinci, in a room dedicated to him. On one side is the Baptism of Christ. Commissioned by the Church of San Salvi, this painting was mostly done by Verrocchio, with the young Leonardo supposedly having painted the angel. It is said that Verrocchio was so impressed with his pupil that he threw down his own paintbrush, never to paint again. (This is merely legend, though.)

On the opposite wall is Annunciation, the first painting attributed to Leonardo in principal, although he was still apprenticing when it was completed in 1476. The style is very much that of Verrocchio, although done with the hand of da Vinci. The figures are not too realistic, and the background, while detailed, lacks realism as well, specifically in the trees. Skin tones are pale, a style that Raphael would adopt as one of his signature elements, with rosy cheeks that seem a bit too fat. But a look at the folds of cloth on the figures sees the way Leonardo da Vinci’s style was evolving, cloth that seems to jump off the canvas.

And finally, in the center, the room contains one of my personal all-time favorite artworks, Adoration of the Magi. In 1481, Leonardo da Vinci was given this commission by the monks of San Donato. He would depart Florence the following year, leaving it unfinished. In fact, few of da Vinci’s paintings would be fully completed, part of the reason so few survive. He seemed to bore with a project as it neared its end, moving on to something else that excited him in the moment.

In Adoration of the Magi, we can see almost all of the elements of Renaissance art that we talked about through Michelangelo. (Click here to read about Michelangelo and the development of art in the Renaissance.) First and foremost, the figures – both in the foreground and in the background – are incredibly detailed and realistic. Examine the faces, and contrast those to the ones in Annunciation only five years earlier. They show actual emotion, and not all positive ones. Focal points are used, with different figures looking at different things, both on and off the painting. Cloth falls naturally.

Second, examine the background. Architectural elements are done realistically, with crisp lines and conscious shading. The trees have individual branches and are not totally symmetrical. And there are horses everywhere, in different forms and levels of detail. The more I stare at Adoration of the Magi, the more I come to see it as a study of the anatomy of horses with a scene in the foreground to satisfy the customers.

The da Vinci room gets crowded, so if you want some time here, you may want to skip some earlier rooms and return to them later. I spend about fifteen minutes standing and staring. I change angles, especially when looking at Adoration of the Magi, and distances from the canvases. I try to see in this one room how a genius like Leonardo da Vinci came into his own, how he went from being just another early Renaissance artist to the mad inventor. And in this one work, one in which the artist can be seen focusing on things other than his art, it can start to be understood.

Leonardo da Vinci never saw himself as an artist. Yes, he painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, works considered to be among the most iconic of all time. His Salvador Mundi sold recently for $450 million, setting an all time record. (There is a school of thought that it’s a forgery.) But his real love seems to have been in science and invention, a fascination by the simple machines of Ancient Greece, and a dedication to finding new ways to do things predicated on these things of the distant past.

If the word Renaissance means a return or a renewal, when it comes to invention in the mold of Leonardo da Vinci, it is a return to Archimedes, the Greek mathematician. The Archimedes screw, first described in 234 BCE, fascinated da Vinci. This simple machine is the precursor to the water pump, the escalator, and even to the helicopter. A young Leonardo would have seen it used by Filippo Brunelleschi when he arrived in Florence, as the older architect utilized versions of the screw to lift things into place when putting the dome on the Duomo, and an exhibit at Museo Leonardo da Vinci talks about some of Leonardo’s sketches of this massive project. (Click here to read about architecture during the Renaissance as seen through Brunelleschi.)

Leonardo da Vinci would take this relatively simple concept and machine, and use it in a number of incredible exercises. For instance, he drew an “air screw” that is the precursor to a modern helicopter rotor. The idea was sound, although the technology did not exist to bring it to life, and wouldn’t for more than 400 years after his death.

Leonardo is credited with inventing the world’s first parachute, tank, scuba gear, robot, and so many more. Walking through the rooms of Museo Leonardo da Vinci, visitors can gaze at these and others of his many drawings brought to life. (Some, like his flying machine, would have never worked; others absolutely could have.) And visitors can play with some of the basic machines of millennia past that inspired the genius.

Much of what Leonardo da Vinci invented was for use in war, as it was war that paid the bills. Though he was born in the Republic of Florence and did return later, his “best” years were spent as the chief military advisor to the Sforza family in Milan, where he would come up with his tank idea, and others that were a bit more practical in the fifteenth century. One room at the museum is dedicated to those, some of which are quite brutal.

Leonardo da Vinci died in France in 1519, and he is buried there, at the royal palace of Amboise. Despite that, his statues can be found all over Italy, and he was even buried in spirit in the Basilica of Santa Croce by means of a plaque.

The Renaissance is about a rapid progression of art, architecture, science, and life as a whole in a relatively short period. It marks a return to a world in which these things are appreciated for their own sakes, something that hadn’t really existed since Roman times. No single person marks the Renaissance spirit quite like Leonardo da Vinci. He was artist, scientist, inventor, and more, all rolled into one. He was the true genius of the Renaissance.

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