It started long ago as a little boy. I discovered I had many unique talents. I was born in the small town of Vinci, in Tuscany, near Florence of Italy in the year 1452. I was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. When we moved to Florence, in the mid-1460s, I was given a wonderful education. I was a fine musician and improviser. But in 1466, I began painting.
Painting became one of my beloved hobbies and it started to become my life. Andrea del Verrocchio, a leading Florentine painter and sculptor took me under his belt. In Verrocchio's workshop I was shown many activities and paintings from altarpieces to panel pictures. In 1478, I became an independent master.
My first commission was to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio. It was the Florentine town hall. The Adoration of the Magi was my first large painting though but was unfinished and was ordered in 1481 for a monastery that I just can not remember.
Milan
The Mona Lisa.
Detail of the background (right side)I painted another picture also called the Benois Madonna and a few others but my mind is old and I have lost most my memory.
In a year around 1482, I began to give service to the Duke of Milan. After writing him a letter explaining to him my ideas of building portable bridges and other techniques I knew he made me principal engineer of his numerous military enterprises. I also acted as an architect and assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the work Divina Proportione. During my long stay in Milan, I created drawings and paintings models for the dome of Milan Cathedral and architectural drawings. My largest commission was for a colossal bronze monument Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico, in the courtyard of...