Little is known about the life of Leonardo da Vinci.
He kept copious notebooks, but these contain only sketches and
speculations. Much of what we know of him comes from tax records,
legal documents, and secondhand sources.
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the town of Vinci.
His father was Ser Piero, a notary; his mother, Caterina, came
of a peasant family. They were not married. The boy's uncle Francesco
may have had more of a hand in his upbringing than by either of
his parents. When Leonardo was about 15, he moved to the nearby
city of Florence and became an apprentice to the artist Andrea
del Verrocchio. He was already a promising talent. While at the
studio, he aided his master with his Baptism of Christ, and
eventually painted his own Annunciation. Around
the age of 30, Leonardo began his own practice, starting work on
the Adoration of the Magi; however, he soon abandoned
it and moved to Milan in 1482.
In Milan, Leonardo sought and gained the patronage of
Ludovico Sforza, and soon began work on the painting Virgin
of the Rocks. After some years, he began work on a giant
bronze horse, a monument to Sforza's father. Leonardo's design
is grand, but the statue was never completed. Meanwhile, he was
keeping scrupulous notebooks on a number of studies, including artistic
drawings but also depictions of scientific subjects ranging from
anatomy to hydraulics. In 1490, he took a young boy, Salai, into
his household, and in 1493 a woman named Caterina (most likely
his mother) also came to live with him; she died a few years later.
Around 1495, Leonardo began his painting The Last Supper, which
achieved immense success but began to deteriorate physically almost
immediately upon completion. Around this same time, Fra Luca Pacioli, the
famous mathematician, moved to Milan, befriended Leonardo, and
taught him higher math. In 1499, when the French conquered Lombard
and Milan, the two left the city together, heading for Mantua.
In 1500, Leonardo arrived in Florence, where he painted
the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. He was
very interested in mathematics at this time. In 1502, he went
to work as chief military engineer to Cesare Borgia, and also became
acquainted with Niccolo Machiavelli. After a year he returned to
Florence, where he contributed to the huge engineering project
of diverting the course of the River Arno, and also painted a giant
war mural, the Battle of Anghiari, which was never
completed, largely due to problems with the paints. In 1505 Leonardo
probably made his first sketches for the Mona Lisa, but
it is not known when he completed the painting.
In 1506, Leonardo traveled to Milan at the summons of
Charles d'Amboise, the French governor. He became court painter
and engineer to Louis XII and worked on a second version of the Virgin of
the Rocks. In 1507, he returned to Florence to engage
in a legal battle against his brothers for their uncle Francesco's
inheritance. In this same year, he took the young aristocratic
Melzi as an assistant, and for the rest of the decade he intensified
his studies of anatomy and hydraulics. In 1513, he moved to Rome,
where Leo X reigned as pope. There, he worked on mirrors, and
probably the above self- portrait. In 1516, he left Italy for France,
joining King Francis I in Amboise, whom he served as a wise philosopher
for three years before his death in 1519.
