Leonardo Di Ser Piero Da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci pronunciation (help•info)) (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519, Old Style) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist,mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo hasoften been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".[1] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of alltime and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind andpersonality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentiallylogical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.[3]
Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in theregion of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He laterworked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo is renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the mostfamous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of theVitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro, textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number because of his...