Leonardo da Vinci text message story: Da Vinci's mum checks in
A short, funny Messenger-style chat starring Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519), Italian painter, engineer and inventor, with his mother. Everyone knows a person who has a brilliant idea for every project except the one they were asked to finish, and everyone has a parent who checks.
Read the chat
- Mamma: Leonardo, did you finish that painting yet
- Leonardo: Almost, Mamma
- Mamma: you said almost in March
- Leonardo: It is a very ambitious smile
- Mamma: how many years does a smile take
- Leonardo: It has wings now
- Mamma: the painting has wings
- Leonardo: No, the flying machine. I got distracted
- Mamma: come home for dinner and bring the painting
Free to try, no account needed until you export.
Who was Leonardo da Vinci?
- He began the Mona Lisa around 1503 and kept it with him for years.
- Thousands of pages of his notebooks survive, full of drawings of machines, bodies and flying devices.
- He worked for rulers and cities across Italy, from Florence to Milan, and ended his life in France.
The chat is invented. Leonardo da Vinci never sent these messages, and the story is labelled as fiction wherever it appears.
How this chat is built
It runs 9 messages between Mamma and Leonardo. Mamma writes 5 of them. The longest line is “come home for dinner and bring the painting” (Mamma) and the shortest is “Almost, Mamma” (Leonardo). The word “painting” comes back 3 times, which is where the rhythm of the joke comes from. It closes on “come home for dinner and bring the painting” from Mamma.
It is shown in the Messenger look , one of the Messenger-style chat tools. In the editor you can switch it to any other look and the whole conversation follows.