Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer.
1452 CE
to 1519 CE
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) is an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer.
Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention.
He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.
Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo is educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio.
Much of his earlier working life is spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan.
He later works in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spends his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter.
Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the euro 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.
Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivaled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity.
He conceptualizes a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlines a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.
Relatively few of his designs are constructed or are even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, enter the world of manufacturing unheralded.
As a scientist, he greatly advances the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.
