Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452 on his father’s estate in Vinci, Italy. He received his education on the estate until the age of fifteen. Which is when his father had noticed Leonardo’s potential and had decided to send him to be an apprentice to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. There he studied sculpture and the mechanical arts. This was also when he first developed an interest in anatomy. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters' guild at Florence, where he remained for the next ten years. In 1482, Leonardo was hired by the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, to be artist and engineer in residence. During his stay in Milan, he started to compose a unified theory of the world and to illustrate it in a series of voluminous notebooks. Unfortunately due to his pursuit of scientific knowledge he had to leave many of his artistic creations unfinished. He stayed in Milan for seventeen years. There he completed six paintings: two portraits of the 'Last Supper', two versions of 'The Virgin of the Rocks', and a decorative ceiling painting in the Castello Sforzesco. Other paintings were either unfinished or have disappeared. In the early 1500’s, Leonardo returned to his home city. In Florence, he was commissioned t