Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most extraordinary figures of the Italian Renaissance. Born Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci on April 15, 1452, in or near Vinci, in Florentine territory, he became a painter, draftsman, engineer, anatomist, and investigator of nature. “Da Vinci” means “from Vinci.” Drawing united his many activities: it allowed him to study how things worked and make thought visible.
FLORENCE AND MILAN
Leonardo spent his early years around Vinci and was training in Andrea del Verrocchio’s Florentine workshop by the late 1460s. There he encountered painting, sculpture, metalwork, and collaborative studio practice. He entered Florence’s painters’ confraternity in 1472.
In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan and entered Ludovico Sforza’s service as painter, engineer, sculptor, and designer of court entertainments. For the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie he painted The Last Supper around 1495–98. Its gestures and expressions turn the apostles’ reaction to Christ’s announcement of betrayal into a drama of the “motions of the soul.” Painting on dry plaster rather than in true fresco allowed Leonardo to revise slowly, but also contributed to the mural’s rapid deterioration.
PAINTING AS A WAY OF KNOWING
Leonardo left few completed paintings, yet several changed art. The Mona Lisa, begun around 1503 and portraying Lisa Gherardini, is celebrated for its psychological presence and sfumato—thin glazes that soften contours into light and atmosphere. Leonardo worked on it over many years and took it to France.
The unfinished Adoration of the Magi reveals his composition developing directly on the panel. Leonardo left it behind when he moved to Milan in 1482. Many projects remained incomplete, but not simply because he lost interest: travel, political upheaval, changing commissions, technical experiments, and continual revision also interrupted his work.
Vitruvian Man joined an ancient theory of proportion with direct study of the human body. For Leonardo, art was inseparable from investigation: perspective, anatomy, light, water, movement, and emotion all belonged to the painter’s effort to understand visible reality.
NOTEBOOKS, MACHINES, AND MIRROR WRITING
Across thousands of notebook pages, Leonardo studied plants, animals, fossils, rivers, flight, optics, geometry, machines, and the human body. He tested inherited ideas through observation and experiment, though he did not escape every error of his age.
Leonardo usually wrote from right to left in mirror script. His left-handedness may have made this comfortable and reduced smearing, but the exact reason is unknown. He wrote normally for other readers, so it was not generally a secret code.
His engineering drawings include bridges, canals, fortifications, weapons, gears, and flying machines. Most remained studies rather than completed inventions, and modern working models often require substantial interpretation.
ANATOMY AND THE HEART
Leonardo dissected human and animal bodies and recorded bones, muscles, organs, pregnancy, and the heart with exceptional precision, although some drawings retained inherited errors. Using dissection and a glass model, he investigated how swirling blood closes the aortic valve. He understood the heart as a one-way pump and came close to circulation, but did not discover the circulatory system. Because the studies remained unpublished, they had little influence on medicine in his lifetime.
FRANCE AND LEGACY
Leonardo served patrons in Florence, Milan, and Rome and worked as an engineer and mapmaker for Cesare Borgia. In 1516 he accepted Francis I’s invitation to Clos Lucé near Amboise as the king’s “First Painter, Engineer and Architect.” He died there on May 2, 1519, aged sixty-seven.
Leonardo’s importance lies not in the legend that he invented every modern machine centuries early, but in his way of looking. He made drawing a form of thought—a means of testing how light falls, water moves, bodies live, and mechanisms transfer force. Art and inquiry were two parts of the same search.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Museo Leonardiano di Vinci — Biography: https://museoleonardiano.it/en/leonardo-in-vinci/biografia/
Metropolitan Museum of Art — Leonardo da Vinci: https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/leonardo-da-vinci-1452-1519
Louvre Museum — Mona Lisa: https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/from-the-mona-lisa-to-the-wedding-feast-at-cana
Museo del Cenacolo Vinciano — The Last Supper: https://cenacolovinciano.org/en/museum/the-works/the-last-supper-leonardo-da-vinci-1452-1519/
British Library — Codex Arundel: https://searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/040-002039546
Royal Collection Trust — Leonardo’s Anatomy: https://www.rct.uk/collection/stories/leonardo-in-the-royal-collection/leonardos-study-of-anatomy