What musical instrument did Leonardo da Vinci design using a bowed keyboard?

Leonardo da Vinci designed the viola organista, a musical instrument using a bowed keyboard.

The viola organista combined ideas from string instruments and keyboard instruments. Pressing keys caused rotating wheels, or bowed mechanisms, to contact strings and produce sustained sounds. Leonardo drew several versions of the concept in his notebooks, including designs from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Unlike a harpsichord, which plucks strings, the viola organista was intended to make strings vibrate through friction from continuously moving surfaces. This gave the design a connection to the bowed viola family while allowing a performer to use a keyboard. Leonardo never appears to have completed a working instrument from the surviving plans.

The idea was not entirely forgotten. Modern instrument makers have built reconstructions, including a playable version made by Polish musician and builder Sławomir Zubrzycki. The viola organista is therefore best understood as Leonardo’s inventive design, not as a standard Renaissance instrument that became widely used.