Leonardo: why the inventor failed to innovate

Purpose – Aims to demonstrate how a foremost “Renaissance man”, Leonardo da Vinci, an artist who also fathered inventions by the score, was destined to have his conceptions remain largely either on paper or in his head. Design/methodology/approach – Describes the creative work of a major polymath of the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo was painter, sculptor, designer, geometer, architect, natural scientist, anatomist, physiologist, diarist and sometime chronicler. Findings – Leonardo was more than a painter and sculptor: he was a prolific inventor of tools, instruments, public works, even spectacles and occasionally entire festivals. Yet the author of so many novel contraptions, devices, systems and events left virtually no material trace of his inventiveness. Originality/value – An analytical portrait enables the author to proffer some answers to the question of why Leonardo's non‐artistic bequest to civilization remains so intangible.