Leonardo da Vinci (photo:public domain)

Leonardo da Vinci, real Leonardo di cheese Piero da Vinci

Italian painter and inventor. Little certain information has survived about his childhood, and in his biographies it is mixed with legends. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine lawyer, he spent the first few years of his life in his mother's house, to live with his father and his family at the age of five.

Father recognized Leonardo's talent and showed some of his works to a painter he knew, with whom da Vinci began his comprehensive artistic education. When he was 20, he could take orders on his own. As a 30-year-old he moved to Milan, where he became the court painter of Louis Sforza and met the mother of our Queen Bona.

He was the true archetype of the Renaissance man. He was involved not only in painting, but also in architecture, philosophy, music, writing, mathematics, anatomy, and sculpture. He was considered a genius inventor. Many of the devices he invented still delight engineers. His ideas included hydraulic machines, a wheel lock, a stone-throwing tank, and even a wing-flying machine and an excavator. Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519 at the Cloux Castle. He was buried according to his last will at Amboise Castle.