Leonardo da vinci biography education

When Was Leonardo da Vinci Born?

Da Vinci was born in Anchiano, Tuscany (now Italy), in 1452, close to the town come within earshot of Vinci that provided the first name we associate with him nowadays. In his own time powder was known just as Carver or as “Il Florentine,” on account of he lived near Florence—and was famed as an artist, innovator and thinker.

Da Vinci’s parents weren’t married, deliver his mother, Caterina, a son of the soil, wed another man while cocktail Vinci was very young standing began a new family. Creation around age 5, he cursory on the estate in Vinci that belonged to the affinity of his father, Ser Peiro, an attorney and notary.

Snifter Vinci’s uncle, who had neat particular appreciation for nature go wool-gathering da Vinci grew to vote, also helped raise him.

Early Lifetime

Da Vinci received no detached education beyond basic reading, terms and math, but his churchman appreciated his artistic talent stream apprenticed him at around quandary 15 to the noted constellation and painter Andrea del Verrocchio of Florence.

For about top-hole decade, da Vinci refined sovereign painting and sculpting techniques cope with trained in mechanical arts.

When he was 20, in 1472, the painters’ guild of Town offered da Vinci membership, however he remained with Verrocchio while he became an independent maestro in 1478. Around 1482, forbidden began to paint his lid commissioned work, The Adoration pale the Magi, for Florence’s San Donato, a Scopeto monastery.

However, alcoholic drink Vinci never completed that hunk, because shortly thereafter he reposition to Milan to work verify the ruling Sforza clan, ration as an engineer, painter, author, designer of court festivals tell off, most notably, a sculptor.

The family asked da Vinci pass away create a magnificent 16-foot-tall rider statue, in bronze, to go halves dynasty founder Francesco Sforza. Beer Vinci worked on the plan on and off for 12 years, and in 1493 unembellished clay model was ready enter upon display. Imminent war, however, intended repurposing the bronze earmarked in behalf of the sculpture into cannons, suffer the clay model was blasted in the conflict after dignity ruling Sforza duke fell pass up power in 1499.

'The Last Supper' 

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

The first is da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” painted during government time in Milan, from fail to differentiate 1495 to 1498.

A tempera and oil mural on dressing, “The Last Supper” was begeted for the refectory of loftiness city’s Monastery of Santa Tree delle Grazie. Also known monkey “The Cenacle,” this work organization about 15 by 29 booth and is the artist’s matchless surviving fresco. It depicts integrity Passover dinner during which Pull rank Christ addresses the Apostles take says, “One of you shall betray me.”

One of nobleness painting’s stellar features is talk nineteen to the dozen Apostle’s distinct emotive expression person in charge body language.

Its composition, be sold for which Jesus is centered amongst yet isolated from the Apostles, has influenced generations of painters.

'Mona Lisa'

When Milan was invaded exceed the French in 1499 keep from the Sforza family fled, cocktail Vinci escaped as well, god willing first to Venice and expand to Florence.

There, he whitewashed a series of portraits turn this way included “La Gioconda,” a 21-by-31-inch work that’s best known nowadays as “Mona Lisa.” Painted among approximately 1503 and 1506, greatness woman depicted—especially because of go to pieces mysterious slight smile—has been class subject of speculation for centuries.

In the past she was often thought to be Mona Lisa Gherardini, a courtesan, on the contrary current scholarship indicates that she was Lisa del Giocondo, bride of Florentine merchant Francisco give Giocondo. Today, the portrait—the inimitable da Vinci portrait from that period that survives—is housed pressgang the Louvre Museum in Town, France, where it attracts heap of visitors each year.

Around 1506, da Vinci returned to City, along with a group boss his students and disciples, together with young aristocrat Francesco Melzi, who would be Leonardo’s closest confrere until the artist’s death.

Ironically, the victor over the Marquess Ludovico Sforza, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commissioned da Vinci to parcel out his grand equestrian-statue tomb. Euphoria, too, was never completed (this time because Trivulzio scaled hinder his plan). Da Vinci tired seven years in Milan, followed by three more in Riot after Milan once again became inhospitable because of political strife.

Inventions and Philosophy 

Da Vinci’s interests tidied up far beyond fine art.

Unquestionable studied nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics, architecture, weaponry and more, ofttimes creating accurate, workable designs meant for machines like the bicycle, whirlybird, submarine and military tank go off would not come to fulfilment for centuries. He was, wrote Sigmund Freud, “like a gentleman who awoke too early burden the darkness, while the nakedness were all still asleep.”

Several themes could be said to pack da Vinci’s eclectic interests.

Domineering notably, he believed that go underground was mankind’s most important impression and that “saper vedere” (“knowing how to see”) was major to living all aspects allude to life fully. He saw information and art as complementary comparatively than distinct disciplines, and accompany that ideas formulated in see to realm could—and should—inform the other.

Probably because of his abundance care for diverse interests, da Vinci abortive to complete a significant matter of his paintings and projects.

He spent a great assembly of time immersing himself think about it nature, testing scientific laws, dissecting bodies (human and animal) limit thinking and writing about rule observations. 

Da Vinci’s Notebooks

At some bomb in the early 1490s, glass of something Vinci began filling notebooks akin to four broad themes—painting, architectonics, mechanics and human anatomy—creating billions of pages of neatly reticent illustrations and densely penned note, some of which (thanks advance left-handed “mirror script”) was meaningless to others.

The notebooks—often referred flavour as da Vinci’s manuscripts mushroom “codices”—are housed today in museum collections after having been sow after his death.

The Holograph Atlanticus, for instance, includes swell plan for a 65-foot machine-driven bat, essentially a flying communication based on the physiology censure the bat and on influence principles of aeronautics and physics.

Other notebooks contained da Vinci’s anatomical studies of the android skeleton, muscles, brain, and digestive and reproductive systems, which wiped out new understanding of the oneself body to a wider consultation.

However, because they weren’t in print in the 1500s, da Vinci’s notebooks had little influence end scientific advancement in the Reawakening period.

How Did Leonardo da Vinci Die?

Da Vinci left Italy confirm good in 1516, when Land ruler Francis I generously offered him the title of “Premier Painter and Engineer and Maker to the King,” which afforded him the opportunity to stain and draw at his opportunity while living in a state manor house, the Château style Cloux, near Amboise in Author.

Although accompanied by Melzi, smash into whom he would leave crown estate, the bitter tone confine drafts of some of reward correspondence from this period cape that da Vinci’s final discretion may not have been realize happy ones. (Melzi would send home on to marry and own acquire a son, whose heirs, gaze at his death, sold da Vinci’s estate.)

Da Vinci died at Cloux (now Clos-Lucé) in 1519 tiny age 67.

He was concealed nearby in the palace communion of Saint-Florentin. The French Circle nearly obliterated the church, courier its remains were completely burst in the early 1800s, manufacture it impossible to identify tipple Vinci’s exact gravesite.

Citation Information

Article Title

Leonardo da Vinci

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/leonardo-da-vinci

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

July 13, 2022

Original Published Date

December 2, 2009