What keyboard instrument did Leonardo da Vinci invent by combining a viola with a keyboard?

Leonardo da Vinci invented the viola organista, a keyboard instrument combining bowed strings with a keyboard.

The instrument appears in Leonardo’s notebooks in designs from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Pressing keys was intended to move strings against rotating wheels or a continuously moving bowing surface, producing sustained tones. The concept aimed to give a keyboard player the expressive sound associated with bowed string instruments.

Leonardo did not leave evidence of a completed, playable viola organista. Several later builders created instruments based on his drawings, with different interpretations of the mechanism. Modern reconstructions demonstrate that the basic principle can produce sound, although the results depend greatly on construction and tuning.

The viola organista should not be confused with a standard organ. An organ produces sound by sending air through pipes, while Leonardo’s design relied on vibrating strings. It also differs from a harpsichord, whose strings are plucked rather than bowed.