The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace is holding history’s largest exhibition of anatomical drawings by that greatest of show offs, Leonardo da Vinci.

The exhibit actually runs till early October, but if you have no plans to cross the pond, fear not, The Queen’s Gallery has an accompanying website, with links to all the images in the exhibition. (Clicking on the images will open magnified views in the same window.) The Gallery also created an iPad app for the exhibit -available through the App Store- and provides a link to all of Leonardo’s drawings held in the Royal Collection.

 

In the video above, Curator Martin Clayton describes three of the drawings in the exhibit and explains how, through his creation of a glass model of the aortic valve (a fascinating procedure in itself) and some water full of grass seeds, Leonardo was able to theorize the role that natural vortices in the flow of blood played in closing of the valve. (Something only confirmed in the last century.)