Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci or Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While Leonardo da Vinci fame initially rested on Leonardo da Vinci achievements as a painter, Leonardo da Vinci also became known for Leonardo da Vinci notebooks, in which Leonardo da Vinci made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and Leonardo da Vinci collective works compose a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.

Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. Leonardo da Vinci began his career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, Leonardo da Vinci worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, all while attracting a large following of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of Francis I, Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years in France, where Leonardo da Vinci died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have failed to incite interest and admiration, making him a frequent namesake and subject in culture.

Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance. Despite having many lost works and less than 25 attributed major works—including numerous unfinished works—Leonardo da Vinci created some of the most influential paintings in Western art. His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work and often regarded as the world's most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo, was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.

Revered for his technological ingenuity, Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine, and the double hull. Relatively few of Leonardo da Vinci designs were constructed or even feasible during Leonardo da Vinci lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of Leonardo da Vinci smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. Leonardo da Vinci made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but Leonardo da Vinci did not publish Leonardo da Vinci findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.