Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 at Anchiano, near Vinci in the Republic of Florence¹. He died on 2 May 1519 at Cloux — now Clos-Lucé — in France¹. His parents were unmarried when he was born: his father, Ser Piero da Vinci, was a Florentine notary and landlord¹. His mother was possibly Caterina di Meo Lippi, a young peasant woman who may have been orphaned early¹. Though a few scholars have posited that she was an enslaved woman from Asia¹. He grew up on his father's family estate, treated there as a legitimate son, with an estimated 22 half-siblings¹.

His schooling was the elementary kind usual for the day — reading, writing and arithmetic¹. Latin came later and largely by his own effort, and higher mathematics only from about the age of thirty¹. He was left-handed, so mirror writing came easily and naturally to him¹. His script, unusual though it was, can be read clearly with a mirror — as his contemporaries testified — and should not be looked on as a secret handwriting¹.

When he was about fifteen, his father apprenticed him to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio¹. In that renowned workshop he received a multifaceted training in painting and sculpture as well as the technical-mechanical arts¹. He also worked in the next-door workshop of Antonio Pollaiuolo¹.

His talent — keenness of observation and creative imagination — was already apparent in the angel he contributed to Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (c. 1470–75)¹. Vasari narrates that Verrocchio was helped by a young pupil, Leonardo, who painted the angel on the left with such skill that he upset the older master². Current studies regard his interventions as more extensive, including the riparian landscape, the golden light and the figure of Christ².

In 1472 he was accepted into the painters' guild of Florence, stayed in his teacher's workshop for five more years, then worked independently in Florence until 1481¹. The Uffizi's Annunciation, considered a youthful work painted in Verrocchio's studio, dates to about 1472³¹. In the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci he broke with the customary profile pose to show the young woman in three-quarter view³¹. The unfinished St. Jerome shows his early interest in anatomy³¹. When he left for Milan in 1482 he had just received the Adoration of the Magi commission, and one for an altar painting in the St. Bernard Chapel that was never begun¹.

Leonardo moved to Milan in 1482 to work in the service of the city's duke — a surprising step for the thirty-year-old, who had just received the Adoration of the Magi commission¹. He was listed in the register of the duke's household as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis, 'painter and engineer of the duke'¹. He spent seventeen years in Milan, until Ludovico Sforza's fall from power in 1499¹. Court festivals, fortifications and hydraulics fell within his brief¹.

His most ambitious project was the equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, pursued over twelve interrupted years¹. A clay model was shown in 1493¹. Preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to stand 16 feet (5 metres) high¹. But because war was imminent the metal, ready to be poured, went to cannon instead, and the project came to a halt¹. The model did not survive¹.

The earliest painting he completed in Milan is probably The Virgin of the Rocks, an altarpiece for the church of San Francesco Grande begun about 1483¹. The project led to ten years of litigation with the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and to a second version of the work completed in 1508¹. He completed at least six paintings during the seventeen Milan years, among them the portraits now called Lady with an Ermine and La Belle Ferronnière¹.

The Last Supper was painted by Leonardo probably between 1495 and 1498 for the refectory of the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan⁴. Ludovico Sforza, his patron during the first Milanese stay, commissioned it⁴. The Sforza coats of arms appear with the family's initials on the lunettes above the mural⁴. The scene fixes the moment Jesus announces that one of the Apostles will betray him⁴. Jesus and Judas reach toward the same dish between them — an act that marks Judas as the betrayer⁴.

Leonardo bypassed true fresco, which requires painting quickly on fresh plaster, and tried instead an experimental technique of tempera or oil paint on two layers of dry preparatory ground⁴. The pigments were not permanently attached to the wall⁴. The painting began to flake within a few years⁴. The deterioration continued for centuries — the kitchen's steam and smoke, the refectory's candle soot, the dampness of the location⁴. A door cut through the wall in 1652 through the feet of Jesus, Napoleonic troops stabled horses in the refectory, and a nineteenth-century flood and mould followed⁴. During the Second World War an Allied bomb collapsed the roof and one wall, leaving the painting exposed to the elements for several months before the space was rebuilt⁴.

After centuries of maltreatment the mural underwent an extensive and controversial twenty-year restoration completed in 1999⁴. Restorers removed previous retouches, grime and varnish, and many critics argued that very little of Leonardo's original work was left⁴. The Cenacolo museum describes the masterpiece, shaped by its technique, its environment and its historical vicissitudes, as vulnerable and fragile⁵. Its staff care for it daily with a wide range of preventive actions⁵. Visitors are admitted in small groups, with fifteen minutes allotted for the viewing⁴.

Leonardo began the earliest of his notebooks during his first years in Milan, sketching his observations on loose sheets or on the tiny paper pads he kept in his belt¹. At various points he tried to arrange the notes by theme¹. Four themes were planned — painting, architecture, mechanics and anatomy¹. Drawing takes precedence over text in the manner of a dimostrazione¹. Throughout, the script runs in his left-handed mirror writing¹.

Because Leonardo never got around to publishing his scientific and artistic studies, his loyal student and friend Melzi inherited his estate¹. More than ten thousand closely written and abundantly illustrated pages, the most voluminous literary legacy any painter had ever left behind¹. About twenty-one codices have survived, contemporary sources mention forty, and thirty-two have been preserved in all once the later bindings are counted¹. After Melzi's death around 1570 the collection passed to the sculptor Pompeo Leoni⁶. He arranged the drawings loosely by subject and pasted them into the pages of at least two large albums⁶.

The Codex Atlanticus, the largest collection of Leonardo's writings and drawings, is preserved at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, catalogued at 1,200 folios⁹⁷. The Royal Collection holds around 550 of his drawings — the most important group in the world — kept in boxes at Windsor because light can damage them⁶. The so-called Madrid Codices were discovered in 1965 in the National Library of Madrid¹. The Codex Leicester, eighteen sheets folded into a 72-page document whose main parts originated between 1504 and 1508⁸. It was shown at the Uffizi from 30 October 2018 until 20 January 2019⁸. Melzi is believed to have compiled the Trattato della pittura before 1542¹¹⁰. It was first printed in 1651 and published complete only in 1817, while the anatomical drawings reached print in the late nineteenth century¹¹⁰. The Museo Galileo's leonardo//thek@ project put the Codex Atlanticus online in March 2023⁷. Its 2.0 version, due in 2026, adds the 600 Vincian sheets at Windsor — together one-third of the extant corpus⁷.

Leonardo's anatomical work belongs to two campaigns of research — around 1490, and between 1506 and 1513¹⁰. In them he investigated the nervous system, the internal organs, the bones and muscles, the structure and function of the heart, and the reproductive systems¹⁰. What began as training for an artist had grown by the 1490s into an independent area of research¹. The dissections themselves may have begun several years after he first moved to Milan, by then a centre of medical investigation¹. The vast majority of his studies of the heart were produced in Milan from 1508 to 1513, though he continued to work on them later in Rome¹¹.

Working in monastery hospitals and medical schools, he dissected perhaps thirty human corpses, and many more animals, recording the findings in hundreds of detailed drawings and thousands of words¹⁰. By his own count he dissected thirty corpses in his lifetime — in Milan, at hospitals in Florence and Rome, and in Pavia¹. There he collaborated with the physician-anatomist Marcantonio della Torre¹. That collaboration gave his studies a new dimension¹. He outlined a plan for a comprehensive work covering exact reproductions of the body, comparative anatomy and physiology, hoping to finish it in the winter of 1510–11¹. To explore the heart he injected warm wax into a bull's heart to examine the valves' forms, and built a glass model to study the hydraulics of the blood¹¹.

Had he published his researches, his intended treatise would have been the single most important work on anatomy ever written¹⁰. Perfectionism, difficulties reconciling observations with traditional beliefs, and bad luck prevented its completion¹⁰. During his lifetime the medical investigations remained private — he did not consider himself a professional in anatomy and neither taught nor published¹¹⁰. The drawings and translated notes reached print only in the late nineteenth century¹¹⁰. Today almost the complete set of the anatomical drawings and comments is owned by the British Crown and held in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle¹¹.

Leonardo began the portrait now known as the Mona Lisa about 1503, without doubt for the Florentine gentleman Francesco del Giocondo¹². His wife, Lisa Gherardini (1479–1542), is the sitter named in the Louvre's own catalogue¹². The painting was already begun by October 1503¹². A document in a Heidelberg library, discovered in 2005, preserves a handwritten note by Agostino Vespucci, a collaborator of Machiavelli, mentioning 'the head of Lisa del Giocondo'¹². Leonardo kept the portrait with him, its execution still unfinished at his death, and it was most probably acquired by Francis I in 1518¹².

He painted it on a thin poplar panel of about 79.4 by 53.4 centimetres, to show the sitter at natural scale¹². Over the years the wood warped slightly and cracked¹². An eleven-centimetre split descends from the top of the panel, crossing the scalp and stopping at the forehead¹². The softly sculptural face shows his handling of sfumato, a technique made possible by the relatively new oil paint in Italy¹³. Part of the royal collection before it became the property of the French people during the Revolution, the painting has belonged to the Louvre's collection since 1804¹³¹². The museum's catalogue gives an acquisition date of 1793¹³¹².

In 1911 the painting was stolen — by Vincenzo Peruggia, a glazier who had worked at the museum¹³. The theft caused an immediate media sensation¹³. People flocked to see the empty space, the museum's director of paintings resigned, and Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso were even arrested as suspects¹³. After its recovery in 1913 it became the Louvre's principal masterpiece and the most famous work in the world¹². During the Second World War it was singled out as the most endangered artwork in the Louvre and evacuated to the French countryside, returning in 1945¹³. Theories about the sitter — that she was Leonardo's mother, Caterina, or that the painting is a self-portrait — remain unproven¹³. Attempts to settle the debate by testing Lisa del Giocondo's DNA were inconclusive¹³.

Salvator Mundi (c. 1500) is the panel at the centre of modern attribution argument¹. Historians in the 21st century believe Leonardo likely contributed to it, and in 2017 it sold for a record-breaking $450.3 million at auction¹. The panel was marketed as a wholly Leonardo work, yet some scholars believe the master painted just a few passages, such as the blessing hand and the tendrils of hair¹. The sale overlooked its poor condition, which required extensive conservation¹. The episode attested to Leonardo's enduring celebrity — and to his powerful position in the canon of art history centuries after his death¹.

The role of most of his studio associates is unclear, which leads to the question of the so-called apocryphal works made with their collaboration¹. Scholars have been unable to agree in their attributions¹. The documented core is small¹. Only seventeen of the paintings that have survived can be definitely attributed to him, and several of them are unfinished¹.

The legend has a founding text: Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects¹⁵. Published in 1550, it became a standard work of art history with its famous attribution of superhuman qualities to Leonardo¹⁵. Vasari's sketch of his unique genius helped crystallize an evolving theory of exceptional human ability, later labelled 'universal genius', with da Vinci as its poster child¹⁵. Though the label itself, as JSTOR Daily notes, is not a term of precision¹⁵. Britannica's own account begins by calling Leonardo the figure whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal¹.

What the record supports is remarkable without exaggeration¹. The 'helical airscrew' he designed around 1487 almost seems a prototype for the modern helicopter¹. But it lacked an adequate source of power for propulsion and lift — nothing flew¹. He dissected perhaps thirty corpses and recorded what he saw in hundreds of drawings¹¹⁰. Yet he neither taught nor published his medical findings in his lifetime¹¹⁰. The anatomical drawings reached print only in the late nineteenth century¹¹⁰. And only seventeen of the surviving paintings can be definitely attributed to him¹.

In 1513 — with the French temporarily expelled from Milan — the sixty-year-old Leonardo moved to Rome¹. There his patron Giuliano de' Medici, brother of the new pope Leo X, gave him a suite of rooms in the Belvedere and a considerable monthly stipend¹. No large commissions followed¹. He worked on mathematical studies, technical experiments and surveys of ancient monuments, and his letters read as embittered¹.

Perhaps stifled by the Roman scene, at sixty-five he accepted King Francis I's invitation and left Italy forever at the end of 1516 with Melzi, his most devoted pupil¹. He spent his last three years at the small residence of Cloux, later called Clos-Lucé, near Amboise¹. He bore the title Premier peintre, architecte et méchanicien du Roi — 'First painter, architect, and engineer to the King'¹. The king treated him as an honoured guest, granting him freedom of action¹. He died at Cloux on 2 May 1519 and was buried in the palace church of Saint-Florentin, devastated in the French Revolution and torn down in the early nineteenth century¹. His grave can no longer be located¹. The manuscripts passed to Melzi¹. Seventeen attributed paintings survive him; and, as Britannica concludes, Leonardo's influence shows little sign of abating¹.