Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519), born at Anchiano near Vinci in the Republic of Florence to unmarried parents — his father Ser Piero a Florentine notary, his mother Caterina a young woman of debated identity — was apprenticed at about fifteen to Andrea del Verrocchio, painted the angel of the Baptism of Christ, and was admitted to Florence's painters' guild in 1472. From 1482 to 1500 he served the Sforza court in Milan as painter and engineer, where he painted the Last Supper (1495–98) — an experimental tempera-on-dry-wall work that began flaking within years and was coated with later retouches until a 20-year restoration completed in 1999. Back in Florence he began the Mona Lisa about 1503, kept it unfinished until his death, and worked on anatomy in two documented campaigns (c. 1490 and 1506–13), dissecting about thirty human corpses; the anatomical treatise was never published in his lifetime. He died at Cloux (Clos-Lucé) in France on 2 May 1519, leaving more than 10,000 notebook pages to Francesco Melzi; the sheets were later bound by Pompeo Leoni into the Codex Atlanticus (Ambrosiana, Milan) and the Windsor volumes (Royal Collection, c. 550 drawings), while the Codex Leicester toured the Uffizi in 2018–19. Only 17 of his surviving paintings can be definitely attributed to him, and the attribution of works such as Salvator Mundi — sold in 2017 for $450.3 million — remains contested.