Leonardo da Vinci

On careful examination, however, the picture is not quite as bad as it looks. Leonardo was experimenting with the trick known as anamorphosis, in which some elements of a work may look distorted when viewed straight on but appear accurate when viewed from another angle.

A third type of literary amusement was one that Leonardo pioneered in the 1490s. He called them “prophecies,” and they were often little riddles or trick questions. He was particularly fond of describing some scene of darkness and destruction, in a style that mocked the prophets and doomsayers who hung around the court, then revealing that he was a

Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo’s patron in Milan, had a reputation for ruthlessness that included, among other alleged acts, poisoning his nephew in order to seize the ducal crown. But Ludovico was a choir boy compared to Leonardo’s next patron, Cesare Borgia. Name any odious activity and Borgia was the master of it: murder, treachery, incest, debaucher

The bribe bought Florence peace for a year, but in June 1502 Borgia was back. As his army sacked more surrounding towns, he commanded the leaders in Florence to send a delegation to hear his latest demands. Two people were selected to try to deal with him. The elder was Francesco Soderini, a wily Church leader who led one of the anti-Medici faction

In addition to the collaborations he did with Verrocchio in the 1470s, the twentysomething Leonardo produced at least four paintings primarily on his own while working at the studio: an Annunciation, two small devotional paintings of the Madonna and Child, and a pioneering portrait of a Florentine woman, Ginevra de’ Benci. Paintings of the Annuncia

“The first intention of the painter,” Leonardo later wrote, “is to make a flat surface display a body as if modeled and separated from this plane, and he who surpasses others in this skill deserves most praise. This accomplishment, with which the science of painting is crowned, arises from light and shade, or we may say chiaroscuro.”30 That stateme

Leonardo had two squirming baby models to observe when painting these pictures. After two childless marriages, his father married a third time, in 1475, and was promptly blessed with two sons, Antonio in 1476 and Giuliano in 1479. Leonardo’s notebooks of the time are filled with drawings and sketches of infants in various active situations: squirmi

His lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method developed more than a century later by Bacon and Galileo. His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the

Around the time Leonardo was fourteen, his father was able to secure for him an apprenticeship with one of his clients, Andrea del Verrocchio, a versatile artist and engineer who ran one of the best workshops in Florence.