Character Catalog

Oil portrait on wood panel housed in the Louvre, considered the most famous painting in the world. Leonardo displays his mastery of sfumato, creating an enigmatic smile and an atmospheric landscape of unparalleled subtlety.

Monumental mural painted on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, depicting the last meal of Christ. A masterpiece of narrative composition, it revolutionized the representation of human emotions in painting.

Altarpiece depicting the Virgin, the infant Jesus, Saint John the Baptist, and an angel in a rocky landscape. Leonardo's first major work entirely by his own hand, it illustrates his poetic conception of light and nature.

A collection of over 200 anatomical drawings made from dissections, depicting muscles, skeleton, organs, and the vascular system with unprecedented precision. They anticipate modern medicine by several centuries.

Drawings and calculations recorded in the Codex on the Flight of Birds, proposing a flapping-wing machine inspired by avian anatomy. Although never built, this invention demonstrates an extraordinary aerodynamic intuition.

Design for an armored war machine drawn for Ludovico Sforza, a precursor to the modern tank. The vehicle, shaped like a flattened cone, was to be operated by men inside and equipped with cannons all around.

Famous drawing depicting a man with ideal proportions inscribed within a circle and a square, illustrating the theories of the Roman architect Vitruvius. It has become the universal symbol of Renaissance humanism.

"The bird is an instrument working according to mathematical laws, and it is within the power of man to reproduce it with all its movements."

"This night of the 2nd of April 1489, I began this book on the human body."

"Water is the driving force of nature. It obeys constant rules that man can observe and imitate for his benefit."

"The painter must above all have a mind like a mirror, which takes on the color of the object placed before it."

"I can build very light and strong bridges, easy to carry; and with them pursue and flee the enemy. I also know ways to burn and demolish the enemy's bridges."

Leonardo's birthplace, nestled in the Tuscan hills between Florence and Pisa. The luminous, rolling landscape of his youth had a lasting influence on the backgrounds of his paintings.

The city where Leonardo completed his apprenticeship in Verrocchio's workshop and painted his first major works. Florence was at the time the world center of artistic and intellectual Renaissance.

Leonardo lived there for nearly twenty years at the Sforza court, completing The Last Supper and developing his hydraulic and military engineering projects. Milan was the main stage of his creative maturity.

The residence where Leonardo spent the last three years of his life, invited by Francis I. It is there that he died in 1519, surrounded by his notebooks and his pupils.

Leonardo stayed there between 1513 and 1516 under the patronage of the Medici, in an artistic landscape dominated by Michelangelo and Raphael. His Roman sojourn was less productive, but nourished his later reflections.

Leonardo constantly filled small leather notebooks he wore at his belt, recording observations, sketches, calculations, and ideas in mirror writing. It is estimated he produced more than 13,000 pages, of which around 7,000 have survived.

These tools allowed him to produce his anatomical and mechanical drawings with remarkable precision. The quill enabled fine, expressive lines characteristic of his unique graphic style.

Leonardo invented and masterfully perfected sfumato, a technique of blurring outlines to create a hazy atmosphere. This method, visible in the Mona Lisa and the Virgin of the Rocks, gave his figures a living and mysterious quality.

Leonardo used these tools both for his pictorial compositions and his engineering projects. They embody his constant concern to unite art and science, measurement and beauty.

Leonardo was an accomplished musician and played the lute with great skill. Music was an integral part of his conception of universal harmony, which he found equally in the proportions of the human body and in mathematics.

For his groundbreaking anatomical studies, Leonardo gained access to human cadavers which he dissected himself. His anatomical plates illustrating muscles, bones, organs, and blood circulation display a surgical precision unprecedented for the era.