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{{Short description|Italian Renaissance polymath (1452–1519)}}
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{{Renaissance Florentine name|da Vinci|Leonardo}}
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{{Infobox person
{{pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
| name = Leonardo da Vinci

| image = Francesco Melzi - Portrait of Leonardo.png<!-- Please consult previous discussions on the talk page before changing this image. It is his only certain contemporary likeness. -->
{{Infobox Artist
| caption = This portrait attributed to ], {{circa|1515–1518}}, is the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo.<ref>{{cite web |title=A portrait of Leonardo c. 1515–18 |publisher=] |url=https://www.rct.uk/collection/912726/a-portrait-of-leonardo |access-date=26 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201123161405/https://www.rct.uk/collection/912726/a-portrait-of-leonardo |archive-date=23 November 2020}}</ref>{{sfn|Zöllner|2019|p=20}}
| bgcolour = #EEDD82
| name = Leonardo da Vinci | birth_name = Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
| image = Leonardo_self.jpg | birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1452|04|15}}
| birth_place = (possibly ]),{{efn|name=Birthplace}} Vinci, {{awrap|]}}
| caption = ], circa 1512 to 1515.<ref group="nb">This drawing in red chalk is widely (though not universally) accepted as an original ]. The main reason for hesitation in accepting it as a portrait of Leonardo is that the subject is apparently of a greater age than Leonardo ever achieved. But it is possible that he drew this picture of himself deliberately aged, specifically for Raphael's portrait of him in ].</ref>
| education = Studio of ]
]
| years_active = {{circa|1470–1519}}
| birthname = Leonardo di Ser Piero
| birthdate = {{birth date|1452|4|15|mf=y}} | death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1519|5|2|1452|4|15}}
| death_place = ], Amboise, {{awrap|]}}
| location = ], ], in present-day ]
| resting_place = ]
| deathdate = {{death date and age|1519|5|2|1452|4|15|mf=y}}
| nationality =
| deathplace = ], ] (in present-day ], ])
| nationality = ] | family = ]
| known_for = {{hlist|Painting|drawing|engineering|anatomical studies|hydrology|botany|optics|geology}}
| field = Many and diverse fields of ] and ]
| movement = ] | notable_works = {{plainlist|
* '']'' ({{circa|1483–1493}})
| works = '']'', '']'', '']''
* '']'' ({{circa|1489–1491|lk=no}})
| signature = Da Vinci Signature.svg
* '']'' ({{circa|1490|lk=no}})
* '']'' ({{circa|1495–1498|lk=no}})
* '']'' ({{circa|1503–1516|lk=no}})}}
| movement = ]
| signature = Firma de Leonardo Da Vinci.svg
| signature_alt = Signature written in ink in a flowing script
| signature_size = 200px
}} }}
'''Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci''' ({{Audio|it-Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci.ogg|pronunciation}}) (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an ] ]: ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ] and ].<!-- NOTE The following paragraph is about HISTORIC OPINION. It is not POV. It does not contravene Wiki policy, even though it uses words like "archetype", "greatest" and "most". It states how Leonardo has been DESCRIBED and CONSIDERED for 500 years. It cites 8 references which make these statements. -->
Leonardo has often been described as the ] of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention.<ref name=HG>{{Cite book | first = Helen | last = Gardner | title = Art through the Ages | year = 1970 | pages = 450–456 }}</ref> He is widely considered to be one of the ] ] of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.<ref name=genius>Vasari, Boltraffio, Castiglione, "Anonimo" Gaddiano, Berensen, Taine, Fuseli, Rio, Bortolon, etc. See specific quotations under heading "Leonardo, the legend".</ref> According to art historian ], the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".<ref name=HG/> Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.<ref>{{Cite book | first = Marco | last = Rosci | title = Leonardo | year = 1977 | page = 8}}</ref>


'''Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci'''{{efn|name=IPA}} (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian ] of the ] who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.{{sfn|Kemp|2003}} While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for ], in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and ]. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the ] ideal,{{sfn|Heydenreich|2020}} and his ] comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary ].{{sfn|Kemp|2003}}{{sfn|Heydenreich|2020}}
Born the illegitimate son of a ], Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at ] in the region of ], Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, ]. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of ] in ]. He later worked in ], ] and ] and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by ].


Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, ], he was educated in ] by the Italian painter and sculptor ]. He began his career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of ] in Milan. Later, he worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in ], all while attracting a ] of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of ], he spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, ], and empirical thinking have failed to incite interest and admiration,{{sfn|Kemp|2003}}{{sfn|Heydenreich|2020}} making him a frequent ] and ].
Leonardo was and is renowned<ref name=genius/> primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the '']'' and '']'', are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by ]'s '']''.<ref name=HG/> Leonardo's drawing of the '']'' is also regarded as a ],<ref>Vitruvian Man is referred to as "iconic" at the following websites and many others:, , ; ; </ref> being reproduced on everything from the ] to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.<ref group="nb">There are 15 significant artworks which are ascribed, either in whole or in large part, to Leonardo by most art historians. This number is made up principally of paintings on panel but includes a mural, a large drawing on paper and two works which are in the early stages of preparation. There are a number of other works that have also been variously attributed to Leonardo.</ref> Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, ].


Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of ] and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance.{{sfn|Kemp|2003}} Despite having many ] and ] – including numerous ] – he created some of the most influential paintings in the ].{{sfn|Kemp|2003}} The '']'' is his best known work and is the world's most famous individual painting. '']'' is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his '']'' drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, '']'', attributed in whole or part to Leonardo,{{sfn|Zöllner|2019|p=250}} was sold at auction for {{US$|450.3&nbsp;million}}, setting a new record for the ] at public auction.
Leonardo is revered<ref name=genius/> for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated ], a calculator,<ref> accessdate=2010-01-07</ref> the ] and outlined a rudimentary theory of ]. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,<ref group="nb">Modern scientific approaches to ] and ] were only in their infancy during the Renaissance.</ref> but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated ] winder and a machine for testing the ] of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.<ref group="nb">A number of Leonardo's most practical inventions are displayed as working models at the Museum of Vinci.</ref> As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of ], ], ], and ].<ref>See expanded in article ]</ref>


Revered for his ], he conceptualised flying machines, a type of ], concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an ],<ref name="AddingMachine">{{cite web |url=http://192.220.96.166/leonardo/leonardo.html |title=Roberto Guatelli's Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Adding Machine |last=Kaplan |first=Erez |year=1996|access-date=19 August 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110529140741/http://192.220.96.166/leonardo/leonardo.html|archive-date=29 May 2011}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kaplan |first=E. |date=Apr 1997 |title=Anecdotes |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/586074 |journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=62–69 |doi=10.1109/MAHC.1997.586074 |issn=1058-6180 |access-date=9 July 2022 |archive-date=11 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220711093113/https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/586074 |url-status=live}}</ref> and the ]. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the ]. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in ], civil engineering, ], geology, ], and ], but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.{{sfn|Capra|2007|pp=5–6}}
== Life ==
{{TOC limit|3}}
{{See also|Leonardo da Vinci's personal life}}


== Biography ==
=== Childhood, 1452–1466 ===
=== Early life (1452–1472) ===
].|alt=Photo of a building of rough stone with small windows, surrounded by olive trees.]]
==== Birth and background ====
]|alt=Pen drawing of a landscape with mountains, a river in a deep valley, and a small castle.]]
]
Leonardo da Vinci, properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci{{efn|{{IPAc-en|,|l|i:|@|'|n|a:r|d|ou|_|d|@|_|'|v|I|n|tS|i|,_|,|l|i:|ou|'|-|,_|,|l|ei|ou|'|-}} {{respell|LEE|ə|NAR|doh|_|də|_|VIN|chee|,_|LEE|oh|-,_|LAY|oh|-}}; {{IPA|it|leoˈnardo di ˌsɛr ˈpjɛːro da (v)ˈvintʃi|lang|it-Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci.ogg}}.|name=IPA}} ("Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci"),{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=7}}{{sfn|Kemp|2006|p=1}}{{efn|name=ser|The inclusion of the title {{lang|it|ser}} (shortening of Italian {{lang|it|messer}} or {{lang|it|messere}}, title of courtesy prefixed to the first name) indicates that Leonardo's father was a gentleman (a low-ranking nobleman).}} was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the ] hill town of ], 20 miles from ].{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=5}}{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}}{{efn|group=SerA|The diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio relays a precise account: "There was born to me a grandson, son of {{ill|Piero da Vinci|fr|lt=Ser Piero}}, on 15 April, a Saturday, at the third hour of the night."{{sfn|Vezzosi|1997|p=13}}{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=83}} Ser Antonio records Leonardo being baptised the following day by Piero di Bartolomeo at the ] of {{ill|Chiesa di Santa Croce (Vinci)|it|lt=Santa Croce}}.{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}}}} He was born ] to Piero da Vinci (Ser Piero da Vinci d'Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504),{{sfn|Bambach|2019|pp=16, 24}} a Florentine ],{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=5}} and Caterina di Meo Lippi ({{circa|1434–1494}}), from the lower class.{{sfn|Marani|2003|p=13}}{{sfn|Bambach|2019|p=16}}{{efn|It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East "or at least, from the Mediterranean" or even of Chinese descent. According to art critic ], head of the ], there is evidence that Piero owned a slave called Caterina.<ref>{{cite news |first=John |last=Hooper |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/apr/12/art.italy |title=Da Vinci's mother was a slave, Italian study claims |date=12 April 2008 |access-date=16 August 2015 |archive-date=23 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191223072445/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/apr/12/art.italy |url-status=live}}</ref> The reconstruction of one of Leonardo's fingerprints shows a pattern that matches 60% of people of Middle Eastern origin, suggesting the possibility that Leonardo may have had Middle Eastern blood. The claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine: "You can't predict one person's race from these kinds of incidences, especially if looking at only one finger". More recently, historian ], after digging through overlooked archives and records in Italy, found evidence that Leonardo's mother was a young local woman identified as Caterina di Meo Lippi.<ref>{{cite news |last=Alberge |first=Dalya |date=21 May 2017 |title=Tuscan archives yield up secrets of Leonardo's mystery mother |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/20/leonardo-da-vinci-orphan-mother-caterina |work=The Guardian |access-date=5 June 2019 |archive-date=10 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200510151906/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/20/leonardo-da-vinci-orphan-mother-caterina |url-status=live}}</ref>}} It remains uncertain where Leonardo was born; the traditional account, from a local oral tradition recorded by the historian ],{{sfn|Bambach|2019|p=24}} is that he was born in ], a country hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the illegitimate birth, though it is still possible he was born in a house in Florence that Ser Piero almost certainly had.{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}}{{efn|name=Birthplace|See {{harvtxt|Nicholl|2005|pp=17–20}} and {{harvtxt|Bambach|2019|p=24}} for further information on the dispute and uncertainty surrounding Leonardo's exact birthplace.}} Leonardo's parents both married separately the year after his birth. Caterina – who later appears in Leonardo's notes as only "Caterina" or "Catelina" – is usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca, who married the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed {{langx|it|L'Accattabriga|translation=the quarrelsome one|label=none}}.{{sfn|Marani|2003|p=13}}{{sfn|Bambach|2019|p=24}} Having been betrothed to her the previous year, Ser Piero married Albiera Amadori and after her death in 1464, went on to have three subsequent marriages.{{sfn|Bambach|2019|p=24}}{{sfn|Kemp|Pallanti|2017|p=65}}{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Kemp|Pallanti|2017|pp=65–66}} for detailed table on Ser Piero's marriages.}} From all the marriages, Leonardo eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy){{sfn|Kemp|Pallanti|2017|pp=65–66}} who were much younger than he (the last was born when Leonardo was 46 years old){{sfn|Kemp|Pallanti|2017|pp=65–66}} and with whom he had very little contact.{{efn|He also never wrote about his father, except a passing note of his death in which he overstates his age by three years.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=11}} Leonardo's siblings caused him difficulty after his father's death in a dispute over their inheritance.{{sfn|Magnano|2007|p=138}}}}


], ], Italy|alt=Photo of a building of rough stone with small windows, surrounded by olive trees]]
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, "at the third hour of the night"{{#tag:ref|The third hour of the night was 10:30&nbsp;pm, three hours after the saying of the ].<ref name=AV/>|group="nb"}} in the ] hill town of ], in the lower valley of the ] in the territory of ].<ref name=SerA>His birth is recorded in the diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio, as cited by Angela Ottino della Chiesa in ''Leonardo da Vinci'', p.83</ref> He was the ] son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine ], and Caterina, a peasant.<ref name=AV>{{Cite book | first = Alessandro | last = Vezzosi | title = Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man | year=1997}}</ref><ref name=Chiesa83>{{Cite book | first = Angela Ottino | last = della Chiesa | title = The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci | year=1967 | page = 83}}</ref><ref group="nb">It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the ] "or at least, from the Mediterranean". According to Alessandro Vezzosi, Head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, there is evidence that Piero owned a Middle Eastern slave called Caterina. That Leonardo had Middle Eastern blood is claimed to be supported by the reconstruction of a fingerprint as reported by Marta Falconi, Associated Press Writer, "" December 12, 2006", accessed 2010-01-06. The evidence as stated in the article is that 60% of people of Middle Eastern Origin share the pattern of whorls found on the reconstructed fingerprint. The article also states that the claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine. "You can't predict one person's race from these kinds of incidences," he said, especially if looking at only one finger."</ref> Leonardo had no ] in the modern sense, "''da Vinci''" simply meaning "of ]": his full birth name was "Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci".<ref name=SerA/>
Very little is known about Leonardo's childhood and much is shrouded in myth, partially because of his biography in the frequently apocryphal '']'' (1550) by 16th-century art historian ].{{sfn|Brown|1998|pp=1, 5}}{{sfn|Marani|2003|p=12}} Tax records indicate that by at least 1457 he lived in the household of his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci,{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=5}} but it is possible that he spent the years before then in the care of his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi in the parish of San Pantaleone.{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=175}}{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}} He is thought to have been close to his uncle, Francesco da Vinci,{{sfn|Kemp|2003}} but his father was probably in Florence most of the time.{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=5}} Ser Piero, who was the descendant of a long line of notaries, established an official residence in Florence by at least 1469 and had a successful career.{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=5}} Despite his family history, Leonardo only received a basic and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading, and mathematics; possibly because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his family decided to focus their attention there.{{sfn|Brown|1998|p=5}}
Little is known about Leonardo's early life. He spent his first five years in the ] of ] in the home of his mother, then from 1457 lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but died young.<ref name= LB>{{Cite book | first = Liana | last = Bortolon | title = The Life and Times of Leonardo | publisher = Paul Hamlyn | publication-place=London | year = 1967}}</ref> Leonardo received an informal education in Latin, geometry and mathematics but did not show any particular signs of aptitude.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}}


Later in life, Leonardo recorded his earliest memory, now in the ].{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=, }} While writing on the flight of birds, he recalled as an infant when a ] came to his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail; commentators still debate whether the anecdote was an actual memory or a fantasy.{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=|ps=. See p. for the original Italian.}}
When Leonardo was sixteen his father married again, twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini. It was not until his third and fourth marriages that Ser Piero produced legitimate heirs.<ref>Rosci, p.20</ref> In later life, Leonardo only recorded two childhood incidents. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a ] dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face.<ref>Rosci, p.21</ref> The second occurred while exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there, and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.<ref name= LB />


==== Verrocchio's workshop ====
Leonardo's early life has been the subject of historical conjecture.<ref>{{cite book |last= Brigstoke | first=Hugh | title=The Oxford Companion the Western Art | year=2001}}</ref> ], the 16th-century biographer of Renaissance painters tells of how a local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo responded with a painting of monster spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of ]. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a shield decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow, which he gave to the peasant.<ref>{{cite book |last=Vasari | first=Giorgio | title=Lives of the Artists | year=1568 | publisher=Penguin Classics |pages = 258–9}}</ref>
]'' (1472–1475) by ] and Leonardo, ] Gallery|alt=Painting showing Jesus, naked except for a loin-cloth, standing in a shallow stream in a rocky landscape, while to the right, John the Baptist, identifiable by the cross that he carries, tips water over Jesus' head. Two angels kneel at the left. Above Jesus are the hands of God, and a dove descending|230x230px]]


In the mid-1460s, Leonardo's family moved to Florence, which at the time was the centre of Christian ] thought and culture.{{sfn|Rosci|1977|p=13}} Around the age of 14,{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=11}} he became a ''garzone'' (studio boy) in the workshop of ], who was the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time.{{sfn|Rosci|1977|p=13}} This was about the time of the death of Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor ].{{efn|The humanist influence of Donatello's '']'' can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly '']''.{{sfn|Hartt|1970|pp=127–133}}{{sfn|Rosci|1977|p=13}}}} Leonardo became an apprentice by the age of 17 and remained in training for seven years.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bacci |first=Mina |translator-last=Tanguy |translator-first=J. |title=The Great Artists: Da Vinci |year=1978 |orig-date=1963 |publisher=Funk & Wagnalls |location=New York}}<!--intro--></ref> Other famous painters apprenticed in the workshop or associated with it include ], ], ], and ].{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}}{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} Leonardo was exposed to both theoretical training and a wide range of technical skills,{{sfn|Rosci|1977|p=27}} including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and woodwork, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting, and modelling.{{sfn|Martindale|1972}}{{efn|The "diverse arts" and technical skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th-century text ''On Divers Arts'' by ] and in the early 15th-century text ''Il Libro Dell'arte O Trattato Della Pittui'' by ].}}
]'' (1472–1475)—], by Verrocchio and Leonardo|alt=Painting showing Jesus, naked except for a loin-cloth, standing in a shallow stream in a rocky landscape, while to the right, John the Baptist, identifiable by the cross that he carries, tips water over Jesus' head. Two angels kneel at the left. Above Jesus are the hands of God, and a dove descending.]]


Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was.{{sfn|Rosci|1977|pp=9–20}} He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio or at the ] of the ].{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}} Florence was ornamented by the works of artists such as Donatello's contemporaries ], whose figurative ]es were imbued with realism and emotion, and ], whose '']'', gleaming with ], displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. ] had made a detailed study of ],<ref>Piero della Francesca, ''On Perspective for Painting (De Prospectiva Pingendi)''</ref> and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and ]'s treatise '']'' were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.{{sfn|Hartt|1970|pp=127–133}}<ref name="Rach">{{cite book |last=Rachum |first=Ilan |title=The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia |year=1979}}</ref>
=== Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476 ===
In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was ]d to the artist Andrea di Cione, known as ] whose workshop was "one of the finest in Florence".<ref>Rosci, p.13</ref> Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include ], ], ], and ].<ref name= LB /><ref name=DA/> Leonardo would have been exposed to both theoretical training and a vast range of technical skills<ref>Rosci, p.27</ref> including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.<ref name=AM>{{Cite book | first = Andrew | last = Martindale | year = 1972 | title = The Rise of the Artist}}</ref><ref group="nb">The "diverse arts" and technicall skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th century text ''On Divers Arts'' by ] and in the early 15th century text ''Il Libro Dell'arte O Trattato Della Pittui '' by ].</ref>


Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his '']'', painting the young angel holding ]'s robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.<ref>Vasari, p.258</ref> This is probably an exaggeration. On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the ] using the new technique of ], the landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.<ref>della Chiesa, p.88</ref> Much of the painting in Verrocchio's workshop was done by his assistants. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his '']'' ({{Circa|1472–1475|lk=off}}), painting the young angel holding Jesus's robe with skill so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio purportedly put down his brush and never painted again<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|p=287}}</ref> (the latter claim probably being apocryphal).{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=83}} The new technique of ] was applied to areas of the mostly ] work, including the landscape, the rocks seen through the brown mountain stream, and much of Jesus's figure, indicating Leonardo's hand.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=88}} Additionally, Leonardo may have been a model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze statue of '']'' in the ] and the ] in '']''.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=83}}


Vasari tells a story of Leonardo as a very young man: a local peasant made himself a round ] shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo, inspired by the story of ], responded with a ] spitting fire that was so terrifying that his father bought a different shield to give to the peasant and sold Leonardo's to a Florentine art dealer for 100 ]s, who in turn sold it to the ].<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|pp=287–289}}</ref>
Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio, including the bronze statue of '']'' in the ], and the ] in '']''.<ref name=Chiesa83/>


=== First Florentine period (1472 – c. 1482) ===
By 1472, at the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the ], the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,{{#tag:ref|That Leonardo joined the guild before this time is deduced from the record of payment made to the Compagnia di San Luca in the company's register, Libro Rosso A, 1472-1520, Accademia di Belle Arti.<ref name=Chiesa83/>|group="nb"}} but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him.<ref name= LB /> Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of the ] valley, drawn on August 5, 1473.<ref group="nb">This work is now in the collection of the ], Drawing No. 8P.</ref><ref name= DA />
[[File:Leonardo da Vinci - Adorazione dei Magi - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''Adoration of the Magi'' {{circa|1478–1482}},{{#tag:ref|'''''The Adoration of the Magi'''''
<br clear=all/> <!---Leave this break. It improves format on wide screens--->
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=27}}: {{circa|1481–1482}}
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=338}}: 1481
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=56}}: {{circa|1480–1482}}
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=222}}: 1481/1482
|group=d}} ], Florence]]
By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the ], the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,{{efn|That Leonardo joined the guild by this time is deduced from the record of payment made to the Compagnia di San Luca in the company's register, Libro Rosso A, 1472–1520, Accademia di Belle Arti.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=83}}}} but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate and live with him.{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}}{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=13}} Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a 1473 pen-and-ink drawing of the ] valley (see below).{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}<ref name=Polidoro>{{cite journal |last1=Polidoro |first1=Massimo|author-link=Massimo Polidoro |title=The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 1 |journal=Skeptical Inquirer |date=2019 |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=30–31 |publisher=Center for Inquiry}}</ref>{{efn|On the back he wrote: "I, staying with Anthony, am happy," possibly in reference to his father.}} According to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the first to suggest making the Arno river a navigable channel between Florence and ].{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=15}}


In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the ],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Clark |first1=Kenneth |last2=Kemp |first2=Martin |title=Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=Penguin |location=United Kingdom |isbn=978-0-14-198237-3 |page=45 |edition=Newition |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fXifCgAAQBAJ&pg=PR45 |date=26 November 2015}}</ref> an indication of his independence from Verrocchio's studio. An anonymous early biographer, known as ], claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and often worked in the garden of the ], where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers organised by the Medici met.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=83}}{{Efn|Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal, "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me."{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}}}} In March 1481, he received a commission from the monks of ] for '']''.{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|pp=77–78}} Neither of these initial commissions were completed, being abandoned when Leonardo went to offer his services to ] ]. Leonardo wrote Sforza ] which described the diverse things that he could achieve in the fields of engineering and weapon design, and mentioned that he could paint.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}{{sfn|Wallace|1972|pp=53–54}} He brought with him a silver string instrument – either a ] or ] – in the form of a horse's head.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|pp=53–54}}
=== Professional life, 1476–1513 ===
]'', (1481)—].|alt=An unfinished painting showing the Virgin Mary and Christ Child surrounded by many figures who are all crowding to look at the baby. Behind the figures is a distant landscape and a large ruined building. More people are coming, in the distance.]]


With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom ], proponent of ]; ], writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and ], teacher of Greek and translator of ] were the foremost. Also associated with the Platonic Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher ].{{sfn|Rosci|1977|pp=9–20}}<ref name="Rach" />{{sfn|Williamson|1974}} In 1482, Leonardo was sent as an ambassador by ] to ], who ruled ] between 1479 and 1499.{{sfn|Rosci|1977|pp=9–20}}{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=83}}
Florentine court records of 1476 show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with ], and acquitted.<ref name=Chiesa83/><ref group="nb">Homosexual acts were illegal in Renaissance Florence.</ref> From that date until 1478 there is no record of his work or even of his whereabouts.<ref name="everything">{{Cite book |title=The Everything Da Vinci Book |first=Shana |last=Priwer |first2= Cynthia |last2=Phillips |year=2006 |pages=245}}</ref> In 1478 he left Verroccio's studio and was no longer resident at his father's house. One writer, the "Anonimo" Gaddiano claims that in 1480 he was living with the Medici and working in the garden of the Piazza San Marco in Florence.<ref name=Chiesa83/> In January 1478 he received his first independent commission, to paint an altarpiece in 1478 for the Chapel of St Bernard in the ]and '']'' in March 1481 for the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto.<ref name=Wasser1>{{Cite book | first = Jack | last = Wasserman | title = Leonardo da Vinci | year = 1975 | pages = 77–78}}</ref> Neither important commission was completed, the second being interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.


<gallery widths="165" heights="165">
In 1482 Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a most talented musician,<ref>{{cite book |last=Winternitz | first=Emanuel | title=Leonardo Da Vinci As a Musician | year=1982}}</ref> created a silver ] in the shape of a horse's head. ] sent Leonardo, bearing the lyre as a gift, to Milan, to secure peace with ], ].<ref>{{cite book |last= Rossi |first=Paolo |title=The Birth of Modern Science |year=2001 |page=33}}</ref> At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint.<ref name=DA/><ref>{{cite web | title =Leonardo's Letter to Ludovico Sforza | work = | publisher =Leonardo-History | date = | url =http://www.leonardo-history.com/life.htm?Section=S5 | accessdate =2010-01-05}}</ref>
File:Leonardo da Vinci Madonna of the Carnation.jpg|'']'', {{circa|1472–1478}}, ], Munich
File:Paisagem do Arno - Leonardo da Vinci.jpg|''Landscape of the Arno Valley'' (1473)
File:Leonardo da Vinci - Ginevra de' Benci - Google Art Project.jpg|'']'', {{circa|1474–1480}}, ], Washington D.C.
File:Madonna benois 01.jpg|'']'', {{circa|1478–1481}}, ], Saint Petersburg
File:Leonardo da Vinci - Hanging of Bernardo Baroncelli 1479.jpg|Sketch of the hanging of ], 1479
</gallery>


=== First Milanese period (c. 1482–1499) ===
Leonardo continued work in Milan between 1482 and 1499. He was commissioned to paint the '']'' for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and '']'' for the monastery of ].<ref name=Kemp>
]'', {{circa|1483–1493}},{{#tag:ref|'''''Virgin of the Rocks''''' (Louvre version)
{{Cite book | first = Martin | last = Kemp | title = Leonardo | year = 2004 }}</ref> While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditures suggests that she was his mother.<ref>Codex II, 95 r, Victoria and Albert Museum, as cited by della Chiesa p. 85</ref>
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=41}}: {{circa|1483–1493}}
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=339}}: between 1483 and 1486
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=164}}: 1483–{{circa|1485}}
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=223}}: 1483–1484/1485
|group=d}} ] version]]
Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the '']'' for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and '']'' for the monastery of ].{{sfn|Kemp|2011}} In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to ] (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king ], and was commissioned by him to paint a ].<ref>{{interlanguage link|Franz-Joachim Verspohl|de}}, ''Michelangelo Buonarroti und Leonardo Da Vinci: Republikanischer Alltag und Künstlerkonkurrenz in Florenz zwischen 1501 und 1505'' (Wallstein Verlag, 2007), p. 151.</ref> In 1490 he was called as a consultant, together with ], for the building site of the ] of ]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.academia.edu/19632579 |title=Amadeo, Bramante and Leonardo and the Cupola of Milan Cathedral |work=Achademia Leonardi Vinci|access-date=9 August 2022 |last1=Schofield |first1=Richard|archive-date=7 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407001344/https://www.academia.edu/19632579|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.academia.edu/44632998 |title=Leonardo a (e i rapporti con) Pavia: una verifica sui documenti |work=Annuario dell'Archivio di Stato di Milano |date=January 2020 |access-date=9 August 2022 |last1=Barbieri |first1=Ezio |last2=Catanese |first2=Filippo |archive-date=7 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407001345/https://www.academia.edu/44632998 |url-status=live}}</ref> and was struck by the equestrian statue of ], of which he left a sketch.<ref>Carlo Pedretti, ''Leonardo da Vinci: drawings of horses and other animals'' (Windsor Castle. Royal Library) 1984.</ref> Leonardo was employed on many other projects for Sforza, such as preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions; ], and wooden model for, a competition to design the ] for ];{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=79}} and a model for a huge ] to Ludovico's predecessor ]. This would have surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, ]'s '']'' in Padua and Verrocchio's '']'' in Venice, and became known as the '']''.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} Leonardo completed a model for the horse and made detailed plans for its ],{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal to ] to be used for a cannon to defend the city from ].{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}


Contemporary correspondence records that Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke of Milan to paint the ] in the ], {{circa}} 1498.<ref>{{cite journal |journal=Arte Lombarda |number=92/93 (1–2) |year=1990 |publisher=Vita e Pensiero{{snd}}Pubblicazioni dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore |pages=76–90 |title=Leonardo's "Sala delle Asse" and the Primordial Origins of Architecture |first=John F. |last=Moffitt |jstor=43132702 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43132702 |access-date=17 August 2023 |archive-date=16 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230816192636/https://www.jstor.org/stable/43132702 |url-status=live }}</ref> The project became a ] decoration that made the great hall appear to be a pergola created by the interwoven limbs of sixteen mulberry trees,<ref>{{cite web |first=Ruggiero |last=Rocky |url=https://rockyruggiero.com/episode-142-leonardo-da-vincis-sala-delle-asse/ |title=Episode 142 – Leonardo da Vinci's Sala delle Asse |series=Making Art and History Come to Life, Rebuilding the Renaissance |date=6 October 2021 |website=rockyruggiero.com |access-date=11 October 2021 |archive-date=3 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230603040721/https://rockyruggiero.com/episode-142-leonardo-da-vincis-sala-delle-asse/ |url-status=live}}</ref> whose canopy included an intricate labyrinth of leaves and knots on the ceiling.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Segui il restauro |url=http://www.saladelleassecastello.it/ |website=Castello Sforzesco – Sala delle Asse |language=it-IT |trans-title=Follow the restoration |access-date=19 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181016091633/http://www.saladelleassecastello.it/ |archive-date=16 October 2018}}</ref>{{clear left}}
He worked on many different projects for Ludovico, including the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for ] and a model for a huge ] to ], Ludovico's predecessor. Seventy tons of ] were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's statue of Gattemelata in ] and Verrocchio's ] in Venice, and became known as the "Gran Cavallo".<ref name=DA/><ref group="nb">Verrocchio's statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni was not cast until 1488, after his death, and after Leonardo had already begun work on the statue for Ludovico.</ref>
]|alt=A page with two drawings of a war-horse, one from the side, and the other showing the chest and right leg.]]
Leonardo began making detailed plans for its casting,<ref name=DA/> however, Michelangelo rudely implied that Leonardo was unable to cast it.<ref name=LB/> In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannons to defend the city from invasion by ].<ref name=DA/>


<gallery widths="165px" heights="165px">
At the start of the ] in 1499, the invading French troops used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai<!-- Don't link this. There's no page --> and friend, the mathematician ], fled Milan for ],<ref name=Chiesa85>della Chiesa, p.85</ref> where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.<ref name=LB/>
File:Leonardo da vinci, Head of a girl 01.jpg|'']'', {{circa|1483–1485}}, ]
File:Leonardo da Vinci - Portrait of a Musician - Pinacoteca Ambrosiana.jpg|'']'', {{circa|1483–1487}}, ], Milan
File:Da Vinci Vitruve Luc Viatour (cropped).jpg|The '']'' ({{circa|1485}}) ], Venice
File:Study of horse.jpg|] in ], {{circa|1488}}{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=65}}
File:Leonardo da Vinci (attrib)- la Belle Ferroniere.jpg|{{lang|fr|]}}, {{circa|1490–1498}}
File:Sala-Asse-18-02-2014-32.jpg|Detail of 1902 restoration, ] (1498)
</gallery>


=== Second Florentine period (1500–1508) ===
On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of ] and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of '']'', a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".<ref>Vasari, p.256</ref>{{#tag:ref|In 2005, the studio was rediscovered during the restoration of part of a building occupied for 100 years by the Department of Military Geography.<ref>{{cite news|first=Richard |last=Owen |title=Found: the studio where Leonardo met Mona Lisa | publisher =] |date= 2005-01-12 |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article411195.ece | accessdate= 2010-01-05}}</ref>|group="nb"}} In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of ], the son of ], acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.<ref name=Chiesa85/> Leonardo created a ] of Cesare Borgia’s ], a town plan of ] in order to win his patronage. Maps were extremely rare at the time and it would have seemed like a new concept; upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief ] and ]. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of ], Tuscany so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. Leonardo created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a ] from the ] to ] in order to allow a supply of ] to sustain the ] during all ].
]'', {{circa|1499–1508}}, ], London]]
]


When Ludovico Sforza was ] in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for ], accompanied by his assistant ] and friend, the mathematician ].{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=85}} In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}} On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of ] and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the ] of '']'', a work that won such admiration that "men women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were going to a solemn festival."<ref name="V265" group="‡" />{{efn|In 2005, the studio was rediscovered during the restoration of part of a building occupied for 100 years by the Department of Military Geography.<ref>{{cite news |first=Richard |last=Owen |title=Found: the studio where Leonardo met Mona Lisa |work=The Times |date=12 January 2005 |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/found-the-studio-where-leonardo-met-mona-lisa-8d6lb0tqddk |access-date=5 January 2010 |location=London |archive-date=3 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200703053422/https://web.archive.org/web/20200703052246/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/found-the-studio-where-leonardo-met-mona-lisa-8d6lb0tqddk |url-status=live}}</ref>}}
He returned to Florence where he rejoined the Guild of St Luke on October 18, 1503, and spent two years designing and painting a great mural of '']'' for the Signoria,<ref name=Chiesa85/> with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, ''The Battle of Cascina''.{{#tag:ref|Both works are lost. While the entire composition of Michelangelo's painting is known from a copy by Aristotole da Sangallo, 1542.<ref>
{{cite book | first = Ludwig | last = Goldscheider | title = Michelangelo: paintings, sculptures, architecture | year = 1967 | publisher = Phaidon Press | isbn = 9780714813141}}</ref> Leonardo's painting is only known from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate is by ].<ref>della Chiesa, pp.106-107</ref>|group="nb"}} In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of ].<ref>Gaetano Milanesi, ''Epistolario Buonarroti'', Florence (1875), as cited by della Chiesa.</ref>


In ] in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of ], the son of ], acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=85}} Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan of ] in order to win his patronage. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of ], Tuscany, so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. He created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a dam from the sea to Florence, in order to allow a supply of water to sustain the canal during all seasons.
In 1506 he returned to Milan. Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan,<ref name=LB/> including ], ] and ].<ref group="nb">D'Oggione is known in part for his contemporary copies of the ''Last Supper''.</ref> However, he did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 he was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.<ref name=Chiesa86>della Chiesa, p.86</ref>


Leonardo had left Borgia's service and returned to Florence by early 1503,{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=124}} where he rejoined the ] on 18 October of that year. By this same month, Leonardo had begun working on a portrait of ], the model for the '']'',<ref>{{cite web |title=Mona Lisa – Heidelberg discovery confirms identity |url=http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/news/monalisa.html |publisher=] |access-date=4 July 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131105050239/http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/news/monalisa.html |archive-date=5 November 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite episode |first=Vincent |last=Delieuvin |author-link=Vincent Delieuvin |title=Télématin |series=Journal Télévisé |network=France 2 Télévision |date=15 January 2008}}</ref> which he would continue working on until his twilight years. In January 1504, he was part of a committee formed to recommend where Michelangelo's statue of '']'' should be placed.<ref>{{cite book |last=Coughlan |first=Robert |title=The World of Michelangelo: 1475–1564 |url=https://archive.org/details/worldofmichaelan0000unse|url-access=limited |others=et al |publisher=Time-Life Books |year=1966 |page=}}</ref> He then spent two years in Florence designing and painting a mural of '']'' for the Signoria,{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=85}} with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, '']''.{{efn|Both works are lost. The entire composition of Michelangelo's painting is known from a copy by Aristotole da Sangallo, 1542.<ref>{{cite book |first=Ludwig |last=Goldscheider |title=Michelangelo: paintings, sculptures, architecture |year=1967 |publisher=Phaidon Press |isbn=978-0-7148-1314-1}}</ref> Leonardo's painting is known only from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate, is by ].{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|pp=106–107}}}}
=== Old age, 1513-1519 ===
]


In 1506, Leonardo was summoned to Milan by ], the acting ] of the city.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=145}} There, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count ], the son of a ] aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student.{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}} The ] wished Leonardo to return promptly to finish ''The Battle of Anghiari'', but he was given leave at the behest of ], who considered commissioning the artist to make some portraits.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=145}} Leonardo may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of d'Amboise;<ref>{{cite journal |title=Achademia Leonardi Vinci |journal=Journal of Leonardo Studies & Bibliography of Vinciana |volume=VIII |pages=243–244 |year=1990}}</ref> ] survives and, if genuine, is the only extant example of Leonardo's sculpture. Leonardo was otherwise free to pursue his scientific interests.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=145}} Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils either knew or worked with him in Milan,{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}} including ], ], and ]. In 1507, Leonardo was in Florence sorting out a dispute with his brothers over the estate of his father, who had died in 1504.
From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where ] and ] were both active at the time.<ref name=Chiesa86/> In October 1515, ] recaptured Milan.<ref name=Wasser1/> On December 19, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna.<ref name=LB/><ref>Georges Goyau, ''François I]'', Transcribed by Gerald Rossi. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved on 2007-10-04</ref><ref>{{Cite web | first = Salvador
| last = Miranda | url = http://www.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1527-ii.htm | title = The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Antoine du Prat | year = 1998-2007 | accessdate = 2007-10-04
}}</ref> It was for Francis that Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical ] which could walk forward, then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.<ref name="Vasari, p.265">Vasari, p.265</ref>{{#tag:ref|It is unknown for what occasion the mechanical lion was made but it is believed to have greeted the King at his entry into ] and perhaps was used for the peace talks between the French king and ] in ]. A conjectural recreated of the lion has been made and is on display in the Museum of ].<ref>{{cite web|title=Reconstruction of Leonardo's walking lion |url= http://www.ancientandautomata.com/ita/lavori/leone.htm |language=Italian| accessdate= 2010-01-05}}</ref>|group="nb"}} In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house ]<ref group = "nb">Clos Lucé, also called Cloux, is now a public museum.</ref> near the king's residence at the royal ]. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, ], supported by a pension totalling 10,000&nbsp;].<ref name=Chiesa86/>


<gallery widths="165px" heights="165px">
Leonardo died at ], on May 2, 1519. ] had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed in romantic paintings by ], ] and other French artists, as well as by ], may be legend rather than fact.<ref group = "nb">On the day of Leonardo's death, a royal edict was issued by the King at ], a two-day journey from ]. This has been taken as evidence that King François cannot have been present at Leonardo's deathbed. However, White in ''Leonardo: The First Scientist'' points out that the edict was not signed by the king himself.</ref><ref>For such images, see ].</ref> Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the ].<ref>Vasari, p.270</ref> In accordance to his will, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the ]. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's ]s, his brothers who received land, and his serving woman who received a black cloak "of good stuff" with a fur edge.<ref>{{cite web| title =Leonardo's will| work =| publisher =Leonardo-history| date = | url =http://www.leonardo-history.com/life.htm?Section=S6| accessdate =2007-09-28}}</ref>
File:Sainte Anne Leonard.jpg|'']'', {{circa|1501–1519}}, Louvre, Paris
File:Leonardo da Vinci - Plan of Imola - Google Art Project.jpg|Leonardo's map of ], created for ], 1502
File:Leonardo da Vinci - Study of Two Warriors' Heads for the Battle of Anghiari - Google Art Project (cropped).jpg|Study for '']'' (now lost), {{circa|1503}}, ], Budapest
File:Leonardo da vinci - La scapigliata.jpg|'']'', {{circa|1506–1508}} (unfinished), ], Parma
File:Study for the Kneeling Leda.jpg|Study for '']'' (now lost), {{circa|1506–1508}}, ], England
</gallery>


=== Second Milanese period (1508–1513) ===
Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor ] as saying: "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."<ref>{{cite book| author = Mario Lucertini, Ana Millan Gasca, Fernando Nicolo | title = Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems| url =http://books.google.com/books?id=YISIUycS4HgC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=leonardo+cellini+francois+philosopher| accessdate =2007-10-03 }}</ref>
By 1508, Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=86}}


In 1512, Leonardo was working on plans for an equestrian monument for ], but this was prevented by an invasion of a confederation of Swiss, Spanish and Venetian forces, which drove the French from Milan. Leonardo stayed in the city, spending several months in 1513 at the Medici's ] villa.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|pp=149–150}}
== Relationships and influences ==
]


=== Florence — Leonardo's artistic and social background === === Rome and France (1513–1519) ===
]
Florence, at the time of Leonardo's youth was the centre of ] thought and culture.<ref>Rosci, p. 13</ref> Leonardo commenced his ] with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor ], died. The painter ] whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters ] and ], sculptor ], and architect and writer ] were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio, ] and the portrait sculptor, ] whose lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni.<ref name=Hartt>
In March 1513, Lorenzo de' Medici's son ] assumed the papacy (as Leo X); Leonardo went to Rome that September, where he was received by the pope's brother ].{{sfn|Wallace|1972|pp=149–150}} From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the ] in the ], where Michelangelo and ] were both active.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=86}} Leonardo was given an allowance of 33 ducats a month and, according to Vasari, decorated a lizard with scales dipped in ].{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=150}} The pope gave him a painting commission of unknown subject matter, but cancelled it when the artist set about developing a new kind of ].{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=150}}{{efn|Pope Leo X is quoted as saying, "This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning!"{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=150}}}} Leonardo became ill, in what may have been the first of multiple ]s leading to his death.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=150}} He practised botany in the ], and was commissioned to make plans for the Pope's proposed draining of the ].<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Ohlig |editor1-first=Christoph P. J. |title=Integrated Land and Water Resources Management in History |date=2005 |publisher=Books on Demand |isbn=978-3-8334-2463-2 |page=33 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CAXwGrryd7sC&pg=PA33}}</ref> He also dissected ]s, making notes for a treatise on ];<ref>{{cite book |last=Gillette |first=Henry Sampson |title=Leonardo da Vinci: Pathfinder of Science |year=2017 |publisher=Prabhat Prakashan |page=84 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f_I5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT84 |access-date=10 September 2019 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103326/https://books.google.com/books?id=f_I5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT84#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref> these he gave to an official in hopes of regaining the Pope's favour, but he was unsuccessful.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=150}}
{{Cite book | first = Frederich | last = Hartt | title = A History of Italian Renaissance Art | year = 1970 | pages = 127–333 }}</ref><ref name=Rosci1>Rosci, ''Leonardo'', chapter 1, ''the historical setting'', pp.9-20</ref><ref name=Bruck/><ref name=Rach/>


In October 1515, King ] recaptured Milan.{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|pp=77–78}}{{efn|There is no documentary basis for the frequently made claim that Leonardo was present at the meeting between Francis I and Leo X, which took place in Bologna from 11 to 14 December 1516.<ref>{{citation|mode=cs1|first=Domenico|last=Laurenza|title=Leonardo nella Roma di Leone X|journal=Lettura Vinciana|volume=XLIII|publisher=Giunti|date=2004|language=it}}</ref>}} On 21 March 1516 Antonio Maria Pallavicini, the French ambassador to the ], received a letter sent from ] a week previously by the royal advisor ], containing the French king's instructions to assist Leonardo in his relocation to France and to inform the artist that the King was eagerly awaiting his arrival. Pallavicini was also asked to reassure Leonardo that he would be well received at court, both by the King and by his mother, ].<ref>{{citation|mode=cs1|first=Jan|last=Sammer|chapter=L'Invitation du roi|editor-first=Carlo|editor-last=Pedretti|title=Léonard de Vinci et la France|publisher=CB Edizioni|date=2009|pages=29–33|language=fr}}</ref> Leonardo entered Francis's service later that year, and was given the use of the manor house ] near the King's residence at the royal ]. He was frequently visited by Francis, and drew plans for an immense ] the King intended to erect at ]. He also made a mechanical lion, which during a pageant walked towards the King and – upon being struck by a wand – opened its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|pp=163, 164}}<ref group="‡" name="V265" />{{efn|It is unknown for what occasion the mechanical lion was made, but it is believed to have greeted the King at his entry into ] and perhaps was used for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. A conjectural recreation of the lion has been made and is on display in the Museum of Bologna.<ref>{{cite web |title=Reconstruction of Leonardo's walking lion |url=http://www.ancientandautomata.com/ita/lavori/leone.htm |language=it|access-date=5 January 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090825195910/http://www.ancientandautomata.com/ita/lavori/leone.htm|archive-date=25 August 2009}}</ref>}}
Leonardo's youth was spent in a Florence that was ornamented by the works of these artists and by Donatello's contemporaries, ] whose figurative ]es were imbued with realism and emotion and ] whose '']'', gleaming with ], displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective,<ref>Piero della Francesca, ''On Perspective for Painting (De Prospectiva Pingendi)''</ref> and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and ] Treatise<ref>Leon Battista Alberti, ''De Pictura'', 1435. , </ref> were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.<ref name=Hartt/><ref name=Bruck/><ref name=Rach/>


Leonardo was accompanied during this time by his friend and apprentice Francesco Melzi, and was supported by a pension totalling 10,000&nbsp;].{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=86}} At some point, Melzi drew a ]; the ] from his lifetime were a sketch by an unknown assistant on the back of one of Leonardo's studies ({{circa|1517|lk=no}})<ref>{{cite web |last=Brown |first=Mark |title=Newly identified sketch of Leonardo da Vinci to go on display in London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/02/newly-identified-sketch-of-leonardo-da-vinci-to-go-on-display-in-london |website=The Guardian |access-date=2 May 2019 |date=1 May 2019 |archive-date=4 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201204220348/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/02/newly-identified-sketch-of-leonardo-da-vinci-to-go-on-display-in-london |url-status=live}}</ref> and a drawing by ] depicting an elderly Leonardo with his right arm wrapped in clothing.<ref name=paralysis>{{cite web |last=Strickland |first=Ashley |title=What caused Leonardo da Vinci's hand impairment? |url=https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/health/da-vinci-hand-palsy-study/index.html |website=CNN |access-date=4 May 2019 |date=4 May 2019 |archive-date=31 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201031223425/https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/health/da-vinci-hand-palsy-study/index.html |url-status=live}}</ref>{{efn|Identified via its similarity to Leonardo's ].<ref name=guardian2005>{{cite web |last=McMahon |first=Barbara |title=Da Vinci 'paralysis left Mona Lisa unfinished' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/may/01/italy.arts |website=The Guardian |access-date=2 May 2019 |date=1 May 2005 |archive-date=8 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200208213719/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/may/01/italy.arts |url-status=live}}</ref>}} The latter, in addition to the record of an October 1517 visit by ],{{efn|"... Messer Lunardo Vinci {{sic}} ... an old graybeard of more than 70 years ... showed His Excellency three pictures<!--one of a certain Florentine lady done from life at the instance of the late Magnificent, Giuliano de' Medici, another of St. John the Baptist as a youth, and one of the Madonna and Child in the lap of St. Anne--> ... from whom, since he was then subject to a certain paralysis of the right hand, one could not expect any more good work."{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=163}}}} confirms an account of Leonardo's right hand being paralytic when he was 65,<ref name=seeker>{{cite web |last=Lorenzi |first=Rossella |title=Did a Stroke Kill Leonardo da Vinci? |url=https://www.seeker.com/did-a-stroke-kill-leonardo-da-vinci-1789047208.html |website=Seeker |access-date=5 May 2019 |date=10 May 2016 |archive-date=22 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222231504/https://www.seeker.com/did-a-stroke-kill-leonardo-da-vinci-1789047208.html |url-status=live}}</ref> which may indicate why he left works such as the ''Mona Lisa'' unfinished.<ref name=guardian2005 /><ref>{{cite web |last=Saplakoglu |first=Yasemin |title=A Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci May Reveal Why He Never Finished the Mona Lisa |url=https://www.livescience.com/65396-da-vinci-hand-injury.html |website=Live Science |access-date=5 May 2019 |date=4 May 2019 |archive-date=2 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200202094640/https://www.livescience.com/65396-da-vinci-hand-injury.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=fainting>{{cite news |last=Bodkin |first=Henry |title=Leonardo da Vinci never finished the Mona Lisa because he injured his arm while fainting, experts say |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2019/05/04/leonardo-da-vinci-never-finished-mona-lisa-injured-arm-fainting/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220110/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2019/05/04/leonardo-da-vinci-never-finished-mona-lisa-injured-arm-fainting/ |archive-date=10 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |newspaper=The Telegraph |access-date=6 May 2019 |date=4 May 2019}}{{cbignore}}</ref> He continued to work at some capacity until eventually becoming ill and bedridden for several months.<ref name=seeker />
Massaccio's ] of the naked and distraught ] leaving the Garden of Eden created a powerfully expressive image of the human form, cast into three dimensions by the use of ] which was to be developed in the works of Leonardo in a way that was to be influential in the course of painting. The Humanist influence of Donatello's David can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly '']''.<ref name=Hartt/><ref name= Rosci1/>


==== Death ====
]
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67, possibly of a stroke.<ref name=neurology>]; Deo, Saudamini. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170415031015/http://www.neurology.org/content/88/14/1381.full |date=15 April 2017 }}. ''Neurology''. 4 April 2017; 88(14): 1381–1382</ref><ref name=fainting /><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P906UFXIoMUC&pg=PA354 |page=354 |title=The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists |author=Ian Chilvers |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford, England |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-19-953294-0}}</ref> Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari describes Leonardo as lamenting on his deathbed, full of repentance, that "he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should have done."<ref>Antonina Vallentin, Leonardo da Vinci: The Tragic Pursuit of Perfection, (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), 533</ref> Vasari states that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the ].<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|p=297}}</ref> Vasari also records that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story may be legend rather than fact.{{efn|This scene is portrayed in romantic paintings by ], ] and other French artists, as well as ].}}{{efn|name=edict|On the day of Leonardo's death, a royal edict was issued by the King at ], a two-day journey from Clos Lucé. This has been taken as evidence that King Francis cannot have been present at Leonardo's deathbed, but the edict was not signed by the King.<ref>White, ''Leonardo: The First Scientist''</ref>}} In accordance with his will, sixty beggars carrying tapers followed Leonardo's casket.{{sfn|Williamson|1974}}{{efn|Each of the sixty paupers were to have been awarded in accord with Leonardo's will.{{sfn|Williamson|1974}}}} Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving, as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo's other long-time pupil and companion, Salaì, and his servant Baptista de Vilanis, each received half of Leonardo's ]s.{{sfn|Kemp|2011|p=26}} His brothers received land, and his serving woman received a fur-lined cloak. On 12 August 1519, ] were interred in the Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin at the Château d'Amboise.<ref name=Florentine>{{cite web |author=Florentine editorial staff |title=Hair believed to have belonged to Leonardo on display in Vinci |url=http://www.theflorentine.net/news/2019/05/hair-believed-belonged-leonardo-displayed-vinci/ |website=The Florentine |access-date=4 May 2019 |date=2 May 2019 |archive-date=4 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190504093717/http://www.theflorentine.net/news/2019/05/hair-believed-belonged-leonardo-displayed-vinci/ |url-status=live}}</ref>


Some 20 years after Leonardo's death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor ] as saying: "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."{{sfn|Gasca|Nicolò|Lucertini|2004|p=}}
A prevalent tradition in Florence was the small altarpiece of the Virgin and Child. Many of these were created in ] or glazed ] by the workshops of Filippo Lippi, Verrocchio and the prolific ] family.<ref name=Hartt/> Leonardo's early Madonnas such as the '']'' and '']'' followed this tradition while showing idiosyncratic departures, particularly in the case of the Benois Madonna in which the Virgin is set at an oblique angle to the picture space with the Christ Child at the opposite angle. This compositional theme was to emerge in Leonardo's later paintings such as ''The ]''.<ref name=LB/>


] ({{circa|1518|lk=no}}) attributed to ]]]
Leonardo was a contemporary of ], ] and ], who were all slightly older than he was.<ref name=Rosci1/> He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the ] of the ].<ref name=LB/> Botticelli was a particular favourite of the Medici family and thus his success as a painter was assured. Ghirlandaio and Perugino were both prolific and ran large workshops. They competently delivered commissions to well-satisfied patrons who appreciated Ghirlandaio's ability to portray the wealthy citizens of Florence within large religious frescoes, and Perugino's ability to deliver a multitude of saints and angels of unfailing sweetness and innocence.<ref name=Hartt/> ] for a Florentine family]] These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the ], the work commencing with Perugino's employment in 1479. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. His first significant commission, The '']'' for the Monks of Scopeto, was never completed.<ref name=LB/>
], or Il Salaino ("The Little Unclean One", i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo's household in 1490 as an assistant. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton," after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions and spent a fortune on clothes.<ref>{{cite book |title=Leonardo, Codex C. 15v |publisher=Institut of France. Trans. Richter}}</ref> Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence, and he remained in Leonardo's household for the next thirty years.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=84}} Salaì executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him many things about painting,"<ref group="‡" name="V265">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|p=293}}</ref> his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils, such as ] and ].


At the time of his death in 1524, Salaì owned a painting referred to as ''Joconda'' in a posthumous inventory of his belongings; it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.<ref name="NR">{{cite web |last=Rossiter |first=Nick |date=4 July 2003 |title=Could this be the secret of her smile? |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/04/07/banr.xml|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030925222942/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=%2Farts%2F2003%2F04%2F07%2Fbanr.xml|archive-date=25 September 2003|access-date=3 October 2007 |website=Daily Telegraph |location=London}}</ref>
In 1476, during the time of Leonardo's association with Verrocchio's workshop, the ] by ] arrived in Florence, bringing ] from Northern Europe which were to profoundly effect Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others.<ref name=Rosci1/> In 1479, the Sicilian painter ], who worked exclusively in oils, traveled north on his way to ], where the leading painter, ] adopted the technique of ], quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo was also later to visit Venice.<ref name=Rosci1/><ref name=Rach/>


== Personal life ==
Like the two contemporary architects, ] and ], Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.<ref name=Rosci1/><ref>Hartt, pp.391-2</ref>
{{Main|Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci}}


]'' {{circa|1507–1516|lk=no}},{{#tag:ref|'''''Saint John the Baptist'''''
] Leonardo's political contemporaries were ] (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the ] in 1478. ] who ruled ] between 1479–1499 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo's age.<ref name=Rosci1/>
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=189}}: {{circa|1507–1514|lk=no}}
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=340}}: {{circa|1508|lk=no}}
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=63}}: {{circa|1500 onwards|lk=no}}
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=248}}: {{circa|1508–1516|lk=no}}
|group=d}} Louvre. Leonardo is thought to have used ] as the model.<ref name="Pedretti-2009">{{Cite book |editor-last=Pedretti |editor-first=Carlo |title=Leonardo da Vinci: l'Angelo incarnato & Salai = the Angel in the flesh & Salai |date=2009 |publisher=Cartei & Bianchi |isbn=978-88-95686-11-0 |location=Foligno (Perugia) |pages=201 |oclc=500794484}}</ref>]]


Despite the thousands of pages Leonardo left in notebooks and manuscripts, he scarcely made reference to his personal life.{{sfn|Zöllner|2019|p=20}}
With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom ], proponent of ], ], writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and ], teacher of Greek and translator of ] were foremost. Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher ].<ref name=Rosci1/><ref name=Rach/><ref>{{Cite book | first = Hugh Ross | last = Williamson | title = Lorenzo the Magnificent | year = 1974}}</ref> Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo was to receive his important Milanese commissions, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment.<ref name= LB />


Within Leonardo's lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his "great physical beauty" and "infinite grace," as described by ],<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|p=284}}</ref> as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect was his love for animals, likely including ] and according to Vasari, a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.<ref>MacCurdy, Edward, ''The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci'' (1928) in {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090227121050/http://www.ivu.org/history/davinci/hurwitz.html |date=27 February 2009 }}</ref><ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|p=286}}</ref>
Although usually named together as the three giants of the ], Leonardo, ] and ] were not of the same generation. Leonardo was twenty-three when Michelangelo was born and thirty-one when Raphael was born.<ref name=Rosci1/> Raphael only lived until the age of 37 and died in 1520, the year after Leonardo, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45&nbsp;years.<ref name=Bruck>{{Cite book
| first = Gene A. | last = Brucker | title = Renaissance Florence | year = 1969 }}</ref><ref name=Rach>
{{Cite book | first = Ilan | last = Rachum | title = The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia | year = 1979}}</ref>


Leonardo had many friends who are now notable either in their fields or for their historical significance, including mathematician ],{{sfn|Bambach|2003}} with whom he collaborated on the book '']'' in the 1490s. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with ] and the two Este sisters, ] and ].<ref>Cartwright Ady, Julia. Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497. Publisher: J.M. Dent, 1899; Cartwright Ady, Julia. Isabella D'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539. Publisher; J.M. Dent, 1903.</ref> While on a journey that took him through ], he drew a portrait of Isabella that appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}}
] (1500) ].]]


Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by ] in his '']''.<ref>Sigmund Freud, ''Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci'', (1910)</ref> Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils ] and ]. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo's brothers of his death, described Leonardo's feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Walter Isaacson in his biography of Leonardo makes explicit his opinion that the relations with Salaì were intimate and homosexual.{{sfn|Isaacson|2017|pp=129–138}}
=== Personal life ===
{{Main|Leonardo da Vinci's personal life}}


Earlier in Leonardo's life, court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with ] in an incident involving a known male prostitute. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de' Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the dismissal.{{sfn|Isaacson|2017}} Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality<ref>{{Cite web |date=26 March 2021 |title=Leonardo, ladies' man: why can't we accept that Da Vinci was gay? |url=http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/mar/26/leonardo-aidan-turner-amazon-prime-video-series-gay|access-date=27 March 2021 |website=The Guardian |language=en|archive-date=11 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220511221427/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/mar/26/leonardo-aidan-turner-amazon-prime-video-series-gay|url-status=live}}</ref> and its role in his art, particularly in the ] and ] manifested in '']'' and '']'' and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.<ref>Michael Rocke, ''Forbidden Friendships'' epigraph, p. 148 & N120 p. 298</ref><ref name="Pedretti-2009" /> <!-- The info contained here is beyond dispute. It HAS been claimed. Please look at the main article and carry on the argument there. -->{{clear left}}
Within Leonardo's lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his "outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind" as described by Vasari,<ref>Vasari, p.253</ref> as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect is his respect for life evidenced by his ] and his habit, described by Vasari, of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.<ref>Vasari, p.257</ref><ref>Eugene Muntz, ''Leonardo da Vinci Artist, Thinker, and Man of Science'' (1898), quoted at </ref>


== Paintings ==
Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned either in their fields or for their historical significance. They included the mathematician ],<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Leonardo_Master_Draftsman/draftsman_left_essay.asp
{{See also|List of works by Leonardo da Vinci}}
| title = Leonardo, Left-Handed Draftsman and Writer | accessdate = 2009-10-18 | last = Bambach | first = Carmen | year = 2003 | location = New York | publisher = Metropolitan Museum of Art}}</ref> with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s, as well as ] and ].{{Citation needed|date=October 2009}} Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Isabella d'Este. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through ], and which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait now lost.<ref name=LB/>
Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his fame rested on his achievements as a painter. A handful of works that are either authenticated or attributed to him have been regarded as among the great masterpieces. These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities that have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. By the 1490s Leonardo had already been described as a "Divine" painter.{{sfn|Arasse|1998|pp=11–15}}


Among the qualities that make Leonardo's work unique are his innovative techniques for laying on the paint; his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology; his interest in ] and the way humans register emotion in expression and gesture; his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition; and his use of subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the ''Mona Lisa'', the ''Last Supper'', and the ''Virgin of the Rocks''.{{efn|These qualities of Leonardo's works are discussed in {{harvtxt|Hartt|1970|pp=387–411}}}}
Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by ].<ref>Sigmund Freud, ''Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci'', (1910)</ref>


=== Early works ===
Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi describing Leonardo's feelings for him as both loving and intensely passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with ], and acquitted.<ref name=Chiesa83/> Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in ''John the Baptist'' and ''Bacchus'' and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.<ref>Michael Rocke, ''Forbidden Friendships'' epigraph, p. 148 & N120 p.298</ref> <!-- The info contained here is beyond dispute. It HAS been claimed. Please look at the main article and carry on the argument there. -->
]'' {{circa|1472–1476}},{{#tag:ref|'''''The Annunciation'''''
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=6}}: {{circa|1473–1474}}
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=338}}: {{circa|1472–1475}}
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=15}}: {{circa|1472–1476}}
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=216}}: {{circa|1473–1475}}
|group=d}} ], is thought to be Leonardo's earliest extant and complete major work.]]
Leonardo first gained attention for his work on the '']'', painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at Verrocchio's workshop, both of which are ]s. One is small, {{nowrap|{{convert|59|cm}}}} long and {{convert|14|cm|abbr=on}} high. It is a "]" to go at the base of a larger composition, a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, {{convert|217|cm|abbr=on}} long.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|pp=88, 90}} In both Annunciations, Leonardo used a formal arrangement, like two well-known pictures by ] of the same subject, of the ] sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with a rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now generally attributed to Leonardo.{{sfn|Marani|2003|p=338}}


In the smaller painting, Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God's will. Mary is not submissive, however, in the larger piece. The girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise.{{sfn|Hartt|1970|pp=127–133}} This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the ], not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting, the young Leonardo presents the humanist face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity's role in God's incarnation.
]'' (c.&nbsp;1514)—]]]


=== Assistants and pupils === === Paintings of the 1480s ===
]'' (unfinished) {{circa|1480–1490}},{{#tag:ref|'''''Saint Jerome in the Wilderness'''''
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed ''Salai'' or ''Il Salaino'' ("The Little Unclean One" i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo's household in 1490. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton", after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on clothes.<ref>Leonardo, Codex C. 15v, Institut of France. Trans. Richter</ref> Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence and he remained in Leonardo's household for the next thirty years.<ref>della Chiesa, p.84</ref> Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him a great deal about painting",<ref name="Vasari, p.265"/> his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils, such as ] and ]. In 1515, he painted a nude version of the '']'', known as ''Monna Vanna''.<ref>{{cite web| last =Gross | first =Tom | title =Mona Lisa Goes Topless | work = | publisher =Paintingsdirect.com | date = | url =http://web.archive.org/web/20070403073656/www.paintingsdirect.com/content/artnews/032001/artnews1.html | accessdate = 2007-09-27 }}</ref> Salai owned the ''Mona Lisa'' at the time of his death in 1525, and in his will it was assessed at 505&nbsp;lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.<ref name=NR>{{cite web | last =Rossiter | first =Nick | title =Could this be the secret of her smile? | work = | publisher =Telegraph.co.UK | date = 2003-07-04 | url =http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/04/07/banr.xml | accessdate = 2007-10-03 }}</ref>
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=31}}: {{circa|1481–1482}}
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=338}}: probably {{circa|1480}}
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=139}}: {{circa|1488–1490}}
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=221}}: {{circa|1480–1482}}
|group=d}} ]]]


In the 1480s, Leonardo received two very important commissions and commenced another work that was of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Two of the three were never finished, and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment.
In 1506, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count ], the son of a ] aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo, and remained with him until the latter's death.<ref name=LB/> Upon Leonardo's death, Melzi inherited the artistic and scientific works, manuscripts, and collections of Leonardo, and faithfully administered the estate.


One of these paintings was '']'', which Bortolon associates with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, as evidenced in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die."{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}} Although the painting is barely begun, the composition can be seen and is very unusual.{{efn|The painting, which in the 18th century belonged to ], was later cut up. The two main sections were found in a junk shop and cobbler's shop and were reunited.{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|pp=104–106}} It is probable that outer parts of the composition are missing.}} ], as a ], occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo's anatomical studies.{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|pp=104–106}} Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.
== Painting ==
]'' (1475–1480)—Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo's earliest complete work]]
{{See also|List of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci}}
Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his enormous fame rested on his achievements as a painter and on a handful of works, either authenticated or attributed to him that have been regarded as among the supreme masterpieces ever created.<ref>By the 1490s Leonardo had already been described as a "Divine" painter. His fame is discussed by Daniel Arasse in ''Leonardo da Vinci'', pp.11-15</ref>


The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the '']'', a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a complex composition, of about {{nowrap|250 x 250 centimetres.}} Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined ] that forms part of the background. In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de' Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro, and the painting was abandoned.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=83}}
These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities which have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. Among the qualities that make Leonardo's work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in ] and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the ''Mona Lisa'', the ''Last Supper'' and the ''Virgin of the Rocks''.<ref>These qualities of Leonardo's works are discussed by Frederick Hartt in ''A History of Italian Renaissance Art'', pp.387-411.</ref>


<!--]'', ], London, demonstrates Leonardo's interest in nature]]-->
]]]
]'', {{circa|1489–1491}},{{#tag:ref|'''''Lady with an Ermine'''''
=== Early works ===
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=49}}: {{circa|1491}}
Leonardo's early works begin with the '']'' painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at the workshop, both of which are ]s. One is small, {{nowrap|{{convert|59|cm}}}} long and {{nowrap|{{convert|14|cm}}}} high. It is a "predella" to go at the base of a larger composition, in this case a painting by ] from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, {{nowrap|{{convert|217|cm}}}} long.<ref>della Chiesa, pp. 88, 90</ref> In both these Annunciations, Leonardo has used a formal arrangement, such as in Fra Angelico's two well known pictures of the same subject, of the ] sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now almost universally attributed to Leonardo.<ref name=Berti>{{Cite book | first = Luciano | last = Berti | title = The Uffizi | year = 1971 | pages = 59–62}}</ref>
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=339}}: 1489–1490
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=111}}: {{circa|1489–1490}}
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=226}}: 1489/1490
|group=d}} ], ], Poland]]


The third important work of this period is the '']'', commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the ], was to fill a large complex ].{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|p=108}} Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the infant ], in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Mysterious Virgin |publisher=] |url=http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/collection/features/potm/2006/may/feature1.htm | access-date =27 September 2007 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20071015062743/http://nationalgallery.org.uk/collection/features/potm/2006/may/feature1.htm | archive-date =15 October 2007 }}</ref> While the painting is quite large, about {{nowrap|200×120 centimetres}}, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of San Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished: one remained at the chapel of the Confraternity, while Leonardo took the other to France. The Brothers did not get their painting, however, nor the de Predis their payment, until the next century.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=85}}
In the smaller picture Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God's will. In the larger picture, however, Mary is not in the least submissive. The beautiful girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise.<ref name=Hartt/> This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the ] not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting the young Leonardo presents the ] face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity's role in God's incarnation.{{#tag:ref|Michael Baxandall lists 5 "laudable conditions" or reactions of Mary to the presence and announcement of the angel. These are: Disquiet, Reflection, Inquiry, Submission and Merit. In this painting Mary's attitude does not comply with any of the accepted traditions.<ref>
{{Cite book | first = Michael | last = Baxandall | title = Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy | year = 1974 | pages = 49–56 }}</ref>|group="nb"}}


Leonardo's most remarkable portrait of this period is the '']'', presumed to be ] ({{circa|1483–1490}}), lover of Ludovico Sforza.<ref name=treasures>{{cite web |url=http://culture.pl/en/event/da-vincis-lady-with-an-ermine-among-polands-treasures |title=Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine among Poland's "Treasures" – Event – Culture.pl|access-date=18 November 2017|archive-date=1 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201042043/http://culture.pl/en/event/da-vincis-lady-with-an-ermine-among-polands-treasures|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=The Lady with an Ermine in the exhibition Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration |last=Kemp |first=M. |location=Washington-New Haven-London |pages=271}}</ref> The painting is characterised by the pose of the figure with the head turned at a very different angle to the torso, unusual at a date when many portraits were still rigidly in profile. The ermine plainly carries symbolic meaning, relating either to the sitter, or to Ludovico who belonged to the prestigious ].<ref name=treasures />
=== Paintings of the 1480s ===
{{Clear}}
]'', ], possibly 1505–1508, demonstrates Leonardo's interest in nature.]]
In the 1480s Leonardo received two very important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Unfortunately two of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One of these paintings is that of '']''. Bortolon associates this picture with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, and the signs of melancholy in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die."<ref name=LB/>


=== Paintings of the 1490s ===
Although the painting is barely begun the composition can be seen and it is very unusual.{{#tag:ref|The painting, which in the 18th century belonged to ], was later cut up. The two main sections were found in a junk shop and cobbler's shop and were reunited.<ref name=Wasser2>Wasserman, pp.104-6</ref> It is probable that outer parts of the composition are missing.|group="nb"}} ], as a ], occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo's anatomical studies.<ref name = Wasser2/> Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.


]'',{{#tag:ref|'''''The Last Supper'''''
The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the '']'', a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a very complex composition about {{nowrap|250 square centimetres}}. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined ] which makes part of the backdrop to the scene. But in 1482 Leonardo went off to Milan at the behest of ] in order to win favour with ] and the painting was abandoned.<ref name=Chiesa83/><ref name=Berti/>
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=67}}: {{circa|1495–1497}}
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=339}}: between 1494 and 1498
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=252}}: 1492–1497/1498
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=230}}: {{circa|1495–1498}}
|group=d}} ], Milan ({{circa|1492–1498}})]]
Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is '']'', commissioned for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. It represents the ] shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death, and shows the moment when Jesus has just said "one of you will betray me", and the consternation that this statement caused.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}


The writer ] observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat and then not paint for three or four days at a time.{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|p=124}} This was beyond the comprehension of the ] of the convent, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor ], told the duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.<ref group="‡" name=":0">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|p=290}}</ref>
The third important work of this period is the '']'' which was commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece, already constructed.<ref>Wasserman, p.108</ref> Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the Infant ], in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene, as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.<ref>{{cite web | title =The Mysterious Virgin | work = | publisher =] | url =http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/collection/features/potm/2006/may/feature1.htm | accessdate = 2007-09-27 }}</ref>
While the painting is quite large, about {{nowrap|200 &times; 120 centimetres}}, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de Predis their payment, until the next century.<ref name=DA>{{Cite book | first = Daniel | last = Arasse | title = Leonardo da Vinci | year = 1998 }}</ref><ref name="Chiesa85"/>


The painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation,<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|pp=289–291}}</ref> but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined."{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=97}} Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ] that was mainly ], resulting in a surface subject to mould and to flaking.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=98}} Despite this, the painting remains one of the most reproduced works of art; countless copies have been made in various mediums.
]'' (1498)—], ], Italy]]


Toward the end of this period, in 1498 Leonardo's trompe-l'œil decoration of the ] was painted for the Duke of Milan in the ].
=== Paintings of the 1490s ===
Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is '']'', also painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death. It shows specifically the moment when Jesus has said "one of you will betray me". Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.<ref name=DA/>


=== Paintings of the 1500s ===
The novelist ] observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat, and then not paint for three or four days at a time.<ref>Wasserman, p.124</ref> This, according to Vasari, was beyond the comprehension of the prior, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the Duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.<ref>Vasari, p.263</ref>
In 1505, Leonardo was commissioned to paint ''The Battle of Anghiari'' in the ] (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the ], Florence. Leonardo devised a dynamic composition depicting four men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the ] in 1440. Michelangelo was assigned the opposite wall to depict the ]. Leonardo's painting deteriorated rapidly and is now known from a copy by ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Seracini |first1=Maurizio |title=The Secret Lives of Paintings |url=https://www.ted.com/talks/maurizio_seracini_the_secret_lives_of_paintings?language=en#t-48953 |format=lecture |date=2012|access-date=14 March 2016|archive-date=18 October 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191018193215/https://www.ted.com/talks/maurizio_seracini_the_secret_lives_of_paintings?language=en#t-48953|url-status=live}}</ref>


]'' or ''La Gioconda'' {{circa|1503–1516}},{{#tag:ref|'''''Mona Lisa'''''
When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation,<ref>Vasari, p.262</ref> but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined".<ref>della Chiesa, p.97</ref> Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface which was subject to mold and to flaking.<ref>della Chiesa, p.98</ref> Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos.
* {{Harvtxt|Kemp|2019|p=127}}: {{circa|1503–1515}}
* {{Harvtxt|Marani|2003|p=340}}: {{circa|1503–1504; 1513–1514}}
* {{Harvtxt|Syson ''et al.''|2011|p=48}}: {{circa|1502 onward}}
* {{Harvtxt|Zöllner|2019|p=240}}: {{circa|1503–1506; 1510}}
|group=d}} ], Paris]]
Among the works created by Leonardo in the 16th century is the small portrait known as the '']'' or ''La Gioconda'', the laughing one. In the present era, it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman's face, its mysterious quality perhaps due to the subtly shadowed corners of the mouth and eyes such that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called "]", or Leonardo's smoke. Vasari wrote that the smile was "so pleasing that it seems more divine than human, and it was considered a wondrous thing that it was as lively as the smile of the living original."<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1991|p=294}}</ref>


Other characteristics of the painting are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details; the dramatic landscape background, in which the world seems to be in a state of flux; the subdued colouring; and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing ] laid on much like ], and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|p=144}} Vasari expressed that the painting's quality would make even "the most confident master ... despair and lose heart."<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1965|p=266}}</ref> The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is rare in a panel painting of this date.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=103}}
=== Paintings of the 1500s ===
]'' or ''La Gioconda'' (1503–1505/1507)—], Paris, France]]
Among the works created by Leonardo in the 1500s is the small portrait known as the '']'' or "la Gioconda", the laughing one. In the present era it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman's face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called "]" or Leonardo's smoke. Vasari, who is generally thought to have known the painting only by repute, said that "the smile was so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original".<ref>Vasari, p.267</ref>{{#tag:ref|Whether or not Vasari had seen the Mona Lisa is the subject of debate. The opinion that he had ''not'' seen the painting is based mainly on the fact that he describes the Mona Lisa as having eyebrows. Daniel Arasse in ''Leonardo da Vinci'' discusses the possibility that Leonardo may have painted the figure with eyebrows which were subsequently removed. (They were not fashionable in the mid 16th century.)<ref name=DA/> The analysis of high resolution scans made by Pascal Cotte has revealed that the Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes which have been subsequently removed.<ref>{{cite news| publisher=] |title= The Mona Lisa had brows and lashes | date = October 22, 2007 |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7056041.stm | accessdate=2008-02-22}}</ref>|group="nb"}}


In the painting '']'', the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape, which Wasserman describes as "breathtakingly beautiful"{{sfn|Wasserman|1975|p=150}} and harkens back to the ''Saint Jerome'' with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, Saint Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} This painting, which was copied many times, influenced Michelangelo, Raphael, and ],{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=109}} and through them ] and ]. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters ] and ].
Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing ], but laid on much like ] and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.{{#tag:ref|Jack Wasserman writes of "the inimitable treatment of the surfaces" of this painting.<ref>Wasserman, p.144</ref>|group="nb"}} Vasari expressed the opinion that the manner of painting would make even "the most confident master&nbsp;... despair and lose heart."<ref>Vasari, p.266</ref> The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is extremely rare in a panel painting of this date.<ref>della Chiesa, p.103</ref>


== Drawings ==
In the '']'' (see below {{ref label|StAnne|StAnne|Virgin and Child with St Anne, return}}) the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape which Wasserman describes as "breathtakingly beautiful"<ref>Wasserman, p.150</ref> and harks back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice.<ref name=DA/> This painting, which was copied many times, was to influence ], ], and ],<ref>della Chiesa, p.109</ref> and through them ] and ]. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters ] and ].
]
] ({{Circa|1510}}) at the ] of ], Italy]]


Leonardo was a prolific draughtsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as ''The Adoration of the Magi'', ''The Virgin of the Rocks'' and ''The Last Supper''.<ref name=Popham /> His earliest dated drawing is a ''Landscape of the Arno Valley'', 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}}<ref name=Popham>{{cite book |first=A. E. |last=Popham |title=The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci |year=1946}}</ref>{{efn|This work is now in the collection of the ], Drawing No. 8P.}}
]'' (c.&nbsp;1499–1500)—]]]


Among his famous drawings are the '']'', a study of the proportions of the human body; the ''Head of an Angel'', for '']'' in the ]; a botanical study of ''Star of Bethlehem''; and a large drawing (160×100&nbsp;cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of '']'' in the National Gallery, London.<ref name=Popham /> This drawing employs the subtle '']'' technique of shading, in the manner of the ''Mona Lisa''. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to '']'' in the Louvre.{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=102}}
=== Drawings ===
<!-- {{main|Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci}} -->


Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that Leonardo would look for interesting faces in public to use as models for some of his work.<ref group="‡" name=":0" /> There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salaì, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile".{{efn|The "Grecian profile" has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many ] statues.}} These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior.<ref name=Popham /> Salaì is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of ], hanged in connection with the murder of ], brother of Lorenzo de' Medici, in the ].<ref name=Popham /> In his notes, Leonardo recorded the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.
Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as ''The Adoration of the Magi'', ''The Virgin of the Rocks'' and ''The Last Supper''.<ref name=Popham/>
His earliest dated drawing is a ''Landscape of the Arno Valley'', 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.<ref name=LB/><ref name=Popham>{{Cite book | first = A.E. | last = Popham | title = The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
| year = 1946 }}</ref>


Like the two contemporary architects ] (who designed the ]) and ], Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.{{sfn|Rosci|1977|pp=9–20}}{{sfn|Hartt|1970|pp=391–392}}
Among his famous drawings are the '']'', a study of the proportions of the human body, the ''Head of an Angel'', for '']'' in the Louvre, a botanical study of ''Star of Bethlehem'' and a large drawing (160×100&nbsp;cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of the '']'' in the National Gallery, London.<ref name=Popham/> This drawing employs the subtle '']'' technique of shading, in the manner of the ''Mona Lisa''. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to '']'' in the Louvre.<ref>della Chiesa, p.102</ref>


== Journals and notes ==
Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that if Leonardo saw a person with an interesting face he would follow them around all day observing them.<ref>Vasari, p.261</ref> There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salai, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile".<ref group = "nb">The "Grecian profile" has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many ] statues.</ref> These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior.<ref name=Popham/> Salai is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de'Medici, in the ].<ref name=Popham/> With dispassionate integrity Leonardo has registered in neat ] the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.
{{See also|List of works by Leonardo da Vinci#Manuscripts}}
<br clear=all/>
] recognised no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are sometimes considered as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and ] (the forerunner of modern science). They were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} Leonardo's notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}
] ({{circa|1510|lk=no}}), Royal Library, ]]]


These notebooks – originally loose papers of different types and sizes – were largely entrusted to Leonardo's pupil and heir Francesco Melzi after the master's death.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=169}} These were to be published, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo's idiosyncratic writing.<ref name=KDK>{{cite journal |author=Keele Kenneth D |year=1964 |title=Leonardo da Vinci's Influence on Renaissance Anatomy |journal=Med Hist |volume=8 |issue=4 |pages=360–370 |pmc=1033412 |pmid=14230140 |doi=10.1017/s0025727300029835 |issn = 0025-7273}}</ref> Some of Leonardo's drawings were copied by an anonymous Milanese artist for ] {{circa|1570}}.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bean |first1=Jacob |last2=Stampfle |first2=Felice |title=Drawings from New York Collections I: The Italian Renaissance |date=1965 |publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art |location=Greenwich, CT |pages=81–82}}</ref> After Melzi's death in 1570, the collection passed to his son, the lawyer Orazio, who initially took little interest in the journals.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=169}} In 1587, a Melzi household tutor named Lelio Gavardi took 13 of the manuscripts to Pisa; there, the architect ] reproached Gavardi for having taken the manuscripts illicitly and returned them to Orazio. Having many more such works in his possession, Orazio gifted the volumes to Magenta. News spread of these lost works of Leonardo's, and Orazio retrieved seven of the 13 manuscripts, which he then gave to ] for publication in two volumes; one of these was the ]. The other six works had been distributed to a few others.<ref>{{cite book |last=Major |first=Richard Henry |author-link=Richard Henry Major |title=Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 40, Part 1 |date=1866 |publisher=The Society |location=London |pages=15–16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HlBIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA15 |access-date=1 October 2019 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103326/https://books.google.com/books?id=HlBIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref> After Orazio's death, his heirs sold the rest of Leonardo's possessions, and thus began their dispersal.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Calder |first=Ritchie |url=https://archive.org/details/leonardoageofeye0000cald |title=Leonardo & the Age of the Eye |publisher=Simon and Schuster |year=1970 |location=New York |pages=275 |isbn=978-0-671-20713-7}}</ref>
== Leonardo as observer, scientist and inventor ==

]'' (c.&nbsp;1485) ]]]
Some works have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at ], the Louvre, the {{lang|es|]|italic=no}}, the ], the ] in Milan, which holds the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, and the ] in London, which has put a selection from the ] (BL Arundel MS 263) online.<ref>{{cite web |title=Sketches by Leonardo |website=Turning the Pages |publisher=] |url=http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html | access-date =27 September 2007 | archive-date =24 June 2010 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20100624031653/http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html | url-status =dead}}</ref> Works have also been at ], the ], and in the private hands of ] and ].{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=169}} The ] is the only privately owned major scientific work of Leonardo; it is owned by ] and displayed once a year in different cities around the world.

Most of Leonardo's writings are in ] cursive.<ref name="Polidoro" /><ref name="Taylor">{{cite book |last=Da Vinci |first=Leonardo |url=https://archive.org/details/notebooks00leon/page/n11/mode/2up |title=The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=] |year=1960|editor-last=Taylor|editor-first=Pamela |location=New York |page=x |isbn=978-0-486-22572-2|editor2-last=Taylor|editor2-first=Francis Henry|editor-link2=Francis Henry Taylor}}</ref> Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it was probably easier for him to write from right to left.<ref>{{cite book |last=Livio |first=Mario|author-link=Mario Livio |title=The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bUARfgWRH14C|orig-date=2002 |edition=First trade paperback |year=2003 |publisher=] |location=New York City |isbn=0-7679-0816-3 |page=136|access-date=22 December 2018|archive-date=13 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230313121951/https://books.google.com/books?id=bUARfgWRH14C|url-status=live}}</ref>{{efn|He also drew with his left hand, his ] strokes "slanting down from left to right{{snd}} the natural stroke of a left-handed artist".{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=31}} He also sometimes wrote conventionally with his right hand.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.foxnews.com/science/da-vinci-was-ambidextrous-new-handwriting-analysis-shows.amp |title=Da Vinci was ambidextrous, new handwriting analysis shows |last=Ciaccia |first=Chris |website=Fox News |date=15 April 2019|access-date=15 April 2019|archive-date=13 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200213082907/https://www.foxnews.com/science/da-vinci-was-ambidextrous-new-handwriting-analysis-shows.amp|url-status=live}}</ref>}} Leonardo used a variety of shorthand and symbols, and states in his notes that he intended to prepare them for publication.<ref name=Taylor /> In many cases a single topic is covered in detail in both words and pictures on a single sheet, together conveying information that would not be lost if the pages were published out of order.<ref>Windsor Castle, Royal Library, sheets RL 19073v–74v and RL 19102.</ref> Why they were not published during Leonardo's lifetime is unknown.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}{{clear left}}

== Science and inventions ==
{{Main|Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci}} {{Main|Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci}}
] as published in ] '']'' (1509)]]


Leonardo's approach to science was observational: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasise experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in ] and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. His keen observations in many areas were noted, such as when he wrote "Il sole non si move." ("The Sun does not move.")<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cook |first=Theodore Andrea|author-link=Theodore Andrea Cook |title=The Curves of Life |year=1914 |page= |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924028937179 |publisher=Constable and Company Ltd |location=London}}</ref>
=== Journals ===
] saw no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and ] (the forerunner of modern science). These notes were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.<ref name=DA/>


In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book '']'', published in 1509.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} While living in Milan, he studied light from the summit of ].{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=145}} Scientific writings in his notebook on fossils have been considered as influential on ].<ref>Baucon, A. 2010. Da Vinci's ''Paleodictyon'': the fractal beauty of traces. Acta Geologica Polonica, 60(1). Accessible from the {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190511153408/http://www.tracemaker.com/ |date=11 May 2019 }}</ref>
The journals are mostly written in mirror-image cursive. The reason may have been more a practical expediency than for reasons of secrecy as is often suggested. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it is probable that it was easier for him to write from right to left.<ref group = "nb">Left-handed writers using a split nib or quill pen experience difficulty pushing the pen from left to right across the page.</ref>]]]
His notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirl pools, war machines, helicopters and architecture.<ref name=DA/>


The content of his journals suggest that he was planning a series of treatises on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on ] is said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis d'Aragon's secretary in 1517.<ref>{{cite book |last1=O'Malley |last2=Saunders |title=Leonardo on the Human Body |year=1982 |publisher=Dover Publications |location=New York}}</ref> Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by Melzi and eventually published as '']'' in France and Italy in 1651 and Germany in 1724,{{sfn|Ottino della Chiesa|1967|p=117}} with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter ].{{sfn|Heydenreich|2020}} According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into 62 editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art."{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}
These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes, distributed by friends after his death—have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at ], ], the ], the ], the ] in ] which holds the twelve-volume ], and ] in ] which has put a selection from its notebook ''BL Arundel MS 263'' online.<ref>{{cite web | title =Sketches by Leonardo | work =Turning the Pages | publisher =] | url =http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html | accessdate =2007-09-27 }}</ref> The '']'' is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands. It is owned by ], and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world.


While Leonardo's experimentation followed scientific methods, a recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as a scientist by Fritjof Capra argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from ], ] and other scientists who followed him in that, as a "]", his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting.{{sfn|Capra|2007|pp=xvii–xx}}
Leonardo's journals appear to have been intended for publication because many of the sheets have a form and order that would facilitate this. In many cases a single topic, for example, the heart or the human foetus, is covered in detail in both words and pictures, on a single sheet.<ref>Windsor Castle, Royal Library, sheets RL 19073v-19074v and RL 19102 respectively.</ref><ref group = "nb">This method of organisation minimises of loss of data in the case of pages being mixed up or destroyed.</ref> Why they were not published within Leonardo's lifetime is unknown.<ref name=DA/>


=== Scientific studies === === Anatomy and physiology ===
{{multiple image
] as published in ] ''De Divina Proportione'']]
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| image1 = Leonardo da Vinci - RCIN 919000, Verso The bones and muscles of the arm c.1510-11.jpg
| alt1 =
| caption1 = Anatomical study of the arm ({{circa|1510|lk=no}})
| image2 = Leonardo Da Vinci's Brain Physiology.jpg
| alt2 =
| caption2 = Leonardo's physiological sketch of the human brain and skull ({{circa|1510|lk=no}})
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Leonardo started his study in the ] of the ] under the apprenticeship of Verrocchio, who demanded that his students develop a deep knowledge of the subject. As an artist, he quickly became master of ''topographic anatomy'', drawing many studies of ]s, ]s and other visible anatomical features.{{citation needed|date=January 2023}}
Leonardo's approach to science was an observational one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or ] explanation. Since he lacked formal education in ] and ], contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. In the 1490s he studied mathematics under ] and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book ''De Divina Proportione'', published in 1509.<ref name=DA/>


As a successful artist, Leonardo was given permission to ] human corpses at the ] in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor ], professor of Anatomy at the ].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci/Second-Florentine-period-1500-08 |title=Leonardo da Vinci |encyclopedia=Britannica|access-date=9 August 2022|archive-date=9 August 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220809222523/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci/Second-Florentine-period-1500-08|url-status=live}}</ref> Leonardo made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words toward a treatise on anatomy.<ref name=Sooke /> Only a small amount of the material on anatomy was published in Leonardo's ''Treatise on painting''.<ref name=KDK /> During the time that Melzi was ordering the material into chapters for publication, they were examined by a number of anatomists and artists, including ], ] and ], who made a number of drawings from them.<ref name=KDK />
It appears that from the content of his journals he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on ] was said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal ]'s secretary in 1517.<ref>
{{Cite book
| last = O'Malley
| last2 = Saunders
| title = Leonardo on the Human Body
| year = 1982
| publisher = Dover Publications
| publication-place = New York
}}</ref> Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by his pupil Francesco Melzi and eventually published as '']'' in France and Italy in 1651, and Germany in 1724,<ref>della Chiesa, p.117</ref> with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter ].{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}} According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into sixty two editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art".<ref name=DA/>


Leonardo's anatomical drawings include many studies of the ] and its parts, and of muscles and sinews. He studied the mechanical functions of the skeleton and the muscular forces that are applied to it in a manner that prefigured the modern science of ].<ref name=Mason>{{cite book |last=Mason |first=Stephen F. |title=A History of the Sciences |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofscience00maso |url-access=registration |publisher=Collier Books |year=1962 |location=New York |page=}}</ref> He drew the heart and ], the ] and other internal organs, making one of the first scientific drawings of a ] ''in utero''.<ref name=Popham /> The drawings and notation are far ahead of their time, and if published would undoubtedly have made a major contribution to medical science.<ref name=Sooke>], ''Daily Telegraph'', 28 July 2013, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191202055415/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/leonardo-da-vinci-met-death-dissected-corpses-embryos-hearts/ |date=2 December 2019 }}, accessed 29 July 2013.</ref>
A recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as Scientist by Frtijof Capra<ref>Capra, Fritjof. The Science of Leonardo; Inside the Mind of the Genius of the Renaissance. (New York, Doubleday, 2007)</ref> argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him. Leonardo's experimentation followed clear scientific method approaches, and his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting; these, and Leonardo's unique integrated, holistic views of science make him a forerunner of modern systems theory and complexity schools of thought.


Leonardo also closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}<ref name=Popham /> Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.<ref name=Popham />
]


Leonardo's dissections and documentation of muscles, nerves, and vessels helped to describe the physiology and mechanics of movement. He attempted to identify the source of 'emotions' and their expression. He found it difficult to incorporate the prevailing system and theories of ], but eventually he abandoned these physiological explanations of bodily functions. He made the observations that humours were not located in cerebral spaces or ]. He documented that the humours were not contained in the heart or the liver, and that it was the heart that defined the circulatory system. He was the first to define ] and liver ]. He created models of the cerebral ventricles with the use of melted wax and constructed a glass ] to observe the circulation of blood through the aortic valve by using water and grass seed to watch flow patterns.<ref name="Jones2012">{{cite journal |last1=Jones |first1=Roger |title=Leonardo da Vinci: anatomist |journal=British Journal of General Practice |volume=62 |issue=599 |year=2012 |page=319 |issn=0960-1643 |doi=10.3399/bjgp12X649241 |pmid=22687222 |pmc=3361109}}</ref>
=== Anatomy ===
Leonardo's formal training in the ] of the ] began with his apprenticeship to ], his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of ''topographic anatomy'', drawing many studies of ]s, ]s and other visible anatomical features.


=== Engineering and inventions ===
As a successful artist, he was given permission to ] human corpses at the ] in ] and later at hospitals in Milan and ]. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor ] and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading ''Treatise on painting''.<ref name=DA/><ref name=Popham/>
{{multiple image
| image1 = Leonardo da vinci, Drawing of a flying machine.jpg
| width1 = 240
| alt1 =
| caption1 = A design for a flying machine ({{circa|1488}}), first presented in the '']''
| image2 = Leonardo da Vinci helicopter.jpg
| width2 = 160
| alt2 =
| caption2 = An ''aerial screw'' ({{circa|1489}}), suggestive of a helicopter, from the '']''
| footer =
}}


During his lifetime, Leonardo was also valued as an engineer. With the same rational and analytical approach that moved him to represent the human body and to investigate anatomy, Leonardo studied and designed many machines and devices. He drew their "anatomy" with unparalleled mastery, producing the first form of the modern technical drawing, including a perfected "exploded view" technique, to represent internal components. Those studies and projects collected in his codices fill more than 5,000 pages.<ref name="guarnieri1">{{Cite journal |last=Guarnieri |first=M. |s2cid=202729396 |year=2019 |title=Reconsidering Leonardo |journal=IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=35–38 |doi=10.1109/MIE.2019.2929366 |hdl=11577/3310853 |hdl-access=free}}</ref> In a letter of 1482 to the lord of Milan ], he wrote that he could create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled from Milan to Venice in 1499, he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. In 1502, he created a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno river, a project on which ] also worked.<ref>{{cite book |last=Masters |first=Roger |author-link=Roger Masters |title=Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power |year=1996}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Masters |first=Roger |title=Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-452-28090-8}}</ref> He continued to contemplate the canalisation of ] while in Louis XII's company{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=145}} and of the ] and its tributaries in the company of Francis I.{{sfn|Wallace|1972|p=164}} Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include ], ], hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a ].{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}}{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}
Leonardo drew many studies of the ] and its parts, as well as muscles and sinews, the heart and ], the ], and other internal organs. He made one of the first scientific drawings of a ] ''in utero''.<ref name=Popham/> As an artist, Leonardo closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He also drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.<ref name=DA/><ref name=Popham/>


]]]
In 2005 a UK heart surgeon, Francis Wells, from Papworth Hospital Cambridge pioneered repair to damaged hearts from viewing Leonardo's medical drawings, made from the latter's body dissections. <ref> http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4289204.stm published by BBC 2005/09/28</ref>


Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of ] for much of his life, producing many studies, including '']'' ({{circa|1505}}), as well as plans for several flying machines, such as a flapping ] and a machine with a helical ].{{sfn|Arasse|1998}} In a 2003 documentary by British television station ], titled ''Leonardo's Dream Machines'', various designs by Leonardo, such as a ] and ], were interpreted and constructed.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365434/ |title=Leonardo's Dream Machines (TV Movie 2003) |website=IMDb|access-date=30 June 2018|archive-date=8 February 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170208160755/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365434/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191121011521/http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/leonardo/parachute.html |date=21 November 2019 }} (retrieved 10 October 2013)</ref> Some of those designs proved successful, whilst others fared less well when tested. Similarly, a team of engineers built ten machines designed by Leonardo in the 2009 American television series '']'', including a ] and a ].
Mr Wells reported that he used the drawings to work out how to restore normal opening and closing function of the mitral valve, so that instead of repairing a floppy valve by narrowing its diameter, thereby restricting blood flow under exercise, he devised what he called: "..a complete rethink of the way we do the mitral valve operation". Leonardo's dissections also disproved the popular belief that the heart was not a muscle and demonstrated that it consists of four rather than two chambers. He 'drew' these findings, but he also described them and it was this combination that assisted Mr Wells. Leonardo also described how arteries develop 'furring' over time, creating blockages. Mr Wells used Leonardo's depiction of the opening phase of the mitral valve to operate without changing its diameter allowing an individual to recover more quickly from the intervention. According to the surgeon: "Leonardo had a depth of appreciation of the anatomy and physiology of the body - its structure and function - that perhaps has been overlooked by some."


Research performed by ] revealed older prototypes for more than 100 inventions that are ascribed to Leonardo. Similarities between Leonardo's illustrations and drawings from the Middle Ages and from Ancient Greece and Rome, the Chinese and Persian Empires, and Egypt suggest that a large portion of Leonardo's inventions had been conceived before his lifetime. Leonardo's innovation was to combine different functions from existing drafts and set them into scenes that illustrated their utility. By reconstituting technical inventions he created something new.<ref>{{citation |mode=cs1 |surname1=] |title=Leonardo da Vinci Spirits of Invention. A Search for Traces |publisher=A.TE.M. |location=Hamburg |isbn=978-3-00-063700-1 |date=2019 |language=en}}</ref>
Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many other animals as well, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.


In his notebooks, Leonardo first stated the 'laws' of sliding ] in 1493.<ref name=Hutchings>{{Cite journal |last=Hutchings |first=Ian M. |date=15 August 2016 |title=Leonardo da Vinci׳s studies of friction |url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043164816300588 |journal=Wear |language=en |volume=360–361 |pages=51–66 |doi=10.1016/j.wear.2016.04.019 |issn=0043-1648|access-date=22 January 2021|archive-date=12 February 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170212083723/http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043164816300588|url-status=live}}</ref> His inspiration for investigating friction came about in part from his study of ], which he correctly concluded was not possible.{{sfn|Isaacson|2017|pp=194–197}} His results were never published and the friction laws were not rediscovered until 1699 by ], with whose name they are now usually associated.<ref group="‡" name=":0" /> For this contribution, Leonardo was named as the first of the 23 "Men of Tribology" by ].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dowson |first=Duncan |date=1 October 1977 |title=Men of Tribology: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) |url=https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/tribology/article/99/4/382/429918/Men-of-Tribology-Leonardo-da-Vinci-1452-1519 |journal=Journal of Lubrication Technology |language=en |volume=99 |issue=4 |pages=382–386 |doi=10.1115/1.3453230 |issn=0022-2305|doi-access=free|access-date=22 January 2021|archive-date=23 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230223055154/https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/tribology/article/99/4/382/429918/Men-of-Tribology-Leonardo-da-Vinci-1452-1519|url-status=live}}</ref>
=== Engineering and inventions ===
]
During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to ] he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River, a project on which ] also worked.<ref>{{cite book | author = ] | title = Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power | year = 1996 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | author = ] | title = Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History | year = 1998 }}</ref> Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include ], hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a ].<ref name=LB/><ref name=DA/>


== Legacy ==
In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span {{convert|720|ft|m|adj=on}} bridge as part of a ] project for Ottoman ] ] of ]. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the ] known as the ]. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a ] based on his design was constructed in Norway.<ref></ref> On May 17, 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the ].<ref>{{cite news | last =Levy | first =Daniel S. | title =Dream of the Master | publisher ='']'' magazine | date = October 4, 1999 | url =http://www.vebjorn-sand.com/dreamsofthemaster.html | accessdate =2007-09-27 }}</ref>
{{further|Cultural references to Leonardo da Vinci|List of things named after Leonardo da Vinci}}


], Florence, by ] (1791–1847)|alt=]]
For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of ], producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c.&nbsp;1505 ], as well as plans for several flying machines, including a ] and a light ].<ref name=DA/> Most were impractical, like his aerial screw helicopter design that could not provide lift. However, the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated.<ref>The U.S. ] (PBS), aired in October 2005, a television programme called "Leonardo's Dream Machines", about the building and successful flight of a glider based on Leonardo's design.</ref>
Although he had no formal academic training,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Polidoro |first1=Massimo |author-link1=Massimo Polidoro |title=The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 2 |journal=] |date=2019 |volume=43 |issue=3 |pages=23–24}}</ref> many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the "]" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination."<ref name=HG>{{cite book |first=Helen |last=Gardner |title=Art through the Ages |year=1970 |pages=450–56}}</ref> He is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived.<ref name="genius">See the quotations from the following authors, in section "Fame and reputation": Vasari, Boltraffio, Castiglione, "Anonimo" Gaddiano, Berensen, Taine, Fuseli, Rio, Bortolon.</ref> According to art historian ], the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and "his mind and ] seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote."<ref name=HG /> Scholars interpret his view of the world as being based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his time.{{sfn|Rosci|1977|p=8}}


Leonardo's fame within his own lifetime was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Interest in Leonardo and his work has never diminished. Crowds still queue to see his best-known artworks, T-shirts still bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to hail him as a genius while speculating about his private life, as well as about what one so intelligent actually believed in.{{sfn|Arasse|1998}}
== Leonardo the legend ==
{{Main|Cultural depictions of Leonardo da Vinci}}
] receiving the last breath of Leonardo da Vinci, by ], 1818.]]
Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died.<ref>see reference to this in section "Old age".</ref> The interest in Leonardo has never slackened. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, ]s bear his most famous drawing and writers, like Vasari, continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in.<ref name=DA/>


The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. ], author of '']'' (''The Courtier''), wrote in 1528: "...Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled..."<ref>{{cite web | author-link = Baldassare Castiglione |first=Baldassare |last=Castiglione |title=Il Cortegiano |url=https://archive.org/details/illibrodelcorteg00cast_2 |year=1528 |language=Italian}}</ref> while the biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote, {{circa|1540|lk=no}}: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf..."<ref>"Anonimo Gaddiani", elaborating on ''Libro di Antonio Billi'', 1537–1542</ref> Vasari, in his '']'' (1568), opens his chapter on Leonardo:<ref group="‡">{{harvnb|Vasari|1965|p=255}}</ref>
], in the enlarged edition of '']'', 1568,<ref>Vasari, p.255</ref> introduced his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words:{{quote|In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.|]}}


<blockquote>In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.</blockquote>
], Florence|alt=Statue of Leonardo da Vinci by Luigi Pampaloni, Uffizi]]


]'', by ], 1818{{efn|name=edict}}|alt=]]
The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. ], author of ''Il Cortegiano'' ("The Courtier"), wrote in 1528: "...&nbsp;Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled&nbsp;..."<ref>
{{Cite journal
| author-link = Baldassare Castiglione
| first = Baldassare
| last = Castiglione
| title = Il Cortegiano
| year = 1528
}}</ref> while the biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote, c.&nbsp;1540: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf&nbsp;...".<ref>"Anonimo Gaddiani", elaborating on ''Libro di Antonio Billi'', 1537–1542</ref>


The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing ] to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius&nbsp;..."<ref> The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing ] to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius..."<ref>{{citation |mode=cs1 |first=Henry |last=Fuseli |title=Lectures |series=Vol II |year=1801}}</ref> This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."<ref>{{cite web |first=A.E. |last=Rio |title=L'art chrétien |url=https://archive.org/details/ldpd_10800128_000 |year=1861 |language=French |access-date=19 May 2021}}</ref>
{{Cite journal
| first = Henry
| last = Fuseli
| title = Lectures
| volume = II
| year = 1801
}}</ref> This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."<ref>
{{Cite journal
| first = A.E.
| last = Rio
| title = L'art chrétien
| year = 1861
}}</ref>


By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo's notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. ] wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."<ref> By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo's notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. ] wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."<ref>{{cite web |first=Hippolyte |last=Taine |title=Voyage en Italie |url=https://archive.org/details/voyageenitalie00taingoog |year=1866 |publisher=Paris, Hachette et cie |language=Italian |access-date=19 May 2021}}</ref>
{{Cite journal
| first = Hippolyte
| last = Taine
| title = Voyage en Italie
| year = 1866
}}</ref>


The famous art historian ] wrote in 1896: "Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values."<ref> Art historian ] wrote in 1896: {{blockquote|Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values.<ref>{{cite book |first=Bernard |last=Berenson | author-link = Bernard Berenson |title=The Italian Painters of the Renaissance |year=1896}}</ref>}}
{{Cite journal
| first = Bernard
| last = Berenson
| author-link = Bernard Berenson
| title = The Italian Painters of the Renaissance
| year = 1896
}}</ref>


The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.artnewsonline.com/currentarticle.cfm?art_id=1240 |title=ArtNews article about current studies into Leonardo's life and works |first=Melinda |last=Henneberger |publisher=Art News Online | access-date = 10 January 2010 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060505165842/http://www.artnewsonline.com/currentarticle.cfm?art_id=1240 |archive-date = 5 May 2006}}</ref> Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: {{blockquote|Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge...Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe.{{sfn|Bortolon|1967}}}} The ] is a special collection at the ].<ref>Marmor, Max. "The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana." '']'' 38, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 1–23.</ref>
The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.<ref>
{{Cite web
| url = http://web.archive.org/web/20060505165842/http://www.artnewsonline.com/currentarticle.cfm?art_id=1240
| title = ArtNews article about current studies into Leonardo's life and works
| author = Melinda Henneberger
| publisher = Art News Online
| accessdate = 2010-01-10
}}</ref> Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: "Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge&nbsp;... Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe."<ref name= LB/>
<br clear=all/>


], which houses a large collection of models constructed on the basis of Leonardo's drawings|alt=]]
== See also ==
Twenty-first-century author ] based much of his biography of Leonardo{{sfn|Isaacson|2017}} on thousands of notebook entries, studying the personal notes, sketches, budget notations, and musings of the man whom he considers the greatest of innovators. Isaacson was surprised to discover a "fun, joyous" side of Leonardo in addition to his limitless curiosity and creative genius.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Italie |first1=Hillel |title=NonFiction: Biography honors 'fun, joyous' sides of genius da Vinci |agency=Associated Press |work=Richmond Times-Dispatch |date=7 January 2018 |page=G6}}</ref>
{{Misplaced Pages-Books}}
=== About Leonardo ===
* ]
* ]
* ]
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On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, the Louvre in Paris arranged for the largest ever single exhibit of his work, called ''Leonardo'', between November 2019 and February 2020. The exhibit includes over 100 paintings, drawings and notebooks. Eleven of the paintings that Leonardo completed in his lifetime were included. Five of these are owned by the Louvre, but the ''Mona Lisa'' was not included because it is in such great demand among general visitors to the Louvre; it remains on display in its gallery. ''Vitruvian Man'', however, is on display following a legal battle with its owner, the ] in Venice. '']''{{efn|'']'', a painting by Leonardo depicting Jesus holding an orb, sold for a world record US$450.3&nbsp;million at a ] auction in New York, 15 November 2017.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/leonardo-da-vinci-painting-salvator-mundi-sells-for-450-3-million-1510794281 |title=Leonardo da Vinci Painting 'Salvator Mundi' Sells for $450.3 Million |last=Crow |first=Kelly |date=16 November 2017 |work=]|access-date=16 November 2017 |language=en-US |issn=0099-9660|archive-date=29 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200629202935/https://www.wsj.com/articles/leonardo-da-vinci-painting-salvator-mundi-sells-for-450-3-million-1510794281|url-status=live}}</ref> The highest known sale price for any artwork was previously US$300&nbsp;million, for ]'s '']'', which was sold privately in September 2015.<ref name=fox>, Fox News, 16 November 2017</ref> The highest price previously paid for a work of art at auction was for ]'s '']'', which sold for US$179.4&nbsp;million in May 2015 at Christie's New York.<ref name=fox />}} was also not included because its Saudi owner did not agree to lease the work.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://aleteia.org/2019/12/01/louvre-exhibit-has-most-da-vinci-paintings-ever-assembled/ |title=Leonardo da Vinci's Unexamined Life as a Painter |date=1 December 2019 |magazine=The Atlantic |access-date=1 December 2019 |archive-date=29 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201029051649/https://aleteia.org/2019/12/01/louvre-exhibit-has-most-da-vinci-paintings-ever-assembled/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://aleteia.org/2019/12/01/louvre-exhibit-has-most-da-vinci-paintings-ever-assembled/ |title=Louvre exhibit has most da Vinci paintings ever assembled |date=1 December 2019 |publisher=Aleteia |access-date=1 December 2019 |archive-date=29 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201029051649/https://aleteia.org/2019/12/01/louvre-exhibit-has-most-da-vinci-paintings-ever-assembled/ |url-status=live}}</ref>
=== Related subjects ===
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The ''Mona Lisa'', considered Leonardo's ], is often regarded as the most famous portrait ever made.{{sfn|Kemp|2003}}{{sfn|Turner|1993|p=3}} ''The Last Supper'' is the most reproduced religious painting of all time,<ref name=HG /> and Leonardo's ''Vitruvian Man'' drawing is also considered a ].<ref>Vitruvian Man is referred to as "iconic" at the following websites and many others: {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201002194508/https://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Vitruvian-Man.html |date=2 October 2020 }}, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170909064630/http://artpassions.com/art/1109-Fine-Art-Classics/0000067329-Leonardo-Da-Vinci-Vitruvian-Man.html |date=9 September 2017 }}, ; {{webarchive|title=Curiosity and difference |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090130113435/http://ingenious.org.uk/read/identity/bodyimage/Curiosityanddifference/ |date=30 January 2009 }}; {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803033719/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/aug/30/art1 |date=3 August 2020 }}</ref>
== Footnotes ==

{{reflist|2|group="nb"}}
More than a decade of analysis of Leonardo's ], conducted by ] and Agnese Sabato, came to a conclusion in mid-2021. It was determined that the artist has 14 living male relatives. The work could also help determine the authenticity of remains thought to belong to Leonardo.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Turner |first=Ben |date=6 July 2021 |title=Scientists may have cracked the mystery of da Vinci's DNA |url=https://www.livescience.com/da-vinci-family-history.html|access-date=9 July 2021 |website=Live Science|archive-date=8 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210708162511/https://www.livescience.com/da-vinci-family-history.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

== Location of remains ==
] where a plaque describes it as the presumed site of Leonardo's remains]]

While Leonardo was certainly buried in the ] of Saint Florentin at the Château d'Amboise in 12 August 1519, the current location of his remains is unclear.{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}}{{sfn|Isaacson|2017|p=515}} Much of Château d'Amboise was damaged during the ], leading to the church's demolition in 1802.{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}} Some of the graves were destroyed in the process, scattering the bones interred there and thereby leaving the whereabouts of Leonardo's remains subject to dispute; a gardener may have even buried some in the corner of the courtyard.{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}}

In 1863, fine-arts ] ] received an imperial commission to excavate the site and discovered a partially complete skeleton with a bronze ring on one finger, white hair, and stone fragments bearing the inscriptions "EO", "AR", "DUS", and "VINC"{{snd}} interpreted as forming "Leonardus Vinci".<ref name="Florentine" />{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}}<ref name="Ouest">{{cite news |last=Montard |first=Nicolas |date=30 April 2019 |title=Léonard de Vinci est-il vraiment enterré au château d'Amboise? |trans-title=Is Leonardo da Vinci really buried at the Château d'Amboise? |work=] |language=fr |url=https://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/data/49693/reader/reader.html?t=1556639116403#!preferred/1/package/49693/pub/71961/page/4 |access-date=4 May 2019 |archive-date=30 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190430171845/https://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/data/49693/reader/reader.html?t=1556639116403#!preferred/1/package/49693/pub/71961/page/4 |url-status=live}}</ref> The skull's eight teeth correspond to someone of approximately the appropriate age, and a silver shield found near the bones depicts a beardless ], corresponding to the king's appearance during Leonardo's time in France.<ref name="Ouest" />

Houssaye postulated that the unusually large skull was an indicator of Leonardo's intelligence; author ] describes this as a "dubious ] deduction".{{sfn|Nicholl|2005|p=}} At the same time, Houssaye noted some issues with his observations, including that the feet were turned toward the ], a practice generally reserved for ], and that the skeleton of {{convert|1.73|m|ft}} seemed too short.<ref name="Ouest" />{{failed verification|talkpage=Talk:Leonardo da Vinci#Houssaye and 1.73 m/5.7ft inconsistency|date=February 2023}} Art historian ] wrote in 1874 that the height would be appropriate for Leonardo.{{sfn|Heaton|1874|p=|loc="The skeleton, which measured five feet eight inches, accords with the height of Leonardo da Vinci. The skull might have served for the model of the portrait Leonardo drew of himself in red chalk a few years before his death."}} The skull was allegedly presented to ] before being returned to the Château d'Amboise, where they were {{nowrap|re-interred}} in the chapel of Saint Hubert in 1874.<ref name="Ouest" /><ref name="telegraph">{{cite news |last=Knapton |first=Sarah |date=5 May 2016 |title=Leonardo da Vinci paintings analysed for DNA to solve grave mystery |work=] |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/05/05/leonardo-da-vinci-paintings-analysed-for-dna-to-solve-grave-myst/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220110/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/05/05/leonardo-da-vinci-paintings-analysed-for-dna-to-solve-grave-myst/ |archive-date=10 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=21 August 2017}}{{cbignore}}</ref> A plaque above the tomb states that its contents are only presumed to be those of Leonardo.{{sfn|Isaacson|2017|p=515}}

It has since been theorised that the folding of the skeleton's right arm over the head may correspond to the paralysis of Leonardo's right hand.<ref name="paralysis" /><ref name="neurology" /><ref name="Ouest" /> In 2016, it was announced that DNA tests would be conducted to determine whether the attribution is correct.<ref name="telegraph" /> The DNA of the remains will be compared to that of samples collected from Leonardo's work and his half-brother Domenico's descendants;<ref name="telegraph" /> it may also be ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Newman |first=Lily Hay |date=6 May 2016 |work=Slate Magazine |title=Researchers Are Planning to Sequence Leonardo da Vinci's 500-Year-Old Genome |url=https://slate.com/technology/2016/05/scientists-at-the-leonardo-project-want-to-sequence-da-vinci-s-genome.html |access-date=4 May 2019 |archive-date=7 March 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200307140612/https://slate.com/technology/2016/05/scientists-at-the-leonardo-project-want-to-sequence-da-vinci-s-genome.html |url-status=live}}</ref>

In 2019, documents were published revealing that Houssaye had kept the ring and a lock of hair. In 1925, his great-grandson sold these to an American collector. Sixty years later, another American acquired them, leading to their being displayed at the ] beginning on 2 May 2019, the 500th anniversary of the artist's death.<ref name="Florentine" /><ref>{{cite news |last1=Messia |first1=Hada |last2=Robinson |first2=Matthew |date=30 April 2019 |title=Leonardo da Vinci's 'hair' to undergo DNA testing |work=CNN |url=https://www.cnn.com/style/article/leonardo-da-vinci-hair-lock-intl-scli/index.html |access-date=3 May 2019 |archive-date=28 November 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191128121823/http://www.cnn.com/style/article/leonardo-da-vinci-hair-lock-intl-scli/index.html |url-status=live}}</ref>

== Notes ==
'''General'''
{{notelist}}

'''Dates of works'''
{{Reflist|group=d|colwidth=30em}}


== References == == References ==
=== Citations ===
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}
'''Early'''
{{Reflist|group="‡"|colwidth=20em}}


'''Modern'''
== Bibliography ==
{{Reflist|colwidth=20em}}
*{{cite book | author = Daniel Arasse| title = Leonardo da Vinci | publisher = Konecky & Konecky | year = 1997 | isbn = 1 56852 1987}}

*{{cite book | author = Michael Baxandall | title = Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy | year = 1974 | publisher = Oxford University Press | isbn = 0 19 881329 5}}
=== Works cited ===
*{{cite book | author = Fred Bérence | title = Léonard de Vinci, L'homme et son oeuvre | publisher = Somogy | year = 1965 | id = Dépot légal 4° trimestre 1965}}
==== Early ====
*{{cite book | author = Luciano Berti | title = The Uffizi | year = 1971 | publisher = Scala}}
{{refbegin}}
*{{cite book | author = Liana Bortolon| title = The Life and Times of Leonardo | publisher = Paul Hamlyn, London | year = 1967 | id = }}
* {{cite book |author=Anonimo Gaddiano |author-link=Anonimo Gaddiano |year=c. 1530 |title=Codice Magliabechiano |chapter=Leonardo da Vinci}} in {{cite book |year=2019 |title=Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists) |publisher=] |location=Los Angeles |isbn=978-1-60606-621-8 |pages=103–114}}
*{{cite book | author = Hugh Brigstoke| title = The Oxford Companion the Western Art | publisher = USA: Oxford University Press | year = 2001 | isbn = 0198662033}}
* {{cite book |last=Giovio |first=Paolo |author-link=Paolo Giovio |year=c. 1527 |title=Elogia virorum illustrium |chapter=The Life of Leonardo da Vinci}} in {{cite book |year=2019 |title=Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists) |publisher=] |location=Los Angeles |isbn=978-1-60606-621-8 |pages=103–114}}
*{{cite book | author = Gene A. Brucker| title = Renaissance Florence | publisher = Wiley and Sons| year = 1969 | isbn = 0 471 11370 0}}
* {{cite book |last=Vasari |first=Giorgio |author-link=Giorgio Vasari |year=1965 |orig-date=1568 |title=] |chapter=The Life of Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=Penguin Classics |translator=George Bull |isbn=978-0-14-044164-2}}
*{{cite book | author = Cennino Cennini | title = Il Libro Dell'arte O Trattato Della Pittui | publisher = BiblioBazaar | location = USA | year = 2009 |isbn = 9781103390328}}
* {{Cite book |last=Vasari |first=Giorgio|author-mask=2 |url=https://archive.org/details/livesofartists0000vasa_k5j0 |title=The Lives of the Artists |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1991|orig-date=1568 |isbn=0-19-283410-X |series=Oxford World's Classics |language=en|translator-last=Bondanella|translator-first=Peter|translator-last2=Bondanella|translator-first2=Julia Conway}}
*{{cite book | author = Angela Ottino della Chiesa| title = The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci | publisher = Penguin Classics of World Art series | year = 1967 | isbn = 0-14-00-8649-8}}
{{refend}}
*{{cite book | author = Simona Cremante | title = Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Scientist, Inventor | publisher = Giunti | year = 2005 | isbn = 88-09-03891-6 (hardback)}}

*{{cite book | author = Frederich Hartt| title = A History of Italian Renaissance Art | publisher = Thames and Hudson | year = 1970 | isbn = 0500231362}}
==== Modern ====
*{{cite book | author = Michael H. Hart | title = ] | publisher = Carol Publishing Group | year = 1992 | isbn = 0-8065-1350-0 (paperback)}}
'''Books'''
*{{cite book | author = Martin Kemp| title = Leonardo | publisher = Oxford University Press| year = 2004 | isbn = 0192806440}}
{{Refbegin|colwidth=30em}}
*{{cite book| author = Mario Lucertini, Ana Millan Gasca, Fernando Nicolo | title = Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems| work = | publisher = Birkhauser| year = 2004| isbn = 376436940X }}
* {{cite book |author-link=:fr:Daniel Arasse |author=Arasse, Daniel |year=1998 |title=Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=Konecky & Konecky |location=] |isbn=978-1-56852-198-5 |ref={{sfnRef|Arasse|1998}} }}
*{{cite book | author = John N. Lupia| title = The Secret Revealed: How to Look at Italian Renaissance Painting | publisher = Medieval and Renaissance Times, Vol. 1, no. 2 (Summer, 1994): 6–17 | id = ISSN 1075-2110 }}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Bambach |editor-first=Carmen C. |editor-link=Carmen C. Bambach |year=2003 |title=Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-300-09878-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QwQxDJMKRE4C |access-date=14 November 2020 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103327/https://books.google.com/books?id=QwQxDJMKRE4C |url-status=live}}
*{{cite book | author = Andrew Martindale| title = The Rise of the Artist | publisher = Thames and Hudson | year = 1972 | isbn = 0-5000-56006}}
*{{cite book | author = ] | title = Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power | publisher = University of Notre Dame Press | year = 1996 | isbn = 0-268-01433-7}} * {{cite book |last=Bambach |first=Carmen C. |author-link=Carmen C. Bambach |year=2019 |title=Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered |volume=1, The Making of an Artist: 1452–1500 |publisher=] |location=New Haven |isbn=978-0-300-19195-0}}
* {{cite book |last=Bortolon |first=Liana |year=1967 |title=The Life and Times of Leonardo |publisher=Paul Hamlyn |location=London}}
*{{cite book | author = ] | title = Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History | publisher = Simon & Schuster | year = 1998 | isbn = 0-452-28090-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Brown |first=David Alan |year=1998 |title=Leonardo Da Vinci: Origins of a Genius |publisher=] |location=New Haven |isbn=978-0-300-07246-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z34SeyFWV8oC |access-date=23 July 2020 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103327/https://books.google.com/books?id=z34SeyFWV8oC |url-status=live}}
*{{cite book | author = Charles D. O'Malley and J. B. de C. M. Sounders | title = Leonardo on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. With Translations, Emendations and a Biographical Introduction | publisher = Henry Schuman, New York | year = 1952 | id = }}
*{{cite book | author = Charles Nicholl | title = Leonardo da Vinci, The Flights of the Mind | publisher = Penguin | year = 2005 | isbn = 0-14-029681-6}} * {{cite book |last=Capra |first=Fritjof |year=2007 |author-link=Fritjof Capra |title=The Science of Leonardo |publisher=Doubleday |location=US |isbn=978-0-385-51390-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/scienceofleonard00capr |url-access=registration}}
*{{cite book | author = Sherwin B. Nuland| title = Leonardo Da Vinci | publisher = Phoenix Press | year = 2001 | isbn = 0-7538-1269}} * {{cite book |last=Clark |first=Kenneth |author-link=Kenneth Clark |year=1961 |title=Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=] |location=City of Westminster |oclc=187223}}
* {{cite book |last1=Gasca |first1=Ana Millàn |last2=Nicolò |first2=Fernando |last3=Lucertini |first3=Mario |year=2004 |title=Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems |publisher=Birkhauser |isbn=978-3-7643-6940-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/springer_10.1007-978-3-0348-7951-4 |url-access=registration}}
*{{cite book | author =A.E. Popham | title = The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci | publisher = Jonathan Cape | year = 1946 | isbn = 0 224 60462 7}}
*{{cite book | author =Shana Priwer & Cynthia Phillips | title = The Everything Da Vinci Book: Explore the Life and Times of the Ultimate Renaissance Man | publisher = Adams Media | year = 2006 | isbn = 1598691015}} * {{cite book |last=Hartt |first=Frederich |year=1970 |title=A History of Italian Renaissance Art |publisher=Thames and Hudson |isbn=978-0-500-23136-4}}
* {{cite book |last=Heaton |first=Mary Margaret |author-link=Mary Margaret Heaton |year=1874 |title=Leonardo Da Vinci and His Works: Consisting of a Life of Leonardo Da Vinci |publisher=] |location=New York |oclc=1706262 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fqUaAAAAYAAJ |access-date=26 September 2020 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103328/https://books.google.com/books?id=fqUaAAAAYAAJ |url-status=live}}
*{{cite book | author = Ilan Rachum| title = The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia'' | publisher = Octopus | year = 1979 | isbn = 0-7064-0857-8}}
* {{cite book |last=Isaacson |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Isaacson |year=2017 |title=Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-1-5011-3915-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vkA5DwAAQBAJ |access-date=23 July 2020 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103329/https://books.google.com/books?id=vkA5DwAAQBAJ |url-status=live}}
*{{cite book | author = ] | title = The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci | publisher = Dover | year = 1970 | isbn = 0-486-22572-0 and ISBN 0-486-22573-9 (paperback)}} 2 volumes. A reprint of .
* {{cite book |last=Kemp |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Kemp (art historian) |year=2006 |orig-date=1981 |title=Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man |publisher=] |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-920778-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oJwVDAAAQBAJ |access-date=23 July 2020 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103329/https://books.google.com/books?id=oJwVDAAAQBAJ |url-status=live}}
*{{cite book | author = Marco Rosci| title = Leonardo | publisher = Bay Books Pty Ltd| year = 1977 | isbn = 0858351765}}
*{{cite book | author = Paolo Rossi| title = The Birth of Modern Science | publisher = Blackwell Publishing| year = 2001 | isbn = 0631227113}} * {{cite book |last=Kemp |first=Martin |year=2011 |orig-date=2004 |title=Leonardo |edition=Revised |publisher=] |location=Oxford, England |isbn=978-0-19-280644-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Kemp |first1=Martin |last2=Pallanti |first2=Giuseppe |year=2017 |title=Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting |publisher=] |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-874990-5}}
*{{cite book | author = Bruno Santi | title = Leonardo da Vinci | publisher = Scala / Riverside | year = 1990}}
*{{cite book |author = Theophilus | title = On Divers Arts | publisher = University of Chicago Press | location=USA |year = 1963 | isbn = 9780226794822}} * {{cite book |last=Kemp |first=Martin |year=2019 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: The 100 Milestones |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4549-3042-6}}
*{{cite book | author = Jack Wasserman | title = Leonardo da Vinci | publisher = Abrams | year = 1975 | isbn = 0-8109-0262-1}} * {{cite book |last=Magnano |first=Milena |year=2007 |title=Leonardo |series=I geni dell'arte |location=Milano |publisher=Mondadori Arte |isbn=978-88-370-6432-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Marani |first=Pietro C. | author-link=Pietro C. Marani |year=2003 |orig-date=2000 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-8109-3581-5}}
*{{cite book | author = ]| title = Lives of the Artists'' | publisher = Penguin Classics, trans. George Bull 1965| year = 1568 | isbn = 0-14-044-164-6}}
*{{Cite book | first = Hugh Ross | last = Williamson | title = Lorenzo the Magnificent | year = 1974 | publisher = Michael Joseph | isbn = 07181 12040}} * {{cite book |last=Martindale |first=Andrew |year=1972 |title=The Rise of the Artist |publisher=Thames and Hudson |isbn=978-0-500-56006-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/riseofartistinmi0000mart |url-access=registration}}
*{{cite book | author = Emanuel Winternitz | title=Leonardo Da Vinci As a Musician | year=1982 | publisher=Yale University Press | location=USA | isbn=9780300026313}} * {{cite book |last=Nicholl |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Nicholl (author) |year=2005 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind |title-link=Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind |publisher=] |location=London |isbn=978-0-14-029681-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=O'Malley |first1=Charles D. |author-link=Charles D. O'Malley|last2=Saunders |first2=J.B. de C.M. |year=1952 |title=Leonardo on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. With Translations, Emendations and a Biographical Introduction |publisher=Henry Schuman |location=New York}}
*{{cite book | author = Alessandro Vezzosi | title = Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man | publisher = Thames & Hudson Ltd, London | year = 1997 (English translation) | isbn = 0-500-30081-X}}
* {{cite book |last=Ottino della Chiesa |first=Angela |year=1967 |title=The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci |translator-last=Jay |translator-first=Madeline |series=Classics of the World's Great Art |publisher=] |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/completepainting0000unse_v5k6}}
*{{cite book | author = Frank Zollner | title = Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings | publisher = Taschen | year = 2003 | isbn = 3-8228-1734-1 (hardback)}} .
* {{cite book |last=Pedretti |first=Carlo |author-link=Carlo Pedretti |year=1982 |title=Leonardo, a study in chronology and style |publisher=Johnson Reprint Corp |location=Cambridge |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=TgXMajWbVfcC}} |isbn=978-0-384-45281-7 }}
* {{cite book |last=Pedretti |first=Carlo |year=2006 |title=Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=Taj Books International |location=Surrey |isbn=978-1-84406-036-8}}
* {{cite book |last=Popham |first=A.E. |author-link=Arthur E. Popham |year=1946 |title=The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=Jonathan Cape |isbn=978-0-224-60462-8}}
* {{cite book |last=Richter |first=Jean Paul |author-link=Jean Paul Richter |year=1970 |title=The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=Dover |isbn=978-0-486-22572-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/notebooksofleona01leon |url-access=registration}} volume 2: {{ISBN|0-486-22573-9}}. A reprint of {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200728201301/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5000 |date=28 July 2020 }}
* {{cite book |last=Rosci |first=Marco |year=1977 |title=Leonardo |publisher=Bay Books Pty Ltd |isbn=978-0-85835-176-9}}
* {{cite book |last1=Syson |first1=Luke |last2=Keith |first2=Larry |last3=Galansino |first3=Arturo |last4=Mazzotta |first4=Antoni |last5=Nethersole |first5=Scott |last6=Rumberg |first6=Per |year=2011 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan |publisher=] |location=London |isbn=978-1-85709-491-6 |ref={{sfnRef|Syson ''et al.''|2011}} }}
* {{cite book |last=Turner |first=A. Richard |year=1993 |title=Inventing Leonardo |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-520-08938-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zlMZDSe21aAC |access-date=23 July 2020 |archive-date=23 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240323103833/https://books.google.com/books?id=zlMZDSe21aAC |url-status=live}}
* {{cite book |last=Vezzosi |first=Alessandro |author-link=Alessandro Vezzosi |translator-last=Bonfante-Warren |translator-first=Alexandra |year=1997 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man |title-link=Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance |series=']' series |publisher=] |location=London |edition=English translation |isbn=978-0-500-30081-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Wallace |first=Robert |year=1972 |orig-date=1966 |title=The World of Leonardo: 1452–1519 |publisher=Time-Life Books |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/worldofleonardo100wall}}
* {{cite book |last=Wasserman |first=Jack |year=1975 |title=Leonardo da Vinci |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-8109-0262-6}}
* {{cite book |last=Williamson |first=Hugh Ross |author-link=Hugh Ross Williamson |year=1974 |title=Lorenzo the Magnificent |publisher=Michael Joseph |isbn=978-0-7181-1204-2}}
* {{cite book |last=Zöllner |first=Frank |author-link=Frank Zöllner |year=2015 |title=Leonardo |edition=2nd |publisher=] |location=Cologne |isbn=978-3-8365-0215-3}}
* {{cite book |last=Zöllner |first=Frank |year=2019 |orig-date=2003 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings |edition=Anniversary |publisher=] |location=Cologne |isbn=978-3-8365-7625-3}}
{{refend}}

'''Journals and encyclopedia articles'''
{{Refbegin|colwidth=30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Brown |first=David Alan |date=1983 |title=Leonardo and the Idealized Portrait in Milan |journal=Arte Lombarda |volume=64 |issue=4 |pages=102–116 |jstor=43105426}} {{subscription required}}
* {{Cite EB1911|wstitle= Leonardo da Vinci | volume= 16 |last1= Colvin |first1= Sidney |author1-link= Sidney Colvin | pages = 444–454 |short=1}}
* {{cite book |last=Cremante |first=Simona |year=2005 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Scientist, Inventor |publisher=Giunti |isbn=978-88-09-03891-2}}
* {{cite book |last=Giacomelli |first=Raffaele |author-link=Raffaele Giacomelli |year=1936 |title=Gli scritti di Leonardo da Vinci sul volo |publisher=G. Bardi |location=Roma}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Heydenreich |first=Ludwig Heinrich |author-link=Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich |date=28 April 2020 |title=Leonardo da Vinci &#124; Biography, Art & Facts &#124; Britannica |encyclopedia=] |publisher=] |location=Chicago |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci |access-date=26 September 2020 |archive-date=25 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120225152720/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/336408/Leonardo-da-Vinci/59104/Science |url-status=live}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Kemp |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Kemp (art historian) |year=2003 |title=Leonardo da Vinci |encyclopedia=] |publisher=] |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T050401 |isbn=978-1-884446-05-4 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000050401 |access-date=23 July 2020 |archive-date=11 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210311022526/https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000050401 |url-status=live}} {{Grove Art subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Lupia |first=John N. |date=Summer 1994 |title=The Secret Revealed: How to Look at Italian Renaissance Painting |journal=Medieval and Renaissance Times |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=6–17 |issn=1075-2110}}
{{refend}}

== Further reading ==
See {{harvtxt|Kemp|2003}} and {{harvtxt|Bambach|2019|pp=442–579}} for extensive bibliographies
{{Library resources box |by=yes |onlinebooks=yes |others=yes |about=yes |label=Leonardo da Vinci }}
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Vanna |editor1-first=Arrighi |editor2-last=Bellinazzi |editor2-first=Anna |editor3-last=Villata |editor3-first=Edoardo |year=2005 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: la vera immagine: documenti e testimonianze sulla vita e sull'opera |trans-title=Leonardo da Vinci: the true image: documents and testimonies on life and work |language=Italian |publisher=] |location=Florence |isbn=978-88-09-04519-4}}
* {{cite book |last=Vecce |first=Carlo |author-link=Carlo Vecce |others=Foreword by ] |year=2006 |title=Leonardo |language=Italian |publisher=Salerno |location=Rome |isbn=978-88-8402-548-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Winternitz |first=Emanuel |year=1982 |title=Leonardo da Vinci As a Musician |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=978-0-300-02631-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/leonardodavincia0000wint |url-access=registration}}
* {{cite book |year=1983 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: anatomical drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-87099-362-6 |url=http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/84801/rec/2 |access-date=31 January 2013 |archive-date=15 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170715011701/http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/84801/rec/2 |url-status=live}}
{{refend}}


== External links == == External links ==
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Latest revision as of 00:21, 15 December 2024

Italian Renaissance polymath (1452–1519) "Da Vinci" redirects here. For other uses, see Da Vinci (disambiguation) and Leonardo da Vinci (disambiguation).

In this Renaissance Florentine name, the name da Vinci is an indicator of birthplace, not a family name; the person is properly referred to by the given name, Leonardo.

Leonardo da Vinci
This portrait attributed to Francesco Melzi, c. 1515–1518, is the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo.
BornLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
(1452-04-15)15 April 1452
(possibly Anchiano), Vinci, Republic of Florence
Died2 May 1519(1519-05-02) (aged 67)
Clos Lucé, Amboise, Kingdom of France
Resting placeChâteau d'Amboise
EducationStudio of Andrea del Verrocchio
Years activec. 1470–1519
Known for
  • Painting
  • drawing
  • engineering
  • anatomical studies
  • hydrology
  • botany
  • optics
  • geology
Notable work
MovementHigh Renaissance
FamilyDa Vinci family
Signature
Signature written in ink in a flowing script

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.

Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, he worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, all while attracting a large following of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have failed to incite interest and admiration, making him a frequent namesake and subject in culture.

Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance. Despite having many lost works and fewer than 25 attributed major works – including numerous unfinished works – he created some of the most influential paintings in the Western canon. The Mona Lisa is his best known work and is the world's most famous individual painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo, was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.

Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine, and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.

Biography

Early life (1452–1472)

Birth and background

Leonardo Da Vinci's baptism record

Leonardo da Vinci, properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ("Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci"), was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence. He was born out of wedlock to Piero da Vinci (Ser Piero da Vinci d'Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504), a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina di Meo Lippi (c. 1434–1494), from the lower class. It remains uncertain where Leonardo was born; the traditional account, from a local oral tradition recorded by the historian Emanuele Repetti, is that he was born in Anchiano, a country hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the illegitimate birth, though it is still possible he was born in a house in Florence that Ser Piero almost certainly had. Leonardo's parents both married separately the year after his birth. Caterina – who later appears in Leonardo's notes as only "Caterina" or "Catelina" – is usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca, who married the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed L'Accattabriga, 'the quarrelsome one'. Having been betrothed to her the previous year, Ser Piero married Albiera Amadori and after her death in 1464, went on to have three subsequent marriages. From all the marriages, Leonardo eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy) who were much younger than he (the last was born when Leonardo was 46 years old) and with whom he had very little contact.

Photo of a building of rough stone with small windows, surrounded by olive trees
The possible birthplace and childhood home of Leonardo in Anchiano, Vinci, Italy

Very little is known about Leonardo's childhood and much is shrouded in myth, partially because of his biography in the frequently apocryphal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) by 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari. Tax records indicate that by at least 1457 he lived in the household of his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, but it is possible that he spent the years before then in the care of his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi in the parish of San Pantaleone. He is thought to have been close to his uncle, Francesco da Vinci, but his father was probably in Florence most of the time. Ser Piero, who was the descendant of a long line of notaries, established an official residence in Florence by at least 1469 and had a successful career. Despite his family history, Leonardo only received a basic and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading, and mathematics; possibly because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his family decided to focus their attention there.

Later in life, Leonardo recorded his earliest memory, now in the Codex Atlanticus. While writing on the flight of birds, he recalled as an infant when a kite came to his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail; commentators still debate whether the anecdote was an actual memory or a fantasy.

Verrocchio's workshop

Painting showing Jesus, naked except for a loin-cloth, standing in a shallow stream in a rocky landscape, while to the right, John the Baptist, identifiable by the cross that he carries, tips water over Jesus' head. Two angels kneel at the left. Above Jesus are the hands of God, and a dove descending
The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475) by Verrocchio and Leonardo, Uffizi Gallery

In the mid-1460s, Leonardo's family moved to Florence, which at the time was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture. Around the age of 14, he became a garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. This was about the time of the death of Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor Donatello. Leonardo became an apprentice by the age of 17 and remained in training for seven years. Other famous painters apprenticed in the workshop or associated with it include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo was exposed to both theoretical training and a wide range of technical skills, including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and woodwork, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting, and modelling.

Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was. He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio or at the Platonic Academy of the Medici. Florence was ornamented by the works of artists such as Donatello's contemporaries Masaccio, whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion, and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective, and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Leon Battista Alberti's treatise De pictura were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.

Much of the painting in Verrocchio's workshop was done by his assistants. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ (c. 1472–1475), painting the young angel holding Jesus's robe with skill so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio purportedly put down his brush and never painted again (the latter claim probably being apocryphal). The new technique of oil paint was applied to areas of the mostly tempera work, including the landscape, the rocks seen through the brown mountain stream, and much of Jesus's figure, indicating Leonardo's hand. Additionally, Leonardo may have been a model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel.

Vasari tells a story of Leonardo as a very young man: a local peasant made himself a round buckler shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo, inspired by the story of Medusa, responded with a painting of a monster spitting fire that was so terrifying that his father bought a different shield to give to the peasant and sold Leonardo's to a Florentine art dealer for 100 ducats, who in turn sold it to the Duke of Milan.

First Florentine period (1472 – c. 1482)

Adoration of the Magi c. 1478–1482, Uffizi, Florence

By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate and live with him. Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a 1473 pen-and-ink drawing of the Arno valley (see below). According to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the first to suggest making the Arno river a navigable channel between Florence and Pisa.

In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio, an indication of his independence from Verrocchio's studio. An anonymous early biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and often worked in the garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence, where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers organised by the Medici met. In March 1481, he received a commission from the monks of San Donato in Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi. Neither of these initial commissions were completed, being abandoned when Leonardo went to offer his services to Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which described the diverse things that he could achieve in the fields of engineering and weapon design, and mentioned that he could paint. He brought with him a silver string instrument – either a lute or lyre – in the form of a horse's head.

With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neoplatonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator of Aristotle were the foremost. Also associated with the Platonic Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola. In 1482, Leonardo was sent as an ambassador by Lorenzo de' Medici to Ludovico il Moro, who ruled Milan between 1479 and 1499.

First Milanese period (c. 1482–1499)

Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1483–1493, Louvre version

Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to Hungary (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna. In 1490 he was called as a consultant, together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for the building site of the cathedral of Pavia and was struck by the equestrian statue of Regisole, of which he left a sketch. Leonardo was employed on many other projects for Sforza, such as preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions; a drawing of, and wooden model for, a competition to design the cupola for Milan Cathedral; and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Ludovico's predecessor Francesco Sforza. This would have surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the Gran Cavallo. Leonardo completed a model for the horse and made detailed plans for its casting, but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal to his brother-in-law to be used for a cannon to defend the city from Charles VIII of France.

Contemporary correspondence records that Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke of Milan to paint the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle, c. 1498. The project became a trompe-l'œil decoration that made the great hall appear to be a pergola created by the interwoven limbs of sixteen mulberry trees, whose canopy included an intricate labyrinth of leaves and knots on the ceiling.

Second Florentine period (1500–1508)

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, c. 1499–1508, National Gallery, London

When Ludovico Sforza was overthrown by France in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for Venice, accompanied by his assistant Salaì and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli. In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack. On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were going to a solemn festival."

In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan of Imola in order to win his patronage. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley, Tuscany, so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. He created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a dam from the sea to Florence, in order to allow a supply of water to sustain the canal during all seasons.

Leonardo had left Borgia's service and returned to Florence by early 1503, where he rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke on 18 October of that year. By this same month, Leonardo had begun working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the model for the Mona Lisa, which he would continue working on until his twilight years. In January 1504, he was part of a committee formed to recommend where Michelangelo's statue of David should be placed. He then spent two years in Florence designing and painting a mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria, with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina.

In 1506, Leonardo was summoned to Milan by Charles II d'Amboise, the acting French governor of the city. There, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count Francesco Melzi, the son of a Lombard aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student. The Council of Florence wished Leonardo to return promptly to finish The Battle of Anghiari, but he was given leave at the behest of Louis XII, who considered commissioning the artist to make some portraits. Leonardo may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of d'Amboise; a wax model survives and, if genuine, is the only extant example of Leonardo's sculpture. Leonardo was otherwise free to pursue his scientific interests. Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils either knew or worked with him in Milan, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, and Marco d'Oggiono. In 1507, Leonardo was in Florence sorting out a dispute with his brothers over the estate of his father, who had died in 1504.

Second Milanese period (1508–1513)

By 1508, Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.

In 1512, Leonardo was working on plans for an equestrian monument for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, but this was prevented by an invasion of a confederation of Swiss, Spanish and Venetian forces, which drove the French from Milan. Leonardo stayed in the city, spending several months in 1513 at the Medici's Vaprio d'Adda villa.

Rome and France (1513–1519)

An apocalyptic deluge drawn in black chalk by Leonardo near the end of his life (part of a series of 10, paired with written description in his notebooks)

In March 1513, Lorenzo de' Medici's son Giovanni assumed the papacy (as Leo X); Leonardo went to Rome that September, where he was received by the pope's brother Giuliano. From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere Courtyard in the Apostolic Palace, where Michelangelo and Raphael were both active. Leonardo was given an allowance of 33 ducats a month and, according to Vasari, decorated a lizard with scales dipped in quicksilver. The pope gave him a painting commission of unknown subject matter, but cancelled it when the artist set about developing a new kind of varnish. Leonardo became ill, in what may have been the first of multiple strokes leading to his death. He practised botany in the Vatican Gardens, and was commissioned to make plans for the Pope's proposed draining of the Pontine Marshes. He also dissected cadavers, making notes for a treatise on vocal cords; these he gave to an official in hopes of regaining the Pope's favour, but he was unsuccessful.

In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan. On 21 March 1516 Antonio Maria Pallavicini, the French ambassador to the Holy See, received a letter sent from Lyon a week previously by the royal advisor Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, containing the French king's instructions to assist Leonardo in his relocation to France and to inform the artist that the King was eagerly awaiting his arrival. Pallavicini was also asked to reassure Leonardo that he would be well received at court, both by the King and by his mother, Louise of Savoy. Leonardo entered Francis's service later that year, and was given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé near the King's residence at the royal Château d'Amboise. He was frequently visited by Francis, and drew plans for an immense castle town the King intended to erect at Romorantin. He also made a mechanical lion, which during a pageant walked towards the King and – upon being struck by a wand – opened its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.

Leonardo was accompanied during this time by his friend and apprentice Francesco Melzi, and was supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi. At some point, Melzi drew a portrait of Leonardo; the only others known from his lifetime were a sketch by an unknown assistant on the back of one of Leonardo's studies (c. 1517) and a drawing by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino depicting an elderly Leonardo with his right arm wrapped in clothing. The latter, in addition to the record of an October 1517 visit by Louis d'Aragon, confirms an account of Leonardo's right hand being paralytic when he was 65, which may indicate why he left works such as the Mona Lisa unfinished. He continued to work at some capacity until eventually becoming ill and bedridden for several months.

Death

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67, possibly of a stroke. Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari describes Leonardo as lamenting on his deathbed, full of repentance, that "he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should have done." Vasari states that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament. Vasari also records that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story may be legend rather than fact. In accordance with his will, sixty beggars carrying tapers followed Leonardo's casket. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving, as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo's other long-time pupil and companion, Salaì, and his servant Baptista de Vilanis, each received half of Leonardo's vineyards. His brothers received land, and his serving woman received a fur-lined cloak. On 12 August 1519, Leonardo's remains were interred in the Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin at the Château d'Amboise.

Some 20 years after Leonardo's death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini as saying: "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."

Drawing of the Château d'Amboise (c. 1518) attributed to Francesco Melzi

Salaì, or Il Salaino ("The Little Unclean One", i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo's household in 1490 as an assistant. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton," after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions and spent a fortune on clothes. Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence, and he remained in Leonardo's household for the next thirty years. Salaì executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him many things about painting," his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils, such as Marco d'Oggiono and Boltraffio.

At the time of his death in 1524, Salaì owned a painting referred to as Joconda in a posthumous inventory of his belongings; it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.

Personal life

Main article: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci
Saint John the Baptist c. 1507–1516, Louvre. Leonardo is thought to have used Salaì as the model.

Despite the thousands of pages Leonardo left in notebooks and manuscripts, he scarcely made reference to his personal life.

Within Leonardo's lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his "great physical beauty" and "infinite grace," as described by Vasari, as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect was his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and according to Vasari, a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.

Leonardo had many friends who are now notable either in their fields or for their historical significance, including mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he collaborated on the book Divina proportione in the 1490s. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters, Beatrice and Isabella. While on a journey that took him through Mantua, he drew a portrait of Isabella that appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud in his Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood. Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salaì and Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo's brothers of his death, described Leonardo's feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Walter Isaacson in his biography of Leonardo makes explicit his opinion that the relations with Salaì were intimate and homosexual.

Earlier in Leonardo's life, court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy in an incident involving a known male prostitute. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de' Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the dismissal. Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in Saint John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.

Paintings

See also: List of works by Leonardo da Vinci

Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his fame rested on his achievements as a painter. A handful of works that are either authenticated or attributed to him have been regarded as among the great masterpieces. These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities that have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. By the 1490s Leonardo had already been described as a "Divine" painter.

Among the qualities that make Leonardo's work unique are his innovative techniques for laying on the paint; his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology; his interest in physiognomy and the way humans register emotion in expression and gesture; his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition; and his use of subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks.

Early works

Annunciation c. 1472–1476, Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo's earliest extant and complete major work.

Leonardo first gained attention for his work on the Baptism of Christ, painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at Verrocchio's workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 centimetres (23 in) long and 14 cm (5.5 in) high. It is a "predella" to go at the base of a larger composition, a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm (85 in) long. In both Annunciations, Leonardo used a formal arrangement, like two well-known pictures by Fra Angelico of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with a rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now generally attributed to Leonardo.

In the smaller painting, Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God's will. Mary is not submissive, however, in the larger piece. The girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise. This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the Mother of God, not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting, the young Leonardo presents the humanist face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity's role in God's incarnation.

Paintings of the 1480s

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (unfinished) c. 1480–1490, Vatican

In the 1480s, Leonardo received two very important commissions and commenced another work that was of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Two of the three were never finished, and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment.

One of these paintings was Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, which Bortolon associates with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, as evidenced in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die." Although the painting is barely begun, the composition can be seen and is very unusual. Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo's anatomical studies. Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.

The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a complex composition, of about 250 x 250 centimetres. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined classical architecture that forms part of the background. In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de' Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro, and the painting was abandoned.

Lady with an Ermine, c. 1489–1491, Czartoryski Museum, Kraków, Poland

The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks, commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece. Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water. While the painting is quite large, about 200×120 centimetres, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of San Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished: one remained at the chapel of the Confraternity, while Leonardo took the other to France. The Brothers did not get their painting, however, nor the de Predis their payment, until the next century.

Leonardo's most remarkable portrait of this period is the Lady with an Ermine, presumed to be Cecilia Gallerani (c. 1483–1490), lover of Ludovico Sforza. The painting is characterised by the pose of the figure with the head turned at a very different angle to the torso, unusual at a date when many portraits were still rigidly in profile. The ermine plainly carries symbolic meaning, relating either to the sitter, or to Ludovico who belonged to the prestigious Order of the Ermine.

Paintings of the 1490s

The Last Supper, Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan (c. 1492–1498)

Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, commissioned for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. It represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death, and shows the moment when Jesus has just said "one of you will betray me", and the consternation that this statement caused.

The writer Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat and then not paint for three or four days at a time. This was beyond the comprehension of the prior of the convent, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.

The painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation, but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined." Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface subject to mould and to flaking. Despite this, the painting remains one of the most reproduced works of art; countless copies have been made in various mediums.

Toward the end of this period, in 1498 Leonardo's trompe-l'œil decoration of the Sala delle Asse was painted for the Duke of Milan in the Castello Sforzesco.

Paintings of the 1500s

In 1505, Leonardo was commissioned to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Leonardo devised a dynamic composition depicting four men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. Michelangelo was assigned the opposite wall to depict the Battle of Cascina. Leonardo's painting deteriorated rapidly and is now known from a copy by Rubens.

Mona Lisa or La Gioconda c. 1503–1516, Louvre, Paris

Among the works created by Leonardo in the 16th century is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or La Gioconda, the laughing one. In the present era, it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman's face, its mysterious quality perhaps due to the subtly shadowed corners of the mouth and eyes such that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called "sfumato", or Leonardo's smoke. Vasari wrote that the smile was "so pleasing that it seems more divine than human, and it was considered a wondrous thing that it was as lively as the smile of the living original."

Other characteristics of the painting are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details; the dramatic landscape background, in which the world seems to be in a state of flux; the subdued colouring; and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils laid on much like tempera, and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable. Vasari expressed that the painting's quality would make even "the most confident master ... despair and lose heart." The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is rare in a panel painting of this date.

In the painting Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape, which Wasserman describes as "breathtakingly beautiful" and harkens back to the Saint Jerome with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, Saint Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice. This painting, which was copied many times, influenced Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto, and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese.

Drawings

Antique Warrior in Profile, c. 1472. British Museum, London
Presumed self-portrait of Leonardo (c. 1510) at the Royal Library of Turin, Italy

Leonardo was a prolific draughtsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper. His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.

Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body; the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre; a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem; and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London. This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre.

Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that Leonardo would look for interesting faces in public to use as models for some of his work. There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salaì, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile". These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior. Salaì is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de' Medici, in the Pazzi conspiracy. In his notes, Leonardo recorded the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.

Like the two contemporary architects Donato Bramante (who designed the Belvedere Courtyard) and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.

Journals and notes

See also: List of works by Leonardo da Vinci § Manuscripts

Renaissance humanism recognised no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are sometimes considered as impressive and innovative as his artistic work. These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science). They were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him. Leonardo's notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.

A page showing Leonardo's study of a foetus in the womb (c. 1510), Royal Library, Windsor Castle

These notebooks – originally loose papers of different types and sizes – were largely entrusted to Leonardo's pupil and heir Francesco Melzi after the master's death. These were to be published, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo's idiosyncratic writing. Some of Leonardo's drawings were copied by an anonymous Milanese artist for a planned treatise on art c. 1570. After Melzi's death in 1570, the collection passed to his son, the lawyer Orazio, who initially took little interest in the journals. In 1587, a Melzi household tutor named Lelio Gavardi took 13 of the manuscripts to Pisa; there, the architect Giovanni Magenta reproached Gavardi for having taken the manuscripts illicitly and returned them to Orazio. Having many more such works in his possession, Orazio gifted the volumes to Magenta. News spread of these lost works of Leonardo's, and Orazio retrieved seven of the 13 manuscripts, which he then gave to Pompeo Leoni for publication in two volumes; one of these was the Codex Atlanticus. The other six works had been distributed to a few others. After Orazio's death, his heirs sold the rest of Leonardo's possessions, and thus began their dispersal.

Some works have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which holds the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, and the British Library in London, which has put a selection from the Codex Arundel (BL Arundel MS 263) online. Works have also been at Holkham Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the private hands of John Nicholas Brown I and Robert Lehman. The Codex Leicester is the only privately owned major scientific work of Leonardo; it is owned by Bill Gates and displayed once a year in different cities around the world.

Most of Leonardo's writings are in mirror-image cursive. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it was probably easier for him to write from right to left. Leonardo used a variety of shorthand and symbols, and states in his notes that he intended to prepare them for publication. In many cases a single topic is covered in detail in both words and pictures on a single sheet, together conveying information that would not be lost if the pages were published out of order. Why they were not published during Leonardo's lifetime is unknown.

Science and inventions

Main article: Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci
Rhombicuboctahedron as published in Pacioli's Divina proportione (1509)

Leonardo's approach to science was observational: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasise experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. His keen observations in many areas were noted, such as when he wrote "Il sole non si move." ("The Sun does not move.")

In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book Divina proportione, published in 1509. While living in Milan, he studied light from the summit of Monte Rosa. Scientific writings in his notebook on fossils have been considered as influential on early palaeontology.

The content of his journals suggest that he was planning a series of treatises on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on anatomy is said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis d'Aragon's secretary in 1517. Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by Melzi and eventually published as A Treatise on Painting in France and Italy in 1651 and Germany in 1724, with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicolas Poussin. According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into 62 editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art."

While Leonardo's experimentation followed scientific methods, a recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as a scientist by Fritjof Capra argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him in that, as a "Renaissance Man", his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting.

Anatomy and physiology

Anatomical study of the arm (c. 1510)Leonardo's physiological sketch of the human brain and skull (c. 1510)

Leonardo started his study in the anatomy of the human body under the apprenticeship of Verrocchio, who demanded that his students develop a deep knowledge of the subject. As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.

As a successful artist, Leonardo was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre, professor of Anatomy at the University of Pavia. Leonardo made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words toward a treatise on anatomy. Only a small amount of the material on anatomy was published in Leonardo's Treatise on painting. During the time that Melzi was ordering the material into chapters for publication, they were examined by a number of anatomists and artists, including Vasari, Cellini and Albrecht Dürer, who made a number of drawings from them.

Leonardo's anatomical drawings include many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, and of muscles and sinews. He studied the mechanical functions of the skeleton and the muscular forces that are applied to it in a manner that prefigured the modern science of biomechanics. He drew the heart and vascular system, the sex organs and other internal organs, making one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero. The drawings and notation are far ahead of their time, and if published would undoubtedly have made a major contribution to medical science.

Leonardo also closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness. Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.

Leonardo's dissections and documentation of muscles, nerves, and vessels helped to describe the physiology and mechanics of movement. He attempted to identify the source of 'emotions' and their expression. He found it difficult to incorporate the prevailing system and theories of bodily humours, but eventually he abandoned these physiological explanations of bodily functions. He made the observations that humours were not located in cerebral spaces or ventricles. He documented that the humours were not contained in the heart or the liver, and that it was the heart that defined the circulatory system. He was the first to define atherosclerosis and liver cirrhosis. He created models of the cerebral ventricles with the use of melted wax and constructed a glass aorta to observe the circulation of blood through the aortic valve by using water and grass seed to watch flow patterns.

Engineering and inventions

A design for a flying machine (c. 1488), first presented in the Codex on the Flight of BirdsAn aerial screw (c. 1489), suggestive of a helicopter, from the Codex Atlanticus

During his lifetime, Leonardo was also valued as an engineer. With the same rational and analytical approach that moved him to represent the human body and to investigate anatomy, Leonardo studied and designed many machines and devices. He drew their "anatomy" with unparalleled mastery, producing the first form of the modern technical drawing, including a perfected "exploded view" technique, to represent internal components. Those studies and projects collected in his codices fill more than 5,000 pages. In a letter of 1482 to the lord of Milan Ludovico il Moro, he wrote that he could create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled from Milan to Venice in 1499, he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. In 1502, he created a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno river, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked. He continued to contemplate the canalisation of Lombardy's plains while in Louis XII's company and of the Loire and its tributaries in the company of Francis I. Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, a mechanical knight, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.

Leonardo's drawings of a scythed chariot and a fighting vehicle

Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight for much of his life, producing many studies, including Codex on the Flight of Birds (c. 1505), as well as plans for several flying machines, such as a flapping ornithopter and a machine with a helical rotor. In a 2003 documentary by British television station Channel Four, titled Leonardo's Dream Machines, various designs by Leonardo, such as a parachute and a giant crossbow, were interpreted and constructed. Some of those designs proved successful, whilst others fared less well when tested. Similarly, a team of engineers built ten machines designed by Leonardo in the 2009 American television series Doing DaVinci, including a fighting vehicle and a self-propelled cart.

Research performed by Marc van den Broek revealed older prototypes for more than 100 inventions that are ascribed to Leonardo. Similarities between Leonardo's illustrations and drawings from the Middle Ages and from Ancient Greece and Rome, the Chinese and Persian Empires, and Egypt suggest that a large portion of Leonardo's inventions had been conceived before his lifetime. Leonardo's innovation was to combine different functions from existing drafts and set them into scenes that illustrated their utility. By reconstituting technical inventions he created something new.

In his notebooks, Leonardo first stated the 'laws' of sliding friction in 1493. His inspiration for investigating friction came about in part from his study of perpetual motion, which he correctly concluded was not possible. His results were never published and the friction laws were not rediscovered until 1699 by Guillaume Amontons, with whose name they are now usually associated. For this contribution, Leonardo was named as the first of the 23 "Men of Tribology" by Duncan Dowson.

Legacy

Further information: Cultural references to Leonardo da Vinci and List of things named after Leonardo da Vinci
Statue outside the Uffizi, Florence, by Luigi Pampaloni (1791–1847)

Although he had no formal academic training, many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the "Universal Genius" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination." He is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote." Scholars interpret his view of the world as being based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his time.

Leonardo's fame within his own lifetime was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Interest in Leonardo and his work has never diminished. Crowds still queue to see his best-known artworks, T-shirts still bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to hail him as a genius while speculating about his private life, as well as about what one so intelligent actually believed in.

The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano (The Courtier), wrote in 1528: "...Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled..." while the biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote, c. 1540: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf..." Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists (1568), opens his chapter on Leonardo:

In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.

The Death of Leonardo da Vinci, by Ingres, 1818

The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius..." This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."

By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo's notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."

Art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896:

Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values.

The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found. Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said:

Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge...Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe.

The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana is a special collection at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Leonardo Museum in Vinci, which houses a large collection of models constructed on the basis of Leonardo's drawings

Twenty-first-century author Walter Isaacson based much of his biography of Leonardo on thousands of notebook entries, studying the personal notes, sketches, budget notations, and musings of the man whom he considers the greatest of innovators. Isaacson was surprised to discover a "fun, joyous" side of Leonardo in addition to his limitless curiosity and creative genius.

On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, the Louvre in Paris arranged for the largest ever single exhibit of his work, called Leonardo, between November 2019 and February 2020. The exhibit includes over 100 paintings, drawings and notebooks. Eleven of the paintings that Leonardo completed in his lifetime were included. Five of these are owned by the Louvre, but the Mona Lisa was not included because it is in such great demand among general visitors to the Louvre; it remains on display in its gallery. Vitruvian Man, however, is on display following a legal battle with its owner, the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Salvator Mundi was also not included because its Saudi owner did not agree to lease the work.

The Mona Lisa, considered Leonardo's magnum opus, is often regarded as the most famous portrait ever made. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time, and Leonardo's Vitruvian Man drawing is also considered a cultural icon.

More than a decade of analysis of Leonardo's genetic genealogy, conducted by Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato, came to a conclusion in mid-2021. It was determined that the artist has 14 living male relatives. The work could also help determine the authenticity of remains thought to belong to Leonardo.

Location of remains

Tomb in the chapel of Saint Hubert at the Château d'Amboise where a plaque describes it as the presumed site of Leonardo's remains

While Leonardo was certainly buried in the collegiate church of Saint Florentin at the Château d'Amboise in 12 August 1519, the current location of his remains is unclear. Much of Château d'Amboise was damaged during the French Revolution, leading to the church's demolition in 1802. Some of the graves were destroyed in the process, scattering the bones interred there and thereby leaving the whereabouts of Leonardo's remains subject to dispute; a gardener may have even buried some in the corner of the courtyard.

In 1863, fine-arts inspector general Arsène Houssaye received an imperial commission to excavate the site and discovered a partially complete skeleton with a bronze ring on one finger, white hair, and stone fragments bearing the inscriptions "EO", "AR", "DUS", and "VINC" – interpreted as forming "Leonardus Vinci". The skull's eight teeth correspond to someone of approximately the appropriate age, and a silver shield found near the bones depicts a beardless Francis I, corresponding to the king's appearance during Leonardo's time in France.

Houssaye postulated that the unusually large skull was an indicator of Leonardo's intelligence; author Charles Nicholl describes this as a "dubious phrenological deduction". At the same time, Houssaye noted some issues with his observations, including that the feet were turned toward the high altar, a practice generally reserved for laymen, and that the skeleton of 1.73 metres (5.7 ft) seemed too short. Art historian Mary Margaret Heaton wrote in 1874 that the height would be appropriate for Leonardo. The skull was allegedly presented to Napoleon III before being returned to the Château d'Amboise, where they were re-interred in the chapel of Saint Hubert in 1874. A plaque above the tomb states that its contents are only presumed to be those of Leonardo.

It has since been theorised that the folding of the skeleton's right arm over the head may correspond to the paralysis of Leonardo's right hand. In 2016, it was announced that DNA tests would be conducted to determine whether the attribution is correct. The DNA of the remains will be compared to that of samples collected from Leonardo's work and his half-brother Domenico's descendants; it may also be sequenced.

In 2019, documents were published revealing that Houssaye had kept the ring and a lock of hair. In 1925, his great-grandson sold these to an American collector. Sixty years later, another American acquired them, leading to their being displayed at the Leonardo Museum in Vinci beginning on 2 May 2019, the 500th anniversary of the artist's death.

Notes

General

  1. ^ See Nicholl (2005, pp. 17–20) and Bambach (2019, p. 24) for further information on the dispute and uncertainty surrounding Leonardo's exact birthplace.
  2. ^ /ˌliːəˈnɑːrdoʊ də ˈvɪntʃi, ˌliːoʊˈ-, ˌleɪoʊˈ-/ LEE-ə-NAR-doh də VIN-chee, LEE-oh-, LAY-oh-; Italian: [leoˈnardo di ˌsɛr ˈpjɛːro da (v)ˈvintʃi] .
  3. The inclusion of the title ser (shortening of Italian messer or messere, title of courtesy prefixed to the first name) indicates that Leonardo's father was a gentleman (a low-ranking nobleman).
  4. The diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio relays a precise account: "There was born to me a grandson, son of Ser Piero [fr], on 15 April, a Saturday, at the third hour of the night." Ser Antonio records Leonardo being baptised the following day by Piero di Bartolomeo at the parish of Santa Croce [it].
  5. It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East "or at least, from the Mediterranean" or even of Chinese descent. According to art critic Alessandro Vezzosi, head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, there is evidence that Piero owned a slave called Caterina. The reconstruction of one of Leonardo's fingerprints shows a pattern that matches 60% of people of Middle Eastern origin, suggesting the possibility that Leonardo may have had Middle Eastern blood. The claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine: "You can't predict one person's race from these kinds of incidences, especially if looking at only one finger". More recently, historian Martin Kemp, after digging through overlooked archives and records in Italy, found evidence that Leonardo's mother was a young local woman identified as Caterina di Meo Lippi.
  6. See Kemp & Pallanti (2017, pp. 65–66) for detailed table on Ser Piero's marriages.
  7. He also never wrote about his father, except a passing note of his death in which he overstates his age by three years. Leonardo's siblings caused him difficulty after his father's death in a dispute over their inheritance.
  8. The humanist influence of Donatello's David can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly John the Baptist.
  9. The "diverse arts" and technical skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th-century text On Divers Arts by Theophilus Presbyter and in the early 15th-century text Il Libro Dell'arte O Trattato Della Pittui by Cennino Cennini.
  10. That Leonardo joined the guild by this time is deduced from the record of payment made to the Compagnia di San Luca in the company's register, Libro Rosso A, 1472–1520, Accademia di Belle Arti.
  11. On the back he wrote: "I, staying with Anthony, am happy," possibly in reference to his father.
  12. Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal, "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me."
  13. In 2005, the studio was rediscovered during the restoration of part of a building occupied for 100 years by the Department of Military Geography.
  14. Both works are lost. The entire composition of Michelangelo's painting is known from a copy by Aristotole da Sangallo, 1542. Leonardo's painting is known only from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate, is by Peter Paul Rubens.
  15. Pope Leo X is quoted as saying, "This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning!"
  16. There is no documentary basis for the frequently made claim that Leonardo was present at the meeting between Francis I and Leo X, which took place in Bologna from 11 to 14 December 1516.
  17. It is unknown for what occasion the mechanical lion was made, but it is believed to have greeted the King at his entry into Lyon and perhaps was used for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. A conjectural recreation of the lion has been made and is on display in the Museum of Bologna.
  18. Identified via its similarity to Leonardo's presumed self-portrait.
  19. "... Messer Lunardo Vinci [sic] ... an old graybeard of more than 70 years ... showed His Excellency three pictures ... from whom, since he was then subject to a certain paralysis of the right hand, one could not expect any more good work."
  20. This scene is portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, as well as Angelica Kauffman.
  21. ^ On the day of Leonardo's death, a royal edict was issued by the King at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a two-day journey from Clos Lucé. This has been taken as evidence that King Francis cannot have been present at Leonardo's deathbed, but the edict was not signed by the King.
  22. Each of the sixty paupers were to have been awarded in accord with Leonardo's will.
  23. These qualities of Leonardo's works are discussed in Hartt (1970, pp. 387–411)
  24. The painting, which in the 18th century belonged to Angelica Kauffman, was later cut up. The two main sections were found in a junk shop and cobbler's shop and were reunited. It is probable that outer parts of the composition are missing.
  25. This work is now in the collection of the Uffizi, Drawing No. 8P.
  26. The "Grecian profile" has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many Classical Greek statues.
  27. He also drew with his left hand, his hatch strokes "slanting down from left to right – the natural stroke of a left-handed artist". He also sometimes wrote conventionally with his right hand.
  28. Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo depicting Jesus holding an orb, sold for a world record US$450.3 million at a Christie's auction in New York, 15 November 2017. The highest known sale price for any artwork was previously US$300 million, for Willem de Kooning's Interchange, which was sold privately in September 2015. The highest price previously paid for a work of art at auction was for Pablo Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger, which sold for US$179.4 million in May 2015 at Christie's New York.

Dates of works

  1. The Adoration of the Magi
  2. Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre version)
  3. Saint John the Baptist
  4. The Annunciation
  5. Saint Jerome in the Wilderness
  6. Lady with an Ermine
  7. The Last Supper
  8. Mona Lisa

References

Citations

Early

  1. Vasari 1991, p. 287
  2. Vasari 1991, pp. 287–289
  3. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 293
  4. Vasari 1991, p. 297
  5. Vasari 1991, p. 284
  6. Vasari 1991, p. 286
  7. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 290
  8. Vasari 1991, pp. 289–291
  9. Vasari 1991, p. 294
  10. Vasari 1965, p. 266
  11. Vasari 1965, p. 255

Modern

  1. "A portrait of Leonardo c. 1515–18". Royal Collection Trust. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  2. ^ Zöllner 2019, p. 20.
  3. ^ Kemp 2003.
  4. ^ Heydenreich 2020.
  5. Zöllner 2019, p. 250.
  6. Kaplan, Erez (1996). "Roberto Guatelli's Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Adding Machine". Archived from the original on 29 May 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  7. Kaplan, E. (April 1997). "Anecdotes". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 19 (2): 62–69. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1997.586074. ISSN 1058-6180. Archived from the original on 11 July 2022. Retrieved 9 July 2022.
  8. Capra 2007, pp. 5–6.
  9. Brown 1998, p. 7.
  10. Kemp 2006, p. 1.
  11. ^ Brown 1998, p. 5.
  12. Nicholl 2005, p. 17.
  13. Vezzosi 1997, p. 13.
  14. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1967, p. 83.
  15. Nicholl 2005, p. 20.
  16. Bambach 2019, pp. 16, 24.
  17. ^ Marani 2003, p. 13.
  18. Bambach 2019, p. 16.
  19. Hooper, John (12 April 2008). "Da Vinci's mother was a slave, Italian study claims". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 December 2019. Retrieved 16 August 2015.
  20. Alberge, Dalya (21 May 2017). "Tuscan archives yield up secrets of Leonardo's mystery mother". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 May 2020. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  21. ^ Bambach 2019, p. 24.
  22. Nicholl 2005, p. 18.
  23. Kemp & Pallanti 2017, p. 65.
  24. ^ Kemp & Pallanti 2017, pp. 65–66.
  25. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 11.
  26. Magnano 2007, p. 138.
  27. Brown 1998, pp. 1, 5.
  28. Marani 2003, p. 12.
  29. Brown 1998, p. 175.
  30. Nicholl 2005, p. 28.
  31. Nicholl 2005, p. 30, 506.
  32. Nicholl 2005, p. 30. See p. 506 for the original Italian.
  33. ^ Rosci 1977, p. 13.
  34. ^ Hartt 1970, pp. 127–133.
  35. Bacci, Mina (1978) . The Great Artists: Da Vinci. Translated by Tanguy, J. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
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  38. Rosci 1977, p. 27.
  39. Martindale 1972.
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