Leonardo da Vinci

**Leonardo Da Vinci** (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath who lived during the Renaissance.  He is famous for his paintings. He was also a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer. Leonardo wanted to know everything about nature, and wanted to know how everything worked. He was very good at studying, as well as designing and making all sorts of inventions.

The art historian Helen Gardner said that no one has ever been quite like him because he was interested in so many things that he seems to have had the mind of a giant, and yet what he was like as a person is still a mystery.

Leonardo was born in Vinci, a small town near Florence, Italy. He was trained to be an artist by the sculptor and painter Verrocchio. He spent most of his life working for rich Italian noblemen. In his last years, he lived in an expensive home given to him by the King of France.

Two of his paintings are among the best-known in the world: the *Mona Lisa* and *The Last Supper*. He did many drawings. His best-known drawing is *Vitruvian Man*. Leonardo often thought of new inventions. He kept notebooks with notes and drawings of these ideas. Most of his inventions were never made. Some of his ideas were a helicopter, a tank, a calculator, a parachute, a robot, a telephone, evolution, and solar power.

## Life 
### Childhood, 1452–1466 
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Leonardo was born on the 15th of April, 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the valley of the Arno River. His grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, wrote down the details of the birth. Leonardo's parents were not married. His father was a Notary, Ser Piero da Vinci. His mother, Caterina, was a servant. She may have been a slave from the Middle East, or from China. His father later took custody of Leonardo, and his mother remarried and had 5 more children. Leonardo's full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, the son of Messer (Mister) Piero da Vinci".

Leonardo spent his first five years living in a farmhouse with his mother. After that, he lived in Vinci with his father, his father's new wife Albiera, his grandparents, and uncle Francesco. Leonardo's other important memory was when he found a cave while exploring in the mountains. He was terrified that some great monster might be hiding there, but he was also very excited and wanted to find out what was inside.

### Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476 
In 1466, when Leonardo was fourteen, his father took him to Florence, to be an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio.

Florence was an exciting place for a young person who wanted to be an artist. Many famous artists had lived in Florence, starting with Cimabue and Giotto in the 1200s. Everywhere a person looked, there were famous and beautiful artworks. The huge cathedral had an enormous new dome. The church of St John had doors that gleamed with gold and were said to be the most beautiful doors in the world. Another church had statues all around it by the most famous sculptors, including one by Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio.

If an artist was lucky, they would find a rich patron who would buy lots of their paintings. The richest family in Florence were the Medici. They had built themselves the finest palace in Florence, and liked buying paintings, statues and other beautiful things. They were also interested in the study of literature and philosophy. Many young artists hoped to get work from the Medici and their friends.

Verrocchio had a big workshop that was one of the busiest in Florence. Leonardo was learning to be an artist, so he had to learn drawing, painting, sculpting and model-making. While he was at the workshop, he learned many other useful skills: chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry.

Leonardo was not the only young painter at Verrocchio's workshop. Many other painters trained there, or often visited. Some of them later became famous: Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Botticelli. These artists were all a few years older than Leonardo.

Very little is known about Leonardo's life and work between 1472 and 1481. People think he was busy in Florence. In 1482, he made a silver lyre (a musical instrument) in the shape of a horse's head. At that time there was a new ruler in the city of Milan, in the north of Italy. Duke Ludovico il Moro was making other rulers nervous. Lorenzo Medici sent Leonardo to Milan as an ambassador. Lorenzo de' Medici wanted Leonardo to give Ludovico the lyre as a present from him. Leonardo wrote a letter to the Duke of Milan, telling him about all the clever and useful things that he could do, like making war machines. He wrote in the letter that he could "also paint". Leonardo did not know at the time that it was for painting that he would be mostly remembered. Leonardo stayed in Milan and worked for the Duke between 1482 and 1499. Part of his work was to design festivals and carnival processions. In Leonardo's notebooks are drawings of theatre costumes, amazing helmets and scenes that might be for the theatre.
, possibly 1505–1508.]]
Leonardo, like most other well-known artists of his time, had servants, young students and older assistants in his workshop. One of his young students was a boy whose name was Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno. He was a handsome boy with beautiful long golden curls. He looked perfect as an artist's model for an angel. But he was such a difficult and dishonest boy that Leonardo called him "Salai" or "Salaino" which means "the little devil". Leonardo wrote in his notebook that Salai was very greedy, that he was a liar and that he had stolen things from the house at least five times. Salai stayed in Leonardo's household for thirty years as a pupil and a servant.

#### *Gran Cavallo* 
Leonardo's most important work for Duke Ludovico was to make a huge statue of the previous ruler, Francesco Sforza, on horseback. He started with the horse. After studying horses and drawing designs, he made a huge horse of clay. It was called the "Gran Cavallo". It was going to be cast in bronze, and it was going to be the biggest bronze horse made in more than a thousand years. Unfortunately, the bronze horse was never made. In 1494, Ludovico had the bronze made into cannons because the French army was invading Milan.

#### *The Last Supper* 
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Leonardo's other important painting in Milan is even more famous: *The* *Last Supper*. The painting shows the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples, before his capture and death. Leonardo chose to paint the moment when Jesus said "one of you will betray me". Leonardo tells the story of the surprise and upset that this caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.

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#### *The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist* 
Leonardo started work on a new painting. He drew a large "cartoon" (a drawing that is a plan for the painting).  The cartoon showed the Virgin Mary sitting on the knee of her mother, St Anne. Mary holds the baby Jesus in her arms. Jesus stretches out his hands to his young cousin John the Baptist. Vasari says that everyone was so amazed by the beautiful drawing that "men and women, young and old" came in large groups to see it "as if they were attending a great festival". On December 19, there was a meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, in Bologna. Leonardo went to the meeting with Pope Leo. Leonardo made an amazing toy to entertain King Francis. It was a life-sized mechanical lion that could walk. It had doors in its chest which opened, and a bunch of lilies came out. Lilies were the royal symbol of the French Kings. Salai was the owner of Leonardo's most famous oil painting, the *Mona Lisa*. He still owned it a few years later when he died, after fighting in a duel.

King Francis said: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."

## Drawings 
Leonardo did not paint very many pictures. But he drew hundreds of quick sketches, plans, maps and detailed drawings. This is how he recorded all the interesting things that he saw, studied and thought about. Some of Leonardo's drawings are "studies" for paintings. In these drawings Leonardo planned the things he was going to paint. Some studies are plans for whole paintings. One of these paintings is the large beautiful drawing of the Madonna and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist that is now in the National Gallery, London. Many of the studies show "details" that Leonardo wanted to get just right. One study shows a very detailed perspective drawing of the ruined buildings in the background of the painting of the Magi. Other studies show hands, faces, drapery, plants, horses and babies.

## Leonardo's notebooks 
 of birds and tried to make a flying machine based on his discoveries.]]

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Leonardo studied things throughout his life. He did not go to university to study. He studied by observing things in the world around him, to see how they were made and how they worked. He drew things that he saw and discoveries he made into his notebooks. Many of his notebooks are now in museums. There are about 13,000 pages of notes and drawings in his notebooks, which are mostly scientific studies. One page shows drawings of the muscles of a  and another page shows how an arm works.

The notebooks were not published in Leonardo's lifetime. After he died, they were divided between different people who had known him. They are nearly all in museums or libraries such as Windsor Castle, the Louvre, and the British Library. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana (a library) in Milan has the twelve-volume *Codex Atlanticus*. No other building that he designed was built.

## Leonardo's studies, designs and inventions 

File:View of a Skull III.jpg|Study of a skull
File:Study of horse.jpg|Study of a horse for the Duke's statue
File:Sedge.jpg|Study of a sedge plant
File:Leonardo polyhedra.png|Rhombicuboctahedron published in Pacioli's book
File:Leonardo parabolic compass.JPG|A parabolic compass.
File:Leonardo helicopter.JPG|A Helicopter.
File:Leonardo cannons.JPG|Cannons.
File:Leonardo walking on water.JPG|Walking on water.
File:Leonardo da Vinci parachute 04659a.jpg|Modern model of Leonardo's parachute.
File:Da vinci bridge.jpg|Modern model of a bridge designed by Leonardo.
File:DaVinciTankAtAmboise.jpeg|Modern model of a tank by Leonardo
File:Leonardo-Flywheel-screenshot.jpg|Modern model of a flywheel

## Related pages
* Renaissance
* Italian Renaissance art
* *Lady with an Ermine*
* List of Renaissance artists
* Michelangelo
* Raphael
* List of Italian painters

## References 
## More reading 
* 
* 
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* 
*  ISBN 0-486-22573-9. 2 volumes. A reprint of the original 1883 edition.
* 
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* Silvia e Luca Guagliumi, "Leonardo e l'architettura", Silvia Editrice, Aprile 2015

* Silvia Guagliumi,Expo 2015:
Leonardo da Vinci e l'architettura lombarda.Saggio pubblicato su Il Giornale dell'Ingegnere (Organo ufficiale dell'Ordine degli Ingegneri e Architetti di Milano),
N.4 - Aprile 2015.
* Silvia Guagliumi, In ricordo di Leonardo, Rivista In Arte, Aprile/Maggio/Giugno 2019.

## Other websites 
* 
* Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design (review) 
* 
* 
* Complete text & images of Richter's translation of the Notebooks
* Vasari Life of Leonardo : in *Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects*.
* Web Gallery of Leonardo Paintings
* Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
* Da Vinci Decoded Article from *The Guardian*
* The true face of Leonardo Da Vinci? 
* Leonardo da Vinci's Ethical Vegetarianism 
* Leonardo da Vinci, a biography with description of his major works, written for children; Tamsyn Taylor, 2020