Leonardo da Vinci was born April 15th, 1452 in the town of Vinci, now known as Italy, to a Florentine lawyer. Growing up on a farm, Leonardo took a great interest in nature and the animals of the mountains. Since Leonardo was illegitimate, he was unable to attend school with regular kids. At age 15, he became an apprentice to an artist known as Andrea del Verrocchio. There he learned to create his own masterpieces while studying Geometry and mastering perspective. Later on, da Vinci became the head of the workshop and in 1477 decided to go ahead and open his own business. Leonardo started to write down his thoughts and ideas in notebooks. Afraid of the Roman Catholic Church, he had to hide his works and notebooks so that they were never to be discovered. Leonardo created a style of writing known as "mirror writing" to disguise his works.
tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic
English: Self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. Red c...
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell'...This was not a difficult task as he was left-handed. Da Vinci moved from town to town all over Italy designing and painting all kinds of things. At one point, Leonardo worked for the King of Milan as a war engineer creating advanced and deadly weapons. Even though he was all for peace and against war, this helped him to improve his mathematic skills as he invented new machines and weapons. In the process, Leonardo used physics, chemistry, and all kinds of math. The Florentines did not like da Vinci, which was ok because da Vinci did not like the Florentines at all. Wanting to learn more about anatomy, Leonardo cut up pigs to learn because the Church would not permit the use of human beings, dead or alive. In 1516, he suffered from paralysis in his right hand and gave up on using a ruler and compass in...