LEONARDO DA 'VINCI (-ven'clie), an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer; born in Vinci, Italy, in 1452. About 1470 he entered the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio, by whom he was instructed in painting and model ing, and where he had Perugino and Lo renzo de Credi as fellow pupils. He vis ited the East, serving as engineer to the Sultan of "Babylon" or Cairo, and visiting Cyprus, Constantinople, and Armenia; and in 1482 he settled in Milan and attached himself to Lodovico Sforza, then guardian of his nephew, the Duke Gian Galeazzo, whom he afterward supplanted.
His famous picture of the "Last Sup per," was pamted on a wall of the refectory of a convent. It was com pleted in 1498. His sketches for vari ous of its parts still exist at Windsor, in the Brera Gallery at Milan, and in the Louvre.
Among other paintings done in Milan were portraits of Lucrezia Crivelli and Cecilia Gallerani, mistresses of the duke, works that cannot now be identified, though "La Belle Ferronniere" of the Louvre has been regarded by some as the former likeness. The influence of Leo nardo on art in Milan was clearly marked and lasting, for he founded an academy there in which Beltraffio and Andrea Salai, his favorite pupil, re ceived instruction; and the great Ber nardino Luini turned to his own uses many of the characteristics of his method. Leonardo was also much em ployed by his patron as an engineer. He devised a system of hydraulic irrigation of the plains of Lombardy, and acted as director of the court festivities and pageants.
After the fall and imprisonment of the Duke Lodovico, in 1500, Leonardo retired to Florence, and by 1502, he had en tered the service of Cmsar Borgia, then Duke of Romagna, as architect and en gineer. In the following year he re
turned to Florence, when he commenced a Madonna and Child with St. Anne for the Servite monks, of which only the noble cartoon now in the Diploma Gal lery of the Royal Academy, London, was completed.
We now reach the period of Leonar do's famous contest with Michael Angelo. Both painters received commissions to decorate the Sala del Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria with important historical compositions. Michael Angelo chose a subject of "Soldiers Surprised While Bathing." Leonardo dealt with "The Battle of Anghiari" (1440). Two years were spent in the preparation of his cartoon; but, having employed a method of painting on the plaster which proved a failure, he, in 1506, abandoned the work. The cartoon is now lost. About 1504 was completed the most cele brated of Leonardo's easel-pictures, the half-length of Mona Lisa, third wife of Zanobi del Giocondo, a work purchased by Francis I. for 4,000 gold florins, and now one of the chief treasures of the Louvre. Another work, now lost, por trayed the celebrated beauty Ginevra Benci; and Pacioli's "On Divine Propor tion" (1509), contained 60 geometrical figures from Leonardo's hand.
In 1506 he was employed by Louis XII., who died in 1515, when Leonardo was in Rome, competing with Michael Angelo for the execution of the facade of San Lorenzo in Florence. The young French king, Francis I., bestowed on him in 1516, a yearly allowance of 700 scudi, and assigned to his use the Chateau Cloux, near Amboise; and it was here that the great artist died, May 2, 1519.