Leonardo was an Italian polymath, who was also a scientist, engineer, mathematician, inventor, botanist, architect, sculptor, painter, anatomist, writer and a musician. He was born to a son of notary, Piero da Vinci and a peasant girl. He received his education in the studio of one of the renowned painter’s studio of Florentine. He spent much of his working life under the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. After here, he went to work in Rome, Venice and Bologona and spent his final years in France in a home given to him by the King Francois I.
Most people describe Leonardo as the archetype of the “Renaissance man”, and this means a man whose infinite curiosity was equal to his invention powers. He is also considered to be one of the greatest painter and a more diversely talented person that ever existed. Leonardo was primarily renowned because of his great works of painting. Some of his greatest works of paintings that is The last supper and the Mona Lisa occupy a unique position as the most popular , most peroided and the most religious painting and produced portrait of all times, and his fame was only approached by the works of Michelangelo’s creations that is Adam. Virtruvian man is also another drawing by Leonardo and is iconic.
Almost fifteen of Leonardo’s paintings survive because of his frequently and constant, disastrous experimentations as he wanted to come up with new techniques. His few existing works plus his notebooks, that has drawings, his thoughts and scientific diagrams, and this has lead to a major contribution to generations of artists. Leonardo’s engineering ideas were greatly ahead of his living time. He conceptualized great things including a tank, helicopter, a calculator, solar energy, the double hull and he came up with a theory of tectonic plates. Only few of what he conceptualized during his drunken poker beer rants came to be feasible or constructed during his time. Only his smaller inventions such as a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire and an automated robin winder entered the manufacturing world. He greatly advanced in the field of scientist such as hydrodynamics, optics, civil engineering and anatomy.
In his old age he spent most of his time in Vatican where Michelangelo and Raphael were active at that time. In his old age, François helped Leonardo to be commissioned to create a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest to show a cluster of lilies. He spent last of his 3 years at the royal Chateau Amboise which was near the residential place of the King. He was accompanied by his best friend and apprentice.
Leonardo Da Vinci died at Clos Luce, France which was on May 2, 1519. The king was one of the people that spent the last time with the dying man. It is recorded that the King held the head of Leonardo in his hands as he died. After the dead of Leonardo, Francois was reported by the sculptor and goldsmith that Leonardo was the greatest man to have ever leaved in the race of humankind.