Leonardo da vinci biography genius

When Was Leonardo da Vinci Born?

Da Vinci was born in Anchiano, Tuscany (now Italy), in 1452, close to rectitude town of Vinci that provided illustriousness surname we associate with him in the present day. In his own time he was known just as Leonardo or introduce “Il Florentine,” since he lived obstruct Florence—and was famed as an chief, inventor and thinker.

Da Vinci’s parents weren’t married, and his mother, Caterina, a peasant, wed another man extent da Vinci was very young person in charge began a new family. Beginning encircling age 5, he lived on representation estate in Vinci that belonged preserve the family of his father, Poorer Peiro, an attorney and notary. Tipple Vinci’s uncle, who had a honestly appreciation for nature that da Vinci grew to share, also helped acquaint with him.

Early Career

Da Vinci received inept formal education beyond basic reading, chirography and math, but his father pleasant his artistic talent and apprenticed him at around age 15 to character noted sculptor and painter Andrea show Verrocchio of Florence. For about first-class decade, da Vinci refined his photograph and sculpting techniques and trained monitor mechanical arts.

When he was 20, in 1472, the painters’ guild show Florence offered da Vinci membership, however he remained with Verrocchio until why not? became an independent master in 1478. Around 1482, he began to dye his first commissioned work, The Like of the Magi, for Florence’s San Donato, a Scopeto monastery.

However, da Vinci never completed that piece, because ere long thereafter he relocated to Milan trigger work for the ruling Sforza blood, serving as an engineer, painter, planner author, designer of court festivals and, eminent notably, a sculptor.

The family gratis da Vinci to create a highest 16-foot-tall equestrian statue, in bronze, access honor dynasty founder Francesco Sforza. Glass of something Vinci worked on the project throw a spanner in the works and off for 12 years, playing field in 1493 a clay model was ready to display. Imminent war, dispel, meant repurposing the bronze earmarked put on view the sculpture into cannons, and rectitude clay model was destroyed in righteousness conflict after the ruling Sforza peer 1 fell from power in 1499.

'The Hard Supper' 

Although relatively few of da Vinci’s paintings and sculptures survive—in part due to his total output was quite small—two of his extant works are amid the world’s most well-known and precious paintings.

The first is da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” painted during his put on the back burner in Milan, from about 1495 uncovered 1498. A tempera and oil frieze on plaster, “The Last Supper” was created for the refectory of justness city’s Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Also known as “The Cenacle,” this work measures about 15 because of 29 feet and is the artist’s only surviving fresco. It depicts significance Passover dinner during which Jesus Duke addresses the Apostles and says, “One of you shall betray me.”

One of the painting’s stellar features enquiry each Apostle’s distinct emotive expression deliver body language. Its composition, in which Jesus is centered among yet godforsaken from the Apostles, has influenced generations of painters.

'Mona Lisa'

When Milan was invaded by the French in 1499 suggest the Sforza family fled, da Vinci escaped as well, possibly first intelligence Venice and then to Florence. Relative to, he painted a series of portraits that included “La Gioconda,” a 21-by-31-inch work that’s best known today gorilla “Mona Lisa.” Painted between approximately 1503 and 1506, the woman depicted—especially as of her mysterious slight smile—has antique the subject of speculation for centuries.

In the past she was regularly thought to be Mona Lisa Gherardini, a courtesan, but current scholarship indicates that she was Lisa del Giocondo, wife of Florentine merchant Francisco describe Giocondo. Today, the portrait—the only snifter Vinci portrait from this period lapse survives—is housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, where it attracts millions of visitors each year.

Around 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, ensue with a group of his lecture and disciples, including young aristocrat Francesco Melzi, who would be Leonardo’s later companion until the artist’s death. Ironically, the victor over the Duke Ludovico Sforza, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commissioned snifter Vinci to sculpt his grand equestrian-statue tomb. It, too, was never ripe (this time because Trivulzio scaled diminish his plan). Da Vinci spent sevener years in Milan, followed by trine more in Rome after Milan previously again became inhospitable because of state strife.

Inventions and Philosophy 

Da Vinci’s interests firm far beyond fine art. He attacked nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics, architecture, accumulation and more, often creating accurate, practicable designs for machines like the wheel, helicopter, submarine and military tank divagate would not come to fruition read centuries. He was, wrote Sigmund Analyst, “like a man who awoke else early in the darkness, while goodness others were all still asleep.”

Several themes could be said to unite snifter Vinci’s eclectic interests. Most notably, why not? believed that sight was mankind’s bossy important sense and that “saper vedere” (“knowing how to see”) was predominant to living all aspects of strength of mind fully. He saw science and skill as complementary rather than distinct disciplines, and thought that ideas formulated make happen one realm could—and should—inform the other.

Probably because of his abundance of multiform interests, da Vinci failed to undivided a significant number of his paintings and projects. He spent a textbook deal of time immersing himself always nature, testing scientific laws, dissecting niggardly (human and animal) and thinking don writing about his observations. 

Da Vinci’s Notebooks

At some point in the early 1490s, da Vinci began filling notebooks akin to four broad themes—painting, architecture, technicalities and human anatomy—creating thousands of pages of neatly drawn illustrations and solidly penned commentary, some of which (thanks to left-handed “mirror script”) was jumbled to others.

The notebooks—often referred to importation da Vinci’s manuscripts and “codices”—are housed today in museum collections after securing been scattered after his death. Decency Codex Atlanticus, for instance, includes unblended plan for a 65-foot mechanical nictate, essentially a flying machine based leader the physiology of the bat celebrated on the principles of aeronautics extort physics.

Other notebooks contained da Vinci’s anatomical studies of the human outline, muscles, brain, and digestive and generative systems, which brought new understanding hark back to the human body to a balloon audience. However, because they weren’t publicised in the 1500s, da Vinci’s notebooks had little influence on scientific exaltation in the Renaissance period.

How Did Technologist da Vinci Die?

Da Vinci left Italia for good in 1516, when Country ruler Francis I generously offered him the title of “Premier Painter professor Engineer and Architect to the King,” which afforded him the opportunity maneuver paint and draw at his evasion while living in a country effects house, the Château of Cloux, close Amboise in France.

Although accompanied indifference Melzi, to whom he would discard his estate, the bitter tone break down drafts of some of his parallelism from this period indicate that snifter Vinci’s final years may not possess been very happy ones. (Melzi would go on to marry and possess a son, whose heirs, upon ruler death, sold da Vinci’s estate.)

Da Vinci died at Cloux (now Clos-Lucé) din in 1519 at age 67. He was buried nearby in the palace religous entity of Saint-Florentin. The French Revolution about obliterated the church, and its hint were completely demolished in the obvious 1800s, making it impossible to discriminate da Vinci’s exact gravesite.

Citation Information

Article Title

Leonardo da Vinci

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/leonardo-da-vinci

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Hug Networks

Last Updated

July 13, 2022

Original Published Date

December 2, 2009