Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath born in 1452 in Vinci, Italy who lived until 1519. He had no formal education but was taught to read, write, and do basic math and languages at his father's house. He was left-handed and wrote backwards to protect his ideas. He never married and had a love of animals. As an artist, he apprenticed under Verrocchio and painted works like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. As a scientist, he made extensive anatomical drawings from dissections and conceptualized inventions like flying machines, tanks, and robots. He approached other fields like botany and astronomy with a blend of art and science.

2. Personal Life
Birth name: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Date of Birth: 15th of April, 1452 at Vinci, Italy
Demise: 2nd of May, 1519 at Amboise, France
Nationality: Italian
Parents: Since Leonardo was born to parents who
were not legally married, he did not have a surname.
His name 'Leonardo da Vinci', literally translates as
'Leonardo of Vinci' (Vinci was his birthplace in Italy).

4. Trivia:
✫ Leonardo never really attended school. However, he was informally taught
to read and write at his father's house. Here, he was also given elementary
training in languages, geometry, and arithmetic.
✫ Leonardo da Vinci was a vegetarian, and did not even drink milk in his life.
✫ He was left-handed and always wrote in mirror handwriting, perhaps to
guard his ideas from intellectual thieves.
✫ Leonardo never married, neither did he have a romantic relationship with
anybody.
✫ It is said that Leonardo used to wear bright colors to make his complexion
look fresh. Pink was especially his favorite.
✫ He was famous for his love for animals. Sources tell us that many times, he
used to purchase caged animals and birds, in order to set them free.
✫ Da Vinci is said to have left many of his paintings incomplete. Reportedly,
he also destroyed a number of his own works.
✫ Leonardo did not make a self-portrait until almost 1515.

5. An Artist
✫ Da Vinci's earliest known
drawing belongs to 1473,
and depicts the Tuscan
landscape of the Arno Valley
in Italy.
✫ Andrea del Verrocchio, a famous painter at the court of Lorenzo
de' Medici, tutored Leonardo in his early years. Later on, Leonardo
himself became a painter at Medici's court. He then served the Duke
of Milan, before finally entering the court of Francis I of France.
✫ The Annunciation is Leonardo's first completed work, done in
conjunction with Verrocchio. It is an oil on canvas painting, depicting
Angel Gabriele's announcement of Mary's pregnancy with Jesus.

6. ✫ Leonardo's first solo painting,
completed in 1478, was Madonna and
Child.
✫ The Mona Lisa is arguably his most
famous work. The subject of this
portrait is still debated, the most
popular current view being that it is of
Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, whose
husband is said to have commissioned
the painting.
✫ One of the hypotheses stated that
Mona Lisa is the self-portrait of
Leonardo as a woman. Though it
seemed weird in the beginning,
numerous X-ray analyses of the
painting suggest that the hypothesis
might actually be true.
✫ Leonardo painted The Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, under
Ludovico il Moro's commission. The painting depicts the moment when Jesus
announced that he would be betrayed. By 1500, the painting's deterioration had
begun. Since 1726, many attempts have been made to restore it.

7. An Anatomist
✫ Around the time Leonardo began apprenticeship with Verrocchio, he
began to study human anatomy. This is one of the primary reasons why
Leonardo's paintings seem so realistic.
✫ Leonardo was granted permission to dissect corpses at the Santa
Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence. Notes from his journals include
detailed studies of the human skull, human fetus, internal organs of a
woman, muscles, tendons, skeleton, vascular system, etc.
✫ The Vitruvian Man is
one of the most famous
works of Leonardo da
Vinci, which combines
art with anatomy and
geometry.

8. An Inventor
✫ Leonardo conceptualized and sketched the
first flying machines, which included the
working sketches of a parachute, a helicopter, a
hang glider, and an airplane.
✫ Da Vinci conceptualized a 33-barrelled
organ, a
sort of a gun that could fire multiple bullets in
quick succession. It surely seems like a
prototype of a modern machine gun.
✫ He made, for the first
time ever, a design of an
armored tank, and
considered it to be the
ultimate war machine.

9. ✫ He also devised a motor car for the first time ever in the history of
mankind. It could function on its own without any human intervention,
and so can be considered to be world's first robotic vehicle.
✫ The first ever humanoid
robot was constructed in
the 15th century by
Leonardo da Vinci. This, he
had actually built, and was
used to entertain people.
His notes have been used
by NASA to design the
planetary exploration
robots.

10. A Scientist
✫ Leonardo had achieved mastery over the principles of
mechanical engineering. He was completely astonished by the
different levers and gears, and used them successfully in many of
his projects.
✫ He approached botany with aesthetic, rather than scientific
curiosity. He was known to draw a single flower several times in
his journals, each time from a different angle.
✫ Leonardo's astronomical observations may have been held
scandalous in his times, since he said that "The earth is not in the
center of the Sun's orbit nor at the center
of the Universe".
✫ Luca Pacioli taught Leonardo,
mathematics. The student - teacher duo
later published a treatise titled "De Divina
Proportione" (the Divine Proportions)
that spoke about the application of
mathematics in art.