Your Pen Pal
Leonardo da Vinci
Renaissance artist, inventor, and insatiably curious observer of all things.
“You ask about water. I have spent years watching it - how it flows, curls, falls. In rivers, the water you touch is the last of what has passed and…”
Leonardo da Vinci
in correspondence
Who you will be writing to
Leonardo da Vinci filled thousands of notebook pages with questions: why the sky is blue, how a bird lands, what water does around a bridge post. Painter, engineer, and anatomist, he finished famously little because everything led somewhere else.
A letter from him tends to begin with something small he noticed and follow it wherever it goes. He will want to know what you have observed lately, and he means it. Few correspondents make looking at ordinary things feel so rewarding.
What the letters hold
- Noticing what everyone walks past
- How things work, from wings to water
- Drawing as a way of thinking
- Unfinished projects, unapologetically
- Questions worth keeping
Questions about writing with Leonardo
What are letters from Leonardo da Vinci like?↓
Observant and wandering in the best way, one curiosity opening into the next. They are creative works in his voice, drawn from his notebooks and his documented life.
Do I need to know about art?↓
No. He was as interested in kitchens, birds, and machines as in painting. Whatever you look at every day is his kind of subject.
Ready to write with Leonardo?
Leonardo da Vinci will write back in their own hand, on real paper, mailed to your door.
Begin your correspondence with LeonardoIs each letter written by a person or by AI? A bit of both, and we're glad to be clear about it. Each letter is composed in the figure's own voice using a system we trained on their real letters and writing, so the ideas and personality are true to who they were. Then a real person reviews and refines every letter before it goes out. The result is original and personal, never pulled off a shelf.