Leonardo da Vinci: A Guide to da Vinci’s Life and Art

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was an Italian painter, architect, sculptor, inventor, and scientist. At the center of da Vinci’s philosophy was a reliance on visual observation skills to understand the complexities of the natural world.

Da Vinci was a true Renaissance man, with talents and interests spanning the fields of art, science, and mathematics. Da Vinci rose to prominence without formal education, and his expressive and naturalistic works shaped the Renaissance.

• Early life: Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 in Vinci, outside of Florence, Italy, to Ser Piero da Vinci, a notary, and Caterina, a peasant woman. Around the age of 15, da Vinci began an apprenticeship with master painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. In 1472, he was accepted to the Painters’ Guild of Florence, but he continued to work under del Verrocchio for five more years.
• Time in Milan: In 1482, da Vinci left Florence to work for Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, as his official painter and engineer. Da Vinci remained in court at Milan for 17 years, until the Duke’s fall from power. Da Vinci spent twelve of those years creating a monument to Francesco Sforza, founder of the Sforza dynasty, that would never be completed—the bronze intended for the sculpture was instead used to make cannons to protect the city during a war with the French, and the original clay model was destroyed. Milan is also where da Vinci began work on his notebooks, which reveal his studies of mathematics, geology, botany, and more.
• Further studies: When da Vinci left Milan around 1500, he made a brief stop in Venice before he returned home to Florence, where he deepened his studies of anatomy and flight. In 1502, he traveled for 10 months with Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, and sketched maps and city plans. In 1503, da Vinci began work on his famous Mona Lisa.
• Treatises: In 1506 Da Vinci returned to Milan, then under control of the French, at the request of governor Charles II d’Amboise. During this time he developed his ideas about the laws of force and motion. When the French were expelled from Milan, da Vinci went to Rome, where he devoted time to his treatises.
• Death: Da Vinci left Rome for France in 1516 to become King Francis I’s first painter, engineer, and architect. He spent the last few years of his life there and died at the age of 67 in Clos-Lucé, France. He left his estate to Francesco Melzi, his devoted pupil.

Leonardo da Vinci’s interests were wide-ranging, but his paintings often featured these three characteristics:

1. 1. Expression: Da Vinci is known for his ability to convey emotion and expression in his subjects’ faces.
2. 2. Natural backgrounds: Da Vinci created slightly blurry landscape backgrounds that he called “nature experienced.”
3. 3. Sfumato: Sfumato means “evaporated” in Italian, and the term describes the painting technique of blending different tones together to create soft edges.

Da Vinci’s surviving body of work consists of just 17 paintings, but the works are some of the most famous in history:

1. 1. Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–19): Perhaps the most famous portrait of all time, the Mona Lisa’s composition set the standard for all subsequent portraiture. The subject, believed to be Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant, is portrayed from the torso up, in front of a blurred landscape. The same sfumato technique that gives a rounded softness to Lisa’s face, hair, and clothing, is echoed in the hills, rivers, and valleys behind her.
2. 2. The Last Supper (1495–98): Commissioned for the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, this scene depicts Christ with his apostles at Passover dinner. Da Vinci captures each of the Apostles’ personalities with distinct poses and facial expressions. Da Vinci’s composition of The Last Supper continues to influence artistic interpretations of the story.
3. 3. The Virgin of the Rocks (1483–86): Da Vinci worked on this altarpiece for three years in Milan. It depicts the meeting between John the Baptist and Jesus. Da Vinci used sfumato and the contrast of light and shadow to give the painting a dreamlike quality.

Grab the MasterClass Annual Membership and plumb the depths of your creativity with the help of modern artist Jeff Koons, abstract artist Futura, and stage designer Es Devlin. Our exclusive video lessons will teach you to do things like utilize color and scale, explore the beauty in everyday objects, and so much more.