Leonardo da Vinci

Who was Leonardo da Vinci?

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath, being a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose "unquenchable curiosity" was equalled 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. Helen Gardner says "The scope and depth of his interests were without precedent...His mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Born as 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 King François 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 painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adamn

Famous Quotes:

• Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.
• Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
• -- Three classes of people: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.
• Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.
• Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
• Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.
• Just as courage imperils life; fear protects it.
• A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.
• Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
• Time stays long enough for those who use it.