BIOGRAPHY AND PERSONALITY OF A FAMOUS TAURUS: LEONARDO DAVINCI

Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer. Born April 15, 1452, in Vinci near Florence, Italy. One of the great masters of the High Renaissance, Leonardo was celebrated as an artist and scientist. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies--particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics--anticipated many of the developments of modern science.

The son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman, Leonardo received virtually no formal education as a boy, yet avidly read the works of classical scholars. About 1466, he was an apprentice to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. By 1478, Leonardo had become an independent master. His first large painting, Adoration of the Magi, was left unfinished. Other works ascribed to his youth are the so-called Benois Madonna, the portrait Ginevra de Benci, and the unfinished Saint Jerome.

About 1482, Leonardo entered the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, serving as architect, mathematician and principal engineer in the duke's numerous military enterprises. His most important paintings during the early Milan period were Virgin of the Rocks and his masterpiece, the Last Supper. Leonardo also began to write what became known as Leonardo's notebooks in Milan in the 1490s. Consisting of 1119 sheets on the entire range of Leonardo's interests, the Codex was compiled by the Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni at the end of the 16th century and was restored in the 1960s.

In 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia as architect and engineer, supervising work on the fortresses of the papal territories in central Italy. During this second Florentine period, Leonardo painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous Mona Lisa. One of the most celebrated portraits ever painted, it is also known as La Gioconda, after the presumed name of the woman's husband. Leonardo seems to have had a special affection for the picture, for he took it with him on all of his subsequent travels.

In 1506, Leonardo returned to Milan and was named court painter to King Louis XII of France, who was residing there. For the next six years Leonardo divided his time between Milan and Florence, where he often visited his half brothers and half sisters and looked after his inheritance. From 1514 to 1516, Leonardo lived in Rome under the patronage of Pope Leo X: he was housed in the Palazzo Belvedere in the Vatican and seems to have been occupied principally with scientific experimentation. In 1516, he traveled to France to enter the service of King Francis I. He spent his last years at the Chäteau de Cloux, near Amboise, where he died on May 2, 1519.

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