Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 near the Tuscan town of Vinci. Apprenticed in Florence to the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio, he quickly revealed a talent that ranged far beyond the workshop. Painter, engineer, anatomist, architect, and inventor, he approached every subject with the same insatiable curiosity, filling thousands of notebook pages with observations, sketches, and designs.

In 1482 Leonardo entered the service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, where he painted The Last Supper on the wall of a monastery refectory. Returning to Florence, he began the portrait known as the Mona Lisa around 1503, a work he refined for years and kept with him until his death. His studies of anatomy, water, flight, and mechanics were centuries ahead of their time.

In 1516 Leonardo accepted the invitation of King Francis I of France and settled near the royal château at Amboise, where he died in 1519. Though he completed relatively few paintings, each transformed the art of his age. His notebooks, rediscovered and studied ever since, reveal a mind of unmatched breadth, and his legacy endures as the very definition of the Renaissance ideal.

Renaissance polymath whose paintings, notebooks, and inventions embodied the union of art and science, and whose Mona Lisa remains the world's most famous portrait.