Tigertail Virtual Museum: 15th C. High Italian Renaissance

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High Italian Renaissance
Early Italian Renaissance
Mannerism

High Italian Renaissance
1490 to 1520

Leonardo

devinci de vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci

born: Vinci, Republic of Florence [now Italy]; 15 April 1452
died: Castle of Chateau de Cloux near Amboise, France; 2 May 1519

Illegitimate son of Ser Piero, a Florentine notary and a young peasant woman, Caterina. Leonardo was born on his father's family estate. Caterina eventually married in her class. Leonardo grew up in his father's house, and received the usual elementary education of that day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Leonardo acquired a working knowledge of Latin much later, when he studied it on his own. Not until he was fully grown did he apply himself to geometry and arithmetic, which he studied with tenacity; although he never really mastered either Latin or mathematics.

Leonardo studied with Andrea del Verrocchio and Antonio Pollaiuolo. In 1482 Leonardo left Florence, leaving behind several unfinished projects, and entered the service of the Duke of Milan. Leonardo worked for 17 years in Milan; he worked as a sculptor; painter; architect; as a fortifications-, mechanical-, and hydraulic engineer; and as a designer of court festivals. He also kept himself busy studying science and writing notebooks on his observations of the world around him.

In 1500 he returned to Florence after the fall of Milan to the French. He worked on mathematics and artistically on a large fresco, The Battle of Anghiari, which he never finished. In 1506 he returned to Milan, and in 1513 he went to work in Rome.

François I, King of France invited Leonardo to be his court painter, architect, and mechanic. At the end of 1516 Leonardo accepted the King's offer and left Italy forever, together with his most devoted pupil, Francesco Melzi. He spent the last three years of his life in the small residence of Cloux (later called Clos-Lucé), near the King's summer palace at Amboise on the Loire, where he died.