HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEO

 Happy 572nd birthday to Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452-May 2, 1519).

Leonardo da Vinci is renowned for his paintings, including but not limited to the 'Mona Lisa', 'The Last Supper' and his 'Vitruvian Man' drawing. But he also was the definition of a Renaissance man, sharing his genius in not only art but science and engineering. For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plan for several flying machines, including a flapping ornithopter and a machine with a helical rotor.

His famous design for a flying machine (1488) is currently housed at Le Institut de France in Paris and is also connected to Batman's creation history. While in the creative process of the character “the Bat-Man”, in 1939 co creator Bob Kane was inspired from Spring-Heeled Jack 2 from 1904, to the film “The Mark of Zorro” staring the swashbuckling masked man had an enormous impact on Kane’s Batman, who formed a boyhood club named the Zorros, but most interestingly cites his main influence for Batman’s cape as da Vinci’s drawings of flying machines, as seen in these sketches presented.

Although Kane, who had already submitted the proposal for Batman at DC and held a contract until 2015, was the only person given official company credit for Batman's creation, writer and co-creator Bill Finger suggested giving the character a cowl and scalloped cape instead of wings, adding gloves, leaving the mask's eyeholes blank to convey mystery, and removing the bright red sections of the original costume Kane designed, suggesting instead a gray-and-black color scheme. With Finger creating the character of Bruce Wayne in his writing and Bob Kane sculpting the high rise swings from his grapple, the character was then refined as the dark icon of the DC Universe to Superman's bright image, and The Bat-Man was launched 85 years ago on March 30, 1939. Thank Leonardo da Vinci and for his contribution to the Dark Knight’s incredible history