Leonardo da Vinci
Date: 1452 - 1519

The year was 1452, over 500 years ago, and in the tiny hamlet of Anciano high in the Tuscan hills, a servant girl gave birth to a boy child fathered by a middle class lawyer. This baby was destined to be known throughout the world for centuries to come as the most famous man in a thousand years of art. He became the great father figure of the Italian Renaissance and indeed so much more. He was a true Renaissance man: scholar, artist, architect, engineer, anatomist, biologist and philosopher. His fame has become such that a single picture by him is regarded as an icon of the whole history of Western art. His genius was fully acknowledged in his lifetime. He was befriended by popes and princes, loved by the great and the good and died in the arms of a king. His young mother Caterina christened him Leonardo and he was educated by his father in the little town of Vinci.

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