Researchers Proved Leonardo da Vinci was Ambidextrous

For all his fame, Leonardo da Vinci remained a bit of an enigma. But one of his first works, done at 21, shed light on the artist’s unknown sides.

It had long been suggested that Leonardo was ambidextrous, e.g., he could write, draw, and paint with both his right and left hands, but researchers believed they had found enough evidence to prove that theory. The team completed a detailed study of da Vinci’s earliest surviving work — Arno River or simply the Landscape.

The drawing of the river flowing through Florence and the castle of Montelupo in the background also featured two handwritten text inscriptions, one on the front written backward and another on the back written left to right. According to Uffizi, researchers showed that the inscriptions were done by the artist who used his left hand to create ‘mirror writing’ on the front and his right hand to pen it on the back.