VINCI, vfn'eh4, LEONARDO DA (1452-1519). A Florentine painter, one of the greatest masters of the High Renaissance, also eelebrated as a sculp tor, architect, engineer, and scientist. He was born at Vinci, a Tuscan mountain town near Empoli, the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Catarina. a peas ant woman. His boyhood was spent nnder the care of his paternal grandparents at Vinci. Af terwards be lived in his father's at Flor ence, and if not actually adopted, he was at least treated as a legitimate son, on the same footing with Scr l'iero's younger children. His father's wealth enabled him to enjoy the very best educa tion Florence, at that time the intellectual and artistic centre of Italy, could afford, and he speedily became the embodiment of every social and intellectual elmrm. He was singularly handsome in person, powerful in physique, per suasive in conversation, a fine musician and im provisatore; and his mind was possessed of a pro found and insatiable love of knowledge and re search, which proved the controlling factor of his life. Before taking up painting he began the studies in nieehanios and in the natural sciences which went hand in hand with his artistic activ ity throughout life.
At what time he became the pupil of his father's friend Andrea (lel Verrocchin is not known. In 1472 he was entered into the painters' guild of Florence, and in 1476 he is still mentioned as Verrocchio's assistant, hut in 1478 lid was work ing as an independent master. From Verrocehio Leonardo learned modeling, as well as painting; hut the reliefs which he executed during his ap prenticeship are lost. The attribution to him of the wax bust of a girl at Lille is at least doubtful. According to the well-known legend he painted an angel in Verrocchio's "Baptism of Christ" (Academy, Florence) with such skill that his master resolved to cease painting. The statement concerning Verrocchio is wrong. but there are excellent critics who maintain that the angel in question is by Leonardo. The aceount of the terrifying shield upon which the artist paint ed all manner of monstrosities acquired from his studies of lizards, serpents, worms, etc., may have some basis of fact; but the "Head of Me dusa" in the Uffizi is certainly a forgery based on Vasari 's description. The "Annunciation," too, in the same gallery is not by Leonardo; the specimen referred to by Vasari is in the Louvre.
In 1478 he was commissioned by the Signoria of Florence to paint a picture for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the Palazzo Pubblico: it is sometimes supposed this is the "Adoration of the Kings," which in an unfinished state survives in the Uffizi. The figures have not. for the most part, advanced further than the grounding; but they reveal a fine scheme of composition and dramatic action. The Madonna sits in the midst of a. great classic ruin ; and in the intense, dra matic action of the worshipers and the crowds endeavoring to approach, the artist has far sur passed the highest achievements of the Early Renaissance. Of the other works ascribed to this youthful period, none seem genuine, except his unfinished "Saint Jerome" (Vatican), a fine anatomical study. Berenson also attributes to him an unfinished profile of a girl, in possession of Donna Laura Minghetti at Rome.
Leonardo first visited Milan in 1482 as the bearer of a present from Lorenzo de' 'Medici to Lodovieo it Moro, who ruled the city as guardian of his young nephew. This present was a strange musical instrument sounding like a lute, and in vented by Leonardo himself, who thus sang his way into the Duke's favor. Among the artist's papers is the brief of a curious letter which he wrote to the Duke after his return to Florence, announcing the manner in which he could he of service to him. Nine of the ten divisions of the letter are devoted to his abilities as a military .and naval engineer; in the last he states his mprowess in architecture and in sculpture: "In painting, also, I can do what may be done, as well as any other, he he who he may." As the earliest documentary evidences of Leonardo's presence in Milan dates from 1487, it has been supposed, from certain parts of his writings, that he passed at least part of the time in the mountains of Armenia and elsewhere in the ser vice of the Sultan of Cairo. But in the fantastic letters in question, taken in part from accounts of travelers, Leonardo seems merely to have indulged in rhetorical exercises. He probably re moved to Milan about 1483 and remained there nntil his patron was driven from the city by the French in 1499. This was the most fruitful period of Leonardo's activity.