Leonardo da Vinci was was a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer. Born in 1452, in the small Tuscan town of Vinci, near Florence, he was the illegimate son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. Leonardo had no surname, "Da Vinci" simply meant "of Vinci". His full birth name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci.

Little is known about Leonardo's early life and it has been the subject of historical conjecture. Georgio Vasari, the 16th century biographer tells of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque. Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire that was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Whether this is a true story or not is up to debate but nonetheless Leonardo advanced rapidly, both socially and intellectually. He was handsome, persuasive in conversation, a fine musician and improviser. About 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy), to the leading Florentine painter and sculptor, Verrocchio. In 1472 he entered in the painter's guild of Florence.

Around 1478 Leonardo became an independent master. In 1482 Leonardo created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici sent Leonardo, bearing the lyre as a gift, to Milan, to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint. He worked in Milan between 1482 and 1499 and had many different projects going for Ludovico including the designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor.

In 1499, at the beginning of the Second Italian War, the invading French troops used Leonardo's life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice, where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.

On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop. By 1506, many of Leonardo's pupils and followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan. Evidence indicates that Leonardo probably wrote various texts later compiled as Treatise on Painting for his pupils.

Although Leonardo produced a relatively small number of paintings, many of which remained unfinished, he was nevertheless an extraordinarily innovative and influential artist. The Mona Lisa, Leonardo's most famous work, is as well known for its mastery of technical innovations as for the mysteriousness of its legendary smiling subject.

He is the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.