"Leonardo da Vinci was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all  still asleep"
                                                              Sigmund Freud

     Nearly everyone has seen either the painting of the Last Supper or that of the Mona Lisa. Leonardo do Vinci is known well for these and other paintings but there is so much more to the man than a mere painter. April 15th marks the birthday of the  painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, engineer and scientist. Leonardo even dabbled in music!

      Like Shakespeare, Leonardo came from an insignificant background and rose to universal acclaim. Born April 15th 1452, Leonardo was the  illegitimate son  of a Florentine notary, Piero da Vinci, and a young woman named Caterina. The key part his father seemed to play in Leonardo's life was to pay for his schooling.

      What most impresses  people today, perhaps, is the immense scope of his achievement. In the 
past, however, he was admired chiefly for  his art and art theory.  Leonardo's equally impressive contribution to  science is a modern rediscovery, having been preserved in a vast quantity of notes that became widely known only in the 20th century.

      When Leonardo finished his schooling and apprenticeship, he set out on his own. He traveled around France and Italy a good deal finding work with various royalty. Although active as court artist,  painting portraits, and designing festivals, Leonardo became increasingly interested in science. He applied his growing knowledge of mechanics to his duties as a civil and military  engineer; in addition, he took up scientific fields as diverse as anatomy, biology, mathematics, and physics.

    With the fall of Milan to the French in 1499, Leonardo left that city to  seek employment elsewhere: he went first to Mantua and Venice, but by April 1500 he was back in Florence. His stay there was interrupted by time spent working in central Italy as a mapmaker and military engineer for Cesare Borgia. Again in Florence in 1503, Leonardo undertook several highly significant artistic projects, including the Battle of Anghiari mural for the council chamber of the Town Hall, the portrait of Mona Lisa, and the lost Leda and the Swan.
 

     Meanwhile, Leonardo's scientific research began to dominate his other activities, so much so that his artistic gifts were directed toward scientific illustration; through drawing, he sought to convey his understanding of the structure of things. He studied the flight of birds and his interest with anatomy led him to perform dissections on cadavers stolen from the local morgue. Leonardo's anatomical drawings were a great aid to physicians who were trying to advance medicine.

     Leonardo's observations and experiments into the workings of nature included the stratification 
of rocks, the flow of water, the growth of plants, and the action of light. The mechanical devices that he sketched and described were also concerned with the transmission of energy. Leonardo's solitary investigations took him from surface to structure, from catching the exact appearance of things in nature to visually analyzing how they function.

      Leonardo died on 2 May 1519 in Amboise. At this time Leonardo da Vinci was 67 year old.  His health had been declining for some time. He suffered what was probably a stroke in 1517 which paralyzed the right side of his body. People around him wrote that he had been sick several weeks before his death. The day he died, a great light went out in the world.

     Leonardo da Vinci was a sheer genius. His intellect has rarely ever been attained much less surpassed. He was a man who comprehended the wonders of nature and the sciences and still was master of seeing and portraying life.

     What is so astounding though is the time in which de Vinci lived. It would be some 300-400 years later before Da Vinci's ideas would be improved upon or even understood! It is truly amazing that an illegitimate child, born of poverty four centuries ago could conceive ideas which are the foundation of our world today.