Da Vinci Born: The Ultimate Renaissance Genius
Leonardo da Vinci was born illegitimate in 1452, the son of a notary and a peasant girl, which meant he couldn't enter the guild of notaries like his father and had to find another path. He was apprenticed to the painter Verrocchio at 14. He never finished most of what he started. The notebooks he left behind — 13,000 pages of drawings and text — contain designs for tanks, solar power, a helicopter, a calculator, and anatomical studies more accurate than anything produced until the 19th century. He filled them writing right-to-left in mirror script. He painted perhaps 15 surviving works. The Mona Lisa, which he carried with him everywhere for 16 years, was never delivered to the person who commissioned it.
April 15, 1452
574 years ago
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