Leonardo da Vinci
Discover Leonardo da Vinci — the Renaissance genius whose paintings, inventions, and notebooks make him history's most versatile creative mind.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is the archetype of the Renaissance 'universal man' — a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, anatomist, botanist, musician, and writer whose range of achievement remains unmatched in human history. His two most famous paintings — the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper — are among the most recognized images in the world.
Leonardo's genius lay not merely in his artistic skill but in his insatiable curiosity about the natural world. His notebooks — over 7,000 surviving pages filled with observations, sketches, and ideas — reveal a mind that moved effortlessly between painting techniques, human anatomy, hydraulic engineering, botany, optics, and aeronautics. He designed flying machines, armored vehicles, and automated mechanisms centuries before technology could realize them.
As a painter, Leonardo pioneered sfumato (the subtle blending of tones), chiaroscuro (the dramatic use of light and shadow), and a psychological depth in portraiture that was entirely new. His scientific approach to art — studying anatomy through dissection, optics through experiment, and nature through tireless observation — established the Renaissance ideal that art and science were complementary paths to understanding the world.