Leonardo da Vinci

Birth name--- Leonardo di Ser Piero

Born---April 15, 1452(1452-04-15)Vinci, Florence, in present-day Italy

Died

May 2, 1519 (aged 67)Amboise, Indre-et-Loire, in present-day France

Nationality

Italian

Field

Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences

Movement

High Renaissance

Works

Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath, having been a scientist, mathematician,

engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Born as

the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the

region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter,

Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan.

He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home

given to him by King François I.

Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose

seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled 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.

It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa

and The Last Supper, occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most

parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's

Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. 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, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only

rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

As an engineer, Leonardo's ideas were vastly ahead of his time. He conceptualised a helicopter, a

tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory

of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were 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, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.

As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil

engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.