Born in Anchiano, near Vinci in the Republic of Florence, Italy, on April 15, 1452, and passing away in Cloux, now Clos-Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519, was the Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose talent and intellect embodied the Renaissance humanist ideal more than any other person. His paintings of the Last Supper (ca. 1495–1488) and Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–19) are two of the most well-known and important works of Renaissance art. His notes demonstrate a mechanical creativity and a spirit of scientific inquiry decades ahead of their times.
Leonardo’s boundless thirst for knowledge, which shaped every thought and action he took, is primarily responsible for his singular reputation during his lifetime and, despite historical criticism, continuing to this day. Because sight was the only sense that could reliably, promptly, and accurately relay the realities of experience, Leonardo, an artist by nature, saw his eyes as his primary source of information. As a result, all observable phenomena were turned into objects of knowledge, and the central idea of his research was saper vedere, or “knowing how to see.” He used his imagination to express himself creatively in all fields that use graphic representation, including painting, sculpture, architecture, and engineering. But he didn’t stop there. He studied nature itself, a line of research that allowed his dual hobbies of art and science to flourish. He did this by using his extraordinary abilities of observation, outstanding intelligence, and mastery of drawing.
Life and works
When Leonardo was born, his parents were single. His mother, Caterina, was a young peasant woman who soon married an artisan, and his father, Ser Piero, was a landlord and notary in Florence. Growing up on his father’s family’s estate, Leonardo was given the standard elementary education of the time—reading, writing, and math—and was considered as a “legitimate” son. It was not until much later that Leonardo took Latin, the primary language of traditional education, seriously and developed a working mastery of it on his own. It wasn’t until he was thirty years old that he started studying advanced geometry and arithmetic, which is a branch of mathematics, that he applied himself to.
Leonardo must have had artistic tendencies from a young age. His father, who was well-liked in Florence, apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio when he was around fifteen years old. Leonardo acquired a comprehensive education in painting, sculpture, and technical-mechanical arts in Verrocchio’s esteemed studio. Additionally, he worked in artist Antonio Pollaiuolo’s workshop next door. After being admitted to the Florence Painters’ Guild in 1472, Leonardo spent five more years working in his teacher’s studio before beginning his own independent career in Florence in 1481. Pen and pencil drawings from this era are still in excellent condition and include numerous technical drawings of pumps, military weapons, and mechanical machinery, among other things. These drawings demonstrate Leonardo’s interest in and familiarity with technical subjects even in the early stages of his career.
First Milanese period (1482–99)
The 30-year-old artist had just received his first significant commissions from his home city of Florence, when he moved to Milan in 1482 to work for the duke of the city. These commissions included an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria that was never started and the unfinished panel painting Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto. It would seem from the fact that he abandoned both initiatives that he left Florence for more profound reasons. Leonardo’s experience-driven intellect would have been put off by the relatively sophisticated Neoplatonism that pervaded the Medici era in Florence, and he may have been drawn to Milan’s more rigorous, academic environment instead. He was also undoubtedly drawn to Duke Ludovico Sforza’s illustrious court and the worthwhile endeavors that awaited him there.
Before Ludovico’s overthrow in 1499, Leonardo lived in Milan for seventeen years. As “painter and engineer of the duke,” he was identified in the royal household record as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis. Within the realm of courts, Leonardo’s demure and refined demeanor were highly regarded. Highly respected, he designed court festivities and was also a painter and sculptor, keeping him occupied all the time. In addition, he worked as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer and was regularly called upon as a technical adviser in the areas of architecture, fortifications, and military affairs. Leonardo set unending standards for himself, as he did throughout his life. His output during this time, and his life overall, might be loosely compared to a gigantic “unfinished symphony.”
As a painter, Leonardo completed six works in the 17 years in Milan. (According to contemporary sources, Leonardo was commissioned to create three more pictures, but these works have since disappeared or were never done.) From about 1483 to 1486, he worked on the altar painting The Virgin of the Rocks, a project that led to 10 years of litigation between the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, which commissioned it, and Leonardo; for uncertain purposes, this legal dispute led Leonardo to create another version of the work in about 1508. During this first Milanese period he also made one of his most famous works, the monumental wall painting Last Supper (1495–98) in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie (for more analysis of this work, see below Last Supper). Also of note is the decorative ceiling painting (1498) he made for the Sala delle Asse in the Milan Castello Sforzesco.
During this period Leonardo worked on a grandiose sculptural project that seems to have been the real reason he was invited to Milan: a monumental equestrian statue in bronze to be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. Leonardo devoted 12 years—with interruptions—to this task. In 1493 the clay model of the horse was put on public display on the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Maximilian to Bianca Maria Sforza, and preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to be 16 feet (5 metres) high. But, because of the imminent danger of war, the metal, ready to be poured, was used to make cannons instead, causing the project to come to a halt. Ludovico’s fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was perhaps the grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. The ensuing war left the clay model a heap of ruins.
As a master artist, Leonardo maintained an extensive workshop in Milan, employing apprentices and students. Among Leonardo’s pupils at this time were Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis, Bernardino de’ Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Andrea Solari, Marco d’Oggiono, and Salai. The role of most of these associates is unclear, leading to the question of Leonardo’s so-called apocryphal works, on which the master collaborated with his assistants. Scholars have been unable to agree in their attributions of these works.
Second Florentine period (1500–08) of Leonardo da Vinci
Soon after the French triumphantly entered Milan in December 1499, or by January 1500 at the latest, Leonardo departed the city accompanied by the mathematician Lucas Pacioli. He left Mantua in February 1500 and traveled to Venice in March, when the Signoria (ruling council) asked him for advice on how to stop a Turkish invasion of Friuli. Leonardo suggested that they get ready to inundate the area that is under threat. He went back to Florence from Venice, where he was greeted with praise and honored as a well-known native son after a protracted absence. He was designated as an architectural specialist on a committee looking into damage to the San Francesco al Monte church’s foundation and structure that same year. As a guest of the Servite order in the Santissima Annunziata cloister, Leonardo appears to have been focusing more on his studies of mathematics than painting. This was communicated to Isabella d’Este, her representative in Florence, by Fra Pietro Nuvolaria, who tried in vain to acquire a painting by Leonardo.
Leonardo left Florence in the summer of 1502 to work for Cesare Borgia as a “senior military architect and general engineer,” maybe as a result of his voracious appetite for life. As the head of the papal army, Borgia—the infamous son of Pope Alexander VI—sought to seize control of the Papal States of Romagna and the Marches with an unparalleled level of brutality. At the age of 27, he was clearly the most captivating and feared individual of his era, and he was at the height of his powers when he hired Leonardo. The man’s personality must have captivated Leonardo, who was twice his age. Leonardo explored and mapped the condottiere’s lands throughout a ten-month period. He created early examples of contemporary cartography during his activities by sketching some of the city plans and topographical maps. Leonardo also met Niccolò Machiavelli at the court of Cesare Borgia. Machiavelli was temporarily stationed there as a political observer for the city of Florence.
Leonardo came to Florence in the spring of 1503 to conduct an expert study of a project aimed at redirecting the Arno River behind Pisa, which the Florentines were then besieging, in order to deny the city access to the sea. Though the idea was ultimately unsuccessful, Leonardo’s efforts encouraged him to think about a concept that was first proposed in the 13th century to construct a sizable canal that would connect Florence to the sea via water and avoid the unnavigable portion of the Arno. Through a series of studies, Leonardo worked out his ideas. Using precise measurements of the terrain and his own panoramic views of the riverbank, which can be viewed as highly artistic landscape sketches, he created a map that showed the canal’s route, including its passage through the Serravalle mountain pass. Although the proposal was repeatedly discussed in the years that followed, it was never completed. However, centuries later, the expressway connecting Florence to the sea was constructed across the very path Leonardo selected for his canal.
Additionally, in 1503, Leonardo was awarded a highly esteemed contract to create a mural for Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio council chamber. The painting was to depict a historical scenario with enormous proportions, measuring 23 by 56 feet (7 by 17 meters), which would have made it twice as huge as the Last Supper. He spent three years working on the Battle of Anghiari; like Michelangelo’s intended companion piece, the Battle of Cascina, it was never completed. Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) during these same years. (See The Mona Lisa and other works below for a further in-depth analysis of the piece.)
There was a lot of scientific research done during the second Florentine period. In the Santa Maria Nuova hospital, Leonardo performed dissections and expanded his studies of anatomy to include a thorough examination of the composition and operation of the human body. He intended a treatise based on his methodical observations of bird flight. Even his hydrological research, which he described as “on the nature and movement of water,” expanded to include studies of the physical characteristics of water, particularly the laws of currents, which he contrasted with air laws. These were also recorded in his own data set, which is included in the so-called Codex Hammer (formerly the Leicester Codex; it is currently owned by software mogul Bill Gates in Seattle, Washington, in the United States).
From this approach came Leonardo’s far-reaching concept of a “science of painting.” Leon Battista Alberti and Piero della Francesca had already offered proof of the mathematical basis of painting in their analysis of the laws of perspective and proportion, thereby buttressing his claim of painting being a science. But Leonardo’s claims went much further: he believed that the painter, doubly endowed with subtle powers of perception and the complete ability to pictorialize them, was the person best qualified to achieve true knowledge, as he could closely observe and then carefully reproduce the world around him. Hence, Leonardo conceived the staggering plan of observing all objects in the visible world, recognizing their form and structure, and pictorially describing them exactly as they are.
It was during his first years in Milan that Leonardo began the earliest of his notebooks. He would first make quick sketches of his observations on loose sheets or on tiny paper pads he kept in his belt; then he would arrange them according to theme and enter them in order in the notebook. Surviving in notebooks from throughout his career are a first collection of material for a painting treatise, a model book of sketches for sacred and profane architecture, a treatise on elementary theory of mechanics, and the first sections of a treatise on the human body.
Leonardo’s notebooks add up to thousands of closely written pages abundantly illustrated with sketches—the most voluminous literary legacy any painter has ever left behind. Of more than 40 codices mentioned—sometimes inaccurately—in contemporary sources, 21 have survived; these in turn sometimes contain notebooks originally separate but now bound so that 32 in all have been preserved. To these should be added several large bundles of documents: an omnibus volume in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, called Codex Atlanticus because of its size, was collected by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni at the end of the 16th century; after a roundabout journey, its companion volume fell into the possession of the English crown in the 17th century and was placed in the Royal Library in Windsor Castle. Finally, the Arundel Manuscript in the British Museum in London contains a number of Leonardo’s fascicles on various themes.
One special feature that makes Leonardo’s notes and sketches unusual is his use of mirror writing. Leonardo was left-handed, so mirror writing came easily and naturally to him—although it is uncertain why he chose to do so. While somewhat unusual, his script can be read clearly and without difficulty with the help of a mirror—as his contemporaries testified—and should not be looked on as a secret handwriting. But the fact that Leonardo used mirror writing throughout the notebooks, even in his copies drawn up with painstaking calligraphy, forces one to conclude that, although he constantly addressed an imaginary reader in his writings, he never felt the need to achieve easy communication by using conventional handwriting. His writings must be interpreted as preliminary stages of works destined for eventual publication that Leonardo never got around to completing. In a sentence in the margin of one of his late anatomy sketches, he implores his followers to see that his works are printed.
Another unusual feature in Leonardo’s writings is the relationship between word and picture in the notebooks. Leonardo strove passionately for a language that was clear yet expressive. The vividness and wealth of his vocabulary were the result of intense independent study and represented a significant contribution to the evolution of scientific prose in the Italian vernacular. Despite his articulateness, Leonardo gave absolute precedence to the illustration over the written word in his teaching method. Hence, in his notebooks, the drawing does not illustrate the text; rather, the text serves to explain the picture. In formulating his own principle of graphic representations—which he called dimostrazione (“demonstrations”)—Leonardo’s work was a precursor of modern scientific illustration.