WAS LEONARDO DA VINCI DYSLEXIC?

2019 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, a man so talented in arts and science as to be arguably the most creative person who ever lived. His biographer, Giorgio Vasari called him, “Largita da Dio”1 (a gift from God), and half-a-millennium later we still ponder what made him so unique. The recent observation that Leonardo might have suffered from intermittent exotropia2 sheds some light on his artistic genius, since ocular misalignment is often linked to talent in the visual arts, but also raises the possibility of dyslexia, since this too can result from misalignment.