Leonardo Da Vinci

Chapter 1 recounts Leonardo’s early life, beginning with his illegitimate birth in 1452 in Vinci, Italy. His father, Piero da Vinci, was a rising notary, while his mother, Caterina, was a poor, orphaned teenager. Their brief relationship did not lead to marriage, and Caterina soon wed another man. Though illegitimate, Leonardo was baptized publicly with 10 godparents and grew up partly in his paternal grandfather’s home. His status barred him from his father’s notary guild but freed him to pursue his creative interests. Denied formal Latin schooling, Leonardo became largely self-taught, prizing direct experience over received knowledge. Childhood memories—including a dreamlike encounter with a bird and a formative hike to a dark cave—reveal his early curiosity, imagination, and fascination with nature. These dual drives—empirical observation and imaginative exploration—shaped his lifelong pursuits in art and science and foreshadowed his visionary yet grounded approach to understanding the world.

Leonardo’s childhood in Vinci was disrupted around age 12 by the death of his stepmother and grandfather, prompting his move to Florence with his father, Ser Piero. Though he had no formal Latin or university education, Leonardo’s attendance at an abacus school helped him develop practical math skills and a pattern-based approach to problem-solving. His father did not legitimize him, likely due to social norms and guild restrictions, but did help arrange his apprenticeship with the accomplished artist Andrea del Verrocchio.

Florence in the 1460s and 1470s was a thriving center of commerce, art, and humanist learning, with the Medici family shaping its culture. The city’s dynamic blend of artisanship, science, and spectacle provided fertile ground for Leonardo’s development. Verrocchio’s workshop was a collaborative, commercially driven environment where apprentices learned anatomy, mechanics, and artistic techniques, often contributing anonymously to commissions.

Leonardo likely modeled for Verrocchio’s statue of David and contributed elements—like animals and angelic figures—to works such as Tobias and the Angel and Baptism of Christ. His skill with light, motion, and natural observation became apparent in these early works. He also began experimenting with chiaroscuro and sfumato, techniques that would define his mature style.

Leonardo’s fascination with engineering, geometry, optics, and theatrical effects also flourished in this period. He sketched elaborate machines and scenery, contributing to Medici pageants and blending artistic vision with technical precision. He produced his earliest dated drawing, a landscape of the Arno Valley, in 1473.

By his early twenties, Leonardo was producing independent paintings, including religious works and the portrait Ginevra de’ Benci, which hinted at his later psychological and technical mastery. His training under Verrocchio instilled in him the importance of observation, interdisciplinary curiosity, and capturing both narrative and movement in art.

In his mid-twenties, Leonardo da Vinci faced two accusations of sodomy involving a young male prostitute named Jacopo Saltarelli. Though the charges were dismissed due to lack of evidence and influential connections, the ordeal likely left an enduring impact on Leonardo, who never married and seemed romantically inclined toward men. His notebooks and artworks reflect a consistent attraction to male beauty, as well as a recurring theme of being an outsider—illegitimate, unconventional, and self-contained. Over the years, he lived and worked alongside a series of beautiful young men, including Salai and Atalante Migliorotti. Despite societal and legal risks, Leonardo neither denied nor suppressed his sexuality. His humor, curiosity, and nonchalance about bodily functions contrast sharply with the era’s moral strictures, especially those of the Church. Leonardo’s sense of alienation—heightened by his sexuality and family status—may have fueled his genius and artistic empathy.

In 1482, Leonardo left Florence and moved to Milan, where he would spend the next 17 years. He arrived as part of a diplomatic delegation, presenting Ludovico Sforza with a silver lyre shaped like a horse’s skull. Hoping for court patronage, Leonardo submitted a striking job application letter that emphasized his abilities as a military engineer—though many of his designs were aspirational or fantastical. He later developed concepts for tanks, steam cannons, a massive crossbow, and a utopian city with multi-level infrastructure, sewage systems, and wide streets designed to prevent plague. Though most projects were never built, they reflected Leonardo’s polymathic imagination and obsession with blending beauty, science, and utility. Milan, with its ruling court and intellectual environment, offered fertile ground for Leonardo’s ideas, even if many remained unrealized during his lifetime.

After arriving in Milan in the early 1480s, Leonardo da Vinci began the lifelong habit of keeping notebooks, filling them with sketches, scientific observations, engineering designs, and to-do lists. These notebooks—some small and portable, others large—captured everything from studies of human anatomy and botany to jokes, costume designs, and treatises on flight and water. Though often disordered and undated, the surviving 7,200+ pages reflect his extraordinary range and intellect. Leonardo used every inch of the page, frequently returning to older sheets to add new ideas. His notes exemplify the Renaissance tradition of the zibaldone, or commonplace book, but on a level never seen before or since. Though he often intended to organize them into formal works, many remained unfinished, like his paintings. Still, his pages preserve an unparalleled view of a polymathic mind exploring the unity and patterns of nature.

During his years at the Sforza court in Milan, Leonardo da Vinci became renowned not for his paintings or engineering, but for his elaborate court entertainments. He produced pageants, plays, and spectacles that combined music, costumes, allegory, and intricate mechanical devices. His work included the Masque of the Planets and the comedy La Danae, where rotating stages, celestial props, and fantastical creatures wowed audiences. Leonardo also designed musical instruments, drew grotesques and allegorical sketches, and created rebuses, fables, and satirical prophecies for performance. These literary and theatrical endeavors advanced his courtly status and provided a creative outlet with firm deadlines—unlike his paintings, which often remained unfinished. Some inventions, like mechanical birds and stage effects, foreshadowed more serious scientific studies. Even his dark fantasy novellas, likely written for court amusement, hint at deeper psychological fascinations with destruction, deluge, and the boundaries between imagination and reality.