So what do we know about this celebrated Renaissance man of mystery?
Leonardo was born in the small town of Vinci, in Tuscany, near Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. 
In the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best education that Florence, a major intellectual and artistic center of Italy, could offer. He rapidly advanced socially and intellectually. He was handsome, persuasive in conversation, and a fine musician and improviser. About 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo was introduced to many activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze.
In 1472 he was entered in the painter's guild of Florence, and in 1476 he was still considered Verrocchio's assistant. In Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (1472, Uffizi, Florence), the kneeling angel at the left of the painting is by Leonardo.
The first known and dated work of Leonardo da Vinci is a pen-and-ink drawing of the Arnovalley. Leonardo drew it on 5. August 1473. The picture shows this drawing.It shows the ingenious mind of Leonardo, because he drew the landscape in a way that it could be real. Nobody else before did it in this way.
About 1482 he left Florence to work primarily as a military and naval engineer for the Duke of Milan. Leonardo recorded his studies in illustrated notebooks covering: painting, architecture, hydraulics, engineering, physics, mechanics, astronomy optics and human anatomy. In 1499 after the invasion of Milan by the French he left and worked throughout Italy.
In 1516 Francis I of France appointed Leonardo 'Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King', a position he held until his death in 1519.
Da Vinci's Last Supper has become one of the most widely appreciated masterpieces in the world. It began to acquire its unique reputation immediately after it was finished in 1498 and its prestige has never diminished. Despite the many changes in tastes, artistic styles, and rapid physical deterioration of the painting itself, the painting's status as an extraordinary creation has never been questioned nor doubted.
The painting has been subject to much attention due to the number of restorations it has had to face since its completion in the fifteenth century. The most recent restoration lasted twenty years and has been the subject of much controversy. The painting that remains so influential has been frequently referred to as "repainted", not "restored". However, restoration has been an ongoing reality with this masterpiece due to unprecedented manner in which Leonardo painted it. Although restoration may have altered Leonardo's painting to a degree, it has prolonged the life of this painting for future generations to appreciate and view.
During his lifetime, Leonardo was indeed above all famous for his evident talent for imitating nature to perfection and when his first biographer, the painter Vasari, described the Mona Lisa, he above all insisted on the work's realism: "Its limpid eyes had the sparkle of life: ringed by reddish and livid hues, they were bordered by lashes whose execution required the greatest delicacy. The eyelashes, in places thicker or more sparse according to the arrangement of the pores, could not be truer. The nose, with its ravishing delicate, pink nostrils, was life itself. In the hollow of the throat, the attentive spectator can catch the beating of the veins".
It is here important to recall to what extent the question of the model's realism is connected to its identity. To this day, we still do not know whether Leonardo da Vinci faithfully represented an existing model, whether he idealized a portrait of a woman of his circle or if he entirely imagined a type of universal woman.
Every kind of possibility, including the most far-fetched, has been envisaged concerning the model's identity: Isabelle of Este, who reigned at Mantua during Leonardo da Vinci's stay there (we know a drawing by him showing her); a mistress of Giuliano di Medici's or of Leonardo himself; perhaps an ideal woman; and even an adolescent boy dressed as a woman, or possibly a self-portrait.
Even today, we possess no final proof of the identity of the woman shown by Leonardo. Indeed, it is astonishing to consider that we now remember more the universal aspects of the picture (the evident idealization of the portrait, the painter's imaginative rendering of the landscape, the balance of the model's posture), more than the reference to a personality who really existed. Even if he painted a woman's face with realism, it is clear that Leonardo lastingly freed himself from any obligations to accuracy to search for an abstract description of the human figure.
Acquired by François I, either directly from Leonardo da Vinci, during his stay in France, or upon his death from his heirs, the painting remained in the royal collections from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the creation of the Central Arts Museum at the Louvre in 1793. We know that it was kept at Versailles under the reign of Louis XIV and that it was in the Tuileries during the First Empire. Since the Restoration, the Mona Lisa has always remained in the Louvre Museum, a key piece of the national collections. Studied by historians and painters, who copied it frequently, the Mona Lisa became world famous after its theft in 1911. On August 21, 1911, a slightly mad Italian painter, Vincenzo Peruggia stole it to return it to its country of origin. After a long police enquiry, during which everyone was suspected, including the Cubist painters and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had one day shouted that "the Louvre should be burnt", the Mona Lisawas rediscovered in Italy almost two years later and rehung in the Louvre, treated with the honours accorded to a head of state, after having occupied, throughout this period, the front pages of the world's newspapers.
We know very little about Leonardo's apprenticeship in Verroccio’s workshop, but the short account provided by Vasari confirms that it included architectural and technological design, according to a concept that was being revived on the model of Vitruvius, as reproposed by Alberti" (Pedretti 14). Having had access to Alberti’s and Vitruvius’ treatises, it is no surprise that Leonardo produced his own version of the Vitruvian man in his notebooks.
This rendering of the Vitruvian Man, completed in 1490, is fundamentally different than others in two ways: The circle and square image overlaid on top of each other to form one image. A key adjustment was made that others had not done and thus were forced to make disproportionate appendages: “Leonardo’s famous drawings of the Vitruvian proportions of a man’s body first standing inscribed in a square and then with feet and arms outspread inscribed in a circle provides an excellent early example of the way in which his studies of proportion fuse artistic and scientific objectives.
It is Leonardo, not Vitruvius, who points out that ‘If you open the legs so as to reduce the stature by one-fourteenth and open and raise your arms so that your middle fingers touch the line through the top of the head, know that the centre of the extremities of the outspread limbs will be the umbilicus, and the space between the legs will make and equilateral triangle’ (Accademia, Venice). Here he provides one of his simplest illustrations of a shifting ‘centre of magnitude' without a corresponding change of ‘centre of normal gravity’. This remains passing through the central line from the pit of the throat through the umbilicus and pubis between the legs. Leonardo repeatedly distinguishes these two different ‘centres’ of a body, i.e., the centers of ‘magnitude’ and ‘gravity (Keele 252).”
This image provides the perfect example of Leonardo's keen interest in proportion. In addition, this picture represents a cornerstone of Leonardo's attempts to relate man to nature. Encyclopaedia Britannica online states, "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe. (Stanford University)
His notebooks combine detailed observation with notes of experiments. Even if he did not actually undertake the experiments, he described what could be tried. Many of his insights foreshadowed scientific research by many centuries. For example:
Finally, having grown old, he remained ill many months, and, feeling himself near to death, asked to have himself diligently informed of the teaching of the Catholic faith, and of the good way and holy Christian religion; and then, with many moans, he confessed and was penitent; and although he could not raise himself well on his feet, supporting himself on the arms of his friends and servants, he was pleased to take devoutly the most holy Sacrament, out of his bed.
The King, who was wont often and lovingly to visit him, then came into the room; wherefore he, out of reverence, having raised himself to sit upon the bed, giving him an account of his sickness and the circumstances of it, showed withal how much he had offended God and mankind in not having worked at his art as he should have done. Thereupon he was seized by a paroxysm, the messenger of death; for which reason the King having risen and having taken his head, in order to assist him and show him favour, to then end that he might alleviate his pain, his spirit, which was divine, knowing that it could not have any greater honour, expired in the arms of the King, in the seventy fifth year of his age.
Leonardo was explicit about protecting intellectual property: 'Do not teach your knowledge and you alone will excel'. When he wants to hide his ideas, he leaves out details or only alludes to them. While his drawings of machines look impressive, could they really work? Was he just a dreamer?
Even to the present day Leonardo is in the news. The recent book "The Da Vinci Code" raises more questions about him. Books have been written to either prove or disapprove certain topics raised in "The Da Vinci Code". Was he a Master in the "Priory de Sion"? Did he depict Mary on the left hand of Jesus in "The Last Supper"?
One thing is for certain Leonardo da Vinci, he left a legacy that will never be forgotten.
