Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452- 2 May 1519) was an Italian painter, architect, and draftsman. His drawing of the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous in Western art history.
EARLY LIFE
Leonardo da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 in Vinci, Republic of Florence. When he was born, his parents weren’t married. His father was a property owner, and his mother was a peasant. He grew with his father’s state, where he was treated as a legal son and received the eliminatory education of that time, Writing, Reading, and Arithmetic. Latin was the language of traditional learning, but he did not pay attention to it seriously.
When he was at the age of 15, his father gained a high reputation in the Florence community. His father apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio. There Leonardo received a complicated art education with painting, sculpture, and technical-mechanical arts. He also worked in the workshop of the artist Antonio Pollaiuolo. From 1472-1481, Leonardo worked in his teacher’s workshop until he was accepted into the painters’ guild of Florence, after which he did independent work in Florence.
During this period, Leonardo made a lot of pencil and pen drawings, some of them technical sketches that show his interest in and knowledge of technical matters even at a young age.
FIRST PERIOD IN MILAN
In 1482, he moved to Milan to work in the service of the city’s Duke.
The 30-year-old artist had just received two big commissions from his hometown of Florence: an altar painting for St Benedict’s Cathedral and a panel painting for San Donato a Scopeto. He lived in Milan for 17 years, until Ludovico fell from power in 1499.
He worked on The Virgin of the Rocks from 1483 to 1486. The Last Supper, in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, was his most famous work during his Milan period.
Vinci worked on a monumental equestrian statue in bronze in Milan, who was what got him invited: the statue would be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty.
He left Milan in 1499 and went to Venice before coming home to Florence.
He left Florence in 1502 and joined Cesare Borgia as a “general engineer and senior military architect”. After returning to Florence in 1503, Leonardo began to paint the Mona Lisa that year.
Charles d’Amboise, the French governor in Milan, asked him to move to Milan again in 1506-1513.
From 1513 to 1516, he spent his last year of his life in Rome and France in 1516 to 1519, where he died.
Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, The Virgin of the Rocks.
DEATH
He died on 2 May 1519 Clos Lucé, Amboise, France.
Read More; 17 December in Indian and World History