Leonardo

SYNOPSIS
da Vinci biography
Born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was concerned with the laws of science and nature, which greatly
informed his work as a painter, sculptor, inventor and draftsmen. His ideas and body of work—which includes "Virgin of the
Rocks," "The Last Supper," "Leda and the Swan" and "Mona Lisa"—have influenced countless artists and made da Vinci a
leading light of the Italian Renaissance.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy. Born out of wedlock, the love child of a respected notary and a
young peasant woman, he was raised by his father, Ser Piero, and his stepmothers. At the age of 14, da Vinci began
apprenticing with the artist Verrocchio. For six years, he learned a wide breadth of technical skills, including metalworking,
QUICK FACTS leather arts, carpentry, drawing and sculpting. By the age of 20, he had qualified as a master artist in the Guild of Saint Luke
NAME: Leonardo da Vinci and established his own workshop.
OCCUPATION: Mathematician, Artist, Inventor,
Musician, Writer Florentine court records show that da Vinci was charged with and acquitted of sodomy at the age of 22, and for two years, his
BIRTH DATE: April 15, 1452
whereabouts went entirely undocumented.
DEATH DATE: May 02, 1519
PLACE OF BIRTH: Vinci, Italy
'THE LAST SUPPER'
PLACE OF DEATH: Amboise, France
FULL NAME: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
In 1482, Lorenzo de' Medici, a man from a prominent Italian family, commissioned da Vinci to create a silver lyre and bring it
AKA: Leonardo da Vinci
AKA: Da Vinci
to Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan, as a gesture of peace. Da Vinci did so and then wrote Ludovico a letter describing
how his engineering and artistic talents would be of great service to Ludovico's court. His letter successfully endeared him to
Ludovico, and from 1482 until 1499, Leonardo was commissioned to work on a great many projects. It was during this time
BEST KNOWN FOR that da Vinci painted "The Last Supper."
Leonardo da Vinci was a leading artist
'MONA LISA'
and intellectual of the Italian Renaissance
who's known for his enduring works "The Da Vinci's most well-known painting, and arguably the most famous painting in the world, the "Mona Lisa," was a privately
Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa."
commissioned work and was completed sometime between 1505 and 1507. Of the painting's wide appeal, James Beck, an art
historian at Columbia University, once explained, "It is the inherent spirituality of the human creature that Leonardo was able
to ingenuine to the picture that raises the human figure to some kind of majesty."

It's been said that the Mona Lisa had jaundice, that she was a pregnant woman and that she wasn't actually a woman at all, but a man in drag. Based on accounts from an early
biographer, however, the "Mona Lisa" is a picture of Lisa Gioconda, the real-life wife of a merchant, but that's far from certain. For da Vinci, the "Mona Lisa" was forever a
work in progress, as it was his attempt at perfection. The painting was never delivered to its commissioner; da Vinci kept it with him until the end of his life. Today, the "Mona
Lisa" hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, secured behind bulletproof glass, and is regarded as a priceless national treasure.

RENAISSANCE MAN

Da Vinci has been called a genius and the archetypal Renaissance man. His talents in arguably extended far beyond his artistic works. Like many leaders of Renaissance
humanism, he did not see a divide between science and art.

His observations and inventions were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, including designs for flying machines (some 400 years before the Wright brothers' first
success), plant studies, war machinery, anatomy and architecture. His ideas were mainly theoretical explanations, laid out in exacting detail, but they were rarely experimental.
His drawings of a fetus in utero, the heart and vascular system, sex organs, and other bone and muscular structures, are some of the first on human record.

One of da Vinci's last commissioned works was a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest to reveal a bouquet of lilies. The famous artist died in Amboise, France, on
May 2, 1519. Da Vinci's assistant and perhaps his lover, Francesco Melzi, became the principal heir and executor of his estate.

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