Leonardo da Vinci

Biography

Illegitimate, barely schooled, and left-handed in an age that distrusted it, Leonardo apprenticed in Verrocchio's workshop and outshone his master. Painting was almost a sideline: his notebooks range across anatomy, flight, hydraulics and geology — a one-man Renaissance whose unfinished projects outnumber his completed paintings.

Italian Renaissance polymath whose painting, anatomy, engineering and invention notebooks spanned art and science.

Known for

The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

Notable works & defining projects

• Mona Lisa
• The Last Supper
• Vitruvian Man

Notable achievements

• Painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, two of the most famous artworks in history
• Produced pioneering anatomical studies from human dissections
• His notebook 'Codex Leicester' set a record price for a manuscript when sold in 1994

Timeline

1. 1482Left Florence for Milan, offering Ludovico Sforza skills as engineer and artist
2. 1498Completed The Last Supper in Milan
3. 1519Died at Clos Lucé in France, as the honoured guest of King Francis I

Did you know?

• He was left-handed and wrote his notebooks in mirror script, readable with a mirror
• He dissected human corpses at night to study anatomy, producing drawings centuries ahead of medical illustration