Leonardo da Vinci was a genius who invented revolutionary ideas centuries before his the
rest of the world would catch up with him.
He embodies the definition of a “Renaissance Man”- one who studied and mastered a variety
of different subjects.
He was a painter, engineer, architect, writer, scientist, and inventor.
While you may know him for his most famous works of art like The Mona Lisa or The Last
Supper, few people know the man behind the paintings.
Today on Biographics, we’re talking about Leonardo da Vinci.
Early Life A baby boy named Leonardo was born on April
15th, 1452 in a Tuscan village called Vinci.
The child was born out of wedlock to a wealthy legal notary named Messer Piero Fruosino di
Antonio, and a beautiful peasant girl named Caterina di Meo Lippi.
His father took responsibility for the boy, and raised him on the family estate with his
wife.
But as a bastard child, young Leonardo was not even allowed to be given his father’s
last name.
He was simply called “Leonardo da Vinci” which means “Leonardo, of Vinci.”
Leonardo lived with his biological mother until he was 5, and his father took over the
responsibility of raising him.
Caterina went on to marry a man who was simply referred to as “the fighter”.
Leonardo’s father, Messer, married a 16-year old noble girl named Albiera, and they had
legitimate children of their own.
Instead of going to school, the countryside was young Leonardo’s classroom.
Even at a young age, he was an inquisitive, and truly fell in love with nature.
He wished that men could fly like birds, and swim through the ocean like fish.
Together with his brothers, they played games of war, and he imagined being triumphant in
battle, like the men in the stories told by his father.
However, this stage of innocence could not last forever.
As he grew up, Leonardo learned that he would not be allowed to inherit the family estate.
Leonardo had 9 brothers and 3 sisters.
So, even if he could inherit his father’s estate, it’s not like there would be much
left to go around, anyway.
He had to learn a trade and figure out how to take care of himself.
In medieval Florence, guilds were like trade unions, and they were split up into multiple
categories of jobs that a man could choose from, so long as he was born into the right
social class.
The highest ranking guilds were called the “Arti Maggiori”, and his father would
have been apart of the guild of powerful lawyers, judges, and notaries.
But as an illegitimate child, this was like being in the lower class, and he was not even
allowed to join the lesser guild categories like “Arti Mediane” , which had the middle
class skills like blacksmiths and stone masons.
His only option would be to join a guild in the “Arti Minori”, which had lower-class
jobs like bakers and millers.
However, Leonardo’s father still wanted his son to have a good life.
He could see that the boy had a natural talent for art.
So, his father introduced him to a man named Andre del Verrocchio, who ran an art studio
in the city of Florence.
After seeing the boy’s sketches, he agreed to take him on as an apprentice.
The Florence Guild of Artists
Andre del Verrocchio had several artists and craftsmen working for him in his workshop.
He would take on commissions from the wealthy and powerful Medici family, and divide the
work among his students and employees.
Their studio worked on improving the beauty of the city.
They had to work with all mediums, whether it was carving marble statues, casting metal,
or painting portraits.
Even architecture, bridges, and other forms of civil engineering were all sketched by
the members of the guild.
So it became necessary for Leonardo to learn multiple disciplines.
After a few years of training, Leonardo da Vinci assisted Verrocchio in painting a commissioned
piece for the Catholic Church called “The Baptism of Christ”.
This was a very large mural on the wall of a church, so there was plenty of space for
two artists to stand and work on the painting at the same time.
Verrocchio instructed Leonardo to paint two angels that had been included in his rough
sketch.
When Da Vinci was done, Verrocchio was in shock.
He could not believe how gorgeous and life-like the painting was.
He knew that the student had already surpassed the master.
By his mid-20’s, Leonardo Da Vinci became a master artist in Verrocchio’s studio,
and he earned a reputation for himself in Florence.
Leonardo conducted experiments with his art, like studying how light changed the shading
on an object, or the perfect time of day to sketch someone’s face.
However, his talent was also a curse, because it caused a lot of jealousy among the art
community.
At 24 years old, Da Vinci was accused of having sex with a male prostitute, and he was arrested
for sodomy.
At that time, the punishment for sodomy was being burned to death.
But when he went to trial, no evidence or witnesses were presented, and they could not
prove that he did anything illegal.
So they let him go.
However, even though he was found “not guilty”, he wrote in his journals that this scandal
very seriously hurt his reputation.
Fewer clients wanted to work with him around Florence, despite his obvious talent.
We don’t know his actual sexual orientation, except that he never got married.
Some believe that he chose to be celibate in order to focus more on his work.
At the end of the day, whoever turned him into the authorities wanted him dead.
As awful as this sounds, medieval times were truly cut-throat, and men of high standing
always had to watch their backs to make sure they were not killed by their enemies.
An assassin named Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli stabbed Giuliano de’ Medici in the streets
simply because they were both from rival banking families.
One of Leonardo’s earliest known sketches was his observation of Baroncelli’s body
in the gallows called “The hanged man”.
After this dispute between the Baroncellis and the Medici families, Florence and Naples
were on the brink of war.
The men in Da Vinci’s guild were forced to stop working on art, and use their engineering
skills to defend the city, instead.
Since Da Vinci was a bastard, he could not become a knight and serve in a royal court,
so he thought this was far more exciting than painting Catholic murals.
He started to design ladders and massive weapons to help defend Florence, should they ever
need it.
Perhaps he saw this as his way to be remembered in the history books.
During a three month time period, the city was on edge, believing they were on the brink
of war.
When Lorenzo Medici returned after making a successful peace treaty, the rest of the
city celebrated, and Leonardo was actually disappointed.
After peace was returned to the city, the artist’s guild could go back to making beautiful
things, but this was no longer challenging or interesting to Leonardo Da Vinci.
When he was 29 years old, he was asked to do his first commissioned mural at a church
all by himself.
The painting was called “Adoration of the Magi”, and he took his concept above and
beyond what any other painter had done in the past.
It was an incredible piece, but Da Vinci didn’t seem to see that, because after spending a
very long time working on the piece, he decided that he could not finish the painting.
He was very restless at that time, and didn’t have the patience to actually sit and complete
a lot of his projects.
He had so many brilliant ideas, he sometimes had had trouble executing them.
Da Vinci was actually sued more than once for getting paid by a patron, and then failing
to finish his work, as promised.
With this, coupled with the accusation of sodomy, his talent was not enough to make
up for his bad reputation.
He thought that maybe, it was time to start over somewhere new.
A New Life in Milan
Even though he was more talented than many of the other painters in Florence, Leonardo
Da Vinci still went through a midlife crisis when he was 30 years old.
He realized that the lifestyle of a professional artist did not suit him, and he craved the
adventure of having a career in weapon designs.
He had an entire book filled with incredible inventions that would not be made until years
later, like a tank, a giant crossbow, underwater scuba gear, and even a robotic soldier.
He was truly hundreds of years ahead of his time, but without a war, these weapons would
never actually come to life.
Leonardo da Vinci planned to move to Milan, because it is the most northern Italian state,
but he wanted to secure employment before he made the journey.
Since the city is much closer to France, they were far more interested in gathering weapons
to defend the country.
He sent a letter to the Duke of Milan, claiming that he was a weapon’s design expert, and
included a few pages from his sketchbook.
At the very end of the letter, he included a single line mentioning that he was also
a painter.
Ludovico Sforza was the temporary Duke of Milan, holding the position of power until
his nephew came of age.
The Sforza family had not been in power for very long, especially compared to the likes
of the Medicis.
Sforza invited Leonardo da Vinci to visit, and he was overjoyed, hoping that he would
finally be able to make a career change.
But, once he got there, he was gravely disappointed to find out that the Duke wanted him to paint
a portrait of his beautiful mistress.
Today, that portrait is called “Lady with an Ermine”.
Even though he came to Milan to escape being a painter, he still blew people away with
his talent.
Sforza was so impressed, he commissioned a statue of a 24-foot tall horse.
Da Vinci told him that it would take at least 3 years to complete.
In reality, Da Vinci was stalling for time, because without the help of his master’s
studio, he had no idea how he was going to pull off a 24-foot tall metal cast horse.
Remember- this was back in the 1400’s, so there was no benefit of modern machinery to
help him.
The Sforzas were still establishing themselves, and the Duke of Milan believed that paying
for things like metal statues would somehow prove their permanence in high society.
At first, Da Vinci created the horse out of clay, and it was unveiled at a party, where
Da Vinci was officially accepted into the Sforza royal court.
Unfortunately, just like a lot of his projects, DaVinci was a bit in over is head, and he
was running out of time.
By a stroke of luck, Sforza decided to go to war, and he needed the metal resources
for his army’s weapons.
Yet again, Da Vinci thought this might be his time to shine with his weapon designs,
but there weren’t enough resources to pay for their creation.
The Duke of Milan game him a new assignment of decorating a church called Santa Maria
delle Grazie, which is where he painted one of his most famous works, “The Last Supper.”
At the time, the priests were actually very annoyed with him, because it took him over
3 years to complete the painting, which is a mural on the wall of the church.
For 17 years, DaVinci enjoyed a life of financial security and respect in Sforza’s royal court.
During the time that he lived in Milan, Da Vinci had a secret project that he never dared
to tell anyone, and it is likely a good reason why the rest of his work was taking so long.
He was dissecting human cadavers and sketching their bodies, muscles, and organs.
He also made wax casts of the organs.
Yes, this sounds incredibly creepy, and he realized this, which is why he kept his sketchbook
a secret, and it only showed up in the 1600’s.
At that time, autopsies and any other form of disturbing the dead was frowned upon by
the Catholic Church.
He already knew what it was like to have a soiled reputation back in Florence, so he
was far more careful this time while leading a double life.
Even though his sketchbook was found over 100 years later, his studies of the human
body were revolutionary, and became the foundation of modern anatomy.
Leonardo da Vinci would write in notebooks about his scientific experiments, inventions,
and artistic ideas.
There are over 15,000 pages of his notes that survived.
He even wrote some of those notes backwards, so you can only read them when looking in
a mirror.
Some people believe he did this because he was worried that his rivals would steal his
ideas.
Homecoming When Leonardo Da Vinci was 50 years old, the
Sforza family lost their position of power, and the French invaded Milan.
When they saw the giant clay horse statue standing on the estate, they used it for target
practice.
Leonardo da Vinci had to leave Milan with the bare necessities, like his journals, and
left all of his works of art behind.
He decided to travel from place to place, once again trying to pitch his ideas for military
weaponry around Italy.
He showed The Duke of Venice his ideas, which included a snorkeling suit for breathing underwater
that actually worked.
He had ideas on how humans could fly, or walk on the bottom of the ocean.
Keep in mind, this was at a time when people didn’t even have clocks or watches to tell
time.
While all of his ideas were amazing, they were far too ahead of his time, and the Duke
of Venice didn’t find a need for any of those inventions.
Da Vinci was forced to reluctantly move back to Florence, because he feared that everyone
would still remember his bad reputation.
But it was actually far worse than that, because by that time, people had all but forgotten
the name Leonardo Da Vinci, and there was a new genius in town: Michelangelo di Lodovico
Buonarroti Simoni.
But you know as simply “Michelangelo”.
He was just 26 at that time.
Since the art world in Florence was so competitive, Leonardo hated Michelangelo almost immediately,
because this meant that he would struggle finding work.
Da Vinci was clearly jealous, and had to find reasons to dislike Michelangelo.
He would write angrily in his journal about how he thought the young man was dirty and
undignified.
Despite the long beard you see in most depictions of Da Vinci, he actually spent all of his
younger years making sure he was always clean-shaven, and wore the finest clothes.
He even had professional musicians playing music for his clients while they sat for their
portraits, and the whole process felt like going to a luxury spa.
Michelangelo, on the other hand, had the polar opposite approach to his art.
He was so focused on his work, that he would forget to shave for a few days, and let his
beard grow.
He let chips of stone and dust cover his home after working on a statue, and it was far
more like a workshop than a comfortable place to clients to stay.
The two artists deeply disliked each other, and even got into a fight out in public.
Secretly, Da Vinci would go home to write about how depressed he was to be getting older,
and the fear and anxiety rules his thoughts.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Since Da Vinci could no longer secure his place in the Florence art scene, he decided
to try his luck at weapon design one last time.
Pope Alexander had a bastard son named Cesare Borgia.
Some people say that he was a great leader, while others say that Borgia was a bloodthirsty
ruler who killed anyone who got in his way.
Machiavelli's famous book called The Prince was even based on Borgia as an example of
what a ruler must be in order to stay in power.
Da Vinci sent his sketches to Borgia, and finally, someone said yes to the weapons.
He become Chief General Engineer for Cesare Borgia, and supervised the construction of
towers, weapons, and bird’s-eye-view maps of the cities he planned on invading, which
was revolutionary for the time.
Da Vinci got everything he wanted, but it was at a price he never expected.
The only reason why Borgia was willing to pay for the creation of all of these weapons
was because he wanted to kill as many enemies as possible.
Until this point, the idea of war had been simply a concept to Leonardo Da Vinci, and
stories of knights going to battle seemed like good fun.
For the first time in his life, Da Vinci actually witnessed what a bloody battle looked like,
and it was too gruesome for him to handle.
He wrote, “Truly, man is more savage than beast, for our brutality exceeds theirs.
We live by the death of others.”
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Borgia ordered the death of one of Da
Vinci’s close friends.
He quietly left Borgia in the dead of night and moved back to Florence, where he returned
to a peaceful life of painting portraits.
Mona Lisa’s Smile After selling those weapons, Leonardo da Vinci
had saved a nice nest egg for retirement, and It was during this time that he painted
“The Mona Lisa” No one knows for sure who she actually is.
There are several theories of who she is, or what she might represent, but none have
been confirmed.
Unlike all of those portraits that were commissioned and given away, he carried around the portrait
of Mona Lisa with him for the rest of his life.
For once, this was a piece of art that was done just for himself, but he was constantly
changing it, because he never felt he got it exactly right.
During his retirement, he started to build massive wings for human beings, in hopes that
it would help people fly.
“There will be wings for man.
If it is not accomplished by me, it will be accomplished some day, by some other.”
There is a commonly told story that during a flight attempt with these wings, someone
fell and broke their leg.
After this failed attempt, he designed a motor that would flap the wings, but it never worked
properly.
However, he did eventually design the first wing that looks very much like what we use
in modern-day airplanes.
Aside from the patrons that he served, Leonardo da Vinci was not yet famous around the world.
He intended to publish books, but he never actually went through with it.
As we mentioned earlier, he wrote and sketched over 15,000 pages on a variety of subjects,
but he was a perfectionist.
So he continued to add on more and more information, because he never felt that they were complete.
Among these notes, there are multiple sketches of an old man with a beard.
People assume that this was his self-portrait, but no one knows for sure.
However, this image is used to portray him in popular culture, and it’s how he is remembered
today.
King Francis I in France had been collecting Da Vinci’s pieces for years, and he wrote
a letter to invite him to live in his chateau.
He agreed to move to France, and when he was 65 years old, and he had a stroke, which paralyzed
his arm.
The king’s castle became his comfortable retirement, and he was given the best medical
care money could buy.
When he died in the year 1519, he left the Mona Lisa and all of his sketchbooks and journals
to his loyal apprentice.
Born a bastard, Leonardo Da Vinci died like a king.
His life lives on forever in his work, and he continued to serve as an inspiration to
people around the world for centuries
to come.