Brief Biography-
Leonardo da Vinci was a man of many different interests, painting being his most notable talent. He was the illegitimate son of a Tuscan notary, born in the town of Anchiano close to Vinci; he moved to Florence at a young age. His training began with the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio. During his apprenticeship under Verrocchio Leonardo joined Florence's confraternity of painters alongside Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino and Sandro Botticelli. Verrocchio was so astonished by the superiority of Leonardo's work that it provoked him to cease painting forever.
Leonardo did not like the violent politics of Lorenzo de' Medici's Florence, and by 1494 he left for Milan. In Milan, he undertook commissions from the church of San Francesco Grande and the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The first, The Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo did not complete until twenty-five years later and the second, The Last Supper, began to peel off the wall. He started commissions for Duke Ludovico Sforza but rarely finished them. One such commission was for a twenty-six-foot-high horse made of bronze which was never delivered. By 1499 Milan was taken by Louis XII of France and his project was ended.
He spent time wandering around Italy before returning to Florence to resume his painting. It was there he painted the Mona Lisa, the wife of Francesco Giocondo; it took him four years to complete. He moved on to Milan again and after some political turmoil went on to Rome where the Pope was now the son of Lorenzo de' Medici. Leo X was not impressed by Leonardo's history in delivering works. Leonardo was also unhappy with the temper of Michelangelo Buonarroti in Rome that he decided to take an offer from Francis I to move to France. He lived in a house near the Amboise for the remainder of his life and died in 1519. Leonardo never married, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Leonardo once stated, ‘Alone you are all yourself, with a companion you are half yourself’. Jean Auguste Ingres dramatized his death where he expires in the arms of the King.