Leonardo da Vinci occupies a unique place in the history of Western culture. He was a painter capable of creating some of the world’s most recognizable images, but painting represented only one part of his restless intellectual life. He also investigated anatomy, engineering, architecture, botany, geology, optics, hydraulics, mathematics, music and flight.
Calling Leonardo a “Renaissance man” is accurate, but the familiar label can make him seem less human than he was. His surviving notebooks reveal someone constantly questioning what he saw: How does water move? What gives a face its expression? How do birds remain in the air? How does the heart circulate blood? Why does the sky appear blue?
His extraordinary achievement was not that he always found the correct answer. It was that he treated observation, drawing and experiment as interconnected ways of understanding the world.
Leonardo completed relatively few paintings, and several of his most ambitious projects failed or remained unfinished. Nevertheless, works such as the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Virgin of the Rocks and Lady with an Ermine transformed European art. His drawings and manuscripts reveal a mind working beyond the conventional boundaries between artist, scientist and engineer.
For a more imaginative introduction to his personality and ideas, read Italia Mia’s fictional interview with Leonardo da Vinci. The present article provides the documented biography and historical context behind that creative companion piece.
Leonardo’s birth and childhood in Vinci
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, near Vinci, a Tuscan settlement west of Florence. His full name, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, identified him as Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci.
He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a successful notary, and a woman named Caterina. Her identity has been debated for centuries, although documentary research indicates that she was probably a local woman of modest background. Leonardo’s parents did not marry each other. Ser Piero later married several times, while Caterina formed a separate family.
Leonardo spent much of his childhood in the household of his paternal family. Because he was born outside marriage, he could not automatically follow his father into the prestigious notarial profession. He appears to have received a practical education rather than the intensive Latin and classical schooling available to boys preparing for university or professional careers.
This limitation may have encouraged his unusually independent intellectual development. Leonardo later taught himself through observation, conversation, experimentation and extensive reading. He sometimes described himself as an “unlettered man,” but that description should not be mistaken for ignorance. He became a formidable writer and investigator, even if his education differed from that of university-trained humanists.
The landscape around Vinci—with its streams, hills, rock formations, plants and changing weather—provided an early laboratory. Natural forms that he observed in Tuscany would return throughout his career in studies of water, vegetation, geology and atmospheric perspective.
Today, visitors can explore this formative landscape through the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci and Leonardo’s traditionally identified birthplace at Anchiano.
Training in Verrocchio’s Florence
Around 1469, Leonardo moved to Florence and entered the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, one of the city’s most versatile masters. Verrocchio was not simply a painter. His workshop produced sculpture, metalwork, altarpieces, decorative objects and designs for public celebrations.
This environment suited Leonardo perfectly. He learned how to grind pigments, prepare panels, draw from models, design compositions and work with different materials. He also encountered the practical problems of mechanics, casting and construction.
Florence was then one of Europe’s most creative cities. Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio had transformed architecture, sculpture and painting earlier in the century. Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and other major artists were active during Leonardo’s youth. Wealthy merchants, religious institutions and the Medici circle competed to commission art.
Leonardo collaborated on Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ, now in the Uffizi Gallery. He is generally credited with painting the angel at the lower left and contributing to parts of the landscape. The soft modeling of the angel already suggests the subtle transitions of light and shadow that would become a defining feature of his mature style.
In 1472, Leonardo was registered with the Compagnia di San Luca, the Florentine painters’ confraternity. He could now work independently, although he remained connected to Verrocchio’s workshop for several more years.
His early works include the Annunciation, the Madonna of the Carnation, the Benois Madonna and the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci. Attribution and dating remain debated in some cases because Leonardo worked collaboratively and frequently experimented with compositions over long periods.
Early portraits and unfinished masterpieces
The portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, painted in the 1470s and now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, is one of Leonardo’s first major psychological portraits. Rather than presenting the sitter as a decorative symbol of status, he gave her a reserved but distinct presence.
The juniper behind her may be a visual reference to her name, since ginepro means juniper in Italian. The reverse of the panel contains a wreath and the Latin motto Virtutem forma decorat—“beauty adorns virtue.”
In 1481, the Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned Leonardo to paint the Adoration of the Magi. He developed a remarkably complex composition in which the Virgin and Child form a calm center surrounded by figures reacting with wonder, agitation and intense curiosity.
Leonardo never finished the painting. Yet the incomplete panel, now in the Uffizi, is invaluable because its underdrawing exposes his thought process. Figures emerge from rapidly revised lines while architecture, horses and distant combat suggest the chaotic world transformed by Christ’s arrival.
Another unfinished work, Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, shows the penitent saint kneeling in a barren landscape. Leonardo’s anatomical knowledge is already evident in the stretched neck, exposed chest and tense muscles. The painting, now in the Vatican Museums, survives in an incomplete and historically damaged state.
These works reveal a recurring pattern. Leonardo’s standards, changing interests and experimental methods often made completion difficult. What patrons regarded as delay or failure could also be the result of his refusal to accept easy solutions.
Leonardo at the court of Milan
Around 1482, Leonardo left Florence for Milan, where Ludovico Sforza—later known as Ludovico il Moro—was becoming the dominant political figure.
In a famous letter seeking employment, Leonardo emphasized his ability to design bridges, fortifications, artillery and military machines. Only near the end did he mention that he could also paint and sculpt. The letter demonstrates how Renaissance courts valued artists as engineers, architects, designers and organizers of public spectacles.
Leonardo remained in Milan for approximately seventeen years. He designed theatrical machinery, costumes and court entertainments; advised on architectural and hydraulic projects; painted portraits; studied mathematics; and planned an enormous equestrian monument honoring Francesco Sforza.
A full-size clay model of the Sforza horse was produced, but the bronze intended for the monument was diverted to military needs. The monument was never cast. The clay model was later destroyed after French forces entered Milan in 1499.
The Virgin of the Rocks
Leonardo’s first major Milanese painting was The Virgin of the Rocks, commissioned in 1483 for an altarpiece in the church of San Francesco Grande.
Two versions survive: one in the Louvre and another in the National Gallery in London. The complicated history of the commission, disagreements over payment and participation by Ambrogio and Evangelista de Predis make the relationship between the versions a continuing subject of research.
The composition places the Virgin, Christ Child, infant John the Baptist and an angel inside a mysterious rocky landscape. Rather than arranging them formally before an architectural throne, Leonardo unites them through glances, gestures and a circular flow of movement.
The plants, stones, water and distant formations are not merely decorative. They create a primordial world in which sacred history and natural observation become inseparable.
Lady with an Ermine and Leonardo’s portrait revolution
Lady with an Ermine, now in Kraków, is generally identified as a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza.
Cecilia turns as though someone has just entered the room. The ermine twists in the same direction, giving the portrait an unusual sense of interrupted movement. The animal may refer to purity, to Ludovico’s personal emblems or to a play on Cecilia’s surname through the Greek word for ermine.
Leonardo rejected the rigid profile format traditionally used for many Italian court portraits. His sitters appear to think, react and occupy changing moments in time. This psychological quality connects Lady with an Ermine, La Belle Ferronnière, Ginevra de’ Benci and the later Mona Lisa.
The Last Supper
Between approximately 1494 and 1498, Leonardo painted The Last Supper in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.
The mural represents the moment after Christ announces that one of the apostles will betray him. Leonardo organized the disciples into four groups of three, allowing gestures, expressions and movements to carry the drama across the table.
Christ remains the stable center. His head is framed by the central window, and the lines of perspective converge around him. The apostles respond with disbelief, anger, fear and urgent questioning. Judas is not isolated on the opposite side of the table, as in many earlier depictions. He remains within the group but withdraws into shadow, clutching the bag associated with his betrayal.
Leonardo wanted the freedom to revise details slowly, so he did not use a conventional true-fresco technique applied to wet plaster. Instead, he experimented on a dry wall. The decision allowed exceptional subtlety but produced a fragile surface that began deteriorating within decades.
The mural suffered from humidity, unsuitable restorations, structural alterations and wartime damage. A major modern restoration directed by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon was completed in 1999 after more than twenty years of work.
Admission to the official Museo del Cenacolo Vinciano is strictly controlled, and advance reservations are essential. Reserve admission to Leonardo’s Last Supper through Weekend in Italy.
Art, science and the fall of Milan
Leonardo’s Milanese years demonstrate why it is misleading to divide his art from his scientific research. While painting The Last Supper, he was also studying optics, geometry, mechanics, anatomy, sound and human expression.
His interest in what he called the “motions of the mind” shaped the apostles’ reactions. His knowledge of perspective structured the room. His observations of light created the illusion that the painted space continued beyond the real refectory.
In 1499, French forces invaded Milan and overthrew Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo lost his principal patron and began a period of travel. He visited Mantua, where he drew a portrait of Isabella d’Este, and then Venice, where he advised the republic on defensive and engineering problems.
By 1500, he had returned to Florence.
Cesare Borgia and the maps of Romagna
In 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia as a military architect and engineer. He traveled through central Italy inspecting fortifications, studying terrain and producing maps.
His celebrated plan of Imola is remarkable for its accuracy and its elevated, almost modern cartographic viewpoint. Leonardo combined measurements made on the ground with geometric organization to represent the city as a coherent system.
This work was not separate from his art. Mapping required the same disciplined observation, control of proportion and translation of three-dimensional space onto a flat surface that he brought to painting.
The Battle of Anghiari and rivalry with Michelangelo
Back in Florence, Leonardo received a major commission to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the great council hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. Michelangelo was commissioned to create The Battle of Cascina for another wall in the same room.
The presence of the two artists has become one of the great legends of Renaissance Florence. Leonardo was in his early fifties and internationally renowned. Michelangelo was more than twenty years younger, intensely competitive and already celebrated for his David.
Neither mural was completed. Leonardo again experimented with an unconventional painting method, and the section he began reportedly failed to dry properly. The work was eventually lost, although copies preserve the violent central struggle for a standard.
Instead of heroic calm, Leonardo imagined soldiers and horses locked in a terrifying knot of aggression. Distorted faces, straining bodies and biting animals presented war as fury rather than noble spectacle.
The rivalry is discussed more broadly in Italia Mia’s guide to the Italian Renaissance.
The Mona Lisa
Leonardo probably began the Mona Lisa in Florence around 1503. The sitter is widely identified as Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo—hence the Italian title La Gioconda and the French La Joconde.
Leonardo did not deliver the portrait to the Giocondo family. He retained it and appears to have continued refining it for years, eventually taking it to France.
The painting’s fame rests on far more than the sitter’s smile. Leonardo used sfumato—extremely subtle transitions between light and shadow—to avoid hard outlines around the eyes and mouth. Because these areas appear to shift as the viewer’s focus changes, her expression seems almost alive.
The sitter’s body forms a stable pyramid, while roads, waterways and fantastic rock formations recede into a vast atmospheric landscape. The horizons on either side do not align perfectly, contributing to the painting’s elusive spatial effect.
Her expression is neither easily joyful nor melancholy. Leonardo created a portrait that seems to register thought itself.
The painting entered the French royal collection and is now in the Louvre. Its theft by Vincenzo Peruggia in 1911, recovery in 1913 and later international exhibitions greatly increased its popular fame, but its artistic importance had been recognized long before the theft.
Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist
Leonardo continued developing ambitious paintings during his later career.
In The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, now in the Louvre, Mary sits on the lap of her mother while reaching toward the Christ Child, who embraces a lamb. The figures are connected through an intricate sequence of gestures and glances.
The lamb symbolizes Christ’s future sacrifice, giving Mary’s movement a double meaning: she reaches lovingly toward her son while appearing to restrain him from his destiny. The landscape, figures and atmosphere seem to flow into one another.
The related Burlington House Cartoon in London presents a different arrangement that also includes the infant John the Baptist. It is one of Leonardo’s greatest surviving drawings.
Saint John the Baptist, probably painted during Leonardo’s final years, emerges from darkness with a smile and an upward-pointing hand. The figure is spiritual yet sensuous, familiar yet unsettling. The absence of a detailed setting concentrates attention on the gesture, expression and soft transitions between visibility and shadow.
Leonardo’s anatomical studies
Leonardo’s study of anatomy began partly from an artist’s need to understand the body, but it developed into an independent program of investigation.
He dissected human corpses in hospitals in Florence, Milan and possibly Rome. His drawings examine the skull, spine, muscles, internal organs, fetus in the womb, reproductive system and structure of the heart.
Some observations were incorrect, particularly when he relied on traditional authorities or animal anatomy to fill gaps in his knowledge. Others were extraordinarily perceptive. He investigated the action of muscles, represented the spine with unusual accuracy and studied how heart valves direct the movement of blood.
Leonardo intended to organize his research into a treatise, possibly in collaboration with the anatomist Marcantonio della Torre. The project was never published. Had his anatomical drawings circulated in printed form, they might have had a much greater influence on early modern medicine.
Their importance lies not only in accuracy but also in method. Leonardo used cutaway views, transparent layers, multiple angles and exploded diagrams to explain structures that could not be understood from a single viewpoint.
The Vitruvian Man
The Vitruvian Man, preserved at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, shows a male figure in two superimposed positions within a circle and square.
Leonardo based the drawing on the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who described relationships between the proportions of the human body and harmonious architecture. Leonardo tested and modified some of those proportions through his own measurements.
The drawing is therefore more than a familiar symbol of humanism. It represents an active conversation between an ancient text, direct observation, geometry and artistic interpretation.
Because the sheet is extremely fragile, it is not permanently displayed.
Flight, water and machines
Leonardo studied birds and air currents with the hope of understanding mechanical flight. His notebooks include designs for winged machines, parachute-like devices, gliders and the famous aerial screw.
These designs should not be described uncritically as completed prototypes of modern helicopters or airplanes. Many could not have worked with the materials or power sources available to Leonardo. Their importance lies in the effort to analyze lift, balance, resistance and movement through systematic observation.
Water fascinated him equally. He studied currents, waves, erosion, canals, locks, pumps and hydraulic machinery. His drawings of turbulent water range from practical engineering diagrams to apocalyptic visions of floods overwhelming cities.
He also designed gears, bearings, cranes, bridges, weapons, theatrical devices and automated mechanisms. Some ideas were original, while others developed technologies already known to engineers and craftspeople. Leonardo’s genius lay partly in recording, combining and visually analyzing mechanical principles with exceptional clarity.
Geology, plants, light and vision
Leonardo observed marine fossils embedded in mountains and rejected simplistic claims that they had been deposited there by a single recent flood. He considered how sediments accumulated and how water reshaped the earth over long periods.
His botanical drawings examine branching patterns, leaf arrangements and the growth of trees. His studies of light, shadow and atmospheric haze helped him understand why distant objects appear bluer and less distinct.
These investigations directly influenced his paintings. The rocky setting of The Virgin of the Rocks, distant landscape of the Mona Lisa and carefully observed plants throughout his work are products of scientific curiosity as well as artistic imagination.
The notebooks and mirror writing
Thousands of pages of Leonardo’s notes survive, although they represent only a portion of what he originally produced. After his death, many manuscripts were separated, reorganized or lost.
The surviving collections include the Codex Atlanticus at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the Codex Arundel at the British Library, the Codex Leicester, the Madrid Codices and the Codex on the Flight of Birds in Turin. The Royal Collection at Windsor Castle preserves an exceptional group of anatomical and artistic drawings.
Leonardo frequently wrote from right to left in mirror script. He was left-handed, and the method may have helped him avoid dragging his hand through wet ink. It may also have made private working notes less immediately readable, but there is little evidence that mirror writing was primarily an elaborate secret code.
His pages rarely follow the orderly structure of a finished book. Words wind around sketches; unrelated observations appear together; problems are revisited years later. They preserve thinking in motion.
Private life and historical controversies
Leonardo never married and left no known children. His household included assistants, pupils and long-term companions, most notably Gian Giacomo Caprotti, called Salaì, and Francesco Melzi.
In 1476, Leonardo and several other young men were anonymously accused of sodomy in Florence. The proceedings were dismissed without a conviction. The surviving record has contributed to centuries of speculation about his sexuality, but the details of his intimate relationships cannot be reconstructed with certainty.
Salaì entered Leonardo’s household as a boy and remained associated with him for decades. Leonardo described him with a mixture of affection and exasperation. Melzi, a young Milanese nobleman and gifted pupil, became particularly important during Leonardo’s later years and inherited his manuscripts.
Modern discussions of Leonardo sometimes swing between presenting him as a flawless visionary and portraying every unfinished project as evidence of personal failure. Both extremes distort the historical figure. He depended on patrons, assistants and established engineering traditions, but his powers of observation and visual analysis were extraordinary.
Second Milanese period and Rome
Leonardo returned to Milan during the period of French rule, working under Charles d’Amboise and receiving the support of King Louis XII. His reputation was now international, even though many of his celebrated projects remained unfinished.
In 1513, he moved to Rome under the patronage of Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of Pope Leo X. Raphael and Michelangelo were then transforming the artistic culture of papal Rome, but Leonardo received no commission comparable to the Sistine Chapel ceiling or Raphael’s Vatican rooms.
He continued anatomical, mechanical and scientific investigations, but his Roman years appear to have been professionally frustrating.
Final years in France
In 1516, Leonardo accepted an invitation from King Francis I of France. He moved to the Château du Clos Lucé near Amboise with Melzi and other members of his household.
Leonardo held the prestigious position of first painter, engineer and architect to the king. He brought several paintings with him, probably including the Mona Lisa, Saint John the Baptist and The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.
Although declining health may have limited his ability to paint, he continued drawing, planning architectural projects and advising the French court. The popular story that Leonardo died in the king’s arms comes from later tradition and should not be treated as established fact.
Leonardo made his will on April 23, 1519, and died at Clos Lucé on May 2. He left his manuscripts, drawings and artistic materials to Francesco Melzi.
He was buried at the collegiate church of Saint-Florentin in Amboise. That building was later destroyed, and remains believed to be his were eventually reinterred in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert at the Château Royal d’Amboise.
Leonardo’s painting techniques
Leonardo believed painting could become a form of knowledge. His mature art rests on several interconnected principles:
- Sfumato: Soft transitions between tones eliminate abrupt outlines and make flesh, atmosphere and expressions appear unstable or alive.
- Chiaroscuro: Carefully organized light and shadow give bodies and objects convincing volume.
- Atmospheric perspective: Distant forms become cooler, hazier and less distinct, reproducing the effect of intervening air.
- Unified composition: Gestures, glances and movements connect figures psychologically as well as visually.
- Observation of nature: Plants, water, rocks, bodies and light are studied as structural parts of the composition.
- Motions of the mind: Facial expressions and bodily gestures reveal thought, emotion and intention.
These qualities influenced Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio and generations of artists in Italy and beyond. Milanese painters such as Bernardino Luini and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio adapted Leonardo’s characteristic expressions, shadows and figure types into what became known as the Leonardesque style.
Leonardo’s place among the country’s greatest painters can be explored further in Italia Mia’s guide to famous Italian artists.
Disputed and lost works
Only a small number of surviving paintings are universally accepted as entirely or substantially by Leonardo. Attribution is difficult because he worked slowly, collaborated with assistants and allowed pupils to use his designs.
Salvator Mundi, depicting Christ raising one hand in blessing and holding a transparent orb, was sold at auction in 2017 as a work by Leonardo. Its attribution, condition and degree of workshop participation remain intensely debated. It should therefore not be presented as an uncontested masterpiece.
La Scapigliata in Parma is widely connected to Leonardo but is unfinished and has also generated discussion about its purpose and authorship.
Several important compositions survive only through copies and preparatory studies. These include Leda and the Swan, the Battle of Anghiari and designs for the Sforza equestrian monument.
Their disappearance contributes to Leonardo’s mystique, but it also reminds us how incomplete the historical record remains.
Where to see Leonardo’s work in Italy
Vinci
The Museo Leonardiano explores Leonardo’s life, machines, scientific investigations and relationship with his birthplace. The nearby house at Anchiano is traditionally associated with his birth.
Florence
The Uffizi Gallery displays the Annunciation, Adoration of the Magi and Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ, which includes Leonardo’s contribution. Palazzo Vecchio is connected to the lost Battle of Anghiari.
Milan
Santa Maria delle Grazie preserves The Last Supper. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana holds the Portrait of a Musician and the vast Codex Atlanticus. Leonardo also worked at the Castello Sforzesco, where surviving decoration in the Sala delle Asse is associated with him.
Turin
The Biblioteca Reale preserves important drawings, including the famous red-chalk portrait traditionally identified as a self-portrait and the Codex on the Flight of Birds. Works on paper are displayed only under controlled conditions.
Venice
The Gallerie dell’Accademia holds the Vitruvian Man. Because light can damage the drawing, it appears only during special exhibitions.
Rome
The Vatican Museums preserve the unfinished Saint Jerome in the Wilderness.
Parma
The Galleria Nazionale in the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta holds La Scapigliata, an enigmatic unfinished female head generally attributed to Leonardo.
Leonardo outside Italy
The Louvre in Paris owns the world’s largest collection of paintings by Leonardo, including the Mona Lisa, The Virgin of the Rocks, La Belle Ferronnière, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist.
The National Gallery in London displays its version of The Virgin of the Rocks and the Burlington House Cartoon. Washington’s National Gallery of Art holds Ginevra de’ Benci, the only Leonardo painting in the Americas. The Czartoryski Museum in Kraków preserves Lady with an Ermine.
In France, the Château du Clos Lucé presents Leonardo’s final residence, while the Château Royal d’Amboise contains the chapel where his presumed remains are buried.
Recommended books about Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
A highly readable modern biography that connects Leonardo’s paintings, notebooks, scientific investigations and personality.
Find Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson on Amazon.com
Leonardo da Vinci by Martin Kemp
Written by one of the leading Leonardo scholars, this study is particularly valuable for understanding the relationship between the artist’s visual imagination and scientific thought.
Find books about Leonardo by Martin Kemp on Amazon.com
Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings
A large-format visual reference bringing together Leonardo’s paintings, drawings and major studies.
Find Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings on Amazon.com
As an Amazon Associate, Italia Mia earns from qualifying purchases.
Why Leonardo da Vinci still matters
Leonardo’s reputation does not depend solely on predicting modern machines or producing famous paintings. His lasting importance comes from the way he investigated relationships: between sight and knowledge, anatomy and movement, water and landscape, emotion and gesture, art and nature.
He did not separate creativity from disciplined observation. Drawing could be preparation for a painting, a record of a dissection, an engineering diagram or a way of discovering a question that had not yet been asked clearly.
His career was filled with contradictions. He designed monumental projects but completed few of them. He created paintings of extraordinary delicacy while also developing military machines. He sought universal principles yet filled his notebooks with specific details: a curl of hair, a water eddy, a bird’s wing, a facial muscle or a layer of rock.
The fictionalized image of Leonardo as a magician who single-handedly invented the future is less interesting than the documented reality. He was a demanding, sometimes frustrated and endlessly curious investigator who believed that careful observation could reveal the structures beneath appearances.
More than five centuries after his death, the questions covering his notebooks still feel immediate. That restless desire to see more clearly—and to connect knowledge across artificial boundaries—is the deepest source of Leonardo da Vinci’s enduring genius.
External links
- Museo Leonardiano in Vinci: Leonardo’s biography and places
- The Last Supper Museum in Milan
- Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre
- Leonardo da Vinci at the National Gallery, London
- Leonardo da Vinci at the National Gallery of Art, Washington
