What stringed keyboard instrument did Leonardo da Vinci invent with bowed strings and keys?

Leonardo da Vinci invented the viola organista, a keyboard instrument whose keys activate bowed strings.

Leonardo drew several versions of the concept in his notebooks. Unlike a conventional piano, in which hammers strike strings, the viola organista uses a continuous friction system: rotating wheels or a moving bow contact strings, while the keyboard selects the notes. The intended result combines keyboard control with the sustained sound of bowed instruments.

No surviving instrument made by Leonardo is known. His drawings show changing mechanisms rather than one finalized model, and later builders interpreted the plans in different ways. The instrument therefore belongs to the history of experimental musical design rather than to a standard Renaissance instrument family.

The name can cause confusion because “viola organista” is also used for modern reconstructions based on Leonardo’s ideas. Those reconstructions are not original Leonardo instruments. They demonstrate how his mechanical studies extended beyond warfare, transport, and flight into sound production.