Leonardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, was born in 1452, at Vinci, a village in the Val d'Arno, between Pisa and Florence, the natural son of Ser Piero Antonio da Vinci, notary to the Signoria of Florence. His mother, named Caterina, afterwards married a villager of Vinci. He was educated in his father's house, and soon began to show signs of that bright and versatile genius which distinguished him through life. As a child he was especially remarkable for his aptitude for arithmetic, and for his skill in music and drawing. About 1470 he was placed by his father in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio, by whom he was instructed in painting and modelling, and where he had Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi as fellow-pupils. So rapid was his progress that before long he began to take part in the production of his master's pictures, and his hand can still be traced in Verrocchio's 'Baptism of our Lord,' in the Academy at Florence. In 1472 his name appears in the books of the guild of painters as an independent artist, and he was patronised by Lorenzo de' Medici. His cartoon of 'The Fall,' mentioned by Vasari as designed for tapestry, has disappeared; indeed of his work of this period, which included various marble figures and terra-cotta heads, all that now remains is an unfinished canvas of 'The Adoration of the Kings,' in the Uffizi, and a kneeling figure of 'St Jerome,' in the Vatican.
He would appear to have been about twenty-eight when he visited the East, serving as engineer to the sultan of 'Babylon' or Cairo, and visiting Cyprus, Constantinople, and Armenia; and in 1482 he settled in Milan, and attached himself to Lodovico Sforza, then guardian of his nephew the Duke Gian Galeazzo, whom he afterwards supplanted. An autograph memorandum, intended for presentation to his patron, still exists, in which, after stating his various qualifications as an architect and engineer, he concludes, 'I can execute sculpture, whether in marble, bronze, or terra-cotta; also in painting I can do as much as any other, be he who he may,' and particularly specifies his readiness to undertake the execution of a bronze equestrian statue of Lodovico's father, Francesco Sforza, the celebrated condottiere. Drawings for the general design and various details of this statue exist in the royal collection at Windsor. The model was exhibited in 1493; but the statue was destined never to be completed in metal, for the 100,000 pounds of bronze which Leonardo required for its casting were never forthcoming. The model still existed in 1501, but since then all trace of the work has been lost.
During the progress of this statue Leonardo was also engaged upon a picture which, even in its present faded and dilapidated condition, remains the best monument of his genius and one of the masterpieces of the world. This is the famous 'Last Supper,' commissioned jointly by the Duke and the monks of Santa Maria delle Grazie, to be painted on a wall of the refectory of the convent. It was completed in 1498, but its execution probably extended over several previous years. Baudello, in one of his novels, has given us a vivid glimpse of Leonardo at work upon this great subject; of the hushed voices of the monks and their visitors as they watched the busy figure painting there from early dawn, wholly absorbed in his pursuit, and forgetting even to eat; and of how the artist would sometimes leave the mounted figure of Francesco which he was modelling in the citadel and return to the convent by the shortest way, merely that he might add to his picture a single touch or two. The moment of his chosen scene upon which the painter has seized is that when Christ has just pronounced the words 'One of you shall betray me,' and their effect upon the disciples is portrayed with the most delicate and subtle truth. There is an elaborate description and criticism of the work from the pen of Goethe. The after-history of the 'Last Supper' is a sad one. Owing to the dampness of the wall, and to the method of oil-painting—not fresco—upon plaster that had been adopted, it soon showed signs of deterioration, and it has repeatedly been found necessary to repaint it; yet still, through all the retouching of others, the profound feeling and dignified composition of the master do not fail to assert themselves. His sketches for various of its parts still exist at Windsor, in the Brera Gallery at Milan, and in the Louvre. It has been very frequently copied, and it was chiefly from a drawing made by Matteini from the copy by Marco d'Oggionno that Raphael Morghen executed his celebrated line-engraving, published in 1800.
Among other paintings done in Milan were portraits of Lucrezia Crivelli and Cecilia Gallerani, mistresses of the duke, works that cannot now be identified, though 'La Belle Ferronnière' of the Louvre has been regarded by some as the former likeness. The influence of Leonardo upon art in Milan was clearly marked and lasting, for he founded an academy there in which Beltraffio and Andrea Salai, his favourite pupil, received instruction; and the great Bernardino Luini, whether or not he actually studied under the master, certainly imbibed and turned to his own uses many of the characteristics of his method. Leonardo was also much employed by his patron as an engineer. He devised a system of hydraulic irrigation of the plains of Lombardy, and acted as director of the court festivities and pageants.
After the fall and imprisonment of the Duke Lodovico in 1500 Leonardo retired to Florence, and by 1502 he had entered the service of Cæsar Borgia, then Duke of Romagna, as architect and engineer, in which capacity he was entrusted with the most ample authority. Records of his work during this period appear in the note-books and maps preserved at Windsor. In the following year he returned to Florence, when he commenced a Madonna and Child with St Anne for the Servite monks, a subject, however, of which only the noble cartoon now in the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy, London, was completed.
We now reach the period of Leonardo's famous contest with Michael Angelo, an artist who appears always to have regarded his elder rival with dislike and jealousy. Both painters received commissions to decorate the Sala del Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria with important historical composi- tions. Michael Angelo chose a subject of 'Soldiers surprised while Bathing,' an incident from the Florentine wars with the Pisans. Leonardo dealt with 'The Battle of Anghiari,' 1440, in which the Florentines vanquished the armies of Milan. Two years were spent in the preparation of his cartoon; but, having employed a method of painting upon the plaster—probably with wax—which proved a failure, he in 1506 abandoned the work. The cartoon is now lost, but its general composition may be gathered from Lucensi's engraving (1558), and from 'The Battle of the Standard,' engraved by Edelinck from a free copy by Rubens of its principal group. About 1504 was completed the most celebrated of Leonardo's easel-pictures, the half-length of Mona Lisa, third wife of Zanobi del Giocondo, upon which he had been engaged at intervals during four years—a work purchased by Francis I. for 4000 gold florins, and now one of the chief treasures of the Louvre. The colour here, as not seldom in the artist's work, has darkened with time, but still the picture remains a triumph of subtle and refined portraiture. Another work, now lost, portrayed the celebrated beauty Ginevra Benci; and Pacioli's De divina Proportione, published in 1509, contained sixty geometrical figures from Leonardo's hand. As had been the case in Milan, so here in Florence he powerfully influenced contemporary artists. Fra Bartolommeo, Jacopo da Pontormo, Ghirlandajo, and the sculptor Bandinelli all profited by his example.
The final period of Leonardo's life was spent in the service of France. In 1506 he visited Milan; and in the same year he was employed by Louis XII., who died in 1515, when Leonardo was in Rome, competing with Michael Angelo for the execution of the façade of San Lorenzo in Florence. The young French king, Francis I., bestowed on him, in 1516, a yearly allowance of seven hundred scudi, and assigned to his use the Château Cloux, near Amboise; and it was here that the great artist expired, 21 May 1519. The well-known story that he died in the royal arms is untrue. Among his later works is 'The Virgin of the Rocks,' now in the National Gallery, London, of which a varying version is preserved in the Louvre, where also is another of his works of the time, a figure of 'St John the Baptist,' and a 'Saint Anne,' somewhat similar in design to the Royal Academy cartoon.
In his art Leonardo was hardly at all influenced by the antique; his practice was founded upon the most patient and searching study of nature. He occupies a supreme place as an artist in virtue of his unrivalled power of delicate draughtsmanship, of his nobility of style and command over the subtleties of expression, of his skill in chiaroscuro and easy mastery of the complexities of light and shade, of modelling and relief, and of aerial perspective. So few in number are the authentic, completed, and well-preserved works by his hand that have reached us that he may be most fully studied in his drawings. Rich collections of these are preserved in the Ambrosian Library, Milan; the Louvre, Paris; the Royal Gallery, Florence; the Albertina Gallery, Vienna; the Academy, Venice; the British Museum; and the Royal Library, Windsor. His celebrated 'Trattato della Pittura,' dealing with all departments of the painter's art, was published in Italian in 1651, translated into French in the same year, and into English in 1721; but a more complete manuscript was discovered by Manzi in the Vatican, and by him published in 1817. His contemporaries bear witness to the splendid personal appearance of Leonardo; but the only undoubted portrait of him that survives is the noble bearded head in the Royal Library, Turin, a red chalk drawing by his own hand.
The voluminous manuscripts of Leonardo, written from right to left—for the painter was left-handed—and evincing his profound research in almost every branch of science, are preserved at Paris, Milan, Windsor, in the British Museum, in the South Kensington Museum, and at Holkham. See Richter's Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), and his Leonardo (Lond. 1880); Mrs Heaton's Leonardo da Vinci and his Works (1874); the fac-simile reproduction of his manuscripts by Ravaisson-Mollien (Paris, 1881-90) and by the Italians (1894 et seq.); and books by Uzielli (1872-85), Séailles (1892), and Eugène Müntz (trans. 1898).