Leonardo da Vinci’s parents were unmarried at the time of his birth near a small village named Vinci in Tuscany. His father, Ser Piero, was a Florentine notary and landlord, and his mother, Caterina, was a young peasant woman who shortly thereafter married an artisan. Leonardo grew up on his father’s family’s estate, where he was treated as a “legitimate” son and received the usual elementary education of the day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Leonardo never married, but he had many close relationships with other artists and intellectuals as well as with his assistants.