Biography

Early life, 1452–1466
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, at Anchiano, a hamlet near the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of Florence. He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant. Little is known about his early life, which has been the subject of historical conjecture by Vasari and others.[5][6]Leonardo was later to record only two incidents of his childhood. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a hawk dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face.[7]
The second incident occurred while he was exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and recorded his emotions at being, on one hand, terrified that some great monster might lurk there and on the other, driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.At the age of five, he went to live in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci, where his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but unfortunately died young.Vasari, the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters, tells the story of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque. Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a plaque decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow which he gave to the peasant. Section references: Bortolon[7], Vasari[8]

Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476

In 1466 Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most proficient artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. The workshop of this renowned master was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Among the painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop and also to become famous, were Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.In a Quattrocento workshop such as Verrocchio's, artists were regarded primarily as craftsmen and only a master such as Verrocchio had social standing. The products of a workshop included decorated tournament shields, painted dowry chests, christening platters, votive plaques, small portraits, and devotional pictures. Major commissions included altarpieces for churches and commemorative statues. The largest commissions were fresco cycles for chapels. As a fourteen-year-old apprentice, Leonardo would have been trained in all the countless skills that were employed in a traditional workshop.Although many craftsmen specialised in tasks such as frame-making, gilding and bronze casting, Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the obvious artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.Although Verrocchio appears to have run an efficient and prolific workshop, few paintings can be ascertained as coming from his hand. And on one of those, according to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated

The painting is the Baptism of Christ. According to Vasari, Leonardo painted the young angel holding Jesus’ robe. Verrocchio, overwhelmed by the sweetness of the angel’s expression, its moist eyes and lustrous curls, put down his brush and never painted again. This is probably an exaggeration. The truth is that on close examination the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint. The landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bears witness to the hand of Leonardo.[8]The other creation of Verrocchio’s which is particularly pertinent to the young Leonardo is the bronze statue of David, now in the Bargello Museum.[9] Apart from the exquisite quality of this work of art, it is significant in holding the claim to be a portrait of the apprentice, Leonardo. If this is the case, then in the figure of David we see Leonardo as a thin muscular boy, quite different to the rounded androgynous figure made by Verrocchio’s teacher, Donatello. [10] It is also suggested that the Archangel Michael in Verrocchio's Tobias and the Angels is a portrait of Leonardo.[9]The earliest known dated work of Leonardo's is from the period at which he was with Verrocchio, a drawing done in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473.Court records of 1476 show that, with three other young men, he was charged with sodomy,[11] of which charges all were acquitted.[12]When Leonardo was twenty he joined the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to work with him.Section references: Bortolon,[7] Vasari,[8] della Chiesa,[9] Martindale[13]