Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( pronunciation (help·info))
(April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor,
architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist,
geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described
as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was
equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of
the greatest painters of all time 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 and personality 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 essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical
methods he employed were unusual for his time.
Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman,
Caterina, at Vinci in the region 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 later
worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the
home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona
Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied
portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame
approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.[1] Leonardo's drawing of the
Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,[4] being reproduced on
everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his
paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently
disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic
procrastination.[nb 2] Nevertheless, these few works, together with his
notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the
nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only
rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a
helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and
outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs
were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,[nb 3] but some of
his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for
testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing
unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the
fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics
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