Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci
Portrait by Leonardo's pupil Francesco Melzi, c. 1510
Born	Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci 15 April 1452 Vinci Tuscany, Italy
Died	May 2, 1519(1519-05-02) (aged 67) Amboise, Indre-et-Loire, France
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences
Notable work	Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man
Movement	High Renaissance

The personal life of Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) has been a subject of interest, inquiry, and speculation since the years immediately following his death. Leonardo has long been regarded as the archetypal Renaissance man, described by the Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari as having qualities that "transcended nature" and being "marvellously endowed with beauty, grace and talent in abundance". Interest in and curiosity about Leonardo has continued unabated for five hundred years. Modern descriptions and analysis of Leonardo's character, personal desires and intimate behavior have been based upon various sources: records concerning him, his biographies, his own written journals, his paintings, his drawings, his associates, and commentaries that were made concerning him by contemporaries.

Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452, "at the third hour of the night" in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of the Republic of Florence. He was the out-of-wedlock son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and an orphaned girl, Caterina di Meo Lippi. His full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci". The inclusion of the title "ser" indicated that Leonardo's father was a gentleman.

Leonardo spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother, then from 1457 lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, Ser Piero married four times and produced children by his two later marriages. Leonardo's seven brothers were later to argue with him over the distribution of his father's estate.

At the age of about fourteen Leonardo was apprenticed by his father to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio. Leonardo was eventually to become a paid employee of Verrocchio's studio. During his time there, Leonardo met many of the most important artists to work in Florence in the late fifteenth century including Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Pietro Perugino. Leonardo helped Verrocchio paint The Baptism of Christ, completed around 1475. According to Vasari, Verrocchio, on seeing the beauty of the angel that his young pupil had painted, never painted again.