Leonardo did not have a formal education. But he began to draw the Tuscan landscape as well as the natural world around him on the farm at a very early age. He loved to read, and his grandfather taught him math and science. Through his love of observation, he taught himself astronomy, anatomy, and physics.
In 1468, Leonardo’s family moved to Florence. At that time—now called the Renaissance—art was flourishing there. Leonardo’s father helped get him an apprenticeship with Andrea del Verrocchio, a painter, sculptor, and goldsmith who took many apprentices, including Sandro Botticelli. Artists were valued in Renaissance Florence, and the wealthy people there became their patrons, securing commissions for them and welcoming them into their homes.
An artist’s apprenticeship followed a rigorous program. In addition to studying the fundamentals of painting, he studied color theory, sculpting, and metalwork. Leonardo studied with Verrocchio until 1472, when he was admitted to Florence’s painters’ guild. This gave him credibility and visibility to wealthy patrons. After five years with the guild, Leonardo opened his own studio, where he worked mostly with oil paints. At that time in Florence, the Medicis were the most important political family, and Lorenzo de’ Medici became Leonardo’s patron (he was also Michelangelo’s and Botticelli’s patron). However, Leonardo had a habit of not finishing work he’d begun, and soon Lorenzo ended his patronage.
In 1482, Lorenzo went under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza, the future Duke of Milan. The Sforzas controlled Milan, but unlike the Medicis, who were bankers, the Sforzas were warriors, and Leonardo learned about machinery and military equipment in Milan. He served as the duke’s chief military engineer and architect, but he also began The Last Supper, one of his most famous paintings, during this time. The duke commissioned it to be painted on the wall of the family chapel, which was thirty feet long by fourteen feet high. Due to the type of paint Leonardo used and the humidity in the chapel, the painting is extremely fragile and began to deteriorate almost immediately. In 1999, a restoration was completed, but very little of the original paint remains, and the expressions of the Apostles are difficult to make out.
In 1499, the duke was forced out of Milan, and King Louis XII of France took over all of his land. With the military experience Leonardo had gained with Sforza, he was able to get work with Cesare Borgia’s army in 1502. Borgia was a notorious figure during the Renaissance. He allegedly killed his own brother, and many believe that Machiavelli based his book The Prince on Borgia. Although Borgia commissioned Leonardo to design bridges, catapults, cannons, and other weapons, he was also a patron of the arts, so Leonardo worked with him until 1503, when King Louis’s governor made Leonardo the court painter in Milan.
Under King Louis, Leonardo continued to do military and architectural engineering in addition to painting. But he was also able to continue his studies in anatomy, botany, hydraulics, and other sciences. In 1513, King Louis XII was forced out of Milan, thus ending Leonardo’s role in his court and freeing him to return to the Medici patronage. By this time, Lorenzo’s son Giovanni had become pope (known as Pope Leo X), and another son, Giuliano, served as the head of the pope’s army. As a result, Leonardo moved to Rome, where he had his own workshop and lived in the Vatican.
During his career, Leonardo developed a technique in painting called sfumato, a word that comes from the Italian sfumere, which means “to tone down” or “to evaporate like smoke.” Sfumato is a fine shading that produces soft, almost invisible transitions between colors and tones using subtle gradations, without lines or borders, from light to dark areas. In Rome, Leonardo painted St. John the Baptist, which is considered the best example of sfumato.