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He was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci Italy, just outside Florence. His father was a Florentine notary and his mother was a peasant who might have been a slave from the middle east. Leonardo had no sir name, and “da Vinci” simply just meant “of Vinci.”
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He was educated by his father in their home, and was taught the usual education of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
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When Leonardo was 15 he apprenticed Andrea del Verrocchio. With Verrocchio, Leonardo learns painting and sculpture primarily.
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He moved to Milan in 1492 and lived there for 17 years. While this was going on he completed the paintings The Last Supper and The Virgin of the Rocks.
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Builds a full-scale clay model of the equestrian statue, unveiled for a wedding.
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Leonardo plans to publish his notebooks; writes a book on the theory of mechanics. He meets with other artists at an “Academia” to discuss artistic theories.
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He was a military architect and engineer for cesare borgia from 1502-1503, and helped lay the groundwork for modern cartography
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Leonardo started painting the Mona Lisa in about 1503. Thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, the painting was never delivered to the patron and instead entered the French royal collection after Leonardo's death, eventually finding a permanent home in the Louvre Museum.
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Leonardo goes to Rome, at request of Pope Leo X’s brother, Giuliano. He opens art studio but concentrates on his science work.
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In 1516 he left Italy to serve King Francis 1 of France. He settled at the Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise, where he was given the title "The King's First Painter, Engineer and Architect"
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Leonardo died on May 2, 1519 in Cloux, France, and is buried at the church of Saint- Florentine. In the later period of the French Revolution the church was torn down, and the whereabouts of Leonardo’s remains are no longer known.