Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo was born in the village in Anchiano, a few miles from a small town of Vinci, in Tuscany, near Florence. He was the son of a rich Florentine notary and a peasant woman. In the mid-1460s the family stayed in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best education that Florence (a major intellectual and artistic centre of Italy) could offer. He fastly advanced socially and intellectually. He was persuasive in conversation, and a good musician and improviser.

In about 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (a studio boy) to Andrea Del Verrocchio (the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day!) In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo was introduced to a lot of activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze.

In 1472 he was entered in the painter's guild of Florence, and in 1476 he was still considered Verrocchio's assistant. In Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ, 1470, the kneeling angel at the left of the painting is by Leonardo.

In 1478 Leonardo became an independent master at the age of 26. His first gob was to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall. His first large painting, the Adoration of the Magi, which he started to paint it in 1481, was never completed. He often didn't complete his work because he started other things and never got back to the others.

Most evidence suggests that he started to work on the Mona Lisa in 1503 and kept working on it until 1506. The lady in Mona Lisa is likely to be Lisa de Gherardini Del Giocondo, the wife of a silk trader, Francesco Del Giocondo. Much is put into the importance of the Mona Lisa, mostly because it is the most famous painting in the world.

Leonardo was really one of the greatest painters ever. He was also a good draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer.