The inventions of one of the world's greatest minds have been recreated for an exhibition on loan to Brisbane in Australia from the Da Vinci Museum in Florence. The exhibition's sixty machines are based on drawings five hundred years old, but many of Leonardo Da Vinci's creations are vital to the way we live today.

Leonardo Da Vinci was illegitimate, left-handed and a genius. He was also a scientist, mathematician, engineer, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer, among other things.

He was excluded from school by the circumstances of his birth, and developed an outsider's gift for observation.

He left behind fourteen thousand technical drawings.

On display are just one hundred of his designs, including the parachute, the hang-glider and the principle of the helicopter.

On show is his concept of the bicycle, which he thought up for a stage production.

But Da Vinci's bicycle chain would end up playing a crucial part in the industrial revolution.

He brought science to art, carefully working out the wingspan of an angel.

One of the most creative spirits of all time, he was also extremely practical.

As an architect, sculptor, scientist and anatomist, he was the original renaissance man.

Da Vinci was born in April 1452 and died in May 1519.

The Brisbane exhibition is open until September the 6th.