Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance architect, musician, inventor, engineer, and scientist. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time. He is also famous for his notebooks, in which he drew and wrote extensively about his observations and theories on a wide range of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, geology, optics, and zoology.
Da Vinci was born in 1452 in the town of Vinci in the Republic of Florence, and he died in 1519 at the age of 67. He was the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman named Caterina. He had very little formal education and was mostly self-taught.
He began his apprenticeship with the artist Andrea del Verrocchio at the age of 14. Da Vinci became an independent painter at 17 years old after he allegedly stole some paints from his master’s studio and painted a figure that caught Verrocchio’s attention so much that it made him decide to take him as an apprentice immediately. Leonardo Da Vinci was a polymath, which means he was really good at a lot of things. He was an artist, an inventor, and a scientist. He created The Last Supper and drew many other famous works of art. In fact, he was so good at drawing that he could draw things exactly as they would look in real life!
But his most important work was his notebooks. These notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time. They also show how Da Vinci had a deep interest in anatomy and physiology—an interest that would help him create many amazing inventions later in his life! Da Vinci died of a stroke on May 2 1519 at the age of 67.
