Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born out of wedlock in 1452 in the Tuscan town of Vinci. Apprenticed at fourteen to the Florentine workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, by twenty he was already a master in his own right — and across the next forty-seven years he produced perhaps fifteen finished paintings, two of them (the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper) the most famous in the world. He filled some 13,000 surviving notebook pages — written in mirror script — with anatomical dissections of unmatched precision, plans for parachutes and helicopters and tanks and submarines, hydraulic engineering, theories of light and optics, designs for cities and fortifications. He worked for the Sforza of Milan, the Medici of Florence, the Borgia, and finally Francis I of France, in whose arms (legend says) he died at sixty-seven.
All Figures
Polymath
Leonardo da Vinci
1,452 CE – 1,519 CE
The archetypal Renaissance man.
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▸Voice-over arc · Read the script
- S01"I am Leonardo. From the village of Vinci. Painter, engineer, dreamer."
- S02"Vitruvian Man. The proportions of the human body. Symmetry of all things."
- S03"I painted the Mona Lisa. They say her smile follows you across the room."
- S04"I sketched flying machines four hundred years before they flew."
- S05"I dissected thirty bodies to draw the inside of the human form."
- S06"I am Leonardo. I have offended God by leaving so much undone."
Deeper Dive
Notable Works
From the Notebooks
Places
- VinciTuscany, ItalyBirthplace and childhood. The hill town gave him his name.1452–1466
- FlorenceRepublic of FlorenceApprenticeship at Verrocchio's workshop, then independent master. Returned twice. Mona Lisa begun here.1466–1482, 1500–1508
- MilanDuchy of MilanCourt engineer and painter for Ludovico Sforza and later the French governor. The Last Supper was painted here.1482–1499, 1508–1513
- RomePapal StatesResident at the Belvedere under Pope Leo X. Mostly studied anatomy; outshone at court by Raphael and Michelangelo.1513–1516
- AmboiseLoire Valley, FranceFinal home at the Château du Clos Lucé as 'First Painter, Engineer and Architect to the King.' Died there in May 1519.1516–1519
In Their Own Words
Learning never exhausts the mind.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation. Even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.
Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
Read Deeper
- Leonardo da Vinci2017by Walter IsaacsonBiography
- Leonardo: The Artist and the Man1995by Serge BramlyBiography
- Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind2004by Charles NichollBiography