Leonardo da Vinci’s full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci didn’t take high honor positions over being able to work independently. He studied nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics, architecture, weaponry and more, creating accurate designs for machines like the bicycle, helicopter, submarine and military tank that would not come to use for centuries. In the early 1490s, da Vinci began filling notebooks that had one of four themes, painting, architecture, mechanics and anatomy. He created the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He believed that sight was mankind’s most important sense. He believed in the accumulation of direct knowledge and facts through observation. He did not make many complete paintings. His earliest known …show more content…
When French forces overran Milan in 1499, they shot the clay model to pieces. The "Mona Lisa" was forever a work in progress, as it was Leonardo’s attempt at perfection. Upon his return to Florence in 1503, Leonardo started to work on the “Battle of Anghiari,” a mural commissioned for the council hall in the Palazzo Vecchio that was to be twice as large as “The Last Supper.” However, he abandoned this project after two years when the painting began to deteriorate before he had a chance to finish it. His painting of the “Virgin of the Rocks,” begun in 1483, demonstrated his pioneering use of contrast between darkness and light that to give three-dimensionality to his figures, and sfumato ,a technique in which subtle gradations, rather than strict borders, make edges softer and more natural. Around 1495, Ludovico commissioned da Vinci to paint “The Last Supper” on the back wall of the dining hall inside the monastery of Milan’s Santa Maria delle Grazie. The piece, which took approximately three years to complete, captures the drama of the moment when Jesus informs the Twelve Disciples gathered for Passover that one of them would soon betray