Da Vinci’s First Flight

The epic tale of ‘Zoroastro of Peretola’, test pilot of Leonardo da Vinci’s most incredible flying machine.

Discover more about the epic tale of ‘Da Vinci’s First Flight’ at this groundbreaking unique exhibition by Artisans of Florence. Explore over 30 incredible large scale flying machine meticulously crafted from da Vinci’s lost notebooks by award winning Artisans along with hands-on experiments, mechanisms and machines which Leonardo created over his lifetime which led to the one of the world’s first piloted test flight and paved the way for human aeronautics.

It is well known that Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) had a passion for flight. He not only studied the flight of birds (Codex on the flight of birds c.1505) but also bats and insects such as dragonflies as well as many of the aerodynamic properties encountered in the natural world. Throughout his life Leonardo secretly studied the laws of flight, fluid dynamics, anatomy of flying animals and designed dozens of flying machines. We now know through recent reconstructions of his designs that he came up with several viable designs for human powered flight.

But was it possible that Leonardo tested one of his flying machines during his own time?

For many years scholars and artisans have pieced together some clues that begin to uncover the incredible story of what may have been Da Vinci’s first flight…

What we know:

From his own writings we know that in 1503 Leonardo met a young man named Zoroastro of Peretola who he took on as an apprentice. A few years later his notes reveal that he is planning to secretly build and test one of his flying machines:

“Board up the top room and make the (test) model tall and large and there is enough space on the roof, and its higher than any other place in Italy and if you stay on the roof alongside the tower they can’t see you from the tiburium (tower)”.

Leonardo da Vinci – Codex Atlanticus (CA) 1006v.

These inscriptions appear next to sketches of two flying machines.

Other notes of Da Vinci’s reveal plans to test “The Great Bird” (a flying machine) with his Zoroastro as the willing test pilot. The location “Swan Mountain” and the date of the proposed flight are also recorded in his notes.

However, after the date passes, Da Vinci doesn’t record any notes regarding the planned test and written records of Zoroastro beyond this time have been lost.

This anecdotal information led some researchers and scholars to surmise that the test may have been ill fated for Da Vinci’s eager apprentice but very limited information about the life of Zoroastro made solving the mystery near impossible… until now…

In 2018 Gabriele Niccolai (head Artisan of the award-winning Niccolai group and owner of the Museum of Leonardo da Vinci in Florence, Italy) was tipped off about a local amateur historian in from Peretola (Zoroastro’s hometown) who had been collecting original documents and accounts of Zoroastro’s life.

Would it finally be possible to solve the mystery for once and for all?