LEONARDO DA VINCI

APRIL 15, 1452- MAY 2, 1519

Leonardo da Vinci moved through the Renaissance like a restless tide, leaving behind ideas as abundant as waves. Born out of wedlock in Vinci, a Tuscan village, he had no formal path laid for him—so he made one. Apprenticed in Florence to Verrocchio, he learned to grind pigments and cast bronze, yet his curiosity pushed far past the studio. For Leonardo, painting was only one form of thinking. His notebooks teem with sketches of flying machines, vortices of water, bones, plants, weapons—each page a restless dialogue between observation and imagination. When he painted, that same intensity showed: the soft transitions of the Mona Lisa, the tumbling swirl of The Last Supper, works that seemed to breathe in their stillness.His life was a series of migrations: Florence, Milan, Rome, and finally the court of Francis I in France. He worked for dukes and popes but owed allegiance only to the puzzle of the world itself. Leonardo died in 1519, leaving many projects unfinished, yet his incompletion feels deliberate, as if the world itself was too vast to pin down. Five centuries later, his pages and paintings still ask questions, still invite anyone curious to look closer.