Leonardo da Vinci

(Italian, 1452–1519)

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian artist considered among the greatest Renaissance painters in the history of Western art. Along with his deft drawing ability and rigorous exploration of materials and techniques, he also excelled in engineering, anatomy, architecture, and cartography. Two of his most famous works The Last Supper (1495–1498) and Mona Lisa (1503–1517), are among the most reproduced images ever made, both demonstrating Da Vinci’s unique capacity to construct complex pictorial spaces and record human emotions. “Nature is the source of all true knowledge,” he once remarked. “She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.” Born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy, he received an education in mathematics and Latin as a youth while also pursuing interests in geology and the mechanisms of flight. In 1466, he apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrochio, whose workshop also included the young Sandro Botticelli and Pietro Perugino. By the age of 20, Da Vinci had joined the Guild of Saint Luke and began producing works depicting angels, the Virgin Mary, and other Biblical themes. An avid inventor throughout his life, Da Vinci made detailed sketches for helicopter-like flying machines and other vehicles while also acquiring a long list of admirers and patrons, including the Medicis, Pope Leo X, and King Francis I of France. Having achieved widespread acclaim during his life, he died on May 2, 1519 while at work on a commission for Francis I, in Amboise, France at the age of 67. In 2017, Da Vinci’s work Salvator Mundi (1490–1519) sold at auction for $450.3 million, despite claims of its inauthenticity it broke the previous record of $181.2 million set by Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (1955) in 2015. Today, the artist’s works can be found in major museums across the world, including the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the National Gallery in London.