A genius and master Inventor, Artist and Scientist, Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 in Vinci, the illegitimate son of Master Piero, a public notary, and his companion Caterina. At the age of 17, Leonardo moved with his father to Florence, where Leonardo apprenticed to Verrocchio, where his brilliance soon eclipsed that of his master.

In 1472 Leonardo became a member of the painter's guild of Florence. In 1476 he was denounced by the Night Watch, but was acquitted of the charge of immoral conduct. One of his most popular early works, "The Adoration of the Magi," was painted in 1481 for the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto as an altar piece. It was never finished due to his departure for Milan, where he offered his services to Duke Ludovico il Moro. He worked on the Duomo in Milan and the Duomo and Castle in Pavia; and painted the Madonna of the Rocks and the Last Supper at this time.

He also set up festivals for the Duke and against his great distain for war, claimed to be an expert in military engineering and arms. In 1499 Ludovico il Moro fled Milan ahead of invading French troops. The Gascon bowmen of Louis XII used Leonardo's model for the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza for target practice. Soon afterwards, Leonardo left Milan in spite of the evident goodwill of the French authorities.

During the next few years, Leonardo wandered from Mantua, in the court of Isabella d'Este, Venice, where he was consultant for architectural matters from 1495 to 1499, to Florence; before becoming military engineer for Cesare Borgia between 1502 and 1503. The death of Pope Alexander VI changed the fortunes of Duke Valentino, and Leonardo returned to Florence in 1503, remaining there until 1506. The Florentine Republic commissioned him to execute a large fresco of the battle of Anghiari for one of the walls of the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria facing a fresco by Michelangelo, one of his rivals. Leonardo experimented with a new technique of fresco, which deteriorated quickly and eventually was lost.

It was in Florence that Leonardo had his greatest following, and it was during his years there that he painted such classics as the Mona Lisa.

In 1506 Leonardo obtained temporary leave from the Florentine Republic in order to return to Milan, where he was to finish certain projects which he had left incomplete due to his earlier hasty departure. In Milan he once again came into contact with the French, who repeatedly asked the Florentine Republic to extend Leonardo's leave. Between 1507 and 1508 Leonardo visited Florence to settle his father's estate. He then spent many years in Milan with the title of "peintre et ingenieur ordinaire". He devoted much of his time to scientific studies and to the engineering projects such as the channeling of the course of the Adda river.

The return of the Sforza family in 1512 forced Leonardo to leave Milan once again. From 1513 to 1516 he was in Rome at the Palazzo Belvedere under the protection of Giuliano dei Medici, the brother of Pope Leo X. Here Leonardo came into contact with Michelangelo and Raphael; both younger, and both rivals. After the death of Giuliano dei Medici, Leonardo accepted an invitation from his French friends and moved to the castle of Cloux near Amboise, where he stayed with his faithful pupil Melzi.

Leonardo died on May 2, 1519, and was buried in the cloister of San Fiorentino in Amboise. The famous angel contributed by Leonardo to Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ was the young artist's first documented painting. Other examples of Leonardo's activity in Verrocchio's workshop are the Annunciation ; the beautiful portrait Ginevra Benci ; and the Madonna with a Carnation . Although these paintings are rather traditional, they include details, such as the curling hair of Ginevra, that could have been conceived and painted only by Leonardo. Other, slightly later works, such as the so-called Benois Madonna and the unfinished Saint Jerome, already show two hallmarks of Leonardo's mature style: contrapposto, or twisting movement; and chiaroscuro, or emphatic modeling in light and shade. The unfinished Adoration of the Magi is the most important of all the early paintings. In it, Leonardo displays for the first time his method of organizing figures into a pyramid shape, so that interest is focused on the principal subject--in this case, the child held by his mother and adored by the three kings and their retinue.

In 1483, soon after he arrived in Milan, Leonardo was asked to paint the Madonna of the Rocks. This altarpiece exists in two nearly identical versions, one, entirely by Leonardo, in the Louvre, Paris, and the other (begun 1490s; finished 1506-08) in the National Gallery, London. Both versions depict a supposed meeting of the Christ Child and the infant Saint John. The figures, again grouped in a pyramid, are glimpsed in a dimly lit grotto setting of rocks and water that gives the work its name. Not long afterward, Leonardo painted a portrait of Duke Lodovico's favorite, Cecilia Gallerani, probably the charming Lady with the Ermine. Another portrait dating from this time is the unidentified Musician.

In the great The Last Supper, completed in 1495-98 for the refectory of the ducal church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Leonardo portrayed the apostles' reactions to Christ's startling announcement that one of them would betray him. Unfortunately, Leonardo experimented with a new fresco technique that was to show signs of decay as early as 1517. After repeated attempts at restoration, the mural survives only as an impressive ruin. When he returned to Florence in 1500, Leonardo took up the theme of the Madonna, Jesus child and Saint Anne. He had already produced a splendid full-scale preparatory drawing ; he now treated the subject in a painting .

We know from Leonardo's recently discovered Madrid notebooks that he began to execute the ferocious Battle of Anghiari for the Great Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence on June 6, 1505. As a result of faulty technique the mural deteriorated almost at once, and Leonardo abandoned it; knowledge of this work comes from Leonardo's preparatory sketches and from several copies. The mysterious, evocative portrait Mona Lisa (begun 1503; Louvre), probably the most famous painting in the world, dates from this period, as does Saint John the Baptist (begun c. 1503-05; Louvre). Leonardo's observations and experiments into the workings of nature include the stratification of rocks, the flow of water, the growth of plants, and the action of light. The mechanical devices that he sketched and described were also concerned with the transmission of energy. Leonardo's solitary investigations took him from surface to structure, from catching the exact appearance of things in nature to visually analyzing how they function. Leonardo's art and science are not separate, then, as was once believed, but belong to the same lifelong pursuit of knowledge.

His paintings, drawings, and manuscripts show that he was the foremost creative mind of the millennium.

OUR SECOND CHOICE FOR MILLENNIUM MAN - CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS