Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, and died on May 2, 1519. He was an Italian man from the High Renaissance era who worked as a painter, artist, engineer, scientist, writer, sculptor, and architect. He became most famous for his paintings, but he is also well known for his notebooks, where he drew and wrote about many subjects, such as the human body, stars, plants, maps, art, and ancient animals. Leonardo is considered a genius who showed the best qualities of the Renaissance, and his work greatly influenced European art, similar to the work of Michelangelo, who was his younger contemporary.
Leonardo was born to a successful notary and a woman from a lower social class in or near Vinci. He studied art in Florence with the painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career in Florence but later worked for Ludovico Sforza in Milan. He returned to Florence and Milan several times and also briefly worked in Rome. Many people copied his work and learned from him. Later, he moved to France at the invitation of King Francis I, where he lived until his death in 1519. Since his death, people have always been interested in his achievements, his wide range of interests, and his scientific thinking. He is often remembered in books, movies, and other cultural works.
Leonardo is considered one of the greatest painters in Western art history and is often called the founder of the High Renaissance. He created fewer than 25 major paintings, many of which were left unfinished, but some of his works are among the most important in art history. His most famous painting is the Mona Lisa, which is the world’s most well-known individual painting. Another famous work is The Last Supper, which is the most copied religious painting ever made. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also a well-known cultural symbol. In 2017, a painting called Salvator Mundi, which is believed to be partly or fully created by Leonardo, sold at an auction for US$450.3 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold publicly.
Leonardo was known for his creative ideas in technology. He imagined flying machines, a type of armored vehicle, a way to use the sun’s energy, a machine for adding numbers, and a design for a ship with two layers. Many of these ideas were not built during his time because the science of materials and engineering was not as advanced then. However, some of his smaller inventions, like a machine that winds thread automatically and a tool to test the strength of wire, were used in manufacturing without much recognition. He made important discoveries in the study of the human body, building structures, water movement, rocks, light, and friction, but he did not share his findings publicly. As a result, his scientific work did not directly influence later scientific progress.
Biography
Leonardo da Vinci, officially named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ("Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci"), was born on April 15, 1452, in or near the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, Italy, about 20 miles from Florence. He was born out of wedlock to Piero da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina di Meo Lippi, who came from a lower social class. It is unclear exactly where Leonardo was born, but some sources suggest Anchiano, a small village that might have provided privacy for his birth. Others believe he may have been born in Florence, where his father lived. After Leonardo’s birth, both of his parents married other people. Caterina later appeared in Leonardo’s notes as "Caterina" or "Catelina." She is often identified as Caterina Buti del Vacca, who married Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, a local artisan. Piero da Vinci married Albiera Amadori the year after Leonardo’s birth. After Albiera’s death in 1464, Piero married three more times. Leonardo had 16 half-siblings from these marriages, but he had little contact with them.
Little is known about Leonardo’s childhood, and much of the information is unclear or based on stories. Tax records show that by 1457, Leonardo lived with his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci. He may have lived with his mother in Vinci before that. He was close to his uncle, Francesco da Vinci, but his father spent much of his time in Florence. Piero da Vinci, who came from a long line of notaries, lived in Florence by 1469 and had a successful career. Leonardo received only basic education in writing, reading, and math, possibly because his artistic talents were noticed early, and his family focused on that instead.
Later in life, Leonardo wrote about his earliest memory in the Codex Atlanticus. He described an infant memory of a kite flying near his cradle and opening his mouth with its tail. Scholars debate whether this was a real memory or a story.
In the mid-1460s, Leonardo’s family moved to Florence, a city known for its art and learning. Around age 14, he became a "garzone" (studio boy) in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, a famous painter and sculptor. He became an apprentice by age 17 and trained for seven years. Other famous artists who trained or worked with Verrocchio included Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo learned many skills, such as drawing, painting, sculpting, and working with materials like metal and wood.
Leonardo was the same age as artists like Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Perugino. He met them at Verrocchio’s workshop or at the Medici’s Platonic Academy, a place where artists, poets, and philosophers gathered. Florence was home to many great artists, such as Masaccio, whose paintings showed realistic figures, and Ghiberti, whose "Gates of Paradise" combined detailed scenes with gold leaf. Piero della Francesca studied how to create the illusion of depth in art, and Leon Battista Alberti wrote about painting techniques that influenced younger artists, including Leonardo.
Many paintings in Verrocchio’s workshop were made by his assistants. According to Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo helped paint "The Baptism of Christ" (c. 1472–1475), creating the angel holding Jesus’s robe with such skill that Verrocchio supposedly stopped painting. Leonardo may have also modeled for Verrocchio’s works, such as the bronze statue of David and the angel Raphael in "Tobias and the Angel."
Vasari wrote about a young Leonardo painting a terrifying monster on a shield for a peasant. The painting was so scary that Leonardo’s father bought a different shield for the peasant and sold Leonardo’s work to an art dealer for 100 ducats.
By 1472, at age 20, Leonardo became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, a group for artists and doctors. Even after starting his own workshop, he stayed close to Verrocchio. His earliest known dated work is a 1473 drawing of the Arno valley. Vasari said Leonardo suggested making the Arno River navigable between Florence and Pisa.
In 1478, Leonardo painted an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in Florence’s town hall, showing his independence from Verrocchio. An early biographer, Anonimo Gaddiano, said Leonardo lived with the Medici family and worked in their garden, where a group of artists and philosophers met. In 1481, he received a commission for "The Adoration of the Magi," but he abandoned it to offer his services to Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan. Leonardo wrote a letter to Sforza describing his skills in engineering, weapons, and painting, and brought a silver musical instrument shaped like a horse’s head.
Leonardo visited the Medici home with Alberti and met humanist philosophers like Marsiglio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, and John Argyropoulos. He also knew Pico della Mirandola, a young poet and philosopher. In 1482, Leonardo was sent by Lorenzo de’ Medici as an ambassador to Ludovico Sforza, who ruled Milan from 1479 to 1499.
- Madonna of the Carnation, c. 1472–1478
Personal life
Although Leonardo left behind thousands of pages in notebooks and manuscripts, he rarely mentioned his personal life.
During his lifetime, Leonardo’s remarkable inventions, his "great physical beauty" and "infinite grace," as noted by Vasari, along with other aspects of his life, drew the interest of others. One such interest was his love for animals, which may have included vegetarianism. Vasari also mentioned that Leonardo sometimes bought caged birds and set them free.
Leonardo had many friends who later became important in their fields or in history, such as mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he worked on a book called Divina proportione in the 1490s. Leonardo seems to have had few close relationships with women, except for his friendship with Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters, Beatrice and Isabella. While traveling through Mantua, Leonardo drew a portrait of Isabella, which may have been used to create a painted portrait that is now lost.
Salaì, also known as Il Salaino ("The Little Unclean One," meaning "the devil"), joined Leonardo’s household in 1490 as an assistant. After one year, Leonardo listed Salaì’s misbehavior, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton" because he stole money and valuables multiple times and spent a lot on clothes. Despite this, Leonardo was very kind to him, and Salaì stayed in Leonardo’s household for thirty years. Salaì painted under the name Andrea Salaì, but Vasari said Leonardo "taught him many things about painting." However, Salaì’s work is generally seen as less skilled compared to other students of Leonardo, like Marco d’Oggiono and Boltraffio.
Beyond friendships, Leonardo kept his private life private. His sexuality has been discussed by many people over time, starting in the mid-1500s and again in the 1800s and 1900s, including by Sigmund Freud in his book Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood. Leonardo’s closest relationships may have been with his students Salaì and Melzi. Melzi, who wrote to inform Leonardo’s brothers about his death, described Leonardo’s feelings for his students as both loving and passionate. Some people have suggested since the 1500s that these relationships were romantic or sexual. Walter Isaacson, in his biography of Leonardo, clearly stated that his relationship with Salaì was intimate and homosexual.
In 1476, when Leonardo was 24 years old, court records show that he and three other young men were accused of sodomy in a case involving a man known to be a prostitute. The charges were dropped because there was not enough evidence. Some believe that one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de’ Medici, and his family may have used their influence to get the charges dismissed. Since then, many people have written about Leonardo’s possible homosexuality and how it might have influenced his art, especially in the androgyny and eroticism seen in paintings like Saint John the Baptist and Bacchus, as well as in some explicit drawings.
Paintings
For most of 400 years, Leonardo da Vinci was best known for his paintings, even though he was also a scientist and inventor. Only a few paintings that are confirmed to be his or strongly believed to be his are considered masterpieces. These paintings are famous for many qualities that other artists have copied and that experts have studied carefully. By the 1490s, Leonardo was already called a "Divine" painter.
What makes Leonardo’s work special includes his new ways of applying paint, his deep knowledge of the human body, light, plants, and rocks, his interest in how people show emotions through their faces and movements, and his creative use of the human body in his paintings. These qualities are seen in his most famous paintings: the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks.
Leonardo first became known for helping paint the Baptism of Christ with an artist named Verrocchio. Two other paintings from this time are Annunciations. One is small, 59 centimeters (23 inches) long and 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) high. It was part of a larger painting by another artist, Lorenzo di Credi, and is called a "predella." The other Annunciation is much larger, 217 centimeters (85 inches) long. In both paintings, Leonardo used a style similar to works by Fra Angelico, showing the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling on the right side of the picture, approached by an angel from the left. The angel has flowing clothing and raised wings, holding a lily. This larger painting was once thought to be by Ghirlandaio but is now believed to be by Leonardo.
In the smaller painting, Mary looks away and folds her hands, a sign of submission to God’s will. In the larger one, however, Mary is reading when the angel arrives. She marks her place in the Bible with a finger and raises her hand in a gesture of greeting or surprise. This calm young woman seems to accept her role as the Mother of God with confidence, not sadness. Here, Leonardo shows the Virgin Mary as a human being, emphasizing her connection to humanity.
In the 1480s, Leonardo received two important commissions and started another groundbreaking painting. Two of the three were never finished, and the third took so long that the people who paid for it had to negotiate about its completion and payment.
One of these paintings was Saint Jerome in the Wilderness. This work was created during a difficult time in Leonardo’s life, as he wrote in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die." The painting is only partially finished, but its unusual composition is visible. Jerome, a holy man, is shown in the center of the picture, slightly tilted and viewed from above. His body forms a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. This painting is linked to Leonardo’s studies of the human body. In the foreground is a lion, whose body and tail form a double spiral. The background has rough rocks and a sketchy landscape.
This same bold style, along with dramatic elements, appears in The Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the monks of San Donato a Scopeto. This painting is complex, about 250 × 250 centimeters. Leonardo made many drawings and studies for it, including one showing ruined classical buildings in the background. In 1482, Leonardo went to Milan at the request of Lorenzo de’ Medici to gain favor with Ludovico il Moro. The painting was abandoned.
The third important work from this period was The Virgin of the Rocks, commissioned for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan. Leonardo painted this with the help of the de Predis brothers. It shows a scene from the childhood of Christ, where the infant John the Baptist, protected by an angel, meets the Holy Family on their journey to Egypt. The painting has a strange beauty, with graceful figures kneeling around the baby Jesus in a wild landscape of rocks and water. It is large, about 200 × 120 centimeters, but simpler than The Adoration of the Magi, which had more figures and architectural details. Both versions of the painting were completed: one stayed at the chapel, and the other was taken to France. The Confraternity and the de Predis brothers did not receive their payment until the next century.
Leonardo’s most famous portrait from this time is The Lady with an Ermine, believed to be Cecilia Gallerani, the lover of Ludovico Sforza. The painting shows the figure with her head turned at a different angle from her body, a style unusual at the time when many portraits were still in profile. The ermine has symbolic meaning, possibly relating to Cecilia or Ludovico, who belonged to the prestigious Order of the Ermine.
Leonardo’s most famous painting from the 1490s is The Last Supper, painted for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. It shows the moment when Jesus announces that one of his disciples will betray him, causing confusion among the group.
Matteo Bandello, a writer, observed Leonardo painting and noted that he sometimes worked nonstop for days and then stopped for several days. This confused the convent’s prior, who pressured Leonardo until he asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari wrote that Leonardo struggled to paint the faces of Christ and Judas and considered using the prior as a model.
The Last Supper was praised as a masterpiece, but it deteriorated quickly. Leonardo used tempera on a gesso surface instead of the more durable fresco technique, leading to mold and flaking. Despite this, the painting remains widely copied in many forms.
Near the end of this period, in 1498, Leonardo painted a trompe-l’œil decoration for the Sala delle Asse in the Castello Sforzesco, commissioned by the Duke of Milan.
In 1505, Leonardo was asked to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the Salone dei Cinquecento ("Hall
Drawings
Leonardo was a skilled artist who made many drawings. He kept notebooks filled with small sketches and detailed drawings that recorded many things that interested him. In addition to these notebooks, there are many studies for paintings. Some of these studies were used to prepare specific works, such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks, and The Last Supper. His earliest known drawing is a landscape of the Arno Valley from 1473. This drawing shows the river, mountains, Montelupo Castle, and farmlands in great detail.
Among his famous drawings are The Vitruvian Man, which studies the proportions of the human body; The Head of an Angel, used for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre; a botanical drawing of the Star of Bethlehem; and a large drawing (160 × 100 cm) in black chalk on colored paper of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London. This drawing uses a soft shading technique called sfumato, similar to the one used in The Mona Lisa. It is believed Leonardo never painted this drawing, though it is similar to The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre.
Other drawings include many studies often called "caricatures" because they are exaggerated but based on observations of real people. Vasari wrote that Leonardo looked for interesting faces in public to use as models for his work. There are many drawings of young men, often linked to a person named Salaì, who had a rare and admired facial feature called the "Grecian profile." These faces are sometimes shown next to those of warriors. Salaì is often shown wearing fancy costumes. Leonardo also designed sets for pageants, which may be connected to these drawings. Other detailed drawings show studies of clothing. Leonardo’s ability to draw clothing improved in his early works. Another well-known drawing is a dark sketch from 1479 in Florence showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, who was hanged for his role in the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de' Medici, during the Pazzi conspiracy. In his notes, Leonardo recorded the colors of the robes Baroncelli wore when he died.
Like two other architects, Donato Bramante (who designed the Belvedere Courtyard) and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Leonardo experimented with designs for churches with central plans. These designs appear in his notebooks as both plans and views, though none were ever built.
Journals and notes
Renaissance humanism did not see science and art as opposites. Leonardo da Vinci’s studies in science and engineering are often viewed as equally important and creative as his art. His research was recorded in about 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which combine art with early science. These notes and drawings were created daily throughout Leonardo’s life and travels as he observed the world around him. His work covers a wide range of topics, from simple things like grocery lists and money owed to more complex ideas, such as designs for wings and water-walking shoes. His notebooks include plans for paintings, studies of clothing and faces, animals, babies, dissections, plants, rocks, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines, and buildings.
After Leonardo’s death, these notebooks—originally loose papers of different sizes—were mostly given to his student and heir, Francesco Melzi. Melzi planned to publish them, but this was very difficult because of the large amount of material and Leonardo’s unique handwriting. Some of Leonardo’s drawings were copied by an unknown artist for a book on art called Codex Huygens (around 1570). After Melzi’s death in 1570, his son, Orazio, inherited the collection but showed little interest in it. In 1587, a tutor named Lelio Gavardi took 13 manuscripts to Pisa, but the architect Giovanni Magenta returned them to Orazio, claiming they had been taken without permission. Orazio later gave the manuscripts to Magenta. News of these lost works spread, and Orazio recovered seven of them, giving them to Pompeo Leoni for publication. One of these was the Codex Atlanticus. The other six were given to others. After Orazio’s death, his heirs sold the rest of Leonardo’s belongings, leading to the notebooks’ dispersal.
Today, some of Leonardo’s works are in major collections, such as the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (which holds the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus), and the British Library in London (which has shared parts of the Codex Arundel online). Others are in places like Holkham Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in private collections, including those of John Nicholas Brown I and Robert Lehman. The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo still in private hands; it is owned by Bill Gates and displayed once a year in cities worldwide.
Most of Leonardo’s writings are written in mirror-image cursive. Since he was left-handed, writing from right to left may have been easier for him. He used many shorthand symbols and wrote that he intended to prepare his notes for publication. Often, a single topic is explained in both words and pictures on the same page, ensuring that information would not be lost if the pages were published out of order. It is unclear why his writings were not published during his lifetime.
Science and inventions
Leonardo studied science by closely observing and carefully describing things he saw. He did not focus on experiments or theories, but instead made detailed drawings and notes. Because he did not have formal training in Latin or math, many scholars of his time did not pay much attention to his scientific work, even though he taught himself Latin. His observations in many areas were noted, such as when he wrote "Il sole non si muove" ("The Sun does not move").
In the 1490s, he studied math with Luca Pacioli and created drawings of regular shapes to be included in Pacioli’s book Divina proportione, published in 1509. While living in Milan, he studied light from the top of Monte Rosa. His notes about fossils in his journals were later seen as important for early studies of ancient life.
His journals suggest he planned to write about many subjects. A complete book about anatomy was reportedly seen during a visit by a secretary of Cardinal Louis d’Aragon in 1517. His work on anatomy, light, and landscapes was later organized by Melzi and published in A Treatise on Painting in France and Italy in 1651 and Germany in 1724. The book included drawings by Nicolas Poussin. In France, the treatise was printed 62 times in 50 years, and it helped people see Leonardo as an important influence on art in France.
Although Leonardo’s experiments followed scientific methods, a recent study by Fritjof Capra suggests he was different from scientists like Galileo and Newton. As a "Renaissance Man," his ideas combined science with art, especially painting.
Leonardo began studying human anatomy under Verrocchio, who required students to learn deeply about the subject. As an artist, he became skilled at drawing visible parts of the body, such as muscles and tendons.
As a successful artist, Leonardo was allowed to dissect human bodies at hospitals in Florence, Milan, and Rome. From 1510 to 1511, he worked with doctor Marcantonio della Torre at the University of Pavia. He made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words for a book on anatomy. Only a small part of this work was published in A Treatise on Painting. When Melzi organized the material for publication, it was reviewed by experts like Vasari, Cellini, and Albrecht Dürer, who made their own drawings based on Leonardo’s work.
Leonardo’s drawings included studies of the human skeleton, muscles, and internal organs. He studied how bones and muscles work together, ideas that were ahead of his time and similar to modern science. He drew the heart and blood vessels, the reproductive system, and one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus inside the womb. His work was far ahead of its time, and if published, it would have greatly helped medical science.
He also studied how age and emotions affect the body, drawing people with facial changes or signs of illness. He compared the anatomy of animals like cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs with that of humans, and made studies of horses.
Leonardo’s studies of muscles, nerves, and blood vessels helped explain how the body moves. He tried to understand where emotions come from and how they are shown on the face. He found it hard to use the old ideas about bodily humors but eventually stopped using them. He noted that humors were not in the brain or heart and that the heart controls the circulatory system. He was the first to describe atherosclerosis and liver cirrhosis. He made models of the brain’s ventricles using wax and built a glass aorta to study blood flow using water and grass seeds.
Leonardo was also valued as an engineer. He used the same careful approach to study machines and devices. He created detailed drawings, including a technique to show how parts of a machine fit together. His notebooks contain over 5,000 pages of designs. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro in 1482, he claimed he could build machines to protect cities or attack enemies. When he fled Milan in 1499, he worked in Venice, designing moveable barriers to protect the city. In 1502, he planned to change the course of the Arno River, a project also studied by Niccolò Machiavelli. He continued to think about water systems while working with Louis XII and Francis I. His notebooks include many inventions, such as musical instruments, a mechanical knight, hydraulic pumps, and a steam cannon.
Leonardo was interested in flight for most of his life. He studied birds and made plans for flying machines like an ornithopter and a rotor-based device. In a 2003 documentary, some of his designs, like a parachute and crossbow, were tested. Some worked, while others did not. In 2009, engineers built ten of his machines, including a fighting vehicle and a self-moving cart.
Research by Marc van den Broek found that many of Leonardo’s inventions had earlier versions from ancient times. His work combined ideas from different sources to create new designs.
In his notebooks, Leonardo first described the "laws" of sliding friction in 1493. He studied friction partly because he wanted to understand if perpetual motion was possible, which he correctly said was not. His findings were not published until 1699, when Guillaume Amontons rediscovered them. For this, Leonardo is credited as the first to study friction in this way.
Legacy
Although Leonardo did not have formal academic training, many historians and scholars consider him the best example of a "Universal Genius" or "Renaissance Man," someone with "never-ending curiosity" and "inventive imagination." He is widely seen as one of the most talented individuals in history. Art historian Helen Gardner noted that the range and depth of his interests were unmatched in history, and "his mind and personality seem superhuman, while the man himself appears mysterious and distant." Scholars believe his understanding of the world was based on logic, though the methods he used were unusual for his time.
During his lifetime, Leonardo was so famous that the King of France took him like a prize and is said to have supported him in his later years and held him as he died. Interest in Leonardo and his work has never decreased. People still line up to see his most famous artworks, his drawings appear on clothing, and writers continue to praise his genius while discussing his personal life and beliefs.
Many written tributes reflect the admiration Leonardo received. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano, wrote in 1528: "Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unmatched." The biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote around 1540: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf." Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists (1568), began his chapter on Leonardo by highlighting his achievements.
The 19th century brought special praise for Leonardo's genius. Henry Fuseli wrote in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius." This idea was repeated by A. E. Rio in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."
By the 19th century, people knew about the scope of Leonardo's notebooks and paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfillment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."
Art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896:
Interest in Leonardo's genius continues today. Experts study and translate his writings, use scientific methods to analyze his paintings, debate ownership of his works, and search for pieces that have been recorded but not found. Liana Bortolon wrote in 1967:
The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana is a special collection at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Twenty-first-century author Walter Isaacson based his biography of Leonardo on thousands of notebook entries, studying his personal notes, sketches, financial records, and thoughts. Isaacson was surprised to find a "fun, joyous" side of Leonardo, in addition to his curiosity and creativity.
On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, the Louvre in Paris held the largest single exhibit of his work, called Leonardo, from November 2019 to February 2020. The exhibit included more than 100 paintings, drawings, and notebooks. Eleven paintings Leonardo completed in his lifetime were shown. Five of these are owned by the Louvre, but the Mona Lisa was not included because it is in high demand among visitors; it remains on display in its gallery. Vitruvian Man was shown after a legal dispute with its owner, the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Salvator Mundi was not included because its Saudi owner did not allow it to be loaned.
The Mona Lisa, considered Leonardo's greatest work, is often seen as the most famous portrait ever made. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time, and Leonardo's Vitruvian Man drawing is also a cultural icon.
A study of Leonardo's family history, conducted by Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato over more than a decade, concluded in mid-2021 that Leonardo has 14 living male relatives. This research may also help confirm the authenticity of remains believed to belong to Leonardo.
Location of remains
Leonardo was buried in the collegiate church of Saint Florentin at the Château d'Amboise on August 12, 1519. However, the exact location of his remains today is unknown. During the French Revolution, much of the Château d'Amboise was damaged, and the church was destroyed in 1802. This destruction caused some graves to be broken, scattering bones and making it unclear where Leonardo's remains are. Some believe a gardener may have buried parts of the remains in a courtyard corner.
In 1863, fine-arts inspector general Arsène Houssaye was asked by the emperor to search the site. He found a partly complete skeleton with a bronze ring on one finger, white hair, and stone pieces with the letters "EO," "AR," "DUS," and "VINC." These letters were thought to form "Leonardus Vinci." The skeleton had eight teeth, which matched the age of someone around Leonardo’s time. A silver shield nearby showed a beardless version of King Francis I, matching how the king looked during Leonardo’s time in France.
Houssaye suggested that the unusually large skull might show Leonardo’s intelligence. However, author Charles Nicholl called this idea questionable. Houssaye also noted that the skeleton’s feet were pointed toward the high altar, a practice usually for non-religious people, and that the skeleton’s height of 1.73 meters (5.7 feet) seemed too short. Art historian Mary Margaret Heaton wrote in 1874 that this height would have been correct for Leonardo. The skull was shown to Napoleon III before being returned to the Château d'Amboise, where it was reburied in the chapel of Saint Hubert in 1874. A plaque above the tomb says the remains are only believed to be Leonardo’s.
It has been suggested that the skeleton’s right arm folded over the head might match Leonardo’s right-hand paralysis. In 2016, scientists planned to test the DNA of the remains to confirm if they belong to Leonardo. The DNA will be compared to samples from Leonardo’s artwork and his half-brother Domenico’s descendants. It may also be fully sequenced.
In 2019, documents showed that Houssaye had kept the bronze ring and a strand of hair. In 1925, his great-grandson sold these items to an American collector. Sixty years later, another American bought them, and they were displayed at the Leonardo Museum in Vinci starting May 2, 2019, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death.