best biographies of leonardo da vinci

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Nonfiction Books » Art » Art History

The best books on leonardo da vinci, recommended by martin kemp.

Mona Lisa. The People and the Painting by Martin Kemp

Every generation has its own Leonardo, and for many he remains a man of mystery. Martin Kemp , Emeritus Professor in Art History at Oxford and the author of Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, helps us identify the non-mythical Leonardo. What might Leonardo be doing were he alive today, in our own digital age?

Interview by Romas Viesulas

The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso by Dante Alighieri

Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation by E.H. Gombrich

Leonardo da Vinci: i documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee by Edoardo Villata

The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci by Jean Paul Richter

Leonardo da Vinci by Kenneth Clark

1 The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso by Dante Alighieri

2 art and illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation by e.h. gombrich, 3 leonardo da vinci: i documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee by edoardo villata, 4 the literary works of leonardo da vinci by jean paul richter, 5 leonardo da vinci by kenneth clark.

F irstly, congratulations on your Leonardo da Vinci book in collaboration with Giuseppe Pallanti. The press release announces boldly that we’re to learn the secrets at the heart of the world’s most iconic work of art. Of course, an air of mystery is perhaps fitting for a book with a subject like Leonardo da Vinci, whose life and work are suffused with myth and speculation. And yet, almost as a final punctuation in your closing paragraph, you state that “There is one Mona Lisa. It was painted by Leonardo. And it is in the Louvre ”. I love this passage! Which summarises so well the spirit of the book. The facts speak for themselves, and they lead us to some very grounded conclusions about the painting, and also about Leonardo.

There is also an important element of mystery which is embedded in the picture, that is to say the ultimate unknowingness of the beloved woman. There Leonardo’s technique induces a sense that we think we can see more than we can. We, then, as viewers, fill it in. There’s this genuine sense that he is leaving something intangible, ineffable, unsaid. So, there is a genuine element of mystery which he has contrived.

The fact that the Mona Lisa in some ways was the product of an unspectacular, almost mundane middle class Renaissance milieu, makes the cultural phenomenon of the painting that much more remarkable. This relatively humble soil was able to give root to this extraordinary flower. In reading the book, I found myself thinking that you could say something similar about Leonardo da Vinci himself.

The portrait is extraordinary because, at that time particularly, portraits were portraits. They were of interest inherently because of the value, status or public profile of the person who is being portrayed. So, to have this sort of painting of a bourgeois woman and for it to become famous almost immediately is extraordinary.

“There’s this genuine sense that he is leaving something intangible, ineffable, unsaid”

Let’s turn to the reading list for our discussion of a ‘non-mythical’ Leonardo. To set the stage, let’s begin with a compatriot of his. Why is Dante important for us to understand Leonardo’s art, and perhaps his scholarly and scientific work as well?

I think Dante  is of importance to Leonardo in two respects. One is a fairly obvious one in that he really set in train – not wholly individually but he gave a great impetus to – the standard Florentine poetic genre of the beloved lady. In his work, Beatrice is never really somebody he knows that well but she is idealised and sublimated into this extraordinary object of rarefied desire. He set in motion a tradition that goes through Petrarch and beyond, and one that was still thriving in the Leonardo courts.

As we know, poets wrote about Leonardo’s portraits using this language. So, that Dantesque figure of the beloved lady goes into a Leonardo portrait and then is extracted – as it were – by the poets who were writing about Leonardo. It’s not been noticed very much before but it is obvious to the close observer.

The other aspect to it is that Dante is the supreme poet-natural philosopher. We know about Dante’s imagination, we know his great storytelling abilities, but we tend to take into account rather less that in The Divine Comedy and in all his works – the Convivio (the Banquet) not least – there is an enormous amount of learning about objects, about physics, about the behaviour of things in the natural world and about light, above all. The Paradiso is about light. And also about the act of seeing.

Natural philosophy as a precursor to what we would regard as hard science ….That leads quite naturally to a discussion of E.H. Gombrich’s Art & Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation  (1960) where he discusses art as a sort of experimental process – an iterative and improvised pursuit – that seems to echo what you’ve described as Dante’s marrying of poetry and science : the transformation of knowledge into poetic vision.

Absolutely. Gombrich was kind of mentor of mine; I never studied with him but he was always immensely encouraging. There are a number of people who are pressing on with art-science agendas and who are interested – both historically and in contemporary terms – with issues of seeing and knowing, which lie behind Gombrich’s The Story of Art . It’s the fact that you don’t just see things and know what they are; you have to have a hypothetical framework, you have to have an interpretive framework, to get leverage on the world. That was very important. I trained as scientist so, in a sense, I knew about hypotheses but less about the philosophical underpinnings which meant that the standard notion of empiricism wouldn’t do the job, that you need schemata models, you need a framework that you can then modify heroically.

“You don’t just see things and know what they are; you have to have an interpretive framework, to get leverage on the world”

For Gombrich, Leonardo was the historical embodiment of that process. He was somebody who had this amazing stock of schemas inherited from the art which he knew but an extraordinary ability to work with the grit of observation and the imagination to see that the old wisdom needed challenging, both on grounds of empirical testing but also on grounds of theoretical constructions. In Gombrich’s “making and matching” formula, there’s the idea that you basically have a way of portraying things; if I wanted to paint a portrait of your face, I have a series of pictorial motifs that I can use and combine to do it. “Matching”, then, is the process which is non-obvious and much more difficult than people realise: to make your eye look like your eye, rather than the general eye which I know how to draw.

If you read Gombrich’s writings – The Story of Art not least but other essays of his as well – then Leonardo is like the light cavalry. When Gombrich gets into a difficult area of argument, then the Leonardo light cavalry come racing over the hill towards the enemy to win the argument.

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Importantly for me, Gombrich also gave a sanction for looking at non-art as being as profound as high art in terms of its potential analysis. He would put an advertisement for a rotary shaver beside Raphael’s Madonna della sedia because they’re both using rounds. That sounds trivial but he makes a lot of it. So, that ability to fashion a visual history rather than more restrictedly an art history is of immense importance, and is very much in the spirit of Leonardo’s endeavour.

If we consider the way that the framework is deployed to make sense of and accentuate the aesthetic qualities of our experienced environment, some would argue that this is what sets Leonardo apart from a long lineage of extremely talented and extremely visionary artists. Would you say that’s one reason why he’s had such lasting influence and importance?

I think he tries to embed in painting all the knowledge – this extraordinary wide ranging encyclopaedic knowledge which he gleans. He wants painting to be a recreation of the visual world on the basis of this encyclopaedic understanding. Ultimately, it’s an unrealisable dream. Even film and moving images can’t do everything. One of the difficulties he had with finishing paintings, is that the ultimate ambition to make the painting into a universal picture, to carry all this immense baggage of knowledge and fantasy, is in a way unrealisable. There’s a kind of unrealistic aspect to the agenda which is always recognisable with Leonardo.

“He wants painting to be a recreation of the visual world on the basis of this encyclopaedic understanding. Ultimately, it’s an unrealisable dream.”

Under Gombrich’s rubric, the culture informs artistic production. So we stand to learn a lot about Leonardo’s milieu in reading from primary sources. The books you’ve chosen are Jean Paul Richter’s  The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (1883) , and Edoardo Villata’s Leonardo da Vinci – i documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee (1999) . Why these two compendia specifically, when the Leonardo scholarship is so vast? Even the primary source material is sprawling, and not even all of Leonardo’s notebooks have survived.

I always emphasise primary sources. If you teach Leonardo, you are faced with this enormous amount of material. My Leonardo library is too big for my house; it’s in the research hall of the history faculty, and there are bigger libraries than that obviously in professional libraries. So, what do you do? The answer, for me, is go to the primary sources as your first port of call: get a sense of them, naturalise yourself in this extraordinary ability he has to cross boundaries, to move fluidly from the motion of hair to the motion of water and so on, and get a feel for that.

Obviously, you need to have an interpretive framework. Historians and accounts that one can recommend range from something like Kenneth Clark’s very beautiful biography which is about Leonardo as an artist – it doesn’t do more than that – to works which tackle different aspects of his intellectual legacy. What has tended to be missing, at least when I did my first synoptic book on Leonardo da Vinci, was a synthetic gathering together of all these things.

Are there particular segments or chapters or letters that provide a unique insight or summary understanding of who Leonardo was and what made him tick?

It is a tough one but let’s do three passages from the Richter book. One is the letter Leonardo wrote to Ludovico Sforza – Ludovico il Moro, the ruler of Milan – and he’s selling his services. This is a draft letter, it presumably went in a fairer copy to Ludovico, but he details all the military things he can do. He can build bridges for crossing moats and he can dig tunnels and he can construct weapons the sort of which are outside the common usage, as he puts it. It gives an idea of this slightly crazy ambition that he has.

At the end, he says by the way, also in sculpture and painting, I can do things as well as anyone else can and will be happy to do the equestrian memorial – the rider on the horse – for your father which I happen to know you want doing . That’s a flavour of the man who was insanely ambitious, very willing to promote himself and recognised he was special. But it’s endearing, this sheer enthusiasm of listing all the different things that he can do, as though he can’t get it out fast enough.

“What is the core of this person’s artistic personality? And how far is it common across all this enormous range of diverse pursuits?”

The second one would be something from the “Paragone” – the comparison between the arts. This was a set piece debate he indulged in at the court of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. It was a kind of courtly knockabout dispute between poets, musicians, sculptors, painters, and writers more generally. And he was very rude about poetry. It was a serious challenge: they were challenging for the attention of the duke, challenging for prestige in the court, and they were challenging for salaries. And Leonardo is determined to give poetry a tough time.

He parades these arguments – some of them really pretty tenuous – and ultimately comes down to the assertion that the ear is not as good as the eye. The eye is the great vehicle through which we see the world and it’s the primary sense. He then assigns a descriptive role to poetry and says that poetry cannot describe a battle as well as a painting can. Which if taken as a visual description, is undebatable. But is poetry really about visual description? So, that gives you a sense of Leonardo in a court: very brilliant, very agile, and willing to bend the evidence rather creatively in his direction and to his advantage.

The other passage would be one of the later writings ‘On the Eye’ from Manuscript D which is the in the Institute de France. I’m not going to give you a specific passage – they are quite a number of them – and the Richter volumes have very brilliant indices, so you can go and see where the Manuscript D Dell’occhio (‘On the Eye’) is. That is relatively well into his career, it is around 1507-1508, and he was to die in 1519. It deals with the complexities of seeing. There is geometry out there, and he is in thrall to geometry. Mathematics , but above all geometry, is the key to understanding the universe, much like Galileo said “the book of nature is written in mathematics”.

For Leonardo, it is written primarily in geometry. So, there’s enormous attention to working out the reflection, refraction, aerial perspectives of objects, and how the atmosphere works and so on. But he says, and this is relatively later in his life, that we have to understand how the eye works in how we see things. The eye, he observes, is optically a very complicated instrument. He doesn’t have a focussing lens which limits what he can accomplish with his explanation. Before Kepler in the early 17th century, there’s no sense of the lens as an active focussing device. So, he tries to work out how the components of the eye –  the humours as they were called: the aqueous humour, the liquid stuff, and the crystalline humour or more gelatinous stuff like the lens in particular – how these combine to create the optics to get an image.

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Most people would think of Leonardo principally as an artist – famous for the Mona Lisa amongst other works – but he seemed to have been quite scathing not only about poets but also his painterly rivals. While most praise was reserved for architects who, I suppose, were the civil scientists of the age. Your own research has been about the relationship between scientific visions of nature and how these are applied to art in practice. In the book  Leonardo da Vinci Kenneth Clark describes at length and in very graceful language Leonardo’s constant negotiation between science and symbolism. This monograph was first published in 1939. This is still a canonical work for you in Leonardo studies?

Yes. Leonardo da Vinci is a beautiful book. And Leonardo has been fortunate in some of the writers who have tackled him, like Walter Pater and like Théophile Gautier in France. He has attracted some fine pens to write about him. Kenneth Clark is up there with them. In terms of art history, Clark is rather sniffily regarded by academics. He’s been called Lord Clark of Civilisation because of his famous television series. He has also written Landscape into Art and The Nude which he saw as very much about the intellectual history of art. They’re regarded as popularising. Now, for me, communicating in a broader framework is terrific and to do it as well as Clark is wonderful. But there is a natural sniffiness amongst  academics when he rides roughshod over some beloved subtleties that they hold dear.

The book as a whole conveys wonderful shape to Leonardo’s art and life. And Clark is more right about aspects of his science and engineering than he has any right to be. He kept clear of the science, he didn’t really tackle it head on, yet via the art and via the drawings, he gets an enormous amount right about Leonardo’s scientific opus. There’s also his great catalogue, which he did before the monograph, of the drawings at Windsor Castle which holds the greatest set of Leonardo drawings. Most of the anatomical drawings for example are at Windsor.

If you look at what he says about them, even when he doesn’t really deal with the science, he gets things extraordinarily right by intuition. Clark had that instinctive penetration into how Leonardo worked even when he was short of detailed knowledge of the area that he was looking at. To me, that’s a testimony of a certain kind of intuitive insight; having got a toehold Leonardo’s art, he was able to make more of the rest of Leonardo’s work than he really should have been able to do.

At one point, he writes that “there is a Leonardo for every generation”. In Leonardo’s approach to science and art, and the interrelation of the two, could Leonardo’s oeuvre be seen as an antidote to some of the very reductionist thinking that characterises many disciplines, compartmentalisation in the academy, and even in the ways that our daily lives seem to have become hyper-specialised? Do we need to recover this Renaissance notion of the interconnectedness of human knowledge, be it scientific, aesthetic, or otherwise?

Absolutely, yes. He was a lateral thinker to a kind of pathological degree. He couldn’t be contained in an area without seeing its implications for other areas. But it has to be done on a different basis now. In Leonardo’s era, though you couldn’t know everything about everything, this universal knowledge – that is to say, understanding the rudiments of physics, optics, anatomy and so on – could potentially be understood to an effective level by someone with Leonardo’s ambitions. And he wasn’t the only person who aimed at universal understanding. Roger Bacon in the middle ages was the Doctor Mirabilis who aspired to universal wisdom.

A theory has been advanced that the last human to have known everything – to have grasped all knowledge – was Goethe . Since then, the production of knowledge has outstripped our ability to digest and retain it.

Yes, Goethe is a supreme manifestation of that ability to work across boundaries and, indeed, to make your understanding of one area stronger because you’ve really got a sense of what is analogous elsewhere. Hermann von Helmholtz, the nineteenth-century physicist and physiologist is rather good as well and rather underrated. We should at least be able to understand what is going on in other areas, even if we can’t be experts on them.

“Leonardo was a lateral thinker to a kind of pathological degree. He couldn’t be contained in an area without seeing its implications for other areas”

I reviewed a book on quantum mechanics for the Times Literary Supplement which, in a sense, is barmy but it was about the beauty of quantum mechanics. Could I teach students about quantum mechanics? Perhaps not in ways that would be conducive to work in the laboratory. However, I would argue that whatever the discipline, we should know the nature of the enterprise: what kind of thing is going on, what criteria are being used, and so on.

Above all, in terms of Leonardo’s search for universal knowledge, he relies upon a profound respect for the orders of nature and how nature works. He doesn’t see us as separate from that natural world. We are in our bodies. As a microcosm, we embody the nature of the wider world. We are locked into its imperatives, and into how nature works. If you’re a canal engineer and you’re trying to alter the flow of rivers, the way to do it is to work in a friendly and cooperative way with the nature of water, rather than trying to push it around.

Leonardo has a profound respect for the order of nature and the human being’s integral place in that. There is a big message here, which is embedded in that notion of trying to get a universal understanding of how nature works.

In an age where our access to and perception of the world is increasingly being mediated by silicon and glass and software, what place is there for a da Vincian method?

Since we did Leonardo show at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1989, I’ve been immensely interested in getting Leonardo to talk to computers, not just as a database but in thinking how can we effectively put computers in dialogue with Leonardo. If you look at Leonardo’s drawings, he clearly wanted them to move. There’s a clearly an inherent sense of animation. For our show at the V&A, I worked with a very brilliant animator called Steve Maher and we animated some of Leonardo’s drawings to tremendous effect. We found that some of his serial drawings – drawings of serial movement – just needed smoothing out; he got the key stages.

“If you look at Leonardo’s drawings, he clearly wanted them to move. There’s a clearly an inherent sense of animation”

For 2019, I’m talking further to Steve for the five hundredth anniversary of Leonardo’s death about doing a virtual reality reconstruction of aspects of Leonardo. Now, that doesn’t mean to say that he anticipated computer graphics or whatever, but it’s a question of what is inherent in his work and how it can be put into a dialogue with the new media, which he would have been completely sold on. This is not – I hope – an anachronistic enterprise. We are always looking back. We also have to be careful as historians that we’re not manipulating the historic Leonardo and coming up with something which is simply a mirror of our own time. But, provided we’re responsible about that dialogue, then I think it can be immensely stimulating and good public communication as well.

So, very much a Renaissance man for the digital age as well?

People often ask me what would Leonardo be doing if he were around at the moment? which is unanswerable in a way. I say he would certainly be in moving media. He would be doing something with images that move and with virtual reality. He would have been spectacularly impressed with that.

June 8, 2017

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Martin Kemp

Martin Kemp FBA is Emeritus Professor in the History of Art at Trinity College, Oxford University. One of the world's leading authorities on Leonardo da Vinci, he has published extensively on his life and work, including the prize-winning Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (2006) and Leonardo (2004), La Bella Principessa (2010), written with Pascal Cotte and, most recently, Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting , with Giuseppe Pallanti (2017).

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5 definitive books on Leonardo da Vinci

• Over 7,000 pages have survived of Leonardo da Vinci’s personal notebook collection.
• Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches, ruminations and theories make for a thrilling read.
• Many biographers have attempted to figure out what made da Vinci such a great artist.

Centuries have passed and yet we still sing the praises of the quintessential Renaissance man , Leonardo da Vinci. The historic figure, the legend and the man fits the bill for our reverence, intrigue and near worship at times. Da Vinci was an intelligent, creative and complicated figure. Within just the past century alone, a countless numbers of books have been written about him.

Those who wish to learn more about him and about the time period in which he flourished would do well to dive into these five select books on Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci’s Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man

The Vitruvian man is a world renown sketch found in one of Leonardo’s notebooks. The image is named after the famous Roman architect Vitruvius. While this image has been parodied a million times over and stamped on trinkets galore, the true genius and history of this piece eludes most people. Historian Toby Lester scours the historical record and recounts the many figures and forces that made this image a reality in 1490, when da Vinci first drew it.

The history is fascinating, as the roots of the picture go back to proto-Christian imagery in which the author finds compelling evidence that the Christ figure owes its prestige and presentation from how statesmen originally presented a godlike Augustus Caesar to the Roman populace. Vitruvius was an instrumental force in ancient times and would come to greatly influence Leonardo, as he also drew on ideas such as the microcosm and macrocosm.

Da Vinci’s Ghost is at once both an intimate personal story of da Vinci and a far-ranging historical tale which contextualizes his greatness and creative mind.

Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of his Childhood

In typical Freudian fashion, Sigmund Freud goes to work on his most famous attempt at a psychoanalytic biography. Reconstructing da Vinci’s early life from a few references in his journals, Freud argues the point that, from a psychoanalytic perspective, da Vinci’s greatness stemmed from sexual repression. No surprise there, considering this was Freud’s modus operandi.

“Observation of men’s daily lives shows us that most people succeed in directing very considerable portions of their sexual instinctual forces to their professional activity. The sexual instinct is particularly well fitted to make contributions of this kind since it is endowed with a capacity for sublimation.”

Freud wrote this book in 1910. Rather than putting this book off as outdated, there are a number of keen observations and thought-provoking ideas that Freud puts forth. Like the many biographers that came both before and after him, Freud is desperately searching to understand where Leonardo’s otherworldly artistry and genius stems from. Freud also concedes the point pretty heavily throughout the book that, in the end, these are just simply his own observations. This is by no means a definitive answer on the enigmatic figure da Vinci still evokes.

Leonardo’s Notebooks

What better place to learn about a man than from the words written in his own hand. These are the personal notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci – the books he poured the contents of his mind into, so that he could both be understood and understand himself. The authors have organized this remnant of his writing into a cohesive and categorical layout, so that you can glide from his thoughts on painting, sculpting and anatomy to his interests in philosophy, natural science and much more.

“The mind of a painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the color of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects are in front of it.”

These books give you the privilege to embark into the mind of the Renaissance master and experience something incredible. Nearly all of these pieces of writing are accompanied with some kind of artwork.

Professor Martin Kemp is considered to be the world’s leading expert on Leonardo da Vinci. This treatise offers us an incredible amount of insight on what made him such a great artist and scientist. Kemp goes on to explain in great detail the artistic merit within masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

The book is both a journey on the winding and disparate career path da Vinci would take throughout his life, his many dreams left undone and a who’s who of the cultural milieu of 15th century Florence and Italy. Kemp draws heavily from da Vinci’s notebooks to paint a full picture of the genius behind the creations.

Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind

Charles Nicholl’s book paints a rich picture of the Italian Renaissance worldview, one da Vinci existed in and shaped while he was alive. He expertly traces da Vinci’s birth as an illegitimate child in Tuscany to his infamous ties and time with the ruling families of Renaissance Europe.

Nicholl also manages to write an even-keeled portrait of da Vinci the man. He doesn’t spend too much time pouring his energy into psychological analysis or going deep into art interpretation. Utilizing his notebook entries, as many biographers before, he fleshes out a general day-to-day life of the master, which makes for an intimate portrayal of the man. While the mystery is still there, reading Nicholl’s work is a humbling admission into the daily minutiae of man who affects us all.

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Books about Leonardo da Vinci: my favorite ones

Leonardo da Vinci is an inspiration for people all over the world since 500 years . So many books were written about him, and many others were made publishing his notes, drawings and paintings. I am often asked what are my favorite or the best books about Leonardo da Vinci and which ones I would recommend. So I have put together the best titles about him that you can find around in English language .

Books about Leonardo da Vinci

I picked some biographies, some art and photo books and a couple of children’s books.

You can buy them on Amazon by clicking on the links in this post. Or ask them to your local bookshop !

Biographies about Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da vinci – by walter isaacson.

From the bestselling author and biographer Walter Isaacson, this book is an intimate and historically accurate portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. His childhood, family, passions and troubles come alive from the pages of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson .

No need to say that Isaacson knows how to turn people’s lives into fascinating adventures, but the life of Leonardo was really adventurous and interesting so there was no need to spice it up. It deserved to be told with every detail!

Oil and Marble – by Stephanie Storey

Oil and Marble by Stephanie Storey is a fictional biography, but the story really happened and the way that the author tells it is very plausible. The story revolves around the competition and rivalry between Leonardo and the younger Michelangelo, both busy painting the walls of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in 1503.

• Here you can find also the best books about Michelangelo !

Art and photography books

Complete paintings and drawings – taschen.

I love Taschen’s art books, so full of beautiful images, and the one on Leonardo is no exception. Complete Paintings and Drawings by Taschen it’s a book to leaf through often and to show to friends.

As the title says, it collects all the paintings and drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, thus offering a complete picture of the artistic work of the Renaissance genius.

Leonardo’s Notebooks

A collection of all the known papers that Leonardo wrote during his life. Hundreds of pages of his notes, jottings, sketches, doodles, and musings, including lists of books he read and even scraps of financial records.

Lenoardo’s notebooks doesn’t includes the drawings. You can find those in the Taschen’s volume mentioned above.

Leonardo da Vinci. The 100 Milestones. By Martin Kemp

Author Martin Kemp is a world renowned da Vinci expert . In this book he explores 100 of the master’s milestones in science, art, engineering, anatomy and architecture.

Leonardo da Vinci. The 100 Milestones is beautifully illustrated, and to me is definitely one of the best books about Leonardo da Vinci . Highly recommended!

Children’s books about Leonardo da Vinci

The story of leonardo da vinci: a biography book for new readers.

I love giving this book to children, they always enjoy it. This humorous biography has colorful illustrations, a lot of fun and less known facts , and it’s highly engaging.

Children will be surely inspired by The Story of Leonardo da Vinci – a biography for new readers , learning how he turned from a curious kid to a full grown genius.

Leonardo da Vinci. Extraordinary Machines – Pop-up book

Pop-up books are a perfect gift both for kids and for grown-up kids. The pages of this one brings up to tridimensional life some of the most extraordinary and futuristic machines that Leonardo designed, giving an insight on how they work. Leonardo da Vinci Extraordinary Machines pop-up book .

I hope that you found some useful reading tips here, I wish you happy reading!

Searching for more books? Here are some of the best books about the Medici of Florence !

If you want to know more about the Renaissance genius read also:

• Fun facts about Leonardo da Vinci
• Leonardo’s Flying machines
• Leonardo’s first painting
• What to do in Vinci

• books and movies
• What to do in Florence and Tuscany

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Leonardo da Vinci

Walter isaacson.

600 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2017

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”You must make the dead covered with dust, which is changed into crimson mire where it has mingled with the blood issuing in a stream from the corpse. The dying will be grinding their teeth, their eyeballs rolling heavenward as they beat their bodies with their fists and twist their limbs. Some might be shown disarmed and beaten down by the enemy, turning upon the foe to take an inhuman and bitter revenge with teeth and nails….Some maimed warrior may be seen fallen to the earth, covering himself with his shield, while the enemy, bending over him, tries to deal him a deadly blow.”

“There have been, of course, many other insatiable polymaths, and even the Renaissance produced other Renaissance Men. But none painted the Mona Lisa, much less did so at the same time as producing unsurpassed anatomy drawings based on multiple dissections, coming up with schemes to divert rivers, explaining the reflection of light from the earth to the moon, opening the still-beating heart of a butchered pig to show how ventricles work, designing musical instruments, choreographing pageants, using fossils to dispute the biblical account of the deluge, and then drawing the deluge. Leonardo was a genius, but more: he was the epitome of the universal mind, one who sought to understand all of creation, including how we fit into it.”

“This inability to ground his fantasies in reality has generally been regarded as one of Leonardo’s major failings. Yet in order to be a true visionary, one has to be willing to overreach and to fail some of the time. Innovation requires a reality distortion field. The things he envisioned for the future often came to pass, even if it took a few centuries. Scuba gear, flying machines, and helicopters now exist. Suction pumps now drain swamps. Along the route of the canal that Leonardo drew there is now a major highway.” ————— “His lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method developed more than a century later by Bacon and Galileo. His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the rest of us rarely pause to ponder after we’ve outgrown our wonder years.” ————— “In fact, Leonardo’s genius was a human one, wrought by his own will and ambition. It did not come from being the divine recipient, like Newton or Einstein, of a mind with so much processing power that we mere mortals cannot fathom it. Leonardo had almost no schooling and could barely read Latin or do long division. His genius was of the type we can understand, even take lessons from. It was based on skills we can aspire to improve in ourselves, such as curiosity and intense observation. He had an imagination so excitable that it flirted with the edges of fantasy, which is also something we can try to preserve in ourselves and indulge in our children.”

“But I did learn from Leonardo how a desire to marvel about the world that we encounter each day can make each moment of our lives richer.”

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Leonardo da Vinci

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 13, 2022 | Original: December 2, 2009

Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, engineer, architect, inventor, and student of all things scientific. His natural genius crossed so many disciplines that he epitomized the term “ Renaissance man.” Today he remains best known for two of his paintings, " Mona Lisa " and "The Last Supper." Largely self-educated, he filled dozens of secret notebooks with inventions, observations and theories about pursuits from aeronautics to human anatomy. His combination of intellect and imagination allowed him to create, at least on paper, such inventions as the bicycle, the helicopter and an airplane based on the physiology and flying ability of a bat.

When Was Leonardo da Vinci Born?

Da Vinci was born in Anchiano, Tuscany (now Italy), in 1452, close to the town of Vinci that provided the surname we associate with him today. In his own time he was known just as Leonardo or as “Il Florentine,” since he lived near Florence—and was famed as an artist, inventor and thinker.

Did you know? Leonardo da Vinci’s father, an attorney and notary, and his peasant mother were never married to one another, and Leonardo was the only child they had together. With other partners, they had a total of 17 other children, da Vinci’s half-siblings.

Da Vinci’s parents weren’t married, and his mother, Caterina, a peasant, wed another man while da Vinci was very young and began a new family. Beginning around age 5, he lived on the estate in Vinci that belonged to the family of his father, Ser Peiro, an attorney and notary. Da Vinci’s uncle, who had a particular appreciation for nature that da Vinci grew to share, also helped raise him.

Early Career

Da Vinci received no formal education beyond basic reading, writing and math, but his father appreciated his artistic talent and apprenticed him at around age 15 to the noted sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio of Florence. For about a decade, da Vinci refined his painting and sculpting techniques and trained in mechanical arts.

When he was 20, in 1472, the painters’ guild of Florence offered da Vinci membership, but he remained with Verrocchio until he became an independent master in 1478. Around 1482, he began to paint his first commissioned work, The Adoration of the Magi, for Florence’s San Donato, a Scopeto monastery.

However, da Vinci never completed that piece, because shortly thereafter he relocated to Milan to work for the ruling Sforza clan, serving as an engineer, painter, architect, designer of court festivals and, most notably, a sculptor.

The family asked da Vinci to create a magnificent 16-foot-tall equestrian statue, in bronze, to honor dynasty founder Francesco Sforza. Da Vinci worked on the project on and off for 12 years, and in 1493 a clay model was ready to display. Imminent war, however, meant repurposing the bronze earmarked for the sculpture into cannons, and the clay model was destroyed in the conflict after the ruling Sforza duke fell from power in 1499.

'The Last Supper' 

Although relatively few of da Vinci’s paintings and sculptures survive—in part because his total output was quite small—two of his extant works are among the world’s most well-known and admired paintings.

The first is da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” painted during his time in Milan, from about 1495 to 1498. A tempera and oil mural on plaster, “The Last Supper” was created for the refectory of the city’s Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Also known as “The Cenacle,” this work measures about 15 by 29 feet and is the artist’s only surviving fresco. It depicts the Passover dinner during which Jesus Christ addresses the Apostles and says, “One of you shall betray me.”

One of the painting’s stellar features is each Apostle’s distinct emotive expression and body language. Its composition, in which Jesus is centered among yet isolated from the Apostles, has influenced generations of painters.

'Mona Lisa'

When Milan was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family fled, da Vinci escaped as well, possibly first to Venice and then to Florence. There, he painted a series of portraits that included “La Gioconda,” a 21-by-31-inch work that’s best known today as “Mona Lisa.” Painted between approximately 1503 and 1506, the woman depicted—especially because of her mysterious slight smile—has been the subject of speculation for centuries.

In the past she was often thought to be Mona Lisa Gherardini, a courtesan, but current scholarship indicates that she was Lisa del Giocondo, wife of Florentine merchant Francisco del Giocondo. Today, the portrait—the only da Vinci portrait from this period that survives—is housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, where it attracts millions of visitors each year.

Around 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, along with a group of his students and disciples, including young aristocrat Francesco Melzi, who would be Leonardo’s closest companion until the artist’s death. Ironically, the victor over the Duke Ludovico Sforza, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commissioned da Vinci to sculpt his grand equestrian-statue tomb. It, too, was never completed (this time because Trivulzio scaled back his plan). Da Vinci spent seven years in Milan, followed by three more in Rome after Milan once again became inhospitable because of political strife.

Inventions and Philosophy 

Da Vinci’s interests ranged far beyond fine art. He studied nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics, architecture, weaponry and more, often creating accurate, workable designs for machines like the bicycle, helicopter, submarine and military tank that would not come to fruition for centuries. He was, wrote Sigmund Freud, “like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep.”

Several themes could be said to unite da Vinci’s eclectic interests. Most notably, he believed that sight was mankind’s most important sense and that “saper vedere” (“knowing how to see”) was crucial to living all aspects of life fully. He saw science and art as complementary rather than distinct disciplines, and thought that ideas formulated in one realm could—and should—inform the other.

Probably because of his abundance of diverse interests, da Vinci failed to complete a significant number of his paintings and projects. He spent a great deal of time immersing himself in nature, testing scientific laws, dissecting bodies (human and animal) and thinking and writing about his observations. 

Da Vinci’s Notebooks

At some point in the early 1490s, da Vinci began filling notebooks related to four broad themes—painting, architecture, mechanics and human anatomy—creating thousands of pages of neatly drawn illustrations and densely penned commentary, some of which (thanks to left-handed “mirror script”) was indecipherable to others.

The notebooks—often referred to as da Vinci’s manuscripts and “codices”—are housed today in museum collections after having been scattered after his death. The Codex Atlanticus, for instance, includes a plan for a 65-foot mechanical bat, essentially a flying machine based on the physiology of the bat and on the principles of aeronautics and physics.

Other notebooks contained da Vinci’s anatomical studies of the human skeleton, muscles, brain, and digestive and reproductive systems, which brought new understanding of the human body to a wider audience. However, because they weren’t published in the 1500s, da Vinci’s notebooks had little influence on scientific advancement in the Renaissance period.

How Did Leonardo da Vinci Die?

Da Vinci left Italy for good in 1516, when French ruler Francis I generously offered him the title of “Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King,” which afforded him the opportunity to paint and draw at his leisure while living in a country manor house, the Château of Cloux, near Amboise in France.

Although accompanied by Melzi, to whom he would leave his estate, the bitter tone in drafts of some of his correspondence from this period indicate that da Vinci’s final years may not have been very happy ones. (Melzi would go on to marry and have a son, whose heirs, upon his death, sold da Vinci’s estate.)

Da Vinci died at Cloux (now Clos-Lucé) in 1519 at age 67. He was buried nearby in the palace church of Saint-Florentin. The French Revolution nearly obliterated the church, and its remains were completely demolished in the early 1800s, making it impossible to identify da Vinci’s exact gravesite.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Leonardo da vinci (1452–1519).

A Bear Walking

• Leonardo da Vinci

The Head of a Woman in Profile Facing Left

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio

The Head of the Virgin in Three-Quarter View Facing Right

Allegory on the Fidelity of the Lizard (recto); Design for a Stage Setting (verso)

The Head of a Grotesque Man in Profile Facing Right

After Leonardo da Vinci

Head of a Man in Profile Facing to the Left

Compositional Sketches for the Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, with and without the Infant St. John the Baptist; Diagram of a Perspectival Projection (recto); Slight Doodles (verso)

Studies for Hercules Holding a Club Seen in Frontal View, Male Nude Unsheathing a Sword, and the Movements of Water (Recto); Study for Hercules Holding a Club Seen in Rear View (Verso)

Carmen Bambach Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2002

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. Trained in Florence as a painter and sculptor in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488), Leonardo is also celebrated for his scientific contributions. His curiosity and insatiable hunger for knowledge never left him. He was constantly observing, experimenting, and inventing, and drawing was, for him, a tool for recording his investigation of nature. Although completed works by Leonardo are few, he left a large body of drawings (almost 2,500) that record his ideas, most still gathered into notebooks. He was principally active in Florence (1472–ca. 1482, 1500–1508) and Milan (ca. 1482–99, 1508–13), but spent the last years of his life in Rome (1513–16) and France (1516/17–1519), where he died. His genius as an artist and inventor continues to inspire artists and scientists alike centuries after his death.

Drawings Outside of Italy, Leonardo’s work can be studied most readily in drawings. He recorded his constant flow of ideas for paintings on paper. In his Studies for the Nativity ( 17.142.1 ), he studied different poses and gestures of the mother and her infant , probably in preparation for the main panel in his famous altarpiece known as the Virgin of the Rocks (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Similarly, in a sheet of designs for a stage setting ( 17.142.2 ), prepared for a staging of a masque (or musical comedy) in Milan in 1496, he made notes on the actors’ positions on stage alongside his sketches, translating images and ideas from his imagination onto paper. Leonardo also drew what he observed from the world around him, including human anatomy , animal and plant life, the motion of water, and the flight of birds. He also investigated the mechanisms of machines used in his day, inventing many devices like a modern-day engineer. His drawing techniques range from rather rapid pen sketches, in The   Head of a Man in Profile Facing to The Left ( 10.45.1) , to carefully finished drawings in red and black chalks, as in The   Head of the Virgin ( 51.90 ). These works also demonstrate his fascination with physiognomy, and contrasts between youth and old age, beauty and ugliness.

The Last Supper (ca. 1492/94–1498) Leonardo’s Last Supper , on the end wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, is one of the most renowned paintings of the High Renaissance. Recently restored, The Last Supper had already begun to flake during the artist’s lifetime due to his failed attempt to paint on the walls in layers (not unlike the technique of tempera on panel), rather than in a true fresco technique . Even in its current state, it is a masterpiece of dramatic narrative and subtle pictorial illusionism.

Leonardo chose to capture the moment just after Christ tells his apostles that one of them will betray him, and at the institution of the Eucharist. The effect of his statement causes a visible response, in the form of a wave of emotion among the apostles. These reactions are quite specific to each apostle, expressing what Leonardo called the “motions of the mind.” Despite the dramatic reaction of the apostles, Leonardo imposes a sense of order on the scene. Christ’s head is at the center of the composition, framed by a halo-like architectural opening. His head is also the vanishing point toward which all lines of the perspectival projection of the architectural setting converge. The apostles are arranged around him in four groups of three united by their posture and gesture. Judas, who was traditionally placed on the opposite side of the table, is here set apart from the other apostles by his shadowed face.

Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–6 and later) Leonardo may also be credited with the most famous portrait of all time, that of Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and known as the Mona Lisa (Musée du Louvre, Paris). An aura of mystery surrounds this painting, which is veiled in a soft light, creating an atmosphere of enchantment. There are no hard lines or contours here (a technique of painting known as sfumato— fumo in Italian means “smoke”), only seamless transitions between light and dark. Perhaps the most striking feature of the painting is the sitter’s ambiguous half smile. She looks directly at the viewer, but her arms, torso, and head each twist subtly in a different direction, conveying an arrested sense of movement. Leonardo explores the possibilities of oil paint in the soft folds of the drapery, texture of skin, and contrasting light and dark (chiaroscuro). The deeply receding background, with its winding rivers and rock formations, is an example of Leonardo’s personal view of the natural world: one in which everything is liquid, in flux, and filled with movement and energy.

Bambach, Carmen. “Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/leon/hd_leon.htm (October 2002)

Further Reading

Bambach, Carmen C., ed. Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman . Exhibition catalogue.. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Additional Essays by Carmen Bambach

• Bambach, Carmen. “ Anatomy in the Renaissance .” (October 2002)
• Bambach, Carmen. “ Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function .” (October 2002)

Related Essays

• Anatomy in the Renaissance
• Architecture in Renaissance Italy
• Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe
• The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity
• Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function
• Antonello da Messina (ca. 1430–1479)
• Arms and Armor in Renaissance Europe
• The Crucifixion and Passion of Christ in Italian Painting
• Drawing in the Middle Ages
• Dutch and Flemish Artists in Rome, 1500–1600
• Early Netherlandish Painting
• Filippino Lippi (ca. 1457–1504)
• Northern Italian Renaissance Painting
• The Papacy and the Vatican Palace
• Patronage at the Later Valois Courts (1461–1589)
• Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641): Paintings
• Rembrandt (1606–1669): Paintings
• Sixteenth-Century Painting in Emilia-Romagna
• Sixteenth-Century Painting in Lombardy
• Sixteenth-Century Painting in Venice and the Veneto
• Unfinished Works in European Art, ca. 1500–1900
• Venetian Color and Florentine Design

List of Rulers

• List of Rulers of Europe
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1400–1600 A.D.
• Florence and Central Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• France, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Rome and Southern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Venice and Northern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• 15th Century A.D.
• Biblical Scene
• Central Italy
• High Renaissance
• The Last Supper
• Madonna and Child
• New Testament
• Religious Art
• Renaissance Art
• Scientific Instrument
• Virgin Mary
• Wall Painting

Artist or Maker

• Boltraffio, Giovanni Antonio
• Parmigianino

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian Renaissance artist, architect, engineer, and scientist. He is renowned for his ability to observe and capture nature, scientific phenomena, and human emotions in all media . Leonardo’s innovative masterpieces demonstrate a mastery of light, perspective, and overall effect. His most-loved works include the Mona Lisa portrait and The Last Supper mural.

Considered one of the greatest minds in history, Leonardo's approach to acquiring knowledge on everything from anatomy to mechanics involved understanding both the theory and practice of any given subject. In short, by combining the skills of the artisan with those of the scholar, Leonardo's vision demonstrated the benefits of a completely new approach to understanding the present world and just how to best create new and marvellous things for a future one.

Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 CE, the illegitimate son of a lawyer from the town of Vinci near Florence. A gifted child, especially in music and drawing, c. 1464 CE the young Leonardo was sent off to pursue a career as an artist and study as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (c. 1435-1488 CE). Other notable future artists then at the workshop included Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510 CE) and Pietro Perugino (c. 1450-1523 CE). Here Leonardo would have learnt to master sketching and painting techniques, as well as the latest trends like the use of classicising ornamental detail in paintings. One of the young Leonardo's first contributions to Renaissance art may have been the kneeling angel in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ painting (c. 1470 CE, Uffizi, Florence). Completing his apprenticeship in 1472 CE, Leonardo became a paid assistant to Verrocchio and was registered as a master in the painter's guild of Florence.

Other skills Leonardo perfected early on in his career included chiaroscuro (the contrasting use of light and shade) and sfumato (the transition of lighter into darker colours). The former technique is especially evident in his c. 1503 CE coloured charcoal illustration Virgin and Child with St. Anne (National Gallery, London) and its c. 1505 painted version (Louvre, Paris ). The technique of sfumato is well-illustrated in Leonardo's c. 1483 CE oil on panel painting Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre). Leonardo was also an innovator, though. His c. 1472 CE The Annunciation (Uffizi) illustrates the artist followed some Renaissance trends, for example, the classical details of Mary's book rest, but also ignored others such as his obvious rejection of symmetry in the background trees.

Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, art historian and contemporary of Leonardo's, gives in his mini-biography the following summary of the artist's personality:

He had a character which was very amiable, impressive and generous, and he had the most beautiful appearance. He was a splendid critic and inventor of all things elegant and delightful, especially in theatrical displays. He sang to his own accompaniment on the lyre , and he was on excellent footing with all the princes of his time. (Woods, 269)

Notes & Sketches

Leonardo was far from being restricted to art and his interests were wide indeed, encompassing just about all the physical world. He studied architecture , engineering, geometry, perspective, mechanics, and hydraulics to satisfy himself just how things worked and why they appeared as they do to the human eye. The natural world was not neglected with studies in anatomy, botany, zoology, and geology. Leonardo kept notebooks throughout his life in which he recorded the results of his investigations and his ideas for new inventions. Machines the artist conjured up include cranes, paddlewheel boats, tanks, cannons, apparatus to breathe underwater, and even flying contraptions. The only element many of these designs lacked was an internal combustion engine, not to be invented, of course, until centuries later. The notes in these books are often interspersed with sketches, many being miniature masterpieces in themselves. Perhaps the most famous of all these sketches is the Vitruvian Man drawing (see below).

In addition, Leonardo wrote down his thoughts on painting and his observation of effects seen in nature he considered useful to the artist. As the man himself said, "a painter is not admirable unless he is universal", although he was appreciative that mastery of any subject takes time and noted that impatience was the mother of stupidity (Hale, 183). These notes and treatises were no doubt useful in Leonardo's role as a tutor to young artists in his own workshop. A curiosity of them is that many are written as mirror script , that is in the reverse direction of normal handwriting.

Besides stacks of notebooks, Leonardo built up an impressive personal library which, by 1503 CE, contained 116 books covering such subjects as medieval and Renaissance medicine , religion , and mathematics. The collection included such seminal works as Natural History by Pliny, Geography by Ptolemy I and On Warfare by Roberto Valturio. Leonardo was interested in languages, too, particularly Latin, which he attempted to teach himself in order to read medieval manuscripts in their original form; long lists of Latin words can be found in his notebooks.

Leonardo's versatility is further illustrated in his employment by Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508 CE), the Duke of Milan. Leonardo had moved to the city in 1482 CE and he acted as the principal Sforza military and naval engineer, on the one hand, and master painter and sculptor, on the other. Leonardo also produced ingenious automata for Ludovico's festivals and these included moving planets with their namesake gods inside. The master turned his hand to a massive bronze equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza (1401-1466 CE), founder of that dynasty, but the project never got beyond the terracotta model stage - by no means the only work Leonardo never finished. Sketches survive showing the general form and Leonardo attempting to work out just how to make and transport the massive pieces of bronze for final assembly.

Leonardo painted Ludovico Sforza's mistress Cecilia Gallerani in his The Lady with an Ermine c. 1490 CE (National Museum Krakow, Poland). His greatest work in the 17 years he spent in Milan, though, was The Last Supper mural (see below). It was in this period, specifically the 1490s CE, that Leonardo pioneered the new medium of red chalk drawings on treated paper. The many surviving examples of these drawings include a famous self-portrait which shows the artist aged and long-bearded. The sketch is now in the Biblioteca Reale of Turin.

Further Travels & France

Leonardo visited Venice in 1500 CE. Around this time he painted his erotic version of the Leda and the Swan story from Greek mythology which is now lost, although sketches survive. In 1502 CE Leonardo worked in Rome where he was commissioned by the statesman Cesare Borgia (1475-1507 CE) to sort out the city's canals. He also mapped the city and surrounding regions, as well as planning improvements to harbours. One of his most celebrated maps is that of Imola which, made in 1502 CE, shows every structure from above on a precise scale, the first such map to be made. By 1503 CE Leonardo was back in Florence to work on proposals for a battle scene mural in the city's Council Hall. Leonardo's now lost 'cartoon' for the work showed the 1449 CE Battle of Anghiari between the armies of Florence and Milan. The early years of the 16th century CE also saw Leonardo complete a painting he had probably been working on sporadically, the Mona Lisa portrait (see below).

In 1517 CE Leonardo moved on to France, where his skills were appreciated by Francis I of France (r. 1515-1547 CE), a great patron of Renaissance artists and architects. Leonardo, specifically invited by the French king, may have been involved in the initial design stage for Francis' Chateau de Chambord on the Loire River, built from 1519 to 1547 CE. The chateau's ingenious double spiral staircase is frequently credited to Leonardo even if firm evidence is lacking.

Leonardo's final work of art was his c. 1515 CE painting St. John the Baptist (Louvre), although he seems to have focussed more on scientific enquiry in the latter stages of his life. Leonardo died at his French home, Chateau Cloux (aka Clos Lucé), on 2 May 1519 CE and he was entombed within the Chapel of Saint Hubert just next to the Chateau d'Amboise.

Reputation & Legacy

The sheer diversity of work left by Leonardo has astounded historians and critics ever since his death . As the Renaissance historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1887 CE) famously stated, "the colossal outlines of Leonardo's nature can never be more than dimly and distantly conceived" (104). Leonardo's artistic works were influential on fellow Renaissance artists because of their mastery of composition and light, the contrapposto posture of his figures (i.e. the asymmetry between the upper and lower body), and the sheer invention and variety of their compositions.

However, it is also true to say that some elements of Leonardo's works were so subtle and skilled that few artists had any hope of imitating them. Then, just as today, much of his art was greatly admired but not wholly understood by everyone. Nevertheless, those who could see did see. The master's work for the Battle of Anghiari, several copies of which were made, was influential on such gifted artists as Raphael (1483-1520 CE) who greatly admired the writhing mass of humanity seemingly captured at a moment frozen in time. This is but one example of the master's influence, just one product of what the mathematician and artists' frequent collaborator Luca Pacioli (c. 1447-1517 CE) already called "the divine left hand" (Campbell, 387). Leonardo's fame even reached as far as Constantinople where the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Bayezid II (r. 1481-1512 CE) invited him, without success, to his court.

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Leonardo's notebooks, not published until after 1570 CE, were influential both for their theories on painting and his diagrams on perspective but also on the pursuit of knowledge in general. Simply the way that Leonardo illustrated certain subjects (from an embryo to a cathedral), with his use of cross-section, perspective, scaled precision, and repeating the subject but from different viewpoints, would all influence draughtsmanship in architecture and the creation of diagrams in science ever after. Above all, Leonardo had shown that practice and theory could not and should not be separated. The great master demonstrated in his own person that a full knowledge of any subject required a combination of the skills of the artisan, the flair and imagination of the artist, and the meticulous research and reasoning of a scholar. Consequently, the approaches to a great many subjects, but especially art, architecture, engineering, and science, were fundamentally changed forever.

Masterpieces

The Mona Lisa ( La Gioconda in Italian) is an oil on wood panel portrait of an unidentified woman made by Leonardo between c. 1503 and 1506 CE. It measures 98 x 53 centimetres (38 x 21 inches), a relatively small size that often surprises modern viewers used to seeing this iconic image in larger reprints. The painting, rather than merely capturing the physical features of the sitter, attempts to capture the very mood and thoughts of the subject at a specific moment in time, what Leonardo called "the motions of the mind" (Campbell, 257). Other effects include the use of aerial perspective such as the recession of colour into the furthest background of a watery-looking landscape and the difference in gradation of colour from the top to the bottom of the painting.

The casual posture of the lady and the position of her hands forms, with the head as the top point, the classic triangle shape that many Renaissance artists were experimenting with in their paintings. Light and dark colours are used expertly to emphasise the oval face and soft hands of the lady while the contours of these combine convex and concave lines which create an illusion of supple movement. Finally, the three-quarter view of the lady creates another suggestion of movement as she seems to have just that moment turned to regard the viewer. That Leonardo is exclusively interested in presenting a view of a living-breathing individual in intimate contact with the viewer is further evidenced by the lack of any identifying title and the total lack of jewellery or other symbols of wealth which were typical of portraits up to that point. The work was immediately influential, inspiring artists like the young Raphael in his own portrait painting such as Maddalena Strozzi and Baldassare Castiglione . Leonardo must have been pleased with the Mona Lisa as he never parted with it during his lifetime and the picture is today one of the star attractions in the Louvre museum in Paris.

The Last Supper

The Last Supper ( Il Cenacolo in Italian) is a depiction of the final meal of Jesus Christ and his apostles which Leonardo painted on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a residence of the Dominican order in Milan. This was a traditional subject to decorate monastic refectories, and the work was very likely commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, whose arms appear at the top of the mural. The work was completed c. 1498 CE. The triumph of the mural is the variation in emotional reactions displayed by each of the apostles as they hear that one of them will soon betray Jesus .

Like any great work of art, The Last Supper has been subjected to all manner of interpretations. Some, for example, have seen Mary Magdalene in the figure who is intended to be the youthful St. John the Evangelist, sitting to the left of Jesus. Despite the intense interest in the peripheral figures and their meaning, the star of the scene is, of course, Jesus, who, presented as a central triangular form, is further brought to the viewer's attention by the precise perspective of the background which leads the eye irresistibly to the picture's very centre. The triangular motif is further repeated by the marked division in colour of Jesus's clothing and Leonardo organising the apostles into four distinct groups, each forming an approximate triangle with their collective bodies. Finally, amongst all the action and bustle of the gesticulating apostles, Jesus, with both hands on the table, is a vision of immobility, a calm and knowing centre in a storm of outrage and incomprehension.

The work was immediately and hugely influential thanks to an engraving of it made by Marcantonio Raimondi (1480-1534 CE) which was distributed far and wide to interested artists. Unfortunately, things went wrong within a decade after completion when the paintwork began to crumble away. This was because Leonardo had experimented with using oil paints and tempera on plaster in an undocumented technique instead of the familiar and much longer-lasting true fresco method. This dubious experimentation has challenged restorers of The Last Supper ever since. The mural also suffered in more recent times. First, a doorway was inexplicably made in the wall which intrudes into the bottom of the mural. Then, during the Second World War , the building was fire-bombed. Fortunately, the mural had been protected by a wall of sandbags and survived the bombing but it was exposed to the weather until adequate building repairs were made. A comprehensive restoration programme was conducted in the early 21st century CE, and it can be visited by the public, although numbers are limited and pre-booking is obligatory.

Vitruvian Man

Although not a finished work of art (or ever intended to be), Leonardo's pen and ink on paper sketch known as the Vitruvian Man has become so famous that it is one of the images most associated with his name. Measuring 34 x 25 centimetres (13.5 x 10 inches), it was drawn c. 1492 CE and is now in the Academia Gallery in Venice. The name of the work derives from Vitruvius (c. 90 - c. 20 BCE), the Roman architect who famously wrote De Architectura ( On Architecture ), an influential treatise which combines the history of ancient architecture and engineering with the author's personal experience and advice on the subject.

Vitruvius' work was popular during the Renaissance when artists were re-examining the classical world for ideas and inspiration. In one particular passage, Vitruvius recommends that correct architectural proportions should be derived from a study of the proportions of the human body. The passage describes a human body within a circle and a square. Several Renaissance artists and architects, attracted by the idea that there was some mysterious and perhaps even divine relationship between mathematics, the human body, and beauty, attempted to draw what Vitruvius had only described in words. Leonardo's Vitruvian Man is one such attempt. The man's naval is the centre of the circle and his fingertips and feet touch its circumference. A second male figure, superimposed on the other, is set within a square. The sketch is perhaps a metaphor for humanity's position at the centre of an ordered universe, and as such it has become a defining symbol of the Renaissance and the ongoing enquiry into the exact relation between religion, science, and art.

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Bibliography

• Anderson, Christy. Renaissance Architecture. Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Sagwan Press, 2015.
• Campbell, Gordon. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Hale, J.R. (ed). The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of the Italian Renaissance by J. R. Hale. Thames & Hudson, 2020.
• Paoletti, John T. & Radke, Gary M. Art in Renaissance Italy. Pearson, 2011.
• Rundle, David. The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Hodder Arnold, 2000.
• Welch, Evelyn. Art in Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Woods, Kim W. Making Renaissance Art. Yale University Press, 2007.
• Wyatt, Michael. The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

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• World Biography

Leonardo da Vinci Biography

Born: April 15, 1452 Vinci, Italy Died: May 2, 1519 Amboise, France Italian artist, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. He was one of the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance, and his influence on painting was enormous to the following generations.

Early years

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, near the village of Vinci about 25 miles west of Florence. He was the illegitimate (born to unmarried parents) son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a prominent notary (a public official who certifies legal documents) of Florence, and a local woman, Caterina. Not much is known about Leonardo's childhood except that when he was fifteen, his father apprenticed him to Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488), the leading artist of Florence and the early Renaissance.

Verrocchio, a sculptor, painter, and goldsmith, was a remarkable craftsman. He had great concern for the quality of execution in expressing the vitality of the human figure. These elements were important in the formation of Leonardo's artistic style. It should be noted that much in Leonardo's approach to art originated from using tradition, rather than rebelling against it.

Assistant in Verrocchio's workshop

Leonardo, after completing his apprenticeship, stayed on as an assistant in Verrocchio's shop. His earliest known painting is in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (c. 1475). Leonardo executed one of the two angels as well as the distant landscape, and he added the final touches to the figure of Christ, determining the texture of the flesh.

Collaboration on a major project by a master and his assistant was standard procedure in the Italian Renaissance. What is special is that Leonardo's work is not a slightly less skilled version of Verrocchio's manner of painting, but an original approach which changed the surface effects from hard to soft, making the edges less cutting, and increasing the slight changes of light and shade.

Independent master in Florence

About 1478 Leonardo set up his own studio. In 1481 he received a major church commission for an altarpiece, the Adoration of the Magi. In this unfinished painting, Leonardo's new approach is far more developed. A crowd of spectators, with varied faces, looks at the main group of the Virgin and Child. There is a strong sense of continuing movement. Leonardo placed the Virgin and Child in the center. Traditionally in paintings of this theme they had appeared at one side of the picture, approached by the kings from the other side.

Earlier Renaissance artists had applied the rules of linear perspective, by which objects appear smaller in proportion as they are farther away from the eye of the spectator. Leonardo joined this principle to two others: perspective of clarity (distant objects are less distinct) and perspective of color (distant objects are more muted in color). He wrote about both of these principles in his notebooks.

The Magi alterpiece was left unfinished because Leonardo left Florence in 1482 to accept the post of court artist to the Duke of Milan. In leaving, Leonardo followed a trend set by masters of the older generation who went to Venice and Rome to execute commissions larger than any available in their native Florence.

Milan (1482–1499)

Leonardo presented himself to the Duke of Milan as skilled in many crafts, but particularly in military engineering. He also produced remarkable machinery for stage set-ups. Both activities point to his intense interest in the laws of motion and propulsion (the movement or push forward), a further aspect of his interest in things and their workings.

Leonardo's first Milanese painting is the altarpiece Virgin of the Rocks. It makes use of a respected tradition in which the Holy Family is shown in a cave. This setting becomes a vehicle for Leonardo's interests in representing nature in dimmed light, which blends together the outlines of separate objects. He once commented that artists should practice drawing at dusk in courtyards with walls painted black.

When the Duke of Milan was overthrown by the French invasion in 1499, Leonardo left Milan. He visited Venice briefly, where the Senate consulted him on military projects, and traveled to Mantua.

Florence (1500–1506)

In 1500 Leonardo returned to Florence, where he was received as a great man. Florentine painters of the generation immediately following Leonardo were excited by his modern methods, with which they were familiar through the unfinished Adoration of the Magi. Leonardo had a powerful effect on the younger group of artists.

Leonardo even served a term as military engineer for Cesare Borgia in 1502, and he completed more projects during his time in Florence than in any other period of his life. In his works of these years, the concentration is mostly on portraying human vitality, as in the Mona Lisa. It is a portrait of a Florentine citizen's young third wife, whose smile is called mysterious because it is in the process of either appearing or disappearing.

Leonardo's great project (begun 1503) was a cavalry battle scene that the city commissioned to adorn the newly built Council Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The work is only known today through some rapid rough sketches of the groups of horsemen, careful drawings of single heads of men, and copies of the entire composition. Leonardo began to paint the scene but was called back to Milan before the work was completed. A short time thereafter, the room was remodeled and the fragment was destroyed.

Milan (1506–1513)

Leonardo was called to Milan in 1506 by the French governor in charge to work on an equestrian statue (a sculpture of a leader riding a horse) project, but he produced no new paintings. Instead he turned more and more to scientific observation. Most of Leonardo's scientific concerns were fairly direct extensions of his interests as a painter, and his research in anatomy (the structure of a living organism) was the most fully developed. Early Renaissance painters had attempted to render the human anatomy with accuracy. Leonardo went far beyond any of them, producing the earliest anatomical drawings still followed today.

Leonardo filled notebooks with data and drawings that reveal his other scientific interests: firearms, the action of water, the flight of birds (leading to designs for human flight), the growth of plants, and geology (the study of earth and its history). Leonardo's interests were not universal, however. Theology (the study of religion), history, and literature did not appeal to him. All his interests were concerned with the processes of action, movement, pressure, and growth. It has been said that his drawings of the human body are less about how bodies are and more about how they work.

In 1513 Leonardo went to Rome, where he remained until 1516. He was much honored, but he was relatively inactive and remarkably aloof (apart) from its rich social and artistic life. He continued to fill his notebooks with scientific entries.

The French king, Francis I (1494–1547), invited Leonardo to his court at Fontainebleau, gave him the title of first painter, architect, and mechanic to the king, and provided him with a country house at Cloux. Leonardo was revered for his knowledge more than for any work he produced in France. He died on May 2, 1519, at Cloux.

Leonardo's influence on younger artists of Milan and Florence was enormous. Among these were Filippino Lippi (1457–1504) and Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531) who were able to absorb and transmit his message rather than merely copy the unimportant aspects of his style.

On a more significant level, Leonardo influenced the two greatest young artists to come in contact with him. Raphael (1483–1520) came to Florence in 1504 at the age of twenty-one, and quickly revealed Leonardo's influence in his portraits and Madonnas. Also, about 1503, Michelangelo (1475–1564) changed from a sculptor of merely grand scale to one whose figures are charged with energy. This may be seen in the contrast between Michelangelo's early David and his later St. Matthew.

From this time on Leonardo influenced, directly or indirectly, all painting. However, most of Leonardo's scientific observations remained unproven until the same questions were again investigated in later centuries.

For More Information

Clark, Kenneth. Leonardo da Vinci. Rev. ed. New York: Viking, 1988.

Kemp, Martin. Leonardo da Vinci, the Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Turner, A. Richard. Inventing Leonardo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

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Leonardo da Vinci

Italian Painter, Designer, Sculptor, Inventor, Scientist, Architect, and Engineer

Summary of Leonardo da Vinci

Only a select number of figures in the pantheon of art history can match the level of fame accorded Leonardo da Vinci. The very personification of the "Renaissance man", Leonardo searched for new knowledge within the burgeoning fields of the humanities and the sciences. One of the so-called "holy trinity" (with Michelangelo and Raphael ) of the Italian High Renaissance , Leonardo remains best known today as the painter of some of the world's greatest masterpieces, and for a series of notebooks and drawings that confirm his reputation as the most accomplished polymath of his time.

Accomplishments

• While his yearning for new knowledge that saw him excel in many fields within the humanities and sciences, Leonardo has achieved most acclaim as a painter. He has gained world-wide fame for his enigmatic portrait, the Mona Lisa , the religious fresco, The Last Supper , and his Vitruvian Man , a mathematically precise anatomical drawing. These priceless works are amongst the most known images of all time.
• Leonardo surpassed the naturalistic techniques of Early Renaissance masters through his meticulous attention to detail and through the introduction of new methods. The most influential of these was his signature sfumato effect in which he blended shades of color to blur - or to "smoke" - the outlines of figures, facial features, and objects. Sfumato achieved such realistic effects it contributed significantly to the birth of the era referred to now as the High Renaissance .
• Leonardo's intellectual curiosity and imagination produced many ideas and inventions that were described in his vast collection of notebooks. These contain scientific diagrams (predicting future inventions such as the parachute, the helicopter, and the military tank), anatomical and botanical sketches and drawings, and his philosophy on painting. As the art historian E. H. Gombrich put it, "the more one reads these pages, the less one can understand how one human being could have excelled in all these different fields of research and made important contributions to all of them".
• Leonardo produced several ambitious architectural designs. In Milan, he designed an ingenious 32-mile waterway linking Milan and Lake Como. He is also credited with the design of the spectacular double-helix central staircase (two spirals winding around a glass column, allowing guests to acknowledge each other without physically passing). Through his ability to combine his creative vision with more practical problem-solving skills, Leonardo helped establish architectural principles that have passed down through the centuries.

The Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo stated that "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt", and as if to push home his point, he invented sfumato , an application of subtle colored glazes that were able to convey atmosphere and subtle shifts in moods and feelings in the human body and face.

Important Art by Leonardo da Vinci

Ginevra de' Benci

Painted while still in his early 20s, Ginevra de' Benci is one of Leonardo's earliest known works. It gives us the first example of his signature portraiture technique whereby he abandoned the conventional "half face" profile pose in favor of a three-quarter pose. Through the three-quarter rotation of his sitter, Leonardo gives us a fuller facial portrait that places the personality of the subject above their status. It was a humanistic technique that would define his future portraits, including such works as the Mona Lisa . Indeed, Leonardo is thought to be the first Italian to represent his sitter in such a way and it would become a convention of High Renaissance portraiture. There is also a strong suggestion (traces of fingerprints on the painting's surface) that Leonardo used his fingers to delicately shade Ginerva's flesh tones. As the National Gallery of Art in Washington (NGAW) states, "The planes of her face subtly modeled, she may have 'come to life' before viewers in a fashion more vivid than any other painting they had seen before", and adds that, "One of Leonardo's contemporaries wrote that he 'painted Ginevra d'Amerigo Benci with such perfection that it seemed to be not a portrait but Ginevra herself'". Ginevra de' Benci was 16 years old and from an affluent family. She was well-educated and had earned a reputation as a fine poet and conversationalist. Her milk-white complexion is flawless, and her blank expression is difficult to read. But as NGAW explains, "Young women of the time were expected to comport themselves with dignity and modesty. Virtue was prized and guarded, and a girl's beauty was thought to be a sign of goodness. Portraitists were expected to enhance - as needed - a woman's attractiveness according to the period's standards of beauty". It is likely that Leonardo was commissioned to paint Ginerva's portrait on the occasion of her betrothal (thought to be to a man named Luigi Niccolini). But as the NGAW states, the painting also "reflects a cultural phenomenon of the Italian Renaissance period - platonic love affairs between well-mannered gentlemen and ladies. Such affairs, often conducted from afar, focused on effusive literary expressions that displayed the courtier's and lady's sophistication". Indeed, Ginevra is known to have had many admirers, including Bernardo Bembo, the Venetian ambassador to Florence, and Lorenzo de'Medici, who both composed poems in her honor. The painting is also of significance for its reverse side which carries an emblem in the form of a wreath of laurel and palm encircled with a sprig of juniper, and a scroll featuring the phrase "Virtutem Forma Decorat" ("beauty adorns virtue"). The NGAW states that "The central juniper, ginepro in Italian, a cognate of Ginevra's name and thus her symbol, also represents chastity. The palm stands for moral virtue, while the laurel indicated artistic or literary inclinations".

Oil on canvas - National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Virgin of the Rocks

This painting presents the Madonna, with infant versions of Christ and John the Baptist, and the archangel Gabriel. Like other Renaissance artists, Leonardo was interested in presenting proverbial religious narratives in a more naturalistic way. Here Leonardo's animate quartet sits amidst a mystical landscape that demonstrates his mathematical approach to picture perspective. Complementing the intimate group in the foreground, the scenery of desolate rocks and still water lends the narrative a dreamlike quality, infusing the scene at once with a sense of the heavenly and the human (a blurring, in other words, of the spiritual with the material). The composition utilizes a pyramidal arrangement common amongst High Renaissance artists, while Leonardo's perfection of anatomical movement and fluidity elevates the figures with a sense of naturalistic motion. Their gestures and glances, too, create a dynamic human interaction that was highly innovative. Leonardo's sfumato style, meanwhile, is present in the way colors and outlines blend into a soft smokiness. This technique brings a heightened intensity and more realistic depth-of-field. The painting is also an early example of the use of oil pigment, which was relatively new to Italy, and made the artist better able to capture such intricate details.

Oil on wood transferred to canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris

Lady with an Ermine

The Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, commissioned this portrait. In it, Leonardo depicts Sforza's sixteen-year-old mistress Cecilia Gallerani (Sforza being in his late thirties). She peers to the right, as if her attention has been caught by something just outside the picture frame. She bears a look of poise and knowing that is exceptional for a young lady of such tender years. The slightly coy smile seems to suggest her confidence in her position at the Court, and the knowledge of the power of her innate beauty. She holds an ermine, bearer of the fur that was used in Sforza's coat of arms. The ermine was a symbol of purity, and its inclusion was likely representative of Cecilia's fidelity to the Duke. Leonardo's genius in this work is evident in the way he captured the complexity of his sitter's psychology. Indeed, her three-quarter pose and gesture were unconventional for portraiture of the time. Leonardo's scientific study of the human body, and its movements and expressions, meanwhile, allowed him to represent the subtle human undertones that intrigue the viewer and invite them into the intimate mental world of the subject. As art critic Sam Leith put it, "Give the painting a really good, close look and you'll see she really does have the very breath of life in her...just distracted by a noise, caught in a living moment...". In 2014, Pascal Cotte, a French scientist, completed a three-year investigation of the painting in which Cotte discovered that it was completed in three distinct stages. Cotte discovered that Leonardo's first version was a simple portrait (with no animal). The second included a small grey ermine. In the third, the animal is transformed into a large white ermine. Commenting on Cotte's research, historian Lorenza Munoz-Aloñso writes, "The duke, who was da Vinci's patron and champion for eighteen years, was nicknamed 'the white ermine'. The progression in the painting might indicate a growing desire from the couple to affirm their relationship in a more public manner. The transformation of the ermine - from small and dark to muscular and white - could also indicate the duke's wish for a more flattering 'portrait' [of his mistress]". It is also widely believed that the ermine was included to conceal the secret pregnancy of Cecilia who later gave birth to Sforza's son - Cesare.

Oil on wood panel - Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland

The Vitruvian Man

In the accompanying text to the drawing, Leonardo describes his intention to study the proportions of man as described by the first-century BC Roman architect Vitruvius (after whom the drawing was named) in his treatise De Architectura ( On Architecture , published as Ten Books on Architecture ). Vitruvius used his own studies of well-proportioned man to influence his design of temples, believing that symmetry was crucial to classical architecture. Leonardo used Vitruvius as a starting point for inspiration in his own anatomical studies and further perfected his measurements, correcting over half of Vitruvius's original calculations. The idea of relative proportion has influenced Renaissance architecture (and beyond) as a concept for creating harmony between the earthly and divine in churches, as well as the temporal in palaces and palatial residences. Ultimately, The Vitruvian Man is a mathematical study of the human body highlighting the nature of balance which proportion and symmetry lend us, an understanding that would inform all of Leonardo's output in art and architecture. It also underlines the goals of Renaissance Humanism which placed man in relation to nature, and as a link between the earthly (square) and the divine (circle). It also demonstrates, of course, the artist's thorough understanding of science and mathematics, and his excellence in draftsmanship. The image is truly iconic and has been referenced through several fine art sources. These include William Blake's, Glad Day (aka The Dance of Albion) (c.1794), Enzo Plazzotta's Homage to Leonardo (aka. Vitruvian Man ) (1984) - an outdoor statue in central London, and Andrew Leicester's giant robot-like Tin Man (2001) sculpture placed in the engineering faculty courtyard at the University of Minnesota. It has also provided a point of reference within popular graphic culture with the online comic book resource (Comiclist) displaying some twenty three comic-book covers - including issues of Spiderman, Wonder Woman and Ironman - that self-consciously align these superheroes with Leonardo's drawing. The drawing has even featured in an episode of The Simpsons (season 10) in which Homer Simpson is chased by the Vitruvian Man in a dream where he is attacked by famous artworks that have come to life.

Pen and ink on paper - Accademia, Venice, Italy

The Last Supper

The Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, commissioned The Last Supper for the dining hall of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie. It tells the famous biblical story of the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion, and specifically, the moment after he has told them that one of their own would betray him. Each of the apostles is individually rendered with different expressions of consternation and disbelief as Judas stands in the shadows clutching the purse containing silver he received for his betrayal (Leonardo was given permission to bring a criminal to his studio from prison to model as Judas). Jesus occupies the center frame, reaching for bread and a glass of wine referring to the Eucharist. Behind him, seen through the windows, lays an idealized landscape, perhaps alluding to heavenly paradise, and the three windows possibly denote the holy trinity. The intricate detail, coupled with the use of one point perspective, placing Jesus at the crux of the pictorial space, and from which all other elements emanate, was to herald in a new direction in High Renaissance art. Furthermore, the use of the vanishing point technique complimented the painting's position and setting, allowing for the artwork to mesh into the space as if it were a natural extension of the nuns' dining area. The art historian E. H. Gombrich said of the finished painting: "There was nothing in this work that resembled older representations of the same theme. In these traditional versions, the apostles were seen sitting quietly at the table in a row - only Judas being segregated from the rest - while Christ was calmly dispensing the Sacrament. There was drama in it, and excitement. Leonardo, like Giotto before him, had gone back to the text of the Scriptures, and had striven to visualize what it must have been like when Christ said, 'Verily I say unto you, that one of you will betray me'". Because the water-based paints typically used for frescos of this type were not conducive to Leonardo's sfumato technique, he opted instead for oil-based paints. However, the oil-on-plaster combination would prove disastrous as, even before the artist's death, the paint had begun to flake from the wall (a situation not helped by the steam and smoke emanating from the monastery's kitchens). Today, little of Leonardo's original paintwork remains with the last restoration, finished in 1999, lasting some twenty-one years. The art historian Khyati Rajvanshi describes how the fresco now sits in a strict temperature-controlled environment. Rajvanshi adds that "The management board allows just 1,300 people to visit the Last Supper each day" giving each person a maximum of fifteen minutes to enjoy the masterpiece (and not leave too much dust to cause it further harm).

Fresco - Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist

This preliminary drawing shows the Virgin seated next to her mother, St. Anne, while holding the baby Jesus, and with the baby St. John the Baptist looking on. Mary's eyes peer down at her child who points to the heavens as he delivers a benediction. The piece is very large in size, consisting of eight papers glued together. Also known as the Burlington House Cartoon , it is presumed to be a sketch in planning for a painting, although the painting either no longer exists, or was never created. Leonardo often used a "cartoon" such as this as a stencil which he placed on the intended painting surface. Once fixed in place, a pin would be used to create an outline that would then guide the artist's brush. Because this piece is impeccably preserved, it is assumed that it was never put to use for this purpose. The drawing is notable in that it reflects Leonardo's search for perfection, even in planning for a painting. His acuity with anatomy is present in the realistic ways the figures' bodies are shown in various gestures of interaction with each other. Genuine tenderness is conveyed in the faces of the women and St. John as they reflect upon the focal point of Christ. The attention to detail for what was a preparatory drawing, underlines the artist's painstaking approach to producing art. Leonardo's cartoons are so technically perfect that they are regarded as highly as his finished masterpieces. Many were admired and shown both at the Court and in public exhibitions during his life and after.

Charcoal and chalk drawing on paper - The National Gallery, London

Salvatore Mundi

King Louis XVII of France is said to have commissioned Salvator Mundi after his conquest of Milan in 1499. The painting is a portrait of Jesus in the role of savior of the world and master of the cosmos. His right hand is raised with two fingers extended as he gives divine benediction. His left hand holds a crystalline sphere, representing the heavens. This is an unusual portrait in that it shows Christ, in very humanist fashion, as a man in contemporary Renaissance dress, gazing directly out at the viewer. It is also a half-length portrait, which was a radical departure from full-length portraits of the time. Jesus's "closeness" to us lends the visage an intense intimacy. The painting is representative of the mastery of Leonardo's signature techniques. The softness of the gaze, acquired through sfumato , lends a spiritual quality, inviting veneration from the viewer, while Jesus's face encompasses an emotion and expressiveness defined by the artist's acuity with anatomical correctness. The darkness from which he emerges contrasts with the light that seems to emanate from Jesus's exposed upper chest. Thus, the painting still (in spite of his humanist outer shell) presents Christ as an awe-inspiring "bringer of light". Salvator Mundi was unaccounted for between 1763 and 1900 when it was bought by one Sir Charles Robinson as a work by Bernardino Luini. It later sold at Sotheby's, London, in 1958 for £45 ($125). The painting, which was badly damaged, was then bought by an independent U.S. auction house in 2005. Having undergone extensive restoration, it reemerged in the early 2000s when it was confirmed as a work by Leonardo (though some experts still questioned it attribution). The painting was sold at auction at Christies New York in 2017 for $450 million a new record for an artwork at that time.

Oil on wood panel - Louvre, Abu Dhabi

The Mona Lisa , also known as La Gioconda , is said to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant named Francesco del Gioconda. The half-length portrayal shows the sitter, seated on a chair with one arm resting on the chair and one hand resting on her arm. The use of sfumato creates a sense of soft calmness, which emanates from her being, and infuses the background. There has been much speculation as to its origin of location, yet it is more widely construed that it is imaginary, a composition born in Leonardo's mind (that could also allude to our admittance into Mona Lisa's dreamlike interior world). But it is of course Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression that transfixes the viewer and the eternal mystery of what's lying behind that iconic smile. Portraits of the time focused on presenting the outward appearance of the sitter, the personality of the subject only hinted at through symbolic objects, clothing, or gestures. Yet Leonardo desired to capture more than mere likeness. He wanted to show something of her soul, which he accomplished by placing emphasis on her peculiar and unconventional smile. As Gombrich observed, "We see that Leonardo has used the means of his ' sfumato ' with the utmost deliberation. Everyone who has ever tried to draw or scribble a face knows that what we call its expression rests mainly on two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes. Now it is precisely these parts which Leonardo has left deliberately indistinct, by letting them merge into a soft shadow. That is why we are never quite certain in what mood Mona Lisa is really looking at us. Her expression always seems just to elude us". Leonardo's painting is probably the most famous single painting in history. It has inspired many artists. Raphael drew upon it for a drawing in 1504, while countless writers have written about her, including the 19 th century French poet Theophile Gautier who called her "the sphinx who smiles so mysteriously." She has been the subject of many popular songs (most famously, perhaps, Mona Lisa, by Nat "King" Cole), and has been parodied in art, from the 1883 caricaturist's Eugene Bataille's, Mona Lisa smoking a pipe , to the 1919 Marcel Duchamp readymade showing her with a mustache and beard. In 1954, Salvador Dalí created his Self-portrait as Mona Lisa and in 1963 Andy Warhol included her in his seminal silkscreen output Mona Lisa "Thirty are better than one" . Her image has also been reproduced endlessly on postcards, calendars, posters, and all manner of other commercial products.

Oil on wood panel - Musée du Louvre, Paris

Biography of Leonardo da Vinci

Childhood and education.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, widely considered one of the most gifted and inventive men in history, was born in 1452 in a village near the town of Vinci, Tuscany.

The illegitimate son of Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine notary and landlord, and Caterina, a peasant girl (who later married an artisan), Leonardo was brought up on the family estate in Anchiano by his paternal grandfather. His father married a sixteen-year old girl, Albiera, with whom Leonardo was close, but who died at an early age. Leonardo was the oldest of twelve siblings but was never treated as the illegitimate son. Like his siblings, Leonardo received a basic education in reading, writing and arithmetic, but he did not show his great passion for learning until adult life.

Early Training and Work

At the age of fourteen, Leonardo moved to Florence where he began an apprenticeship at the renowned workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, an artist who himself had been a student of the Early Renaissance master Donatello . It is a matter of record that Leonardo also visited the nearby workshop of Antonio Pollaiuolo. Verrocchio was an important artist in the court of the Medici, a family noted equally for its political power and its generous patronage of the arts. Indeed, Florence attracted many talented young artists, including Domenico Ghirlandaio , Pietro Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi and it is indicative of his father's civic standing that Leonardo was able to take up his apprenticeship in such a prestigious workshop.

Although Leonardo gained only a basic grasp of Latin and Greek, Florentine artists of this period were compelled to the study the humanities as a way of more fully understanding man's place in the modern world, and Leonardo's curious and skeptical mind was nurtured under Verrocchio's mentorship (as art historian E. H. Gombrich wrote, "At a time when the learned men at the universities relied on the authority of the admired ancient writers, Leonardo, the painter, would never accept what he read without checking it with his own eyes").

Leonardo's name would become closely associated with the intellectual movement/philosophy known as Renaissance Humanism . It promoted a return to the values and ideals of the classical world but also laid emphasis on what it was to "be human". Great focus was placed on "higher" education and the promotion of "civic virtue" in the belief that by reaching one's full potential - which the Renaissance artist achieved by becoming learned in aesthetic beauty, ethics, logic, and scientific and mathematical principles - one could advance civilization. Leonardo would more than measure up to the title of "renaissance man" through his passionate interest in the disciplines of art, anatomy, architecture, geometry, chemistry, and engineering.

In 1472, after six years of apprenticeship, Leonardo became a member of the Guild of St. Luke, a Florentine group of artists and medical doctors. Although his father had set him up with a workshop of his own, Leonardo - now regarded by many of his peers, according to Gombrich, "as a strange and rather uncanny being" - continued to work with Verrocchio as an assistant for a further four or five years.

Customary to the times, the output of Verrocchio's workshop would have given rise to collaborative efforts between master and apprentice. Two pictures accredited to Verrocchio, The Baptism of Christ (1475) and The Annunciation (1472-75), are seen by art historians, such as the Renaissance chronicler, Giorgio Vasari , to evidence Leonardo's lighter brush strokes when compared with Verrocchio's heavier hand.

In 1476, Leonardo was accused of sodomy with three other men. Homosexuality was illegal and punishable, not only by imprisonment, but also by public humiliation and even death. Leonardo was acquitted through lack of corroborative evidence, which has been attributed to the fact that his friends/lovers came from powerful Florentine families. Perhaps because of the stigma and chastisement, Leonardo kept a low profile over the next few years, with little or no record of his activities during this time.

Leonardo's earliest commissions came in 1481 from the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto for a panel painting of the Adoration of the Magi (unfinished), and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria (never begun). However, Leonardo stopped work on the commissions to move to Milan after accepting an offer from the city's Duke to join his court. He was listed in the royal register as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis ("painter and engineer of the duke").

There is some speculation as to why the move to Milan was so appealing to the artist when his Florentine career was in the ascendency. It may have been that his decision was to put the earlier sexual scandal behind him. While that may have been a contributory factor, it seems more likely that what the historian Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich called Leonard's "gracious but reserved personality and elegant bearing" was a better fit for the austere Milanese Court. As Heydenreich writes, "It may have been that the rather sophisticate spirit of Neoplatonism prevailing in the Florence of the Medici went against the grain of Leonardo's experience-oriented mind and that the more strict, academic atmosphere of Milan attracted him. Moreover, he was no doubt enticed by Duke Ludovico Sforza's brilliant court and the meaningful projects awaiting him there".

Mature Period

Leonardo worked in Milan between 1482 and 1499. Between 1483-86, he worked on the The Virgin of the Rocks , an altarpiece commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. For reasons that are unknown, Leonardo entered into a decade-long legal dispute with the Confraternity (leading Leonardo to paint a second version of the work in 1508). In 1485, he undertook a diplomatic mission to Hungary on behalf of the Duke. He met with the influential Hungarian King, Matthias Corvinus, and worked on preparations for court festivals. While in Hungary he also worked on engineering and architectural plans, including for the dome of the cathedral in Milan.

While in Milan, Leonardo spent a great deal of time observing human anatomy. He closely studied the way in which human bodies moved, the way they were built and proportioned, how they interacted in social engagement and communication, and their habits of gesture and expression. This was a time-consuming and painstaking undertaking that helps explain perhaps why there are so few paintings dating from this period - just six in total, with suggestion of a further three commissions either now lost or never commenced - yet an extraordinarily large library of drawings. These are now testament to Leonardo's mastery of observation and his ability to convey human emotion.

It was during this period that he experimented with new and different painting techniques. One of the practices Leonardo is most famous for is his ability to create a "smoky" effect, which was coined sfumato . Through his deep knowledge of glazes and brushstrokes, he developed the technique, which allowed for edges of color and outline to flow into each other to emphasize the soft modulation of flesh or fabric, as well as the remarkable translucence of hard surfaces such as crystal or the tactility of hair. The intimate authenticity that resulted in his figures and subjects seemed to mirror reality in ways that had not been seen hitherto. A good example of this is his depiction of an orb in the painting Salvatore Mundi (1490-1500). It was during this period that Leonardo produced his great fresco masterpiece - what Gombrich called "one of the great miracles wrought by human genius" - The Last Supper (1495-98). It was painted on the dining hall wall of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

As an antidote to the beauty of his great masterpieces, Leonardo produced a series of drawings of deformed faces and bodies, perhaps the most famous of which are A Bald Fat Man with a Broken Nose (1485-90), and Grotesque Head of an old Woman (1489-90). The art historian Martin Kemp writes that Leonardo sometimes "followed ugly people around and drew them [in the belief] that the beautiful needed the grotesque [...] like light and shade". The art historian Jonathan Jones said of the former, meanwhile, that Leonardo's "repeated doodles of the same archetypal ugly visage [was] sometimes called his 'nutcracker' profile [...] This looks like a real man, and a fairly scary one: a street character, a violent, massive bald guy with a broken nose. And what makes it seem most real is that it is drawn quickly yet decisively, as in a sketch from life".

For his last unfinished project before leaving Milan, Leonardo was commissioned to cast a five-meter-high equestrian bronze sculpture - called Gran Cavallo - commemorating Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. In 1493, a clay model of the intended sculpture was displayed during the wedding of Emperor Maximilian to Bianca Maria Sforza, emphasizing the importance of the anticipated work. Unfortunately, the project was never finished and the conquering French Army, who had seized Milan in 1499, ended up using Leonardo's model for target practice. It is believed that the bronze reserved to cast the clay sculpture had been repurposed for cannon casting in what proved to be the unsuccessful defense of Milan against Charles VIII in the war with France.

Following the French invasion of Milan, and the overthrow of Duke Sforza in 1499, Leonardo left for Venice accompanied by his childhood friend and future assistant, Salai. In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military engineer where his main commission was to design naval defense systems for the city under threat of a Turkish military incursion. Leonardo returned to Florence in 1500, where he received a warm and enthusiastic welcome. He lived as a guest of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata. Leonardo was employed as a senior architectural advisor for a committee working on a damaged foundation at the church of San Francesco al Monte, but he devoted most of his time to studying mathematics.

In 1502, Leonardo secured service in the Court of Cesare Borgia, an important member of an influential family, as well as son of Pope Alexander VI, and commander of the papal army. He was employed as a "senior military architect and general engineer" and accompanied Borgia on his travels throughout Italy. His duties included making maps to aid with military defense, as well as designs for the construction of a dam to ensure an uninterrupted supply of water to the canals from the River Arno. During the diversion of the river project, he met Niccolò Machiavelli, who was a noted scribe and political observer for Florence. It has been said that Leonardo introduced Machiavelli to the concepts of applied science, and that he had a great influence on the man who would go on to be called the Father of Modern Political Science.

Leonardo returned for a second time to Florence in the spring of 1503 and was enthusiastically welcomed into the Guild of St. Luke. He worked on landscape sketches for a canal that would bypass the "choppy" Arno River and connect Florence directly with the sea. As Heydenreich notes, "The project, considered time and again in subsequent centuries, was never carried out, but centuries later the express highway from Florence to the sea was built over the exact route Leonardo chose for his canal". His return to Florence also spurred one of the most productive periods of painting for the artist including preliminary work on his Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (1503-19), the mural Battle of Anghiari (1503-05) (which was left unfinished and later copied by the artist Peter Paul Rubens ), and what was destined to become the world's most famous portrait, the Mona Lisa (1503-19). Of the latter, Gombrich wrote: "What strikes us first is the amazing degree to which Lisa looks alive. She really seems to look at us and to have a mind of her own. Like a living being, she seems to change before our eyes and to look a little different every time we come back to her [...] That great observer of nature knew more about the way we use our eyes than anybody who had ever lived before him".

In 1508, Leonardo returned to Milan where he remained for the next five years enjoying the generous patronage of Charles d'Amboise, the French Governor of Milan, and King Louis XII (of France). He was engaged in architectural projects, with notable commissions such as work on a Villa for Charles, bridge building, a project to create a waterway to link Milan with Lake Como, and preparatory sketches for an oratory for the church of Santa Maria alla Fontana.

Leonardo ran a successful studio which included his former Milanese pupils, de' Conti and Salai, and new recruits, Cesare da Sesto, Giampetrino, Bernardino Luini, and a young aristocrat named Francesco Meizi. Although he created little as a painter, Leonardo did undertake a second aborted sculptural commission from the military commander, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. The preparatory sketches for the equestrian sculpture have survived, but the Trivulzio scrapped the project in favor of a more modest design.

Leonardo's second Milan period is best known for his scientific activities. He collaborated with the renowned anatomist, Marcantonio della Torre, which led to Leonardo's precise drawings of the human body and his excursions in comparative anatomy (differences between species) and the related field of physiology. Meanwhile, his manuscripts of this time included mathematic, mechanical, geological, optical, and botanical studies. He created plans for his famous flying machine, and also devised military weapons such as an early example of the machine gun and a large crossbow. Gombrich suggested that there were two reasons that Leonardo "never published his writings, and that very few can even have known of their existence." The first was because "he was left-handed and had taken to writing from right to left so that his notes can only be read in a mirror". The second relates to the possibility that Leonardo "was afraid of divulging his discoveries [such as his observation the 'the sun does not move'] for fear that his opinions would be found heretical".

It was also during the second Milan period that Leonardo and Francesco Melzi, his favorite pupil, became close companions and remained so until Leonardo's death. It may be reasonably surmised that at this point in his life, Leonardo was finally able to live discreetly as a gay man, his accomplishments and acclaim providing a safe shelter from the kind of traumatic and punitive stigmatization he experienced in his earlier years in Florence.

Late Period

In 1513, after the temporary expulsion of the French from Milan, the sixty-year-old Leonardo relocated, taking Salai and Melzi with him, to Rome where he spent the next three years. He was given a generous stipend and residence in the Vatican by the Giuliano de' Medici, the brother of Leo X, the new pope. It was a depressing time for Leonardo, however, who struggled to secure any meaningful commissions. As Heydenreich writes, Leonardo arrived in Rome "at a time of great artistic activity: Donato Bramante was building St. Peter's, Raphael was painting the last rooms of the pope's new apartments, Michelangelo was struggling to complete the tomb of Pope Julius II, and many younger artists, such as Timoteo Viti and Sodoma, were also active".

Heydenreich refers to "drafts of embittered letters" which confirmed Leonardo's disquiet and unhappiness which restricted his activities largely to "mathematical studies and technical experiments or surveyed ancient monuments as he strolled through the city". However, Leonardo did produce a "magnificently executed map of the Pontine Marshes" and drawings for a planned Florentine residence for the Medici (who had returned to power in 1512).

While in Rome he also made the acquaintance of King François I of France who offered Leonardo the permanent position of "first painter, architect and engineer to the King" at the French Royal Court. François is credited with doing more than any other individual to promote Renaissance art and architecture in France and Leonardo, having accepted the King's invitation, lived out the last three years of his life (with Melzi) at a small, but palatial, residence at Clos Lucé, close to the king's residence at Château d'Amboise. Leonardo brought with him a large cache of paintings and drawings, most of which stayed in France after his death (and which are now housed in Le Louvre as part of the world's largest single collection of Leonardo's art).

Leonardo did little painting in France, although his last painting, St John the Baptist (1513), was most likely made during this time. He worked on landscape plans for the palace gardens but all new work was abruptly halted following a region-wide outbreak of malaria. Leonardo found time to edit his scientific papers and to prepare his treatise on painting, including his Visions of the End of the World series which included his many cataclysmic storm drawings, known as the Deluges .

During these years, Leonardo and King François formed a close friendship - Vasari wrote that "The King ... was accustomed frequently and affectionately to visit him" - and, although he died shortly before construction began in earnest, it is likely that Leonardo designed the now famous double-helix staircase (two concentric spirals wind separately around a central column, allowing guests to pass without meeting while still being able to see one another through windows placed in a central column) of the Chateau de Chambord, a lavish Renaissance Chateau, commissioned by François (and which took 28 years to complete). Leonardo died on May 2, 1519 at Clos Lucé, naming Melzi as principal beneficiary of his estate.

It is down to Melzi's efforts that Leonardo's notebooks and drawings were saved. After Leonardo's death, Melzi returned to Milan where he was visited by Vasari. Referring to Melzi as his "much beloved" pupil, Vasari wrote that "he holds them [the notebooks] dear, and keeps such papers together as if they were relics". Leonardo's vineyards (sixteen rows) in Milan, a gift to Leonardo from Sforza in 1482 (confiscated during the French invasion but returned to Leonardo's ownership at a later unknown date) were divided between Salai and a former servant. (The vineyards remain an ongoing concern and a Leonardo Museum to this day.)

The reverence with which Leonardo was regarded is epitomized by the apocryphal story of François I's attendance at his death. Vasari described Leonardo as having "breathed [his] last in the arms of the king". Their legendary friendship inspired the 1818 painting by Ingres , François I Receives the Last Breaths of Leonardo da Vinci , in which Leonardo is shown as dying in the arms of the King.

Leonardo was originally interred in the chapel of St Florentin at the Chateau d'Amboise in the Loire Valley, but the building was destroyed during the French revolution. Although it is believed that he was reburied in the smaller chapel of St Hubert, Amboise, the exact location remains unconfirmed.

The Legacy of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo's list of achievements is extensive. As a defining figure of the High Renaissance, he helped usher in a new dawning in Western art and civilization. Amongst his most influential techniques were his pioneering use of vanishing points, the soft clouding effect in his signature sfumato method, his profound understanding of the dynamics between light and dark in chiaroscuro , and the enigmatic facial expressions of his figures that created a mesmerizing and realistic quality. One can add to his paintings, his inventions, his precise anatomical and topographical drawings, as well as hydraulic and mechanical designs and his architectural achievements.

It is hard to encapsulate the achievements of an artist who, in the words of art historian Martin Kemp, had "got such a grip on people's imagination - whether they're engineers, medics, fans of art, or whatever". Nevertheless, Kemp gives us a good insight into Leonardo's genius through his account of the "spine tingling" privilege of studying the Mona Lisa on an easel (the painting having been temporarily released from its bulletproof glass casing). Kemp had been worried that the painting might have lost something of its uniqueness because of its excessive fame and overexposure. He need not have worried. "There is a sense of something happening between the picture and yourself", he said, and while acknowledging that his assessment "sounds entirely pretentious [...] it does happen". Kemp argued indeed, that when in the presence of the original work, "The picture becomes a kind-of living thing", and that any attempt to offer an analysis of Mona Lisa's aura was, in the end, a somewhat futile exercise.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Leonardo da Vinci

• Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reimagined the World By Shelley Frisch & Stefan Klein
• Leonardo Da Vinci: The Biography Our Pick By Walter Isaacson
• Leonardo da Vinci By Kenneth Clark and Martin Kemp
• The Young Leonardo: Art and Life in Fifteenth Century Florence By Larry J. Feinburg
• Leonardo Our Pick By Marten Kemp
• Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered Our Pick By Carmen C. Bambach
• The Shadow Drawing: How Science Taught Leonardo How to Paint By Francesca Fiorani
• Leonardo da Vinci: The 100 Milestones By Martin Kemp
• Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist Our Pick By Martin Clayton and Ron Philo
• The Story of Art By E. H. Gombrich
• Leonardo da Vinci By Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich
• The Story of Modern Art By Norbert Lynton
• Illuminations By Walter Benjamin
• Leonardo's Notebook from 1508: Fully Digitized Our Pick Available online from the British Library
• Leonardo's Notebooks: Writing and Art of the Great Master By H. Anna Suh
• The Da Vinci Notebooks By Leonardo da Vinci
• Leonardo's Anatomical Drawings By Leonardo da Vinci
• Leonardo Da Vinci: Complete Paintings and Drawings By Johannes Nathan & Frank Zollner
• Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Works By Simona Cremante
• Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man By Martin Kemp
• Leonardo da Vinci: Complete Paintings (Revised) Our Pick By Pietro C. Marani
• The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting By Ben Lewis
• Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Works
• Leonardo da Vinci: Paintings, Drawings, Quotes, Biography
• The lusts of Leonardo da Vinci By Jonathan Jones / The Guardian / Oct 19, 2011
• Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography by Walter Isaacson review - unparalleled creative genius By Blake Morrison / The Guardian / Dec 16, 2017
• The Secret Lives of Leonardo da Vinci By Claudia Roth Pierpont / The New Yorker / Oct 16, 2017
• What made Leonardo da Vinci a genius By Simon Worrall / November 4, 2017
• Psychology - The Smile of the "Mona Lisa" By Gustav Kobbé / The Lotus Magazine / November 1916
• Anatomy and Leonardo da Vinci Our Pick By Antony Merlin Jose / Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine / 2001
• Leonardo da Vinci and Fluid Mechanics By Ivan Marusic and Susan Broomhall / Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics / 2021
• Who was Leonardo da Vinci and what can we learn from him? By Nicola Davis / The Guardian / April 22, 2019
• The Mind of Leonardo Da Vinci Our Pick By Jonathan Pevsner / Scientific American / May 2, 2019
• 5 Surprising Things We Learned About Leonardo da Vinci From Historian Martin Kemp's New Online Masterclass By Menachem Wecker / Artnet / November 25, 2022
• The marvellous ugly mugs By Jonathan Jones / The Guardian / December 4, 2002
• Behind the Art: What hidden messages does Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper hold? By Khyati Rajvanshi / The Indian Express
• Secrets of Leonardo's 'Lady with an Ermine' Finally Revealed By Lorenza Munoz-Aloñso / Artnet
• Ginevra de' Benci National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
• Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan at National Gallery London
• Christie's: The Last Leonardo da Vinci - Salvator Mundi
• Smarthistory: Leonardo, The Mona Lisa - in the Renaissance and today Our Pick
• The Telegraph: Mystery of Leonardo Da Vinci's two Virgins
• Smarthistory: The Last Supper Our Pick
• Smithsonian Channel: Does 'The Last Supper' Really Have a Hidden Meaning?
• The Guardian: Leonardo da Vinci - An artist who deserves every bit of his fame
• Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Artist & Inventor | Mini Bio Our Pick
• Interesting Engineering: Leonardo da Vinci's brilliant mind Our Pick
• NBC News Learn: Leonardo Da Vinci, Renaissance Man
• History Documentary BBC: Leonardo DaVinci, behind a Genius Our Pick
• The Da Vinci Code 2003 Novel by Dan Brown
• The Da Vinci Code 2006 Film
• The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci 1900 Novel by Dimitri Mérejkowski / A fictionalized account of da Vinci's life
• The Secret Supper 2004 Novel by Javier Sierra / This fictional thriller revolves around da Vinci's painting The Last Supper
• Chiaroscuro: The Private Lives of Leonardo da Vinci 2005 Graphic Novel by Pat McGreal and David Rawson / Da Vinci's life and possible homosexual relationship with the young artist Salai are narrated in this comic book series
• Mr. Peabody and Sherman 2014 Film / In this animated children's film, da Vinci, his painting The Mona Lisa, and his flying machine, are central to the plot
• My Favorite Martian S03E28 1966 TV Program / In this episode, main character Martin calls on da Vinci to help fix his spaceship, and da Vinci is upset to learn that many of his inventions have been credited to other people throughout history
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood 2010 Video Game / In this game, da Vinci is a significant supporting character, outlining missions for players

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Content compiled and written by Zaid S Sethi

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Kimberly Nichols

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Walter Isaacson’s ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ Is the Portrait of a Real Renaissance Man

By Jennifer Senior

• Nov. 1, 2017
• Share full article

Because Walter Isaacson has made a cottage industry of writing about Renaissance men, it’s no surprise, really, that he’s finally landed on a subject from the actual Renaissance. Like the other idols in Isaacson’s gallery of polymaths and visionaries — Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs — Leonardo da Vinci was born with extra bundles of receptors, attuned to frequencies his peers could not hear and capable of making connections no one else could see, especially between the sciences and the humanities.

There is a significant difference, though, between “Leonardo da Vinci” and Isaacson’s previous biographies. His other geniuses left behind bountiful source material about the lives they led. Leonardo did not. There are, famously, 7,200 pages of his glorious notebooks to work from, and yes, they are rich in maps, doodles, anatomical drawings, schema for new machines, models for new weapons, proposals for city redesigns, geometric patterns, portraits, eddies, swirls, curls, pensées, scientific observations of uncanny prescience. (Among the most staggering: He intuited the first and third laws of motion, 200 years ahead of Newton.)

But what Leonardo’s notebooks lack — which Isaacson readily concedes — are “intimate personal revelations.” Some biographers are perfectly comfortable composing a full-body portrait based solely on a few faint footprints. (Consider the legions who have tackled Shakespeare.) Isaacson does not seem to be that kind of writer. Absent the documentary material he’s accustomed to, he overcompensates with copious analyses of Leonardo’s works.

I’m not sure the role of art critic suits him. Isaacson’s enthusiasm is admirable, but he hails many of Leonardo’s creations in the same breathless tone with which a teenager might greet a new Apple product. The words “brilliant,” “wondrous” and “ingenious” come up a lot. It is not atypical to find a sentence like this one, describing Leonardo’s notebooks: “They allow us to marvel at the beauty of a universal mind as it wanders exuberantly in free-range fashion over the arts and sciences and, by doing so, senses the connections in our cosmos.”

As an art historian, Isaacson falls prey to the excesses of the profession, adopting the oracular tone of a museum docent — “the landscape of her soul and of nature’s soul are intertwined,” he writes of the Mona Lisa — and spending pages on questions of interest to a select few, like whether the original drawing of “Virgin and Child With Saint Anne” did or did not include the lamb.

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The Secret Lives of Leonardo da Vinci

By Claudia Roth Pierpont

In Renaissance Florence, a number of designated boxes placed throughout the city allowed citizens to make anonymous denunciations of various moral crimes—in 1461, for example, the artist-monk Filippo Lippi was accused of fathering a child with a nun. But the crime that the government was really trying to control was sodomy, so notoriously prevalent that contemporary German slang for a homosexual was Florenzer . The common nature of the offense did not erase the threat of serious consequences. In 1476, Leonardo da Vinci, on the verge of his twenty-fourth birthday, was named as one of four men who had practiced “such wickedness” with the seventeen-year-old apprentice of a local goldsmith. There is little doubt that Leonardo was arrested. Although any time he may have spent in jail was brief, and the case was dismissed, two months later, for lack of corroborating witnesses, he had plenty of time to ponder the possible legal punishments: a large fine, public humiliation, exile, burning at the stake. It is impossible to know if this experience affected the artist’s habit, later cited as a mark of his character, of buying caged birds from the market just to set them free. But it does seem connected with the drawings he made, during the next few years, of two fantastical inventions: a machine that he explained was meant “to open a prison from the inside,” and another for tearing bars off windows.

These drawings are part of a vast treasury of texts and images, amounting to more than seven thousand surviving pages, now dispersed across several countries and known collectively as “Leonardo’s notebooks”—which is precisely what they were. Private notebooks of all sizes, some carried about for quick sketches and on-the-spot observations, others used for long-term, exacting studies in geology, botany, and human anatomy, to specify just a few of the areas in which he posed fundamental questions, and reached answers that were often hundreds of years ahead of his time. Why is the sky blue? How does the heart function? What are the differences in air pressure above and beneath a bird’s wing, and how might this knowledge enable man to make a flying machine? Music, military engineering, astronomy. Fossils and the doubt they cast on the Biblical story of creation. “Describe,” he instructs himself, “what sneezing is, what yawning is, the falling sickness, spasm, paralysis, shivering with cold, sweating, fatigue, hunger, sleep, thirst, lust.” He intended publication, but never got around to it; there was always something more to learn. In the following centuries, at least half the pages were lost. What survives is an unparalleled record of a human mind at work, as fearless and dogged as it was brilliant. And yet, despite occasional jottings—a grocery list, a book to be borrowed—these notebooks were in no way a diary or a personal journal; they contain none of the self-exploration of Augustine or Thoreau. Consumed with the desire for knowledge, Leonardo told us more about the world than seems possible, and next to nothing about himself.

His biographers have a hard time, at once starved and overwhelmed, tasked with constructing a man around the spectacular evidence of this disembodied mind. The paintings offer little more in the way of knowledge. Arguments persist even about the identity of the woman known as Mona Lisa, or why Leonardo never delivered the portrait to the husband who commissioned it, if indeed it was her husband who commissioned it. Our deepest sense of this most famous artist remains subject to change. The systematic publication of the notebooks, beginning in the late nineteenth century, tipped our understanding of his goals from art toward science, and opened questions about how to square the legendary peacefulness of his nature with his designs for ingeniously murderous war machines. More recently, the sensationalizing notion at the center of Dan Brown’s mega-selling book “ The Da Vinci Code ”—that one of the apostles depicted in Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” is actually, and visibly, a woman—connects him with our current preoccupation with gender fluidity. And this sense of connection isn’t entirely imposed. Leonardo’s works do show a striking fixation on androgyny, a term often used about his figures—a fixation that became unignorable with the rediscovery, in the nineteen-nineties, of a long-lost pornographic drawing. Is there nothing in Leonardo that can’t be found once we start looking? Who will he be for us today?

Walter Isaacson, at the start of his new biography, “ Leonardo da Vinci ” (Simon & Schuster), describes his subject as “history’s consummate innovator,” which makes perfect sense, since Isaacson seems to have got the idea for writing his book from Steve Jobs, the subject of his previous biography. Leonardo, we learn, was Jobs’s hero. Isaacson sees a particular kinship between the men because both worked at the crossroads of “arts and sciences, humanities and technology”—as did Isaacson’s earlier subjects, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. For all the unfamiliar challenges this book presents, in terms of history and culture, Isaacson is working a familiar theme. As always, he writes with a strongly synthesizing intelligence across a tremendous range; the result is a valuable introduction to a complex subject. He states right off that he takes the notebooks, rather than the paintings, as his starting point, and it isn’t surprising that he has the most to say when he slows his pace and settles into a (still brief) discussion of optics, say, or the aortic valve. The most sustained and engrossing chapter is largely devoted to Leonardo’s water studies—vortices, floods, cloud formation—and depends on one of the remaining complete notebooks, the Codex Leicester. The codex is currently owned by Bill Gates, who (as Isaacson does not point out) had some of its digitized pages used for a screen saver on the Microsoft operating system.

Isaacson’s Leonardo is a comparably modern figure, not merely “human,” as the author likes to point out, but a blithe societal misfit: “illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical.” True enough, although Isaacson sometimes strains the relatability. His Leonardo is lucky to have been born illegitimate—because he was not expected to follow his father into the notary business—and lucky, too, to have been only minimally educated, in math and writing, rather than schooled in the Latin authors reserved for youths of higher rank. Untrammelled by authority, he was free to think creatively. As for being easily distracted, Isaacson warns that a young Leonardo today might well be medicated out of his creative urges. Beneath its diligent research, the book is a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it. Isaacson’s answer, repeated like a mantra, lies precisely in the Leonardesque (or Jobsian) refusal to distinguish art from science, observation from imagination, and to attain a “combinatory creativity.” And this goal isn’t just the prerogative of genius; we can all approach it.

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The most up-to-date if occasionally dismaying aspect of the book is its framing as a self-help guide, along the lines of “How Leonardo Can Change Your Life.” Isaacson explains that, while working on the book, he taught himself to be more observant, and it isn’t hard to respect his good intentions—he mentions sunlight, eddying water—until he writes, “When I saw the hint of a smile come across someone’s lips, I tried to fathom her inner mysteries.” One hopes that she shook him out of it. Fortunately, the book contains several clear and absorbing pages about the “Mona Lisa” ’s famously mysterious smile, particularly in relation to Leonardo’s studies of lip muscles, which he dissected, and drew, alternately, with skin on and skin off. Most important, Isaacson tells a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life, which is rewarding even if it doesn’t set you on the path to enlightenment.

What’s more, he brings news. Five hundred and sixty-five years after Leonardo’s birth, in 1452, we at last know who his mother was. Her first name, Caterina, was previously all we had, although it had been assumed that she was of lower station than Leonardo’s father, Piero, who left the tiny Tuscan town of Vinci for bustling Florence around the time his son was born, and married a highly respectable woman within a year. Speculation about Caterina has been rampant. Mike Lankford’s “ Becoming Leonardo ” (Melville House) builds on theories that she was a slave, possibly of North African origin, thus adding “mixed race” and “cross-cultural” to the artist’s twenty-first-century credentials. Isaacson, though, relays the findings of a new work of documentary scholarship, Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti’s “ Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting ” (Oxford), which establishes Caterina as a sixteen-year-old orphan from a neighboring hamlet, quickly married off to a local farmer to avoid awkward situations. But many questions remain. Did the boy ever live with his mother? Whom did he love, and who loved him? Being illegitimate was not a disgrace; although the status carried legal limitations, Leonardo’s baptism was a well-attended event, and he seems to have grown up mostly with his father’s family, while Caterina (who soon had other children) lived a short distance away. Still, he was a country boy of few prospects. Left-handed, he had trouble writing except in reverse, from right to left, each letter backward on the page—perhaps a trick he’d taught himself to keep from smearing his ink, or for keeping secrets, but a habit that no one seems to have bothered correcting. All he could certainly do was draw.

He moved to Florence to live with his father at about the age of twelve, shortly after Piero’s wife and their only child died. The exact year is uncertain, as is the year, not long after, when he became an apprentice in the workshop of Verrocchio, a leading artist and his father’s client. The city must have been a revelation to Leonardo: enormously wealthy, with numerous palazzi built by the newly dominant business class, room after room to be filled with art. There were more wood-carvers in town than butchers, and the streets were a living gallery of works by Donatello, Ghiberti, and Brunelleschi—the revolutionary generation that had just passed. Verrocchio provided a practical education, not only in painting and sculpture but also in metalwork and engineering. And Leonardo, even in his teens, made a strong impression. He was reportedly a boy (and later a man) of exceptional good looks and grace, and art historians have conjectured that he might have posed for Verrocchio’s delicate, curly-haired bronze David, described by Isaacson as “a slightly effeminate and strikingly pretty boy of about fourteen,” whose face bears the hint of a smile. The identification is appealing (if not the established fact that Isaacson ultimately suggests). Most fascinating, however, is the way that Leonardo transformed this lightly boyish charm into a radiantly pure yet sensual ideal of male beauty.

He had an affinity for angels. In Verrocchio’s painting “The Baptism of Christ,” the Master’s hardy, pug-nosed angel seems to stare in wonder at the rapt creature beside him, one of the earliest works of Leonardo, its noble profile trailing a cascade of golden curls. The divide between the two is technical as well as imaginative: Leonardo used oil paint, not old-fashioned egg-based tempera, and applied it in multiple thin layers, each a luminescent veil, so that his angel appears to be modelled in light. Giorgio Vasari, who wrote the first authoritative biographies of Renaissance artists, in 1550, claimed that Verrocchio gave up painting when he saw what his pupil had done, an exaggeration meant to stress the unprecedented nature of Leonardo’s genius, and of the generation he introduced.

Yet Leonardo’s reputation, unlike Michelangelo’s and Raphael’s after him, was slow to rise. He does not seem to have been conventionally ambitious: he stayed with Verrocchio for roughly a decade, far longer than the usual term, both working and living with the Master. Another angel he painted in this period, part of an “Annunciation” now in the Uffizi, was distinguished by scrupulously naturalistic bird wings. Although they were crudely overpainted sometime later, one can make them out, short and strong: real wings to give fantasy flight. Clearly, Leonardo’s mind was already roaming beyond the studio.

He was still living with Verrocchio when he was charged with sodomy in 1476. As soon as he was cleared, he left town for a year, to work on a project in Pistoia. Some have speculated that the charges caused a break with his father—who, by now remarried, went on to have several legitimate sons. Others have wondered if the accusations (there was a second one, soon after the first) contributed to the evident disfavor of Florence’s most important patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici. Although Leonardo had already produced his first indisputable masterpiece—a poetic portrait of a local banker’s daughter, Ginevra de’ Benci, which is now a treasure of the National Gallery in Washington—and had established his own studio on returning to Florence, his name was notably absent from a list of the best painters in the city that Lorenzo provided to the Pope, in 1481. (Botticelli, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio were among those who made the cut and were hired to paint the walls of the newly built Sistine Chapel.) But there were other possible reasons for the omission. Leonardo had never painted in fresco, the durable technique favored for wall paintings. And he was already known for leaving things unfinished. Indeed, by 1483, he had abandoned two important commissions and departed for Milan. He was thirty years old, and had accomplished little. In a long and detailed letter that reads like a job application, he offered his services to the local ruler, Ludovico Sforza, as a military engineer. As a seeming afterthought, he mentioned that he could also paint.

A chariot fitted with enormous whirling blades, slicing men in half or cutting off their legs, leaving pieces scattered; guns with multiple barrels arranged like organ pipes to increase the speed and intensity of firing; a colossal missile-launching crossbow. Leonardo made many such frightening drawings while in the employ of Ludovico, who gained the title of Duke of Milan only after poisoning his nephew, some years later, but who effectively served in that role throughout the seventeen years that Leonardo spent in the city. Partly because Ludovico’s claim was shaky, Milan was under frequent siege by rival powers, and Leonardo offered him skills—“I have methods for destroying any fortress or redoubt, even if it is founded on solid rock”—that seem both opportunistically savvy and fantastical, rather like the drawings. He had never demonstrated any military skills before, and his intention in these drawings remains a matter of dispute. Was he an unworldly visionary or a conscienceless inventor? Isaacson wants it both ways: “I believe his proposal was serious,” he writes of the fearsome crossbow, pointing to some thirty preparatory drawings, yet he believes that the design was nevertheless “a work of imagination rather than invention,” for the plain reason that it wouldn’t have worked—and didn’t work, even when constructed by modern engineers, for television, in 2002. This argument blurs the question of intent, but suggests the complexities involved in making any moral judgments about the man.

It was a new life in Milan, which is perhaps just what Leonardo wanted. He was not put to work on military matters, or indeed on any major project, for years—his first job was to fix a plumbing problem—but he proved his worth by designing the elaborate pageants that were a hallmark of Ludovico’s regime, a theatrical form of family propaganda. This sort of work, however, was ephemeral, and has left almost nothing behind, to the immense regret of art historians, who have often fretted that he was wasting his time. Yet Leonardo appears to have been content. The hedonistic court life suited him: he became something of a dandy, dressing in pinks and purples, satins and velvets, his hands scented with lavender. He completed portraits, much admired, of Ludovico’s mistresses, and set up a workshop that turned out devotional pictures for a wealthy clientele. He enjoyed the company of colleagues in widespread disciplines, from architecture to mathematics. Even the damp Lombard weather seems to have suited him; its blue-gray mists, so different from Tuscan sunlight, become the weather of his paintings. And it was in Milan that he began to keep notebooks. Kenneth Clark, whose book on Leonardo, written in the nineteen-thirties, remains indispensable, observes that the range of his activities led him to write down his ideas, in his strange right-to-left script, and to annotate his drawings, beginning with simple pieces of machinery and ending with the world.

“Thief liar obstinate greedy”: with these four exasperated words, written in 1491, after a decade in Milan, Leonardo described the figure with whom he had the most enduring relationship of his life. Gian Giacomo Caprotti was ten years old when he entered the workshop, the previous year. A poor boy of extraordinary beauty, he was brought in as a servant, probably also as a model, and to be trained as a painter—he later had a modest career—and stayed for twenty-eight years. He seems to have resembled one of Leonardo’s angels. Vasari wrote about his beauty and particularly about his “lovely curling hair which Leonardo adored.” Since, however, he was in the habit, early on, of stealing purses, silverpoint pens, and anything else he could get his hands on, Leonardo gave him the nickname Salaì—Little Devil, more or less—and that is how he has been known to history.

It seems fair to assume that they became lovers when Salaì was in his teens. Another of Leonardo’s early biographers, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, writing in about 1560, invented a dialogue between Leonardo and the Greek sculptor Phidias, in which Leonardo replies to the question of whether he and Salaì ever played “that ‘backside game’ which Florentines love so much” with a boisterous affirmative: “Many times!” By way of explanation, he recalls Salaì’s beauty, “especially at about fifteen.” Modern scholars have identified a number of drawings presumably of Salaì, mostly at a later age, when the hair is still curly but the chin is weak and the flesh already somewhat slack. If he does not entirely impress us, though, he continued to impress Leonardo, whose most touching portrait shows the maturing man sketched lightly, almost absentmindedly, around a drawing of the human heart.

It was while he was making notes on the flight patterns of birds, and particularly the fork-tailed red kite, that he was reminded of an early experience, and wrote the only passage about his childhood in the notebooks. Disregarded until Freud wrote a small book about it, in 1910, the passage still commands attention. In this memory—or, as Freud suggested, this fantasy—a kite flew down on the artist in the cradle, “and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me several times with its tail inside my lips.” Freud was apologetic about pointing out that the fantasy “corresponds to the idea of an act of fellatio,” which readers might well consider a grave insult to the artist, although “tradition does in fact represent Leonardo as a man with homosexual feelings.” Feelings that, Freud believed, did not have a sexual outlet: the very existence of the notebooks, in his view, was evidence of the redirection of Leonardo’s sexual energies into his obsessional researches. Leonardo himself was not a stranger to such thoughts, writing, in one of the notebooks, “Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.” It is impossible to know if he was alluding to the experience of an afternoon or of a lifetime, but it isn’t hard to imagine what he would have made of Freud’s assertion that he had never known sexual passion.

Freud’s study has been discredited on many counts, the most profound being his theory that the “psychical genesis of homosexuality” lies in a boy’s erotic attachment to a too-loving mother. Working backward from this theory, he concluded that “poor, forsaken” Caterina must have lived alone with her son for at least the first three years of his life. Surprisingly, the most admirable of Leonardo’s modern biographers—Serge Bramly, writing in 1988, and the richly nuanced Charles Nicholl, writing in 2004—while hardly uncritical of Freud’s analysis, consider his thoughts about the artist’s relationship with his mother to be of enduring value. Isaacson is almost refreshing in his sweeping rejection not only of Freud but of any attempt to psychoanalyze a man who lived five hundred years ago (although he occasionally bends his own rule). As he sees it, the bird, tail and all, reflects nothing more than Leonardo’s interest in flight. Whether or not this is true—who can say?—it is good to have a major biography that (at last) presumes no need to put forth a reason for the artist’s sexuality.

Long before Freud, critics noted that Leonardo painted figures that displayed what Freud called the “blissful union of the male and female natures.” The ravishing angel in each of the two versions of “The Virgin of the Rocks,” commissioned in Milan, is a clear descendant of the early Florentine angels, and confounds any attempt to assign the figure a pronoun—perhaps conveying a theological ideal as well as a personal one. In fact, the preparatory drawing, used for both figures, is of a woman. (Michelangelo elided gender in a comparably obsessive way: his heavily muscled female figures—the Libyan Sibyl on the Sistine Ceiling, Night in the Medici Chapel—were clearly modelled on men, as the drawings attest.) In more openly erotic territory, Leonardo’s late painting of St. John the Baptist is notoriously epicene (Isaacson writes of its “come-hither naughtiness”) and some have seen it as an idealized Salaì. Stranger still, there is a resemblance between this St. John and the woman in the painting often called the “Nude Mona Lisa,” who sits with breasts exposed, against a misty landscape, turning to look the viewer in the eye. At least eight copies of this softly smiling, seminude portrait exist, in emphatically Leonardesque style, and a finished drawing may show the Master’s own corrections. Evidently, his studio fed an appetite for more than Madonnas.

But no one was prepared for the emergence, in 1991, in New York, of a drawing of a hollow-eyed, wingless angel, a sure but dissipated cousin to these other figures, sporting both the suggestion of a woman’s breasts and a huge erection, just slightly blurred where attempts to erase it had failed. Playful caricature? Hermaphroditic pornography? Isaacson suggests both, but even a thick volume devoted to the drawing, edited by a leading Leonardo expert, Carlo Pedretti, fails to provide any answers. One story has it that the drawing was part of a secret cache of obscene Leonardo material held in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. The works were allegedly stolen, in the nineteenth century, prompting not legal prosecution but relief.

It was often Leonardo’s ambition that kept him from completing things, or that ruined the things he completed. A bronze horse that he designed for Ludovico was so enormous that it proved impossible to cast; Ludovico finally dispatched the raw bronze to a neighboring state to be turned into cannons, in preparation for a threatened attack by the French. It may have been Ludovico’s fear that the French would make off with “The Last Supper” that caused Leonardo to execute the painting directly on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the church that Ludovico had chosen for his tomb. Again, the scale was enormous—twenty-nine feet wide, fifteen feet tall—and Leonardo was in a predicament about technique. He liked to work slowly, to rethink, to add layer upon layer, none of which was possible with fresco, which dried quickly and bonded to the wall. Yet he wasn’t sure how to make his preferred medium—oil paint—bond successfully. Experimenting, he concocted a mixture of oil and tempera, and, sometime around 1495, he went to work. Using everything he had learned, in years of study, about anatomy, perspective, light, color, and the physical manifestations of human emotion, he painted one of the world’s most celebrated masterpieces, completed by early 1498, and flaking off the wall by 1517. Leonardo was alive then, and would have known.

The French were unable to pry the painting from the wall, it’s true, although they gave it serious thought almost as soon as they stormed the city, in 1499, driving Ludovico out. They were more successful, however, with the painter. Leonardo was soon on cozy terms with Louis XII’s occupying force, earning unspecified “obligations to His Majesty the King of France.” It was only the threat of Ludovico’s return that made him leave the city and go back to Florence, where he made the acquaintance of an even greater master of Realpolitik, Niccolò Machiavelli. At the time, Machiavelli was an envoy for the Florentine Republic, negotiating to keep the infamous warlord Cesare Borgia from attacking the city. It seems to have been under Machiavelli’s auspices that, in 1502, Leonardo became Borgia’s military engineer. He inspected fortresses, made maps, and designed weapons—he may also have acted as a spy for Florence—as Borgia conquered towns through central Italy in a trail of slaughter that rattled even Machiavelli. Leonardo lasted eight months in the job.

Back in Florence, where the fame of “The Last Supper” had spread, he was greeted as a great master come home. Crowds flocked to see a new work on display; he turned aside commissions from the titled and the rich. But he accepted the commission for a patriotic battle scene on a wall of the city’s Great Council Hall and completed a preparatory cartoon that was among the most powerful works he ever made. “The Battle of Anghiari” has been viewed as both a monument to the passions of war and a passionate antiwar statement: men’s faces savagely twisted, horses tearing at one another’s flesh, one horse screaming in pain, like something out of a Renaissance “Guernica.” Just as he was readying himself to work on the painting itself, though, the city government commissioned Michelangelo to paint another wall in the same room, deliberately spurring a competition between Florence’s two greatest artists.

Michelangelo loathed Leonardo. It’s clear from their work why they might not have got along. Michelangelo’s hard-edged line, even in painting, was sculptural, and deliberately antithetical to the softened atmospherics that Leonardo pursued. But the animus was also personal. Michelangelo, then in his mid-twenties, was gruff, hardworking, ill-kempt, and, by his own account, celibate, because of what appears to have been his severely repressed and spiritualized homosexuality. At one point, he insulted Leonardo on the street, with a taunt about the bronze horse that had been left unfinished, reportedly leaving Leonardo standing red-faced. The witness to this incident found it worth noting that Leonardo, ever beautiful in his person, went around Florence in a rose-pink tunic, and it is irresistible to infer how irritating Michelangelo must have found the older artist, with his peacock clothes and his perfumed air, and with what now amounted to an entourage of swankily dressed assistants.

Leonardo seemed to delight in adding fuel to the fire. Some months before Michelangelo was commissioned to paint alongside Leonardo, in early 1504, there was a meeting to view his nearly completed statue of David and to decide where in the city it would stand. All the important artists in town were present—Botticelli, Perugino, Filippino Lippi (child of the artist-monk and the nun)—but Leonardo alone objected to the figure’s exposed nudity, and pronounced the need for “decent ornament.” A tiny sketch he made on the spot shows the statue with its offending member neatly hidden by what Isaacson describes as “a bronze leaf.” It’s hard to believe that the man whose notebooks contain a section, “On the Penis,” in which he argues against “covering and concealing something that deserves to be adorned and displayed with ceremony” was truly offended by what he saw. Yet his objections prevailed. The genitals of the marble colossus were covered, and stayed that way for some forty years.

It isn’t hard to imagine the defiant mood in which Michelangelo set about producing his rival cartoon for the Council Hall. Instead of a battle scene, he depicted a whole troop of naked, twisting, posing, and extremely well-muscled men, who are caught bathing in a river just as the battle alarm sounds. (As Jonathan Jones notes, in “The Lost Battles,” this work, like Leonardo’s, quickly became a school for younger artists.) But, before Michelangelo could begin to paint, the Pope summoned him to Rome for another commission. Leonardo had seen enough to comment on certain artists who made figures so conspicuously muscled that they resembled “a sack of walnuts.” Still, he was nonplussed by the aggressive younger artist, and was temperamentally ill-suited to this sort of head-on competition. Worse, he had continued to experiment with materials, and as he worked he discovered that, yet again, the paint was not adhering to the wall. When Michelangelo suddenly returned, in 1506, Leonardo abandoned the project and fled back to Milan. As it happened, Michelangelo, consumed by other tasks, never even began his painting. All that remains of either work are a few sublime preparatory drawings—the monumental cartoons are both lost—and later copies.

Among the paintings that Leonardo took away with him was the portrait later known as the “Mona Lisa,” begun around 1503 and soon admired for its astonishing naturalism. Although most scholars agree that it represents Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a local silk merchant, there is no consensus on why the artist chose such a comparatively lowly subject when he was evading requests from the Marchioness of Mantua. As for the “Mona Lisa” ’s haunting smile—“Mona,” a contraction of “Madonna,” is a title akin to Lady or Madam—it, too, remains a mystery. Was Leonardo recalling his mother’s smile? Or Salaì’s? Both theories have been proposed. Or was the smile just a clever allusion to the fact that the lady’s last name, Giocondo, means “cheerful”? (In France, the portrait has always been known as “La Joconde.”) Whatever this portrait meant to Leonardo—the biggest mystery of all—he chose never to relinquish it, but went on, year after year, adding small perfecting strokes and glazes. Nonetheless, he increasingly turned away from painting, anxious to complete his studies and to order the contents of his notebooks. He was in his fifties and feared that he was running out of time.

In Milan, he acquired the services of another beautiful boy who became central to his life. Francesco Melzi, however, was in every other way Salaì’s opposite: aristocratic, educated, serious, a devoted amanuensis, and ultimately something of a son. When political changes forced Leonardo to leave Milan in 1512, he (and Salaì) stayed with the Melzi family outside the city, before moving on to pass three mostly miserable years in Rome. His reputation for not finishing things meant that he no longer received big commissions, a situation that he generally felt as a relief, except when confronted with the galling achievements of Michelangelo and Raphael, in their positions as favorites of the Pope. (It was one thing to be free from unwanted work, another to be ignored.) Although he was universally revered, Leonardo still needed money, and so required a patron with more patience than this class of person usually displayed. Fortunately, Francis I, the new King of France, just twenty-one years old, was eager to import Italian art, and very much in the market for a grand old man of the Renaissance. All that Leonardo needed to supply, in exchange for a stipend and a small château, was his wisdom.

We get a last glimpse of him in 1517, well ensconced in France but frail, when the secretary for the Cardinal of Aragon recorded a visit. Leonardo is still in possession of a portrait of “a certain Florentine lady,” and two other paintings that appear equally impressive. He shows off his notebooks, calling them “an infinity of volumes,” and the account continues, “If these were to be brought to light they would be both useful and delightful.” None of the notebooks had been brought to light by the time Leonardo died, in May, 1519, at the age of sixty-seven. Instead, the task fell to Melzi, who inherited most of Leonardo’s estate, the notebooks included. He managed to organize the notes on painting, and did his careful best—the selling of pages did not begin until after his death—but was finally overwhelmed. A single lifetime was not enough.

Melzi was with Leonardo at the end, but Salaì was living in Milan. He had left the entourage on its way to France, and, despite reported visits to Leonardo, it has been easy to assume a serious break. Leonardo, in his will, left Salaì only half of a property he owned near Milan, leaving the other half to a favorite new servant. Many biographers, including Isaacson, assume that Salaì was essentially cut off. The will, moreover, makes no mention of the paintings, an omission that has been the source of much scholarly agitation. A document detailing Salaì’s effects, made out after his death, only five years later, lists a number of paintings identified by Leonardesque titles (“La Ioconda”), but leaves it unclear whether these were originals or copies. Isaacson concludes, somewhat rashly, that Salaì (in his late thirties) “lived up to his reputation as a sticky-fingered little devil, one who was somehow able to get his hands on things.”

But another document, not discussed by Isaacson, suggests a happier possibility. Brought to light in 1999 by the scholar Bertrand Jestaz, it shows that, in 1518, while Leonardo was still alive, Francis I’s treasurer in Milan issued a small fortune to Salaì in exchange for a group of paintings. According to Jestaz, the sum involved was so large that they can only have been Leonardo’s originals; several of his paintings did indeed enter the King’s collection and are now in the Louvre. (The ones still in Salaì’s possession at his death fell steeply in value soon after and were surely copies.) The art historian Laure Fagnart plausibly concludes that Leonardo left so little to Salaì in his will because he’d already provided for him very well.

Salaì’s reputation has never been the best, and Isaacson’s suggestion hardly does further damage. But the two interpretations say very different things about Leonardo. No one believes anymore that a great artist must be a saint, and there are many things we will never understand about the man. The way that he treated the grownup child who had been the love of his life, as that life was coming to an end, may not be on the same moral plane as the issues raised by his machines of war, but it offers at least one answer to the question of who Leonardo really was.

Leonardo seems to have found peace in his final years, closely attended by the young King—who lived in a château just a few hundred yards away—organizing court celebrations and pondering geometric puzzles to his heart’s content. His last certain work was not a painting, or even a drawing, but a party he put on in his gardens, in honor of the King, in the summer of 1518. There was an enormous canopy of sky-blue cloth decorated with gold stars, supported on columns covered with ivy. There was music. A spectacle titled “Paradiso” was performed, with players costumed as the planets, surrounded by the sun, the moon, and the twelve celestial signs. Four hundred torches were set burning, so that, as a letter-writer of the time recalled, “the night was chased away.” And in the morning all of it was gone. ♦

An earlier version misspelled the first name of the author Mike Lankford.

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Leonardo da Vinci

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Table of Contents

• Rave and Reviews

About The Book

About the author.

Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of  Time . He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 2, 2018)
• Length: 624 pages
• ISBN13: 9781501139161

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Raves and Reviews

"As always, [Isaacson] writes with a strongly synthesizing intelligence across a tremendous range; the result is a valuable introduction to a complex subject. . . . Beneath its diligent research, the book is a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it. . . . Most important, Isaacson tells a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life." — The New Yorker

“To read this magnificent biography of Leonardo da Vinci is to take a tour through the life and works of one of the most extraordinary human beings of all time and in the company of the most engaging, informed, and insightful guide imaginable. Walter Isaacson is at once a true scholar and a spellbinding writer. And what a wealth of lessons there are to be learned in these pages." —David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Wright Brothers and 1776

“I’ve read a lot about Leonardo over the years, but I had never found one book that satisfactorily covered all the different facets of his life and work. Walter—a talented journalist and author I’ve gotten to know over the years—did a great job pulling it all together. . . . More than any other Leonardo book I’ve read, this one helps you see him as a complete human being and understand just how special he was.” — Bill Gates

“Isaacson’s essential subject is the singular life of brilliance. . . . Isaacson deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo . . . a masterpiece of concision.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“A captivating narrative about art and science, curiosity and discipline.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Originals

“He comes to life in all his remarkable brilliance and oddity in Walter Isaacson’s ambitious new biography . . . a vigorous, insightful portrait of the world’s most famous portraitist...Isaacson’s purpose is a thorough synthesis, which he achieves with flair.” — The Washington Post

“Walter Isaacson is a renaissance man. . . . Rather like Leonardo, he’s driven by a joyful desire to discover. That joy bubbles forth in this magnificent book. In Isaacson, Leonardo gets the biographer he deserves—an author capable of comprehending his often frenetic, frequently weird quest to understand. This is not just a joyful book; it’s also a joy to behold. . . . Isaacson deserves immense praise for producing a very human portrait of a genius.” —The Times of London

“The pleasure of an Isaacson biography is that it doesn’t traffic in such cynical stuff; the author tells stories of people who, by definition, are inimitable....Isaacson is at his finest when he analyzes what made Leonardo human.” —The New York Times

“Monumental . . . Leonardo led an astonishingly interesting eventful life. And Isaacson brilliantly captures its essence.” — The Toronto Star

"Majestic . . . Isaacson takes on another complex, giant figure and transforms him into someone we can recognize. . . . Totally enthralling, masterful, and passionate.” — Kirkus Reviews , starred review

"Illuminating . . . This is a monumental tribute to a titanic figure." — Publishers Weekly , starred review

“Isaacson uses his subject’s contradictions to give him humanity and depth.” —Anthony Grafton, The New York Times

“Encompassing in its coverage, robust in its artistic explanations, yet written in a smart, conversational tone, this is both a solid introduction to the man and a sweeping saga of his genius.” — Booklist , starred review

“A fresh and enthusiastic reading of the extraordinary da Vinci notebooks, written in a way that makes them both accessible and contemporary. Absorbing, enlightening and always engaging.” — Miranda Seymour, author of Mary Shelley

“Isaacson's biography is linear enough to follow easily, yet it returns, as did the artist, time and again, to the highly concrete, enticingly yet rigorously investigable mysteries of the human and natural world. Model . . . . This beautiful book, on coated stock, showing text and illustrations to the best advantage, is a pleasure to hold.” —Bay Area Reporter

“Isaacson, to his credit, helps us see Leonardo’s artistic vision with fresh eyes. . . . He writes simply and clearly, and even though his principal character hails from antiquity, the narrative hums like a headline from the morning paper, alert to topical parallels between then and now . . . we finish the book with a renewed conviction that the world’s most famous Renaissance man was, in essence, inimitable.” —Christian Science Monitor

“A full and engrossing profile of the artist . . . The author moves fluidly between the scientific inquiries of Leonardo’s notebooks and the artistic achievements in his sketchbooks, and carries the same themes, such as the artist’s boundless curiosity and inquiry, through them in a way that does not seem too facile or overapplied.” —East Hampton Star

“A 21st century page-turner." —USA Today

“Exuberant . . . a richly illustrated ride through the artist’s life . . . a fascinating, bonbon-size tribute to the man who thought to ask.” — Newsday

“Beautifully produced and illustrated, the biography is an ideal match of author and subject. . . . Fascinated by Leonardo’s genius, Isaacson lucidly and lovingly captures his stunning powers of observation that spanned so many disciplines. . . . Isaacson’s monumental and magnificent biography does succeed in helping us understand what made da Vinci’s paintings so memorable, and in making Leonardo much more accessible, as a genius, a man of and outside of his times, and as a 'quirky, obsessive, playful, and easily distracted' human being.” — Tulsa World

“In some ways this is Walter Isaacson's most ambitious book. He uses the life he recounts in a wonderful way to speculate on the source of geniuses...always you are informed, entertained, stimulated, satisfied. This has to be the most beautifully illustrated and printed book I've seen in recent years.” —Fareed Zakaria GPS

“[A] splendid work that provides an illuminating guide to the output of one of the last millennium’s greatest minds.” — Guardian US

"Leonardo da Vinci's prowess as a polymath — driven by insatiable curiosity about everything from the human womb to deadly weaponry — still stuns. In this copiously illustrated biography, we feel its force all over again. Walter Isaacson wonderfully conveys how Leonardo's genius unified science and art." —NATURE

"Dazzling" —HARVARD GAZETTE

"Luminous . . . Leonardo Da Vinci is an elegantly illustrated book that broadens Isaacson’s viewfinder on the psychology of major lives – Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs are the subjects of his previous biographies, best-sellers all." —THE DAILY BEAST

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• Carnegie Medal Honor Book

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Leonardo da Vinci Paperback – Unabridged, October 2, 2018

• Print length 624 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Simon & Schuster
• Publication date October 2, 2018
• Dimensions 6.13 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1501139169
• ISBN-13 978-1501139161
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Unabridged edition (October 2, 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 624 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501139169
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501139161
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.9 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
• #3 in Historical Italy Biographies
• #10 in Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers (Books)
• #51 in Scientist Biographies

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About the author

Walter isaacson.

Walter Isaacson is writing a biography of Elon Musk. He is the author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race; Leonardo da Vinci; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He is a Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine.

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Leonardo da Vinci (1452 -1519)

Leonardo da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 near the Tuscan town of Vinci, the illegitimate son of a local lawyer. He was apprenticed to the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence and in 1478 became an independent master. In about 1483, he moved to Milan to work for the ruling Sforza family as an engineer, sculptor, painter and architect. From 1495 to 1497 he produced a mural of 'The Last Supper' in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

Da Vinci was in Milan until the city was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family forced to flee. He may have visited Venice before returning to Florence. During his time in Florence, he painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous 'Mona Lisa' (1503-1506).

In 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, remaining there until 1513. This was followed by three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king Francis I, Leonardo moved to the Château of Cloux, near Amboise in France, where he died on 2 May 1519.

The fame of Da Vinci's surviving paintings has meant that he has been regarded primarily as an artist, but the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks reveal the most eclectic and brilliant of minds. He wrote and drew on subjects including geology, anatomy (which he studied in order to paint the human form more accurately), flight, gravity and optics, often flitting from subject to subject on a single page, and writing in left-handed mirror script. He 'invented' the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute some 500 years ahead of their time.

If all this work had been published in an intelligible form, da Vinci's place as a pioneering scientist would have been beyond dispute. Yet his true genius was not as a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two: an 'artist-engineer'. His painting was scientific, based on a deep understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light and shade. His science was expressed through art, and his drawings and diagrams show what he meant, and how he understood the world to work.

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Biography Online

• Leonardo da Vinci Biography

In addition to art, Da Vinci studied all aspects of life from anatomy to mathematics and astronomy; his far-reaching investigations and discoveries sought to show an underlying unity of the universe. Da Vinci is considered to be a key person in the birth of the European Renaissance , which saw an emergence of new ideas, scientific discoveries and the creation of beautiful art.

Short Biography of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo was born an illegitimate son of a Florentine noble and peasant woman; he grew up in Vinci, Italy. In his formative years, he developed a love of nature and from an early age began to display his remarkable academic and artistic talents.

Adoration of the Magi by Da Vinci

In 1466, he moved to Florence where he entered the workshop of Verrocchio. Initially, his formative style reflected his teacher but he soon developed an artistic sense which went far beyond his master’s rigid style. His first work of significance was the “Adoration of the Magi” commissioned by monks of San Donato a Scopeto. Although unfinished, the work was a masterpiece and introduced several new ideas. In particular, he introduced themes of movement and drama. He also pioneered the use of Chiaroscuro ; this is the technique of defining forms through the contrast of light and shadow. This would be later used to great effect in the Mona Lisa.

“Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.” The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Richter, 1888)

In 1482, Leonardo went to the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan, where he stayed for 16 years. Here he continued painting and also branched out into other interest such as engineering and anatomy.  During this period he painted the famous artworks “Madonna on the Rocks” and also “The Last Supper.”

Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci

The Last Supper has been described as one of the greatest religious paintings. With Christ at the centre of the picture, it embodies great feeling and emotion as Christ is about to announce his imminent betrayal by Judas. The painting is held at the Convent of Santa Maria Delle Grazie, Milan, but unfortunately over time the quality of the original painting has deteriorated, despite frequent restoration attempts.

Leonardo Da Vinci and Mona Lisa

In 1499, his patron L. Sforza was defeated by the French invasion, causing Leonardo to return to Florence. During this period, he painted the fresco of the Battle of Anghiari. This artwork was to exert tremendous influence over future artists. However, it was never completed and was later destroyed. It was also during this period that Leonardo completed The Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is one of the world’s most famous and intriguing pictures. The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a wife of a Florentine noble. For several days she came to Leonardo and sat for her portrait to be painted; however, she refused to smile. Leonardo even tried hiring musicians but to no avail. One day, just for a fleeting second, she gave a faint smile, and Leonardo was able to capture it. Her smile encapsulates a mysteriousness which is both fascinating and intriguing. Sri Chinmoy said of the Mona Lisa.

“That smile has immortalized her, immortalized the artist and immortalized the art. Artist and art have been immortalized by just a faint smile, a smile that has an enigmatic touch. Even now a soul-touch is there, and that soul-touch has conquered the heart of the world.” (1)

In the Mona Lisa, Leonardo masters the techniques of sfumato and chiaroscuro . Sfumato enables a gradual transition between colours – allowing delicate and expressive images. In the Mona Lisa, the use of chiaroscuro is evident in the contrast between her face and the dark background.

Glider design by Da Vinci

In this period Leonardo also extended his studies into engineering, science and other subjects. There seemed to be no end to his interests. He made copious notes in his complex mirror handwriting, much of which wasn’t deciphered in his lifetime. He also drew complex models of machines; in particular, he was fascinated by flight. He used to buy birds just so that he could release and enjoy watching them fly away. Da Vinci also attempted to build a flying object himself. Machines that he drew on paper, such as helicopters, would become a reality many centuries later. If his medicinal studies had been published, it would have revolutionised the science, as he was one of the first to understand the circulation of blood within the body. He also realised the earth revolved around the sun, anticipating the future work of Copernicus and Galileo .  Da Vinci was driven to contemplate all aspects of life and the world, it left him with a great love and fascination with the universe.

“Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity — by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles…” The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Through different fields, Da Vinci sought to see an underlying unity in the universe and took an optimistic view of human potential.

“Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory.”

The Vitruvian Man

Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man

This is a drawing of the proportions of man. Da Vinci used earlier work and notes by the Roman architect Vitruvius. The picture combines art, man and science – illustrating the beauty of geometrical proportions and the human form. It is symbolic of Da Vinci’s work, and the Renaissance he inspired, to combine these art forms into one diagram. In the simplicity of a line drawing, there are many different factors brought into play; it has become an iconic image.

Da Vinci fame grew during his lifetime, though he was not a wealthy man and he had to rely on the patronage of his patrons. This included powerful men, such as Cesare Borgia, who in the early 1500s demanded Da Vinci design instruments of war. Da Vinci designed a crossbow, prototype tank and ‘machine gun.’

Personal life of Da Vinci

Leonardo remained single throughout his life. He did not marry or have children. He kept his personal life private and shared few details. He was close with his pupils Salai and Melzi, but appeared to be mostly absorbed in his far-reaching investigations, work and paintings. In his day, contemporary reports indicated Da Vinci was a unique person, with a physical beauty, dignified presence and strong moral character. Da Vinci expresses his love of truth:

“To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God’s grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.” The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

His first biographer, Giorgio Vasari, writes on the person of Da Vinci in 1550.

“..Besides a beauty of body never sufficiently extolled, there was an infinite grace in all his actions; and so great was his genius, and such its growth, that to whatever difficulties he turned his mind, he solved them with ease.” ( Source text )

A notable characteristic of Da Vinci was his wide-ranging respect and reverence for truth, life and living creatures. He adopted a vegetarian diet and would buy caged birds just so he could release them. He is quoted as saying:

“ The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

Between 1506-1510, Leonardo spent time in Milan working on behalf of the very generous French King Lois XII. In 1513 he travelled to the Vatican, Rome where he enjoyed the patronage of the new Medici Pope, Leo X. Here, Da Vinci worked in proximity to contemporaries such as the great Masters Michelangelo and Raphael . However, an intense rivalry soon developed between the younger Michelangelo and Da Vinci.

The religion of Da Vinci

Despite being the patron of the Pope, Da Vinci was not an orthodox Catholic. Vasari writes of Da Vinci that he was:

“cast of mind was so heretical that he did not adhere to any religion, thinking perhaps that it was better to be a philosopher than a Christian.”

Madonna of the Rocks (cropped) by Da Vinci

Vasari removed this quote in the second edition but, from his life’s work, we can see Da Vinci valued reason and was willing to question dogma passed down through the ages. Da Vinci wrote criticisms of the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church. The religious paintings of Da Vinci also indicate a religious faith expressed in a non-conformist way. His Madonna on the Rocks incorporates a Virgin Mary, not dressed regally or surrounded with a halo, but simply dressed in the surroundings of nature. Da Vinci did believe in God, but his religious sensibilities were expressed through seeing God in art, science and nature.

“We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.” The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Da Vinci was a great perfectionist – one reason why he completed so few paintings was that he never felt he had satisfactorily finished anything. He said towards the end of his life:

“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.”

In 1515, Da Vinci left to settle at the castle of Cloux, near Amboise by the kind invitation of Francis I of France. Here Da Vinci, spent his remaining years, free to pursue his own studies. He died in 1519 leaving behind one of the greatest body of artistic and scientific works.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Leonardo da Vinci ”, Oxford, UK – www.biographyonline.net . Published: 12th Jan 2014. Last updated 15th February 2018.

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• Leonardo da Vinci
• Leonardo da Vinci Facts

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Biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Inventor and Artist of the Renaissance

Victor Ovies Arenas / Getty Images

• Art History
• Architecture
• M.A., Anthropology, University of Iowa
• B.Ed., Illinois State University

Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452–May 2, 1519) was an artist, humanist, scientist, philosopher, inventor, and naturalist during the Italian Renaissance . His genius, says his biographer Walter Isaacson, was his ability to marry observation with imagination and to apply that imagination to intellect and its universal nature.

Fast Facts: Leonardo da Vinci

• Known For : Renaissance-era painter, inventor, naturalist, philosopher, and writer
• Born : April 15, 1452 in Vinci in Tuscany, Italy
• Parents : Piero da Vinci and Caterina Lippi
• Died : May 2, 1519 in Cloux, France
• Education : Formal training limited to "abacus school" in commercial math, an apprenticeship at the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio; otherwise self-taught

Leonardo da Vinci was born in the village of Vinci in Tuscany, Italy, on April 15, 1452, the only child of Piero da Vinci, a notary and eventually chancellor of Florence, and Caterina Lippi, an unmarried peasant girl. He is properly known as "Leonardo" rather than "da Vinci," although that is a common form of his name today. Da Vinci means "from Vinci" and most people of the day who required a last name were given it based on their place of residence.

Leonardo was illegitimate, which, according to biographer Isaacson, may well have assisted his skill and education. He was not required to go to formal school, and he passed his youth in experimentation and exploration, keeping careful notes in a series of journals that have survived. Piero was a well-to-do man, descended from at least two generations of important notaries, and he settled in the town of Florence. He married Albierra, the daughter of another notary, within eight months of Leonardo's birth. Leonardo was raised in the da Vinci family home by his grandfather Antonio and his wife, along with Francesco, Piero's youngest brother only 15 years older than his nephew, Leonardo himself.

Florence (1467–1482)

In 1464, Albierra died in childbirth—she had no other children, and Piero brought Leonardo to live with him in Florence . There, Leonardo was exposed to the architecture and writings of the artists Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472); and it was there that his father got him an apprenticeship to the artist and engineer Andrea del Verrocchio. Verrocchio's workshop was part art studio and part art shop, and Leonardo was exposed to a rigorous training program that included painting, sculpture, pottery, and metalworking. He learned the beauty of geometry and the mathematical harmony that art can leverage. He also learned chiarroscuro and developed the sfumato technique for which he would become famous.

When his apprenticeship ended in 1472, Leonardo registered in the Florentine painter's confraternity, the Compagnia di San Luca. Many of the works he did in Verocchio's workshop were often completed by several of the students and/or the teacher, and it is clear that by the end of his tenure, Leonardo had surpassed his master.

Verocchio's workshop was sponsored by the duke of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici  (1469–1492), also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. Some of the works painted by Leonardo in his 20s include the "Annunciation" and the "Adoration of the Magi," and the portrait of "Ginevra di Benci."

Milan (1482–1499)

When Leonardo turned 30, he was sent by Lorenzo on a diplomatic mission to bring a lute in the shape of a horse's head that he himself had crafted to be given to Ludovico Sforza, the powerful duke of Milan. With him was Atalante Migliorotti (1466–1532), the first of his long-term companions who acted as a friend, assistant, secretary, and romantic partner.

When Leonardo arrived in Milan, he sent a letter to Ludovico, a letter that was more or less a job application, laying out in detail the type of job he envisioned being useful to the duke: military and civil engineering. Instead, Leonardo ended up an impresario, producing elaborate pageants for the royal court such as the "Masque of the Planets." He designed scenery and costumes and developed fantastic mechanical elements for the plays that would fly, descend, or animate for the audience. In this role, he was part court jester: he sang and played the lute, told stories and fables, played pranks. His friends described him as gentle and entertaining, handsome, precise, and generous, a valued and beloved companion.

The Genius in the Notebook

It was also during this period that Leonardo began keeping regular notebooks. More than 7,200 single pages exist today, estimated to be one-quarter of his total output. They are filled with expressions of sheer genius: flights of fancy, precognitive sketches of impossible technologies (scuba gear, flying machines, helicopters); careful, analytical anatomical studies of dissections he performed on humans and animals; and visual puns. In his notebooks and his canvases, he played with shadow and light, perspective, motion, and color. His drawings of humans at the time are fascinating: an old warrior with a nutcracker nose and an enormous chin; grotesquely old men and women; and a thin, muscular, curly-haired androgynous figure, the opposite avatar of the old warrior who would provide centuries of delight and speculation for art historians.

Of course, he painted while he was in Milan: portraits included several of Ludovico's mistresses, "The Lady with the Ermine and La Belle Ferronnière," and religious works such as "Virgin of the Rocks" and the astonishing "Last Supper." He also made the famous drawing "Vitruvian Man," the best of numerous attempts of the day to illustrate what the Roman architect Vitrivius (c. 80–15 BCE) meant when he said the layout of a temple should reflect the proportions of a human body. Leonardo ditched most of Vitrivius' measurements and calculated his own ideal of perfection.

In 1489, Leonardo finally earned the job he had wanted in 1482: he received an official court appointment, complete with rooms (albeit not at Ludovico's castle). His first commission was to make an immense sculpture of the duke of Milan's father Francesco sitting on a horse. He made the model of clay and worked for years planning the casting, but never completed the bronze sculpture. In July 1490, he met the second companion of his life, Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, known as Salai (1480–1524).

By 1499, the duke of Milan was running out of money and no longer consistently paying Leonardo, and when Louis XII of France (1462–1515) invaded Milan, Ludovico fled the city. Leonardo stayed in Milan briefly—the French knew him and protected his studio from the mobs—but when he heard rumors that Ludovico was planning to return, he fled home to Florence.

Italy and France (1500–1519)

When Leonardo returned to Florence, he found the city still shaken from the after-effects of the brief and bloody rule of Savonarola (1452–1498), who in 1497 had led the "Bonfire of the Vanities"—the priest and his followers collected and burned thousands of objects such as artworks, books, cosmetics, dresses, mirrors, and musical instruments as forms of evil temptations. In 1498, Savonarola was hanged and burned in the public square. Leonardo was a different man when he returned: he dressed like a dandy, spending almost as much on clothing as he did on books. His first patron was the notorious military ruler Cesare Borgia (1475–1507), who conquered Florence in 1502: Borgia gave Leonardo a passport to travel wherever he needed, as his personal engineer and innovator.

The job only lasted about eight months, but during that time Leonardo built a bridge supporting a garrison of troops out of a pile of lumber and nothing more. He also perfected the art of maps, drawing villages as they would be seen from the air, accurate, detailed birds-eye views of cities measured with a compass. He also established a friendship with Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), who would base his classic "The Prince" on Borgia. By 1503, though, Borgia was running amok, requiring mass executions in the towns he occupied. At first, Leonardo seemed oblivious, but when Machiavelli left, so did Leonardo: back to Florence.

In Florence, Leonardo and Machiavelli worked on an astonishing project: they planted to divert the Arno river from Pisa to Florence. The project got started, but the engineer changed the specs and it was a spectacular failure. Leonardo and Machiavelli also worked on a way to drain the Piombino Marshes: the movement and force of water was a fascination for Leonardo throughout his life, but the marsh project was also not completed.

Michelangelo

Artistically, Florence had a huge drawback: Leonardo had acquired a nemesis, Michelangelo . Twenty years younger, Michelangelo was a pious Christian convulsed by agony over his nature. The two artists' communication devolved into a bitter feud. The two men were each commissioned to do battle scenes: hung in separate galleries, the paintings were depictions of frenzied faces, monstrous armor, and mad horses. Isaacson suggests that the upshot of the war of the battle scene was useful to both artists because they were now both luminaries, rather than interchangeable parts.

From 1506–1516, Leonardo wandered back and forth between Rome and Milan; another one of his patrons was the Medici Pope Leo X (1475–1521). In 1506, Leonardo adopted Francesco Melzi, the 14-year-old son of a friend and civil engineer, as his heir. Between 1510 and 1511, Leonardo worked with anatomy professor Marcantonio della Torre, whose students dissected humans while Leonardo made 240 meticulous drawings and wrote 13,000 words of description—and probably more, but those are what survived. The professor died of the plague, ending the project before it could be published.

And of course, he painted. His masterpieces during this period in his life include the "Mona Lisa" ("La Gioconda"); "The Virgin and Child with St. Anne," and a series of images of Salai as St. John the Baptist and Bacchus.

In 1516, Francis I of France commissioned Leonardo for another astounding, impossible task : design a town and palace complex for the royal court at Romorantin. Francis, arguably one of the best patrons Leonardo ever had, gave him the Chateau de Cloux (now the Clos Luce). Leonardo was by now an old man, but he was still productive—he made 16 drawings over the next three years, even if the city project was not completed—but he was visibly ill and had likely suffered a stroke. He died on May 2, 1519, at the Chateau.

• Clark, Kenneth and Martin Kemp. "Leonardo da Vinci: Revised Edition." London, Penguin Books, 1989.
• Isaacson, Walter. "Leonardo Da Vinci." New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. 
• Farago, Claire. "Biography and Early Art Criticism of Leonardo da Vinci." New York: Garland Publishing, 1999.
• Nicholl, Charles. "Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind." London, Penguin Books, 2005.
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• Leonardo da Vinci's 'Study of Hands'
• Top 12 Greatest Visual Artists of All Time

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10 Famous Artworks by Leonardo da Vinci

One of the great Renaissance painters, Leonardo da Vinci continually tested artistic traditions and techniques. He created innovative compositions, investigated anatomy to accurately represent the human body, considered the human psyche to illustrate character, and experimented with methods of representing space and three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface. The result of his inexhaustible curiosity is many unfinished projects but also some of the most lifelike, complex, and tender representations of human nature. His experiments influenced the art of his successors and often became the standard of representation in subsequent centuries. At his death in 1519, Leonardo left many notebooks filled with jottings and sketches but very few finished works. Some of his pieces were completed by assistants, but others were lost, destroyed, or overpainted. Below are 10 examples of some of his most well-known surviving works.

Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19)

The world’s most famous artwork, the Mona Lisa draws thousands of visitors to the Louvre Museum each day, many of whom are compelled by the sitter’s mysterious gaze and enigmatic smile. The seemingly ordinary portrait of a young woman dressed modestly in a thin veil, somber colors, and no jewelry might also confound its viewers, who may wonder what all the fuss is about. The painting’s simplicity belies Leonardo’s talent for realism. The subject’s softly modeled face shows his skillful handling of sfumato , an artistic technique that uses subtle gradations of light and shadow, rather than line, to model form. The delicately painted veil, the finely wrought tresses, and the careful rendering of folded fabric reveal Leonardo’s tireless patience in recreating his studied observations. Moreover, the sitter’s perplexing expression only adds to her realism. Her smile might be engaging or it might be mocking— viewers can’t quite figure it out because, like a human, she is a complex figure, embodying contrary characteristics simultaneously.

Last Supper (c. 1495–98)

One of the most famous paintings in the world, the Last Supper was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza , duke of Milan and Leonardo’s patron during his first stay in that city, for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Depicting a sequential narrative, Leonardo illustrates several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthew 26:21–28, in which Jesus declares that one of the Apostles will betray him and then institutes the Eucharist . Leonardo, who was intrigued by the manner in which a man’s character can reveal itself in posture, expression, and gesture, depicted each disciple’s unique reaction to the declaration. The Apostles’ postures rise, fall, extend, and intertwine as they appear to whisper, yell, grieve, and debate around Jesus, who sits serenely in the center. Because of Leonardo’s experimental painting technique, in which he used tempera or oil paint on two layers of preparatory ground, the work began to disintegrate soon after he finished it. Viewers, however, can still recognize it as a complex study of varied human emotion, revealed in a deceptively simple composition.

Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)

Leonardo’s pen-and-ink drawing Vitruvian Man comes from one of the many notebooks that he kept on hand during his mature years. It is accompanied by notes, written in mirror script, on the ideal human proportions that the Roman architect Vitruvius laid out in a book on architecture from the 1st century BCE. The drawing illustrates Vitruvius’s theory that the ideal human could fit within a circle and a square, two irreconcilable shapes. Leonardo resolved the concept by drawing a male figure in two superimposed positions—one with his arms outstretched to fit in a square and another with his legs and arms spread in a circle. The work shows not only Leonardo’s effort to understand significant texts but also his desire to expand on them. He was not the first to illustrate Vitruvius’s concepts, but his drawing later became the most iconic, partly because its combination of mathematics, philosophy, and art seemed a fitting symbol of the Renaissance. The drawing is now housed in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice , where it is not typically on display but kept in a climate-controlled archive.

Self Portrait (c. 1490/1515–16)

Long regarded as a self-portrait, the red chalk drawing of an old man with long wavy hair and a beard has been reproduced to such an extent that it defines how most people think of Leonardo’s appearance. Yet some scholars argue that the figure, with its craggy features, furrowed brow, and downcast eyes, appears much older than the age Leonardo ever reached; Leonardo died at age 67. They propose that the drawing may be one of his grotesque drawings, sketches he habitually made in his notebooks of people with eccentric features. Whomever the portrait represents, it is a departure from Leonardo’s often captivating subjects, yet he managed to imbue the figure with the nobility and wisdom of a mature age.

The Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483–86)

Based on stylistic evidence, many scholars consider the painting The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre the first of two paintings that Leonardo made of an apocryphal legend in which the Holy Family meets Saint John the Baptist as they flee to Egypt from Herod ’s Massacre of the Innocents. Leonardo was involved in years of litigation with the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, which commissioned the work, and the dispute eventually led Leonardo to paint another version of the subject about 1508, which is now housed in the National Gallery of London.

The first painting shows the ways in which Leonardo ushered in the High Renaissance . Early paintings from this period often depicted figures in linear arrangements, separate from one another, and stiff in form. In The Virgin of the Rocks , however, the figures of the Virgin Mary , the Christ Child, the infant John, and an archangel are arranged in a pyramidal composition, and they not only convincingly occupy a space but interact with one another through gestures and glances. A youthful Mary sits on the ground in a mysterious rocky landscape, not on a throne as so many early Renaissance paintings depicted her. Her body has movement—it seems to sway as she tilts her head protectively toward the infant John, who kneels in prayer at the left, and she looks as if she nudges him over to the Christ Child at the right. Jesus, in turn, blesses John as an archangel, seen in a complex pose from the back, points toward John and glances inscrutably outward at the viewer. Leonardo also notably excluded traditional holy signifiers— halos for Mary and Christ and a staff for John—so that the Holy Family appears less divine and more human.

Head of a Woman (1500–10)

Head of a Woman , a small brush drawing with pigment, depicts a young woman with her head tilted and her eyes downcast. Her posture recalls the Virgin Mary in Leonardo’s The Virgin of the Rocks , suggesting that the drawing may have served as a model. The drawing’s nickname , La scapigliata , translates to “disheveled” and refers to the young woman’s wayward strands of hair. The loosely sketched tendrils and shoulders contrast with the highly finished face, where Leonardo gently modeled the woman’s delicate features, from her heavy eyelids to her tender lips. It reveals Leonardo’s fluid means of working, utilizing both expressive drawing to create form and controlled layering to provide detail.

Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–91)

Many art historians identify the youthful woman in Lady with an Ermine as Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Leonardo’s patron, Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. The ermine was often used as an emblem for the duke. The woman turns her head to the right, her bright eyes seemingly directed toward something outside the frame. Although the painting has been heavily overpainted, notably the dark background, it nonetheless reveals Leonardo’s knowledge of anatomy and his ability to represent character in posture and expression. He captures the girl’s youth and genial nature in her guileless features, attentive gaze, and tender embrace of the ermine, which sits with its head cocked regally and alert. Her slender hand reveals the complicated bone structure beneath the skin, just as the head of the ermine suggests the skull underneath the finely rendered fur.

Salvator Mundi (c. 1500)

The head-on portrait of Salvator Mundi (c. 1500; “Savior of the World”) made headlines in 2017 when it sold for a record-breaking $450.3 million at auction. The high price was all the more surprising when considering that Salvator Mundi was in poor condition, it had a questionable history, and its attribution was a subject of debate among scholars and critics. Many pundits remarked on the poor skill used to represent Jesus’ face; the stiff posture, which was so unlike the Renaissance master’s characteristic twisting poses; and the unconvincing representation of the glass globe, which, if solid, would have reflected a distorted view of its holder, an optical trick that Leonardo would have known about. Christie’s, the auction house that managed the sale, dismissed the criticisms, noting that any lack of craft was the result of heavy restoration in previous centuries and pointed to the soft modeling of Jesus’ right hand and the finesse of his tight curls, both characteristics that resembled Leonardo’s technique. The auction house also asserted that conservators had confirmed that the painting was made of the same materials that Leonardo would have used, notably ultramarine , an expensive high-quality blue pigment often reserved exclusively for virtuosos. The attribution debate continued well after the sale, but the interest in the work and the large sum paid at auction attested to Leonardo’s enduring celebrity and to his powerful position in the art history canon five centuries after his death.

Ginevra de’ Benci (c. 1474/78)

Housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci is the only painting by Leonardo publicly displayed in the Western Hemisphere. It is one of Leonardo’s earliest works, finished when he was in his early 20s, and shows some of the unconventional methods he would use throughout his career. Inspired by his Northern contemporaries, Leonardo broke with tradition by depicting the solemn young woman in a three-quarter pose rather than the customary profile, and thus he may have been the first Italian artist to paint such a composition. He continued to use the three-quarter view in all of his portraits, including the Mona Lisa , and it quickly became the standard for portraiture, so ubiquitous that viewers take it for granted today. Leonardo may also have used his fingers when the paint was still tacky to model Ginevra’s face, as suggested by the fingerprints found in the paint surface.

On the reverse side of the painting, a wreath of laurel and palm encircles a sprig of juniper ( ginepro in Italian—a pun on the sitter’s name), and a scroll bearing the Latin phrase “beauty adorns virtue” entwines each of the flora. The truncated appearance of the reverse side suggests that the painting may have been cut at the bottom, possibly because of damage from water or fire. Some scholars speculate that the portrait on the obverse would have included Ginevra’s hands and propose that a silverpoint study of arms and hands housed at Windsor Castle may have served as a preliminary drawing.

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (c. 1503–19)

Some scholars believe that The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne was Leonardo’s last painting, and in this work he used many of the conventions that he had established throughout his career to depict three generations of the Holy Family— Saint Anne , her daughter, the Virgin Mary, and the Christ Child. Anne, at the apex of the pyramidal composition, watches Mary, who sits on her lap, as the Virgin tenderly restrains the Christ Child from mounting a lamb. Contrasting with the knowing infant Leonardo depicted in The Virgin of the Rocks , the Christ figure in the The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne appears innocent, demonstrating playful juvenile behavior and showing a trusting expression as he returns his mother’s gaze. The interactions between the figures feels intimate and reveals Leonardo’s ability to represent convincing human relationships.

The painting also shows Leonardo’s lifelong interest in believably representing three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. As in many of Leonardo’s paintings, the figures sit amid a fantastical landscape. Using aerial perspective , a technique that he wrote about in his Treatise on Painting , Leonardo created the illusion of distance by painting the rocky formations in the background so that they appear blue-gray and less detailed than the landscape of the foreground. He used this technique in many of the landscapes of his earlier works, including the Mona Lisa and The Virgin of the Rocks .

Leonardo DiCaprio

Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio has starred in films such as Titanic , The Aviator , The Wolf of Wall Street , and The Revenant .

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1974-present

Leonardo DiCaprio Now: Actor Switched His Killers of the Flower Moon Role

Quick facts, leonardo dicaprio’s young life and start in acting, early movies: what’s eating gilbert grape and romeo and juliet, titanic and a-list stardom.

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Environmental work, who is leonardo dicaprio.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio earned worldwide stardom after starring in James Cameron ’s 1997 epic drama Titanic and has become one of Hollywood’s most successful leading men. Starting his career in television before moving on to movies, he has regularly collaborated with the iconic director Martin Scorsese , including such films as Gangs of New York , The Aviator , The Departed , and The Wolf of Wall Street . DiCaprio has also starred in the Quentin Tarantino films Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , as well as other notable movies like Blood Diamond , Revolutionary Road , Inception , and The Great Gatsby . He earned his first of six Academy Award acting nominations for his supporting role in 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and finally took home the Oscar for Best Actor for the 2015 movie The Revenant .

FULL NAME: Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio BORN: November 11, 1974 BIRTHPLACE: Los Angeles, California ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio

Born on November 11, 1974, in Los Angeles, Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is the only child of Irmelin and George DiCaprio. His parents chose the name Leonardo because when his mother was pregnant with him during a honeymoon in Florence, she felt him “kicking furiously ” while looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting at the Uffizi Gallery.

His parents divorced when he was still a toddler. DiCaprio was mostly raised by his mother, a legal secretary born in Germany. Despite his parents’ early divorce, DiCaprio remained close to his father, a comic book artist and distributor.

With his parents’ urging, DiCaprio explored his creative side, developing an early interest in acting. “I loved imitating people” DiCaprio later told Backstage . “I loved joking around with my parents and creating different characters. I liked doing my own little homemade skits.” He didn’t like attending John Marshall High School in Los Angeles and wished to instead focus on acting auditions. He ultimately dropped out of high school but later earned his general equivalency diploma.

Early TV Roles and First Movie

DiCaprio began appearing in television commercials as a young child, though he didn’t have much success in Hollywood until he reached his early teens. For years, he had trouble landing an agent. One agent even recommended DiCaprio change his name to Lenny Williams to improve his appeal, saying his birth name was “too ethnic.” DiCaprio considered quitting acting after failing to find work despite multiple auditions, but his father encouraged him to keep at it.

By the early 1990s, the burgeoning actor began landing regular television work, with guest appearances on programs such as The New Lassie and Roseanne . He also landed a role in the dramatic comedy Parenthood, inspired by the 1989 movie of the same name, with DiCaprio playing the role originated by Joaquin Phoenix . The show proved to be short-lived, but DiCaprio was nominated for a Young Artist Award for Best Young Actor Starring in a New Television Series.

In 1991, DiCaprio took a leap forward when he was cast as a semi-regular on the family comedy Growing Pains, with Kirk Cameron and Alan Thicke. He portrayed Luke Brower, a homeless boy taken in by the family, earning another Young Artist Award nomination for the performance. DiCaprio made his film debut in the low-budget horror flick Critters 3 (1991), which earned him a third Young Artist Award nomination . He got the chance to demonstrate his talents as a serious actor two years later.

Proving he was more than a just good-looking teenager, DiCaprio starred opposite Robert De Niro in This Boy’s Life . The film delved into the difficult relationship between a young boy and his abusive stepfather in this adaptation of Tobias Wolff’s memoir. De Niro watched the auditions and said of DiCaprio’s, “I like the blond kid. He’s quite good.” In his first major movie role, the still-young actor didn’t yet know how to behave on a film set and “came with a bunch of bad habits that we got rid of,” director Michael Caton-Jones said, after which DiCaprio’s acting improved. He impressed critics, with Roger Ebert writing that “the movie is successful largely because he is a good enough actor to hold his own in his scenes with De Niro.”

DiCaprio turned heads again with his performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), co-starring Johnny Depp . Director Lasse Hallstrom almost passed on DiCaprio because “I thought we needed someone who wasn’t as good-looking,” but he was impressed enough with the actor’s audition to cast him anyway. Portraying a child with mental disabilities, DiCaprio spent several days at homes for mental ill teenagers to study their mannerisms and incorporate them into his performance, according to Leonardo DiCaprio: The Biography by Douglas Wight. DiCaprio awed critics and film industry insiders so much so that director Martin Scorsese found it hard to believe he wasn’t actually mentally challenged, according to Wight . The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

DiCaprio continued to pursue interesting and diverse film projects. He starred in the 1995 coming-of-age drama The Basketball Diaries and worked with Sharon Stone , Gene Hackman , and Russell Crowe on the western film The Quick and the Dead that same year. Sony Pictures was reluctant to hire DiCaprio for the latter film, but Stone believed in his talent enough that she paid his salary herself . The next year, DiCaprio starred as the Romeo to Claire Danes ’s Juliet in Romeo + Juliet (1996), Baz Luhrmann’s modern retelling of William Shakespeare ’s tragic love story. DiCaprio nearly passed on the project, “I didn’t want to run around in tights, swinging a sword,” but his father urged him to accept the role, according to Wight, which helped establish him as a leading Hollywood actor.

Another tragic love story helped propel DiCaprio’s career to a stratospheric level in 1997. He co-starred with Kate Winslet in James Cameron ’s Titanic, about the sinking of the titular ocean liner. In the movie, he plays Jack, a poor artist who falls for the rich and beautiful Rose (Winslet) on board. The couple faces danger not only from Rose’s fiancé (Billy Zane) but the ship itself after it strikes an iceberg. With a production budget that topped $200 million, it was the most expensive film ever made at the time.

Then 22 years old, DiCaprio turned down a role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) to appear in Titanic . Winslet was so impressed with DiCaprio that she urged Cameron to cast him, even if he didn’t cast her, according to Wight. DiCaprio had hesitations about the part, and Cameron initially felt he “didn’t strike me as necessarily having the qualities I wanted for my Jack,” but after the auditions were complete, Cameron decided, “He was the guy,” according to Wight.

Titanic became both a critical and commercial smash hit. It garnered 14 Academy Award nominations and won 11, taking home the distinctive honors of Best Picture and Best Director. It was the first film to reach the billion dollar mark in international sales. The success of the film also showed that DiCaprio could command traditional leading man roles. He quickly became a world-famous celebrity with a growing following of admirers, his charm and youthful good looks landing him on People magazine’s list of the “50 Most Beautiful People” in 1997 and 1998.

Immediately after Titanic , DiCaprio hit a bit of a career slump, as The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and The Beach (2000) proved to be disappointments both financially and artistically. However, DiCaprio quickly bounced back and demonstrated his range as an actor in two noteworthy features from 2002. He first portrayed real-life con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. in Steven Spielberg ’s Catch Me if You Can (2002), alongside Tom Hanks and Christopher Walken .

He also starred with Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York (2002), the first of many collaborations between DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese. A pet project for the famed director, he had trouble securing financing for it until DiCaprio came aboard. The actor, himself, relished the role of an Irish street gang member because it was a departure from the boyish roles with which he was becoming associated.

The Aviator , The Departed , and Inception

DiCaprio once again worked with director Martin Scorsese on The Aviator (2004), taking on the challenge of playing one of America’s most famous businessmen: the eccentric and reclusive Howard Hughes . DiCaprio spent a year preparing for the starring role, reading books about and listening to recordings of Hughes, and conducting research about chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder, according to Wight. DiCaprio received widespread critical praise for the performance, winning his first Golden Globe and once again receiving an Academy Award nomination, this time as a leading actor. Film critic Robert Denerstein wrote that DiCaprio “captures Hughes’ brio, as well as the sadness that accompanied the gradual onset of insanity that turned Hughes into a legendary recluse.”

DiCaprio’s next Scorsese movie was 2006’s The Departed , which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. A remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (2002), DiCaprio portrayed Billy Costigan, an undercover state trooper who infiltrates the crew of Irish mob boss Frank Costello ( Jack Nicholson ), while one of Costello’s plants ( Matt Damon ) infiltrates the Massachusetts State Police. DiCaprio gained 15 pounds of muscle for the part and met with several people in Boston with actual ties to the Irish mob.

That same year, DiCaprio also appeared in the political war thriller Blood Diamond , portraying a diamond smuggler in war-torn Sierra Leone. DiCaprio spent months in South Africa preparing for the part, which involved interviewing people living in the country, studying the correct accents, and learning how to camouflage himself from South African military officers. The film received some criticism from the diamond industry, to which DiCaprio responded , “If the movie does anything, it will bring more awareness to the issue and people will be asking more questions, and the industry is going to have to have viable answers.” DiCaprio earned another Best Actor nod at the Oscars for his performance.

In 2008, DiCaprio reunited with Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road , a tense film about a 1950s suburban couple facing a myriad of personal problems. Winslet suggested DiCaprio for the role because the two remained closed after Titanic and wanted to work together again but wanted to do so on a completely different film. DiCaprio followed that role up with the Scorsese thriller Shutter Island (2010) and Inception (2010), a Christopher Nolan –directed science fiction thriller about people who use futuristic technology to invade the dreams of others. DiCaprio agreed to a pay cut for the latter film in exchange for a percentage of the film’s gross profits, which ultimately earned him $50 million , his largest salary for a film performance to date.

DiCaprio took on another famous figure in the 2011 biopic J. Edgar . Directed by Clint Eastwood , the movie explores the life of J. Edgar Hoover , who ran the FBI for nearly five decades. To prepare for the role, DiCaprio conducted extensive research and visited many of Hoover’s haunts in Washington, D.C. “I do love playing historical figures simply because there’s so much incredibly diverse, interesting information about a character when you can research their life,” he explained to Backstage . “A lot of the stuff you’d never be able to make up as a writer.”

In 2012, DiCaprio marked his first collaboration with director Quentin Tarantino in Django Unchained , co-starring Jamie Foxx , Kerry Washington , and Christoph Waltz. Tarantino portrayed the villainous Calvin J. Candie, an 1850s-era plantation owner who forces his male slaves to fight to the death. It was a notably intense role, and during one dinner scene, DiCaprio accidentally cut his hand on a glass after smashing his fist upon the table, but he didn’t break character and the scene was used in the film. “My hand started really pouring blood all over the table,” DiCaprio said. “I’m glad Quentin kept it in.”

The following year, he re-teamed with Baz Luhrmann to play one of literature’s most intriguing characters, starring as Jay Gatsby in the 2013 adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic The Great Gatsby .

Also in 2013, DiCaprio again joined forces with Scorsese to star in and co-produce The Wolf of Wall Street, portraying investment banker Jordan Belfort , who gained notoriety for defrauding clients while lining his own pockets in the 1990s. The film received some criticism for allegedly glorifying Belfort’s illegal actions and unethical lifestyle, but DiCaprio pushed back against these claims, saying “I hope people understand we’re not condoning this behaviour, that we’re indicting it.” DiCaprio’s portrayal of Belfort earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor, along with Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Picture. Jonah Hill , Margot Robbie , and Matthew McConaughey also starred in the film.

Despite his phenomenally successful three-decade career, fans and observers noted with surprise that DiCaprio hadn’t yet won an Academy Award. That changed when he starred in The Revenant as Hugh Glass, an 1820s frontiersman forced to endure the wilderness after being left for dead. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the 2015 film was difficult to shoot due to frigid weather, and for the performance, DiCaprio ate raw bison , slept in an animal carcass, and endured freezing temperatures. The movie immediately generated major awards buzz and finally earned DiCaprio his first Academy Award in February 2016.

“Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history” he said during his Oscar acceptance speech . “Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the Indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this.”

Newest Movies: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and K illers of the Flower Moon

In 2019, DiCaprio worked with Quentin Tarantino again on the comedy-drama film Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood , which depicts a 1969 Hollywood and an alternative version of the events surrounding the notorious Charles Manson murders. Although many of the characters in the movie are based on real people, including actor Sharon Tate (portrayed by Margot Robbie ), DiCaprio portrayed the fictional Rick Dalton, a floundering actor who confides in his longtime stunt double, played by Brad Pitt . DiCaprio took a pay cut to work with Tarantino again, once again accepting profits from the film’s box-office performance, as he had with Inception . The role earned him his sixth Academy Award nomination for acting.

DiCaprio and Scorsese collaborated for a sixth time with Killers of the Flower Moon , which released in October 2023. Reuniting DiCaprio with his A Boy ’s Life co-star Robert De Niro , the film depicts a real-life series of murders on the Osage Nation Reservation in Oklahoma during the 1920s. DiCaprio portrays Ernest Burkhart, a member of the murderous conspiracy who marries Mollie Kyle (portrayed by Lily Gladstone ) to gain her trust. DiCaprio was originally cast in the heroic role of FBI agent Tom White, but during development of the film, he insisted on switching to Burkhart’s character , which led to significant script revisions.

Ultimately, Jesse Plemons took on the role of White, and the changes were seemingly worthwhile. Film critic Brian Tallerico wrote DiCaprio and De Niro, who plays Burkhart’s uncle William Hale, “fuel each other’s performances.” And what dominant performances they were. “The sublimated tension of the Hale–Ernest dynamic, embodied by two Scorsese veterans in fine form, is so clear and legible that it sometimes runs the risk of pushing everyone else to the narrative periphery,” Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times writes .

As a Hollywood A-lister, DiCaprio has found himself in the media spotlight over his past girlfriends. His on-again, off-again relationship with supermodel Gisele Bündchen was fodder for celebrity magazines and websites from 2000 to 2005. DiCaprio then dated model Bar Refaeli for several years. In 2011, he was briefly linked to actor Blake Lively . Since then, he has reportedly dated various models, including most recently Gigi Hadid .

Leonardo DiCaprio has an estimated net worth of more about $300 million .

In a 2019 article , The Hollywood Reporter shared that DiCaprio typically earns $20 million per role. Of course, this can vary. For example, the star earned $50 million for Inception after agreeing to a pay cut in exchange for a percentage of the 2010 movie’s gross profits. It remains his most lucrative role to date. He struck a similar deal for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019), with a reported initial payday of $15 million.

In addition to commanding high-paying deals for his acting roles, DiCaprio is also a movie producer. Some of the blockbusters he has backed include Orphan (2009), The Ides of March (2011), and his upcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon .

DiCaprio has long been passionate about environmental issues. In 2000, he hosted an Earth Day celebration and interviewed former President Bill Clinton for a television segment about global warming. DiCaprio also wrote, narrated, and produced The 11th Hour , an environmental documentary that was released in 2007, and was heavily involved in the production of the 2016 documentary Before the Flood , about climate change.

The actor is one of the founders of The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF), a nonprofit that supports and brings awareness to numerous environmental causes. He has also served on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. In March 2018, DiCaprio served as an executive producer of the History Channel’s eight-part docuseries The Frontiersman , a look back at America’s most iconic pioneers who helped shape the country.

• I loved imitating peopl ... I loved joking around with my parents and creating different characters. I liked doing my own little homemade skits.
• The best thing about acting is that I get to lose myself in another character and actually get paid for it. It’s a great outlet. As for myself, I’m not sure who I am. It seems that I change every day.
• As an actor, I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe humankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, happening to someone else’s planet, as if pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away. But I think we know better than that.
• Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.

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Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. He is the author of two true crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy . He is also an avid film buff, reader, and lover of great stories.

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