Leonardo Da Vinci

       Leonardo Da Vinci                   

Leonardo Da Vinci

Born in 1452, Leonardo Da Vinci is most famous as an artist, but he is also a scientist, mathematician, inventor, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer. 

He is one of the most famous artists of history, and some people think that he is one of the most talented people to have ever lived. 

Leonardo was born in Vinci, a small town in Italy that is where he got his name –‘Da Vinci’ means ‘of Vinci’, so he is known as ‘Leonardo of Vinci’. 

Leonardo began painting at a young age, and when he was fourteen he was sent to the city of Florence and apprenticed to an artist named Verrocchio. 

Verrocchio and his apprentices would often work on pieces together in the workshop. That is why Leonardo only painted part of the earliest paintings we have of his. 


By the time he was twenty Leonardo was good enough that his father set him up in his own workshop, and that is when he began creating artworks of his own. Despite training as an artist, it seems that Leonardo did not think of himself as a painter. 

When he moved to Milan at the age of thirty he wrote a later to the Duke there talking about the wonderful and different things he could do in engineering, and, he said, he could ‘also paint’.

Leonardo Da Vinci_Self Portrait

 Art and science were not seen as separate studies, but more like the two sides of the same coin during the Renaissance when Da Vinci lived. 

It's true that Leonardo was full of ideas of inventions that would not be used for hundreds of years and he spent a great deal of time in a close and careful study of the world around him. 

A long time had been spent by him on studying the human anatomy, he imagined ways that people could walk on water and designed armored tanks; he invented an early parachute and a version of the helicopter, a self-propelled cart, and scuba diving gear. 

Some of his inventions were put to use, some were forgotten and others never really worked. One thing desired of all by Leonardo was to find a way for a person to fly. 

He tried countless ways and studied birds, but as far as we know, Leonardo Da Vinci never achieved flight.

Leonardo Da Vinci's Monalisa

While  Leonardo’s genius for painting was obvious for everyone who saw it, his contribution to science, for the most part, went unrecognized for many years. 

Two of his paintings, ‘The Last Supper’ and ‘The Mona Lisa’ are considered the most famous paintings of the world. 

Leonardo Da Vinci was incredibly famous and successful during his lifetime,  unlike many other artists. 

And after he died, people were still interested in him and his art. For more than five hundred years people have studied and enjoyed his work.