Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. One of the greatest figures of the Italian Renaissance, he was active in Florence, Milan, and, from 1516, France. As state engineer and court painter to the Duke of Milan, he painted the Last Supper mural (c. 1495; Sta Maria delle Grazie, Milan), and on his return to Florence painted the Mona Lisa (c. 1503-05; Louvre, Paris). His notebooks and drawings show an immensely inventive and enquiring mind, studying aspects of the natural and scientific world from anatomy and botany to aerodynamics and hydraulics.

Milan

Leonardo left Florence for Milan in c. 1482, offering his services to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, primarily as a military and naval engineer, as a sculptor next, and as a painter incidentally. As a military engineer he was responsible for the construction of assault machines, pontoons, a steam cannon, and a tortoise-shaped assault tank. For a castle in Milan he created a forced-air central heating system and also a water-pumping mechanism. Leonardo's inventions ranged from complex cranes to pulley systems, lathes, drilling machines, a paddlewheel boat, flying machines, and an underwater breathing apparatus.

Soon after his arrival, however, he painted Ludovico's mistress, Cecilia Gallerani (the Lady with an Ermine, Kraków, Czartoryski Collection), and, in partnership with Ambrogio da Predis in 1483, an altarpiece to which Leonardo contributed the central panel, The Virgin of the Rocks. (The existence of two versions, one in the Louvre, Paris, and one in the National Gallery, London, may be explained by the revision of the altarpiece in 1506 after a long period of haggling, when presumably a first version of the panel was sent to France and the other was finally accepted by the confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.)

Other undertakings were the bronze equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, of which only the model was completed, and the world-famous fresco of the Last Supper in the refectory of Sta Maria delle Grazie. This painting, in which he used an experimental oil medium, suffered from the damp wall on which it was painted.

Venice, Rome, and Florence

Having left Milan to return to Florence in 1499, the following year Leonardo travelled to Venice, where he may have met the Italian painter Giorgione, who was greatly impressed by his treatment of light and shade. Leonardo developed the use of both chiaroscuro (the contrast of light and shadow) and also sfumato (the subtle graduation of colours and tones), both techniques helping to extend the emotional depth and complexity of painting.

After mapping the country and planning canals and harbours for Caesar Borgia in Rome, in 1503 Leonardo was commissioned by the Signory of Florence to produce a battle scene on the walls of the Council Hall. Michelangelo was commissioned the same time for a similar work. After working on the Battle of Anghiari for two years, Leonardo left the work unfinished, and an experimental technique again destroyed what he had done. Over the same time, Leonardo also worked on the portrait of Mona Lisa (La Gioconda; Louvre), the wife of wealthy merchant Francesco Zanobi del Giocondo. The mysterious smiling picture depicted all the subtle elusiveness of expression that Leonardo loved.

Later years

In 1506 Leonardo returned to Milan (now under French domination) as the city's engineer and architect, moved on to Rome in 1513 for three years, and then accepted Francis I's invitation to France. He spent his last years in the small castle of Cloux near the royal residence of Amboise on the Loire. His last painting was the St John the Baptist (c. 1514-15), now in the Louvre.

Early life: Florence
Leonardo was the son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a lawyer from Florence, and his mother, Catarina, was of humble birth and unmarried. The child was brought up in his father's household and showed unusual gifts from his earliest years, youthful pursuits being music, modelling, and drawing. His father placed him in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio, where he was the fellow pupil of Botticelli, Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi. It is probable that he painted the kneeling angel in Verrocchio's Baptism (Uffizi), in which according to legend the master recognized the pupil's superiority. He was enrolled in the painters' guild in Florence in 1472, and Lorenzo the Magnificent took him under his protection in 1477.

First works
Before 1481 he devoted himself to projects and studies in architecture, hydraulics, mechanics, engineering, astronomy, geology, and anatomy. To this period belong the Virgin and Child (Munich), viewed with doubt by some authorities but containing many Leonardesque details; the portrait of Ginevra de Benci (Liechtenstein Collection); and the unfinished Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi).

Research in science and art
His voluminous notebooks and diagrammatic drawings, of which the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, England, contains the greatest collection, show a profound research into general scientific laws demonstrable by observation and experiment. In applied science he had all the equipment of a great inventor, anticipating the aeroplane, the armoured vehicle, and the submarine. On the subject of architecture and town planning he had a modern attitude towards acoustics, light, and space, and conceived of two-level highways.

His notes for a treatise on painting and his remarks on the observation of accidental effects in nature are still stimulating to artists. Superb examples of his powers as a draughtsman, apart from his scientific and anatomical studies, are his drawings of horses and warriors for the Battle of Anghiari, his silverpoint bust of a warrior (British Museum, London), and his self-portrait in sanguine (Turin), while his cartoon for the Virgin and St Anne (Royal Academy, London) is a monochrome masterpiece.