Leonardo Da Vinci's Accomplishments

Leonardo Da Vinci was born in a small town of Vinci, Tuscany, on April 15, 1452. He died at age 67, on May 2, 1519. His parents never got married, but he lived with his mother until the age of 5. Leonardo was then raised by his father who married another woman. He never had attended public school, though, when he was 15, he joined the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. At age 24, he was persecuted along with many others on counts of sodomy, but then no witnesses came fourth, then the charges were dropped. Da Vinci was not only a painter, but a sculptor, architect, inventor, engineer, scientist, and musician. He sketched the first parachute, helicopter, aeroplane, tank, swinging, bridges, and one of his most famous, “The Flying Machine.”

His most famous artworks are “Vitruvian Man,” “The Last Supper,” and the “Mona Lisa,” and “The Virgin Of The Rocks.” He became a member of the guild of St. Luke, which is a painters guild in Florence. In 1482, Da Vinci went to the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. He went there because he had wrote a letter to the Duke saying that he knew how to make portable bridges and was also skilled in many other techniques of making war machines. Da Vinci’s most important personal painting, which he did while he was in Milan was, “The Virgin of the Rocks.” He worked on it for a long time, but again, he didn’t finish his work. Also from 1495 to 1497 he worked very hard on his masterpiece, “The Last Supper.” While he had stayed in Milan, he made many more paintings, theater designs, architectural drawings, and even a small model for the dome of the Milan Cathedral. His largest piece of work was the “colossal bronze monument” to Francesco Sforza. But, when the Sforza family was chased out of Milan by French forces, the statue was left unfinished; as most of his work had, and ended up getting destroyed by French archers who used it for target