Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci combined painting with an unusually broad practice of drawing and investigation. His surviving paintings are few, but thousands of notebook pages document studies of anatomy, water, mechanics, optics, plants, architecture and machines.
Florence and Verrocchio’s workshop
Leonardo was born in 1452 near Vinci in Tuscany.
As a young man he entered the Florentine workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, where painting, sculpture, metalwork and design were practiced together. This workshop environment helps explain why Leonardo never treated painting as an isolated craft. Early works and collaborations show close attention to drapery, landscape and light. By the 1470s he was registered independently in Florence, although the chronology and attribution of several early works remain debated.
Leonardo da Vinci in images
Selected visual references help connect the article to surviving works, objects, places, documents or practical examples related to this subject.
Milan and court service
Around 1482 Leonardo entered the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. A famous letter presents him not only as a painter but as a designer of military engineering, bridges and architecture. In Milan he worked on portraits, religious paintings, court spectacles and an enormous equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza that was never cast in bronze. The clay model was destroyed after the French invasion. The episode demonstrates how much of Leonardo’s career involved ambitious projects that remained unfinished or survive only in drawings.
The Last Supper
Leonardo painted The Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan in the 1490s. He rejected the standard buon fresco method of painting rapidly onto wet plaster and instead used an experimental technique on a dry prepared wall so he could revise slowly. The surface began deteriorating within decades. The composition groups the apostles in reactions to Christ’s announcement of betrayal, using architecture and perspective to focus attention on Christ while allowing intense psychological variation across the table.
Anatomy and notebooks
Leonardo dissected human bodies and made exceptionally detailed anatomical drawings of skeleton, muscles, organs and fetal development. He also investigated water flow, flight, gears, fortifications and optics. The notebooks are working documents, full of mirrored writing, diagrams, corrections and unrelated subjects on the same sheet. Many proposed machines were never built and should not be described as modern inventions completed centuries early. Their value lies in the visual method of breaking problems into observable parts and mechanical relations.
Mona Lisa and final years
Leonardo began the Mona Lisa in the early sixteenth century and continued working on it over an extended period. Its soft modeling, atmospheric landscape and subtle expression became central to his later reputation, though that fame expanded dramatically after his lifetime. In 1516 Leonardo moved to France under the patronage of Francis I and lived near the royal residence at Amboise. He died there in 1519. His legacy rests less on the number of completed works than on the extraordinary density of connections among painting, drawing and empirical investigation.
More context, examples and technical detail
This section moves beyond the introductory account into the material, historical and interpretive details that make Leonardo da Vinci worth studying in depth.
A career built across courts and disciplines
Leonardo trained in Verrocchio’s Florentine workshop, worked for Ludovico Sforza in Milan, returned to Florence, served French governors and papal patrons, and ended his life in France under Francis I. His notebooks range across painting, anatomy, hydraulics, mechanics, fortification and optics. The diversity is real, but the modern image of a solitary “universal genius” can hide the collaborative workshops and court systems that supported his work.
Many ambitious projects remained unfinished, including the Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Anghiari.
Observation moved constantly between art and science
Leonardo’s anatomical drawings investigate muscles, bones, organs and fetal development with extraordinary clarity. His water studies examine vortices and flow; botanical drawings track branching and leaf structure. These investigations were not separate hobbies. Understanding light, anatomy and movement directly informed painting, while drawing served as a common language for thinking across disciplines.
Notebooks, unfinished projects and the myth of effortless genius
Leonardo’s reputation as a universal genius can hide how fragmentary his output actually is. Many paintings were left unfinished, large commissions failed or changed, and countless engineering ideas remained drawings rather than built machines. His notebooks move between anatomy, hydraulics, optics, mechanics, geometry and visual studies because he treated drawing as an investigative tool. Dissections informed his anatomical sheets; observations of water and atmosphere shaped both science and painting. The value of the notebooks is not that Leonardo magically invented every later technology, but that they reveal an unusually persistent habit of asking how visible effects and physical systems work.
Around 1482 Leonardo entered the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan.
Leonardo painted The Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan in the 1490s.
Leonardo dissected human bodies and made exceptionally detailed anatomical drawings of skeleton, muscles, organs and fetal development.
Leonardo began the Mona Lisa in the early sixteenth century and continued working on it over an extended period.
Leonardo trained in Verrocchio’s Florentine workshop, worked for Ludovico Sforza in Milan, returned to Florence, served French governors and papal patrons, and ended his life in France under Francis I.
Leonardo’s anatomical drawings investigate muscles, bones, organs and fetal development with extraordinary clarity.
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