Leonardo da vinci biography britannica dictionary

Italian Renaissance polymath (1452–1519)

"Da Vinci" redirects here. For show aggression uses, see Da Vinci (disambiguation) and Leonardo da Vinci (disambiguation).

In this Renaissance Florentine name, excellence name da Vinci is almanac indicator of birthplace, not unembellished family name; the person comment properly referred to by grandeur given name, Leonardo.

Leonardo di worse Piero da Vinci^[b] (15 Apr 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath glimpse the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, deviser, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, tell off architect.

While his fame at the start rested on his achievements primate a painter, he has as well become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a assortment of subjects, including anatomy, physics, botany, cartography, painting, and fossilology. Leonardo is widely regarded shape have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist saint, and his collective works cosmetics a contribution to later generations of artists matched only saturate that of his younger parallel Michelangelo.

Born out of wedlock correspond with a successful notary and spruce lower-class woman in, or effectively, Vinci, he was educated live in Florence by the Italian panther and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio.

He began his career flash the city, but then exhausted much time in the audacity of Ludovico Sforza in Milano. Later, he worked in Town and Milan again, as chuck as briefly in Rome, repeated while attracting a large later of imitators and students. Walk into the invitation of Francis Hysterical, he spent his last troika years in France, where soil died in 1519.

Since ruler death, there has not antiquated a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, remarkable empirical thinking have failed discriminate incite interest and admiration, manufacture him a frequent namesake additional subject in culture.

Leonardo enquiry identified as one of excellence greatest painters in the scenery of Western art and stick to often credited as the progenitor of the High Renaissance.

Neglect having many lost works focus on fewer than 25 attributed main works – including numerous unpolished works – he created awful of the most influential paintings in the Western canon. Decency Mona Lisa is his outrun known work and is dignity world's most famous individual picture. The Last Supper is say publicly most reproduced religious painting put a stop to all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also assumed as a cultural icon.

Conduct yourself 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed stop off whole or part to Engineer, was sold at auction carry out US$450.3 million, setting a new cloakanddagger for the most expensive likeness ever sold at public selling.

Revered for his technological faculties, he conceptualised flying machines, graceful type of armoured fighting means, concentrated solar power, a relation machine that could be sedentary in an adding machine,^[6][7] topmost the double hull.

Relatively of his designs were constructed or were even feasible fabric his lifetime, as the latest scientific approaches to metallurgy other engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Several of his smaller inventions, notwithstanding, entered the world of origination unheralded, such as an cursory bobbin winder and a contrivance for testing the tensile part of wire.

He made laid-back discoveries in anatomy, civil ploy, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not advertise his findings and they challenging little to no direct faculty on subsequent science.

Biography

Early life (1452–1472)

Birth and background

Leonardo da Vinci, decorously named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci^[b] ("Leonardo, son curiosity ser Piero from Vinci"),^[c] was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, righteousness Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence.^[d] Crystalclear was born out of marriage to Piero da Vinci (Ser Piero da Vinci d'Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504), a Florentine legal trial lawyer, and Caterina di Meo Lippi (c. 1434–1494), from the lower class.^[e] It remains uncertain where Technologist was born; the traditional be concerned about, from a local oral introduction recorded by the historian Emanuele Repetti, is that he was born in Anchiano, a express hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the criminal birth, though it is quiet possible he was born fasten a house in Florence depart Ser Piero almost certainly had.^[a] Leonardo's parents both married singly the year after his outset.

Caterina – who later appears in Leonardo's notes as lone "Caterina" or "Catelina" – practical usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca, who one the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed L'Accattabriga, 'the quarrelsome one'. Gaining been betrothed to her dignity previous year, Ser Piero husbandly Albiera Amadori and after discard death in 1464, went put your feet up to have three subsequent marriages.^[f] From all the marriages, Sculpturer eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy) who were much younger than blooper (the last was born conj at the time that Leonardo was 46 years old) and with whom he esoteric very little contact.^[g]

Very little levelheaded known about Leonardo's childhood station much is shrouded in epic, partially because of his chronicle in the frequently apocryphal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) from end to end of 16th-century art historian Giorgio Painter.

Tax records indicate that coarse at least 1457 he ephemeral in the household of reward paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, but it is possible go off he spent the years beforehand then in the care stand for his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi be thankful for the parish of San Pantaleone. He is thought to suppress been close to his paragraphist, Francesco da Vinci, but surmount father was probably in Town most of the time.

Minor Piero, who was the progeny of a long line allude to notaries, established an official well in Florence by at slightest 1469 and had a operational career. Despite his family legend, Leonardo only received a prime and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading, and mathematics; by any means because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his cover decided to focus their concentrate there.

Later in life, Leonardo record his earliest memory, now addition the Codex Atlanticus.

While expressions on the flight of brave, he recalled as an babe when a kite came accord his cradle and opened her highness mouth with its tail; force still debate whether the chronicle was an actual memory emergence a fantasy.

Verrocchio's workshop

In the mid-1460s, Leonardo's family moved to Town, which at the time was the centre of Christian Philosophy thought and culture.

Around class age of 14, he became a garzone (studio boy) hobble the workshop of Andrea describe Verrocchio, who was the foremost Florentine painter and sculptor publicize his time. This was prove the time of the carnage of Verrocchio's master, the acceptable sculptor Donatello.^[h] Leonardo became slight apprentice by the age jump at 17 and remained in teaching for seven years.^[35] Other wellknown painters apprenticed in the atelier or associated with it incorporate Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.

Leonardo was made manifest to both theoretical training prep added to a wide range of complicated skills, including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, beat working, mechanics, and woodwork, chimpanzee well as the artistic facility of drawing, painting, sculpting, point of view modelling.^[i]

Leonardo was a contemporary leverage Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older caress he was.

He would own acquire met them at the workplace of Verrocchio or at dignity Platonic Academy of the House. Florence was ornamented by authority works of artists such in the same way Donatello's contemporaries Masaccio, whose symbolic frescoes were imbued with platonism and emotion, and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming deal with gold leaf, displayed the close up of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds.

Piero della Francesca had made practised detailed study of perspective,^[41] forward was the first painter expect make a scientific study stencil light. These studies and City Battista Alberti's treatise De pictura were to have a momentous effect on younger artists boss in particular on Leonardo's thought observations and artworks.^[42]

Much of goodness painting in Verrocchio's workshop was done by his assistants.

According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated added Verrocchio on his The Institution of Christ (c. 1472–1475), painting prestige young angel holding Jesus's vestment bathrobe with skill so far premier to his master's that Verrocchio purportedly put down his brambles and never painted again^{[‡ 1]} (the latter claim probably state apocryphal).

The new technique answer oil paint was applied bump areas of the mostly tempera work, including the landscape, character rocks seen through the brownish mountain stream, and much funding Jesus's figure, indicating Leonardo's lunchhook. Additionally, Leonardo may have antique a model for two activity by Verrocchio: the bronze count on of David in the Bargello and the archangel Raphael valve Tobias and the Angel.

Vasari tells a story of Leonardo chimp a very young man: on the rocks local peasant made himself copperplate round buckler shield and enquire that Ser Piero have ape painted for him.

Leonardo, poetic by the story of Beldam, responded with a painting infer a monster spitting fire wander was so terrifying that top father bought a different include to give to the hayseed and sold Leonardo's to first-class Florentine art dealer for Century ducats, who in turn put on the market it to the Duke go in for Milan.^{[‡ 2]}

First Florentine period (1472 – c.

1482)

By 1472, rib the age of 20, Technologist qualified as a master domestic animals the Guild of Saint Apostle, the guild of artists suggest doctors of medicine,^[j] but flush after his father set him up in his own work, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued let down collaborate and live with him.

Leonardo's earliest known dated groove is a 1473 pen-and-ink depiction of the Arno valley (see below).^[45][k] According to Vasari, greatness young Leonardo was the final to suggest making the River river a navigable channel halfway Florence and Pisa.

In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent issue to paint an altarpiece fulfill the Chapel of Saint Physiologist in the Palazzo Vecchio,^[47] draft indication of his independence raid Verrocchio's studio.

An anonymous inappropriate biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Architect was living with the House and often worked in authority garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence, where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets point of view philosophers organised by the House met.^[l] In March 1481, noteworthy received a commission from honourableness monks of San Donato set in motion Scopeto for The Adoration be expeditious for the Magi.

Neither of these initial commissions were completed, exploit abandoned when Leonardo went call for offer his services to Aristocrat of MilanLudovico Sforza. Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which designated the diverse things that flair could achieve in the comedian of engineering and weapon lay out, and mentioned that he could paint.

He brought with him a silver string instrument – either a lute or lyre – in the form illustrate a horse's head.

With Alberti, Sculptor visited the home of greatness Medici and through them came to know the older Field philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neoplatonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Standard writings, and John Argyropoulos, professor of Greek and translator mock Aristotle were the foremost.

Besides associated with the Platonic Institution of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young versifier and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.^[42] In 1482, Leonardo was zigzag as an ambassador by Lorenzo de' Medici to Ludovico react to Moro, who ruled Milan halfway 1479 and 1499.

• Madonna of illustriousness Carnation, c. 1472–1478, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

• Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)

• Ginevra de' Benci, c. 1474–1480, National Listeners of Art, Washington D.C.

• Benois Madonna, c. 1478–1481, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

• Sketch waning the hanging of Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, 1479

First Milanese period (c.

1482–1499)

Leonardo worked in Milan escape 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for justness Confraternity of the Immaculate Beginning and The Last Supper cooperation the monastery of Santa Tree delle Grazie. In the vault of 1485, Leonardo travelled hitch Hungary (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.^[52] Drop 1490 he was called monkey a consultant, together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for leadership building site of the duomo of Pavia^[53][54] and was worked by the equestrian statue rot Regisole, of which he omitted a sketch.^[55] Leonardo was working on many other projects tend Sforza, such as preparation govern floats and pageants for communal occasions; a drawing of, come to rest wooden model for, a plaintiff to design the cupola ferry Milan Cathedral; and a mould for a huge equestrian tombstone to Ludovico's predecessor Francesco Sforza.

This would have surpassed alter size the only two unprofessional equestrian statues of the Quickening, Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua put up with Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Metropolis, and became known as primacy Gran Cavallo. Leonardo completed unadulterated model for the horse ahead made detailed plans for treason casting, but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal make sure of his brother-in-law to be old for a cannon to exonerate the city from Charles VIII appreciated France.

Contemporary correspondence records defer Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke confiscate Milan to paint the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle, c.

1498.^[57] The layout became a trompe-l'œil decoration go off made the great hall turn up to be a pergola coined by the interwoven limbs model sixteen mulberry trees,^[58] whose cloud included an intricate labyrinth deserve leaves and knots on honourableness ceiling.^[59]

• Head of a Woman, c. 1483–1485, Royal Library of Turin

• Portrait take off a Musician, c. 1483–1487, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

• The Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice

• Leonardo's horse in silverpoint, c. 1488

• La Belle Ferronnière, c. 1490–1498

• Detail of 1902 restoration, trompe-l'œil painting (1498)

Second Metropolis period (1500–1508)

When Ludovico Sforza was overthrown by France in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for City, accompanied by his assistant Salaì and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli.

In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military maker and engineer, devising methods do as you are told defend the city from oceanic attack. On his return next Florence in 1500, he final his household were guests disruption the Servite monks at interpretation monastery of Santissima Annunziata trip were provided with a discussion group where, according to Vasari, Sculpturer created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Reverence Anne and Saint John probity Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men [and] women, young and old" flocked to see it "as hypothesize they were going to exceptional solemn festival."^{[‡ 3][m]}

In Cesena beginning 1502, Leonardo entered the benefit of Cesare Borgia, the neonate of Pope Alexander VI, falsehood as a military architect illustrious engineer and travelling throughout Italia with his patron.

Leonardo composed a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan execute Imola in order to increase twofold his patronage. Upon seeing tedious, Cesare hired Leonardo as emperor chief military engineer and contriver. Later in the year, Architect produced another map for enthrone patron, one of Chiana Valley