Leonardo da Vinci was an artist and inventor who lived long ago in Italy. Da Vinci means from Vinci, the village where Leonardo was born. Leonardo lived during a time in Italy called the Renaissance. Leonardo learned art in Florence, in the workshop of an artist named Andrea del Verrocchio. Verrocchio's workshop took on many kinds of work, including sculpture and decorative metalwork as well as paintings. Leonardo was a painter, a sculptor, an architect and an engineer. In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan to work for the ruling family there. In a letter draft to the Duke of Milan, Leonardo listed nine points on his skills as a military engineer and described his skills as an artist and architect in a tenth point.

Leonardo designed devices to entertain guests at courts, especially water clocks and fountains, and one design had a mechanical man as a bell-ringer. Leonardo drew a plan for an ideal city with wide streets and underground waterways. Leonardo's flying-machine ideas came mainly from his work on military technology for the court of Milan, which led him to think of aerial reconnaissance. Leonardo's drawings of the self-propelled cart in his notebooks do not fully show its mechanism, so modern engineers have had to guess how it worked. Leonardo kept notebooks filled with drawings and notes. Leonardo seems to have begun recording his thoughts in notebooks from the mid-1480s, when he worked as an engineer for the Duke of Milan.

Leonardo probably worked on loose sheets of paper bought from Milan's stationers, which he carried around to record his observations. Leonardo was left-handed. Leonardo wrote his notes backwards, in mirror writing, so they read from right to left. Because he wrote in mirror writing, Leonardo often began a notebook at what we would call the last page. Over 7,000 pages of Leonardo's notes and drawings have survived. A notebook that Leonardo began in Florence in 1508 was called, in his own words, 'a collection without order', to be arranged by subject later. The Codex Atlanticus is a collection of 1,119 sheets of Leonardo's drawings and notes. Leonardo wrote short fables about plants, animals and natural elements, often with tiny sketches.

The Codex Atlanticus covers Leonardo's whole career, from 1478 in Tuscany to 1519 in France. The Codex Atlanticus was not assembled by Leonardo: the sculptor Pompeo Leoni gathered the papers in the late 16th century and sorted them into two huge volumes. The Codex Atlanticus got its name from its size: Pompeo Leoni pasted Leonardo's papers on large sheets of the format used for atlases. As of November 2026, the Codex Atlanticus has been kept at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan since 1637, when Marquis Galeazzo Arconati donated it. Leonardo's notebooks and drawings, thousands of pages in all, only began to surface, be studied and be published after 1800.

The Codex Leicester has 18 double sheets, or 72 pages, put together mostly in Florence between 1504 and 1508. As of November 2026, the Codex Arundel is one of Leonardo's notebooks, kept at the British Library in London. The Codex Arundel was put together after Leonardo's death from loose papers of various types and sizes, not as a bound book. In the Codex Arundel, Leonardo wrote about concave mirrors, which he saw as possible sources of heat. As of November 2026, the V&A in London holds five of Leonardo's notebooks, bound into three volumes called the Forster Codices. Leonardo's notebooks have been described as a 'visual laboratory', and the Science Museum has built models of some of his ideas.

Leonardo studied how birds fly. Leonardo drew designs for flying machines. Many of Leonardo's flying machines were ornithopters, machines with flapping wings. In Leonardo's ornithopter, the pilot would lie face down and pedal a crank to flap the wings, which were to span more than 33 feet. Leonardo compared air to water and flying to swimming. People do not have enough muscle power and endurance to fly with flapping wings the way birds do. Leonardo designed a flying machine that worked like a helicopter, but it was never built. Leonardo drew an idea for a parachute. A modern full-size version of Leonardo's parachute was built in 2000 and tested by jumping from a balloon. Some of Leonardo's ideas, especially his flying machines, may not have worked in his lifetime.

Before beginning a painting, Leonardo would work out his composition in a drawing. Leonardo painted The Last Supper on a wall in Milan. In a notebook from about 1495, Leonardo wrote about how a group of people sitting at a table might be posed, possibly for his Last Supper. Leonardo used a method that let him paint the Last Supper on dry plaster and work slowly, so he could make changes. Leonardo built up his painted figures over layers of black and white underpainting, using what he knew about how light and shadow show us shapes. The Last Supper, with its church and monastery, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since September 1980. As of November 2026, at the Last Supper's church in Milan today, visits last 15 minutes and are limited to 40 people at a time, to protect the painting.

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is famous for the sitter's smile. The Mona Lisa is painted in the sfumato style, which wraps the figure in a misty haze. As of November 2026, the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris. As of November 2026, the Louvre says it holds the largest collection of Leonardo's paintings in the world, as well as 22 drawings. In 1966 the Mona Lisa was moved to the Louvre's largest room. As of November 2026, it sits in a temperature- and humidity-controlled glass case. Leonardo da Vinci moved to France and spent the rest of his life there. The king of France gave Leonardo a manor house and an income near the royal château at Amboise.

Words to know

• Renaissance: a time
• sfumato: a misty style
• ornithopters: flapping machines
• composition: how things fit
• reconnaissance: spying from above