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Leonardo
di ser Piero da Vinci, (April 15, 1452 – May
2, 1519) was an Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician,
engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor,
architect, botanist, musician 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. According to art historian Helen Gardner,
the scope and depth of his interests were without
precedent and "his mind and personality seem
to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".
Born 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 and spent 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 painting 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,
comprise a contribution to later generations of artists
only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity.
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.
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Leonardo da Vinci - Self portrait
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