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Birth
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April 15, 1452
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Death
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May 2, 1519
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Place of Birth
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Vinci, Italy
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Principal Residence
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Florence
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Known for
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Initiating the Italian High Renaissance with paintings that set a new standard for composition and expression of complex emotion
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Possessing a sprawling intellect that touched astoundingly diverse areas of knowledge, but suffering from a tendency to assume too many projects in various fields, and failing to complete most
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Milestones
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1466 Began his career as an apprentice to Florentine artist Andrea del Verrochio
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1470 Contributed a kneeling angel to Verrochio's Baptism of Christ. Leonardo's angel is generally considered superior to Verrochio's central figures.
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1481 Began painting Adoration of the Magi, an unfinished work that reveals his technique of beginning with a dark painting surface and adding elements of light, unlike most painters of his time who started with outlined figures on a white surface
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1485 While serving the duke of Milan as a military advisor, painted The Virgin of the Rocks, which demonstrated his use of sfumato, a technique he developed for blending tones to create a soft glow and sense of atmosphere
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1495-1497 At Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, painted The Last Supper, a dramatic depiction of the moment Jesus announced that he would be betrayed
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1503 Began but did not finish Battle of Anghiari, a work that broke with conventions of battle painting and depicted the violent fury of battle rather than the historical narrative
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1503-1506 Painted the Mona Lisa, which he kept with him for the remainder of his life
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1506 Was summoned to Milan by Charles d'Amboise, where he designed a military monument that was never built, and devoted his energies to anatomical studies
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1510?-1513? Drew a self-portrait, perhaps the most famous of the many drawings he produced
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1514-1516 Resided in the Vatican and focused his attention on scientific experimentation
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1516 Moved to France to enter the service of King Francis I, and spent much of his remaining years conversing with the king and observing the properties of water
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Did You Know
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The subtlety of expression and glow of faces depicted by Leonardo is attributed in part to his practice of painting by the soft light of dusk with a linen sheet drawn overhead to further diffuse the illumination.
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The Last Supper, which began to deteriorate in Leonardo's lifetime, suffered further damage when 17th-century monks cut a door through the lower portion, and was nearly destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II.
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Leonardo established modern techniques of scientific illustration with highly accurate renderings such as Embryo in the Womb (1510?).
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Knowledge of Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari, which was destroyed in the 17th century, is based on later artists' rendering of the work, most notably a drawing by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens.
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Leonardo performed autopsies on corpses to improve his knowledge of physiology, and ridiculed lesser artists' depictions of human flesh, saying they looked like 'sacks of nuts.'
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