The life of the genius from Vinci

Leonardo was born in Vinci, in the Florentine hills, on 15th April 1452. From a very young age he was fascinated by the nature in the countryside around his home town, and would follow the flight of birds and the workings of mills. The family of Ser Piero, his father, soon moved to Florence, which in that period of artistic and architectural fervour, was an open-air work site.

Ser Piero set up his son in one of the best known workshops of the time: that of Verrocchio. Here he painted, at the age of 17, an angel in Verrocchio’s painting The Baptism of Christ with such compositional skill and balance that, according to legend, Verrocchio himself stated that he never again wished to raise a brush.

The year 1482 marked, for Leonardo, the beginning of a series of journeys that led to him visiting many courts in Italy and even to that of King Louis XII of France. In that year he left Florence to enter the service of Ludovico Sforza, known as Il Moro, Lord of Milan, as an engineer, sculptor, painter and also musician.

Leonardo spent twenty years in Milan, during which time he painted some of his most famous works: the Last Supper and the Virgin of the Rocks. He also intensified his studies of machines, architecture, hydraulics, town planning and anatomy.

After the fall of the Duchy of Milan, by the French, he began his wanderings, firstly to Mantua and Venice, and Florence (where he began to paint his most famous work, the Mona Lisa, which he always carried around with him), and then Rome, where he entered the service of Cesare Borgia as a military engineer.

In 1517, Francis I, son of the King of France, who appreciated his superior talent, invited him to his court. Here he passed the last few years of his life. He died in Cloux on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67 years old. In his will, Leonardo left all his manuscripts to his favourite pupil, Francesco Melzi, while to another disciple, Salai, he left the paintings found in his studio, including the Mona Lisa.