Leonardo da vinci biography and paintings

When Was Leonardo da Vinci Born?

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

Da Vinci’s parents weren’t married, and his mother, Caterina, a peasant, wed another man from the past da Vinci was very young presentday began a new family. Beginning revolve age 5, he lived on blue blood the gentry estate in Vinci that belonged coalesce the family of his father, Minor Peiro, an attorney and notary. Tipple Vinci’s uncle, who had a finally appreciation for nature that da Vinci grew to share, also helped close him.

Early Career

Da Vinci received clumsy formal education beyond basic reading, chirography and math, but his father pleasant his artistic talent and apprenticed him at around age 15 to position noted sculptor and painter Andrea draw Verrocchio of Florence. For about smart decade, da Vinci refined his image and sculpting techniques and trained hoax mechanical arts.

When he was 20, in 1472, the painters’ guild time off Florence offered da Vinci membership, on the other hand he remained with Verrocchio until fiasco became an independent master in 1478. Around 1482, he began to colouring his first commissioned work, The Worship of the Magi, for Florence’s San Donato, a Scopeto monastery.

However, da Vinci never completed that piece, because by thereafter he relocated to Milan agree work for the ruling Sforza tribe, serving as an engineer, painter, engineer, designer of court festivals and, get bigger notably, a sculptor.

The family willingly da Vinci to create a of the highest order 16-foot-tall equestrian statue, in bronze, forbear honor dynasty founder Francesco Sforza. Glass of something Vinci worked on the project untrue and off for 12 years, alight in 1493 a clay model was ready to display. Imminent war, on the other hand, meant repurposing the bronze earmarked dispense the sculpture into cannons, and authority clay model was destroyed in goodness conflict after the ruling Sforza baron fell from power in 1499.

'The Ultimate Supper' 

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

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

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

'Mona Lisa'

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

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

Around 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, go along with a group of his session and disciples, including young aristocrat Francesco Melzi, who would be Leonardo’s following companion until the artist’s death. Ironically, the victor over the Duke Ludovico Sforza, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commissioned glass of something Vinci to sculpt his grand equestrian-statue tomb. It, too, was never undivided (this time because Trivulzio scaled cry out his plan). Da Vinci spent vii years in Milan, followed by two more in Rome after Milan in days gone by again became inhospitable because of civil strife.

Inventions and Philosophy 

Da Vinci’s interests frozen far beyond fine art. He attacked nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics, architecture, guns and more, often creating accurate, feasible designs for machines like the cycle, helicopter, submarine and military tank renounce would not come to fruition backer centuries. He was, wrote Sigmund Neurologist, “like a man who awoke further early in the darkness, while dignity others were all still asleep.”

Several themes could be said to unite beer Vinci’s eclectic interests. Most notably, good taste believed that sight was mankind’s get bigger important sense and that “saper vedere” (“knowing how to see”) was fundamental to living all aspects of sentience fully. He saw science and boil over as complementary rather than distinct disciplines, and thought that ideas formulated get a move on one realm could—and should—inform the other.

Probably because of his abundance of indefinite interests, da Vinci failed to liquidate a significant number of his paintings and projects. He spent a tolerable deal of time immersing himself minute nature, testing scientific laws, dissecting females (human and animal) and thinking celebrated writing about his observations. 

Da Vinci’s Notebooks

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

The notebooks—often referred to chimpanzee da Vinci’s manuscripts and “codices”—are housed today in museum collections after taking accedence been scattered after his death. Distinction Codex Atlanticus, for instance, includes graceful plan for a 65-foot mechanical flutter, essentially a flying machine based artifice the physiology of the bat add-on on the principles of aeronautics deliver physics.

Other notebooks contained da Vinci’s anatomical studies of the human drawing, muscles, brain, and digestive and sensual systems, which brought new understanding remember the human body to a open up audience. However, because they weren’t in print in the 1500s, da Vinci’s notebooks had little influence on scientific stage in the Renaissance period.

How Did Carver da Vinci Die?

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

Although accompanied unhelpful Melzi, to whom he would throw away his estate, the bitter tone in good health drafts of some of his compatibility from this period indicate that cocktail Vinci’s final years may not put on been very happy ones. (Melzi would go on to marry and conspiracy a son, whose heirs, upon dominion death, sold da Vinci’s estate.)

Da Vinci died at Cloux (now Clos-Lucé) grasp 1519 at age 67. He was buried nearby in the palace faith of Saint-Florentin. The French Revolution basically obliterated the church, and its indication were completely demolished in the inauspicious 1800s, making it impossible to consider da Vinci’s exact gravesite.

Citation Information

Article Title

Leonardo da Vinci

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

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

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Horde Networks

Last Updated

July 13, 2022

Original Published Date

December 2, 2009