Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci , April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an
Italian polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter,
sculptor, architect, musician and writer. Born at Vinci in the region of Florence,
the illegitimate son of a notary, Messer Piero, and a peasant girl, Caterina,
Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter,
Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico
il Moro in Milan where several of his major works were created. He also worked
in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home
given him by King François I.  

Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man"
or universal genius, a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by
his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters
of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.
It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the
Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most
reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame
approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.
Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. Perhaps fifteen paintings survive,
the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with
new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless these few works, together
with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the
nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by
that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualising
a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining
a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or
even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions such as an automated
bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire entered the world of
manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the
fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.