Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo was born in 1452 near the village of Vinci, close to Florence, the illegitimate son of the notary Piero da Vinci and Caterina, about whom little is known with certainty. His birth status excluded him from some formal professional paths, but did not remove him from local society: his father had connections and could arrange an artisanal education. Leonardo spent part of his childhood in his father's household and did not receive a university education.

As a teenager Leonardo became an apprentice in Andrea del Verrocchio's Florence workshop, where painting, sculpture, metalwork and technical skills were practised side by side. He was admitted to the Florentine painters' guild in 1472. The workshop provided practical training through observation and collaboration rather than an abstract academic curriculum. His later versatility grew from this urban craft culture and from access to patrons.

Leonardo worked as a painter, draughtsman, engineer and investigator in Florence, Milan, Rome and finally France. He studied anatomy, water, plants, light and movement by drawing and recording observations in notebooks. His method joined empirical observation to experiment and analogy, though it was not modern experimental science. He revised compositions over long periods and left some commissions unfinished, partly because of his wide-ranging interests.

His best-known paintings include The Last Supper in Milan and the Mona Lisa, on which he worked from around 1503. He investigated perspective, human expression and the transitions between light and shadow, including the soft sfumato technique. Much of his work was made for courts, churches or wealthy patrons; painting was therefore also part of patronage and political representation. His notes contain designs for machines, but many were never built or tested.

Leonardo designed canals, fortifications and devices and gave technical advice to rulers such as Ludovico Sforza. His anatomical studies included dissections of human bodies and comparisons with animals; legal and practical limits shaped this research. The notebooks, mostly written in mirror script, contain varied subjects rather than a systematic book. He thus combined artistic production with investigation without strictly separating these activities into the later academic disciplines.

Leonardo lived during the Italian Renaissance, a period of urban wealth, court culture and renewed interest in classical texts and visual art. Florence, Milan and other states competed for artists and engineers as expressions of prestige. The Italian political world remained fragmented and was shaped by war, dynastic politics and foreign intervention. Artistic production often depended on commissions from churches, guilds, rulers and wealthy families.

Humanist scholarship placed people, language and classical antiquity at its centre, while religion continued to shape everyday life and many artistic commissions. Print spread ideas more rapidly, but Leonardo worked mainly in manuscripts and workshops. Anatomy, mechanics and natural philosophy developed within traditions that combined observation with older authorities. His interest in nature reflected this changing world of knowledge, though his own work was only published to a limited extent during his lifetime.

Leonardo's commissions influenced the visual culture of the courts and cities where he worked, and his pupils and collaborators circulated aspects of his style. The Last Supper became an influential model for later religious painting, despite the fragile technique used to create it. His technical plans probably had few direct applications during his lifetime, so their importance lies chiefly in documenting his investigative imagination.

His anatomical drawings and observations were not published as a coherent scientific work and initially had limited influence on other practitioners. After his death, the notebooks were dispersed among collectors and parts were studied only much later. His paintings contributed to changing ideas of artistic identity, in which the artist was increasingly regarded as an intellectual creator rather than a craft worker. This shift was broader than one individual and was connected to patronage and urban culture.

Leonardo died in 1519 at Amboise in France, where he lived at the invitation of King Francis I. A later story says that he died in the king's arms, but this is not reliably confirmed. He was buried in the chapel of Saint-Hubert; the precise identification of his remains is uncertain. His legacy consisted of paintings, drawings, manuscripts and workshop materials, much of which became dispersed after his death.

The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are internationally known and have been the subjects of extensive technical and historical study. The image of Leonardo as a universal genius is partly a later construction: it highlights his real range but can obscure the roles of collaborators, patrons and unfinished projects. Historians distinguish his workable studies from speculative designs and ask what the notebooks can actually demonstrate. His legacy therefore calls for both recognition and context.