Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 in Vinci, near Florence, the illegitimate son of the notary Ser Piero da Vinci and Caterina, a local woman. Raised principally in his father's household, he entered the Florence workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio by the late 1460s. Records show him listed in the painters' guild in 1472. His early Florentine works include the unfinished Adoration of the Magi, commissioned in 1481, and the Annunciation, usually dated to the 1470s. He left Florence for Milan around 1482, offering Duke Ludovico Sforza skills as an engineer, designer of weapons, architect, sculptor, and painter. In Milan, Leonardo produced The Last Supper for the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, painting it between about 1495 and 1498. Rather than using durable fresco, he experimented with tempera and oil on a dry wall; deterioration began early and has made conservation unusually difficult. The mural depicts Christ announcing that one apostle will betray him, arranging the twelve disciples in four groups of three. For Ludovico, Leonardo also planned court festivities, studied fortifications and canals, and developed the monumental Sforza horse project. A huge clay model was displayed in 1493, but the bronze statue was never cast after French forces invaded Milan in 1499. Leonardo's surviving notebooks document a relentless investigation of nature and technique. He filled thousands of pages with mirror-written Italian notes and drawings, although only a portion survives. His anatomical studies, based partly on dissections in Florence, Milan, and Pavia, include precise images of muscles, bones, the heart, and a fetus in the uterus. The Vitruvian Man, drawn around 1490, translates proportions described by the Roman writer Vitruvius into a figure inscribed within circle and square. Other sheets examine flight, flowing water, geology, optics, machines, and possible flying devices. These proposals reveal careful observation, but many were never built and should not be treated as completed inventions. After Milan fell, Leonardo worked in Florence, where he began the Mona Lisa, identified as a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Its completion date remains uncertain; Leonardo carried the panel with him and it was later acquired by King Francis I of France. From 1506 he spent periods in Milan, then entered Francis I's service in 1516. He lived at Clos Luce near Amboise and died on 2 May 1519. His will named pupil Francesco Melzi heir of his books, instruments, and drawings.