The original Renaissance Man – “a person with many talents or areas of knowledge” if you ask the Oxford English Dictionary – was Leonardo da Vinci. Painter, sculptor, writer, scientist, inventor, engineer, mathematician, musician, anatomist, botanist, geographer, cartographer: Leonardo (‘da Vinci’ just means ‘from Vinci’) was the definition of well-rounded, the ultimate multi-hyphenate who came up with both the Mona Lisa and the helicopter, among other things.

Less famously, he was also in terrific nick. According to his Renaissance biographer Georgio Vasari, Leonardo’s “great strength could restrain the most violent fury, and he could bend an iron knocker or a horseshoe as if it were lead”. Thus he adhered to the Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy that a healthy mind should be housed in a corresponding body.

The idea of a Renaissance Man comes from Leonardo’s day when the revival of interest in classical thinking flourished in Italy, then spread across Europe and lasted until the 17th. The short version goes like this: you can do it all. And more than that you should do it all, or at least try. Embrace knowledge in all its forms and develop a skill set as broad as you can.

Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare were some of the earliest exemplars of the Renaissance Man

The Blueprint For The Modern Man

Renaissance Man is not a term in common parlance today, for reasons both obvious and less so. In the modern world, we’re encouraged to specialize from an early age, narrowing down our school subjects even before we enter the jobs market and monomaniacally plough a lone furrow ever deeper. Mindful of becoming a jack of all trades, we silo ourselves in the hope of becoming master of one.

Having been out of fashion, there are indications though that the Renaissance Man may be undergoing something of a, well, renaissance. Today, though, he’s more likely to be termed a ‘polymath’ or an ‘expert-generalist’ – the latter term coined by Orit Gadiesh, chairman of management consultants Bain & Co, and defined by her as “someone who has the ability and curiosity to master and collect expertise in many different disciplines, industries, skills, capabilities, countries and topics”.