Leonardo da Vinci's powerful and attractive personality appears to be a decisive moment for the renaissance. He embodies the newly established freedom of man in art, equaled by the status of artisans and scientists, which has connected the experience gained in the arts with the theoretical and scientific thought that has risen to the level of an equal interlocutor with the leading intellectuals of his age. His unusual and inexhaustible genius goes beyond the objective ambitions of the Early Renaissance. From the data of his life, we judge that his miraculous enthusiasm, not always able to finish his projects, has received reproaches early and is crowned with a legendary aura. His writings have a strange fate, and his scientific studies lend unpredictable scale to the science of art theory. He develops all the arts by suggesting through them their high, uncompromising and complexity, the ideal for which he gives us the idea through a relatively small number of completed paintings.

image source

Leonardo has the self-esteem of a purebred Tuscan because he was born in a small town (Vinci), located 30 km west of Florence, between Empoli and Pistoia. His father Piero, a notary, acquired it from an extramarital affair with the rural lady Catherine, with whom he would conclude a marriage union in 1457. Childhood takes him to the father's house where he is surrounded by very tender care of her young stepmother. Because Señor Piero married four times, but only acquired a second child in 1476. He established himself as a permanent notary at Florence's serrarium in 1469. He lives in this city until his death in 1504. It is logical to assume that Leonardo has received a solid education (mostly in grammar and calculus) before going to 1467 or 1469 in the workshop of Veroquio, to whom he owes his "polytechnic" preparation: painting, sculpture, decoration. Accepted in 20 years in the guild of artists, Leonardo left Veroquie not until 1479. Besides his very likely participation in the work of the bottega, he also created several separate canvases. The first large order, which came late (1481), is the monks of the Monastery of San Donato in Skopje, the "L'Adoration des Mages" . At the end of 1481, Leonardo left Florence to settle in Milan, where he was sent as a lyre master, by Lorenzo Medici to Ludovico Moro. He is much more likely to have gone on his own initiative in the Lombardy royal court to work on the elaboration of the impressive monument depicting Duke Sforza on a horse called "Il Cavallo". It was then that the Duke sought an experienced bronze statue. This departure should not surprise us, as in the same period Florence begins to export his talents to strengthen his ties with neighboring cities or rulers. Unfortunately, no details have been found about Leonardo's relationships with the artists who surround Lorenzo Medici. It seems that the young artist has remained outside the artistic community of Florence for 13-14 years. It was possible during the period 1480-1481 to have worked as a restorer of marble statues in the gardens of Lorenzo Medici, near San Marco.

The situation in Milan is quite different. There, Leonardo falls into a favorable environment that greatly helps to manifest his talents. In the beginning was the Cavallo project, which, after long delays, in 1489 Ludovic Moore was forced to seek a sculptor from Florence. Leonardo worked hard on him during the period 1490-1494, initially making a seven meter high clay model, which was shown during a holiday in November 1493. The casting of the monument is difficult and lasts a long time. Shortly before, the order for an altar wall designed for the Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception in San Francesco Grande: "The Virgin in the Rocks" (stored in the Louvre). Then, studies and designs for a central round ornament grille and dome for the Milan Cathedral and the Pavia Cathedral (1490) are presented. The artist receives Bellisozone (1490) turn-of-the-scenes scenes for "The Paradise", for Taccone's "Danae" (Taccone, Leonardo draws the costumes and prepares for many parades, festivals and tournaments. In the same time, he has devoted his studies to the urbanization of small towns, to irrigation systems for the fields or to channeling channels in Milan, he studies and geological observations in the Alps, develops different technologies. he was born in the collections of mathematicians and attended the arrival of Pacioli, and the idea of ​​writing the "Treatise of Painting" was born in the early days of Leonardo's creative activity became extremely intense during the last century of the 15th century: the Roman coins in the castles, the writing of the Last Supper on the wall of the monastery's dining room in Santa Maria delle Grazie (1495-1497), and Leonardo's glory traverses all of Western Europe. Pachioli paid tribute to him in his treatise "De divina proportione" (1498). The conquering wars of France in northern Italy, which began at the end of 1494, and the conquest of Milan by the armies of Louis XII, took away the power of the city from Ludwigo Moro.