About Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452 in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River near Florence. He was the illegitimate son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant who may have been a slave from the Middle East.

In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio or 'True Eye'. Verrocchio's workshop was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence. Other famous painters associated with the workshop include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. In such a workshop, Leonardo could learn skills such as drafting, chemistry and metallurgy, as well as drawing, painting and sculpting.

It is said that Leonardo's collaboration with Verrocchio on his painting Baptism of Christ was so superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.

At the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of St Luke, the guild for artists and doctors.

Between 1476 and 1481 Leonardo is believed to have had his own workshop in Florence. In 1478 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard and in 1481 Leonardo started The Adoration of the Magi for the Monks of San Donato in Scopeto.

In 1482 he wrote an oft-quoted letter to Ludovico, then ruler of Milan, describing the many marvellous and diverse possibilities he could achieve in the field of engineering. Between 1482 and 1499 Leonardo worked in Milan and in 1489 embarked on a concerted effort to study human anatomy.

While in Milan, Leonardo was commissioned to work on The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. He also worked on many different projects for Ludovico, including the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it, but in 1494 the bronze was used to make cannons to defend the city walls.