Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance, known as a painter but also an engineer, anatomist and architect. Born out of wedlock near Vinci, he wrote left-handed in mirror script and about fourteen entered Verrocchio's Florence workshop.

About 1482 he went to Milan, offering Duke Ludovico Sforza his engineering skills. There he painted the Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper and modelled the giant equestrian Gran Cavallo, whose bronze became cannon in 1494. After the French overthrew Ludovico in 1500 he returned to Florence, served Cesare Borgia as a military engineer and in 1503 began the Mona Lisa.

In 1516 Francis I gave him the use of Clos Lucé at Amboise, and he died there in 1519. His pupil Francesco Melzi inherited his paintings and library; his thousands of notebook pages on anatomy, flight and water stayed unpublished, little influencing later science.