Leonardo da Vinci’s father and mother were never married to one another. His father was an attorney and notary. His mother was a peasant. Leonardo was the only child they had together. With other partners, Leo’s mother and father, had a total of 17 other children. These were Leo’s half-siblings.
Leo’s parents weren’t married. His mother, Caterina, was a peasant. She married another man when Leo was very young and began a new family. When Leo was 5 years old, he lived on the estate that belonged to the family of his father, in Vinci. His father, Ser Peiro, was an attorney and notary. Leo’s uncle had a particular appreciation for nature. He helped raise Leo and inspired him with the same appreciation.
When Leo was growing up he spent a lot of time in his father’s home. At his father’s home, Leo had access to scholarly texts owned by his family and friends and he was exposed to Vinci’s painting tradition. When Leo was 15 his father sent him to be a student in the renowned workshop of Andrea del Verrochio in Florence. Even as an apprentice Leo showed that he had amazing talent. One of Leo’s first big projects was to paint an angel in Verrochio’s “Baptism of Christ,” and Leo’s
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Leo made over 240 drawings and wrote about 13 thousand words on a dissertation on anatomy. His drawings include studies of the human skeleton and studies of muscles and tendons. He studied the functions of the skeleton, mostly the mechanical functions, and he studied muscular forces in a manner that predated the modern science of biomechanics. He drew the heart and vascular system, and the sex organs. He drew one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero. These drawings were far ahead of their time and were left unpublished. If they were published these drawings and notations would have made a major contribution to medical