How Old Was Da Vinci When He Painted The Mona Lisa

Leonardo Da Vinci is probably all-time known equally the famous artist who painted the 'Mona Lisa', which has hung in the Louvre gallery in Paris for over 200 years.

However he wasn't just a groovy painter. Da Vinci was also a sculptor, an builder, a poet, a composer, a scientist, a mathematician and an inventor. Wow! It's difficult to believe that one man could possibly accept that many talents.

Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius and mayhap 1 of the most remarkable men that has always lived.

Pinnacle 10 facts

Leonardo Da Vinci was born almost Florence in Italia in 1452.
Leonardo'south parents were not married. His male parent, Ser Piero, was a wealthy Florentine lawyer and his mother, Caterina, was a young peasant girl. He spent his early on years with his mother just and so lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle. His father went on to marry four times!
Da Vinci was a huge animate being lover. He fifty-fifty chose to be a vegetarian, something that was very unusual in those days. He was said to buy animals from the market just so he could set them free from their cages!
Leonardo was left handed. Merely as well equally using his left manus to write, he wrote back to forepart, from correct to left across the page which meant that, for many years, people were unable to sympathize his notes. This kind of 'mirror writing' led people to believe that Da Vinci wanted to go on his ideas secret!
Leonardo obviously had an astonishing mind but believe it or non he never went to school! Instead he was taught reading, writing and maths at home.
The Mona Lisa is a portrait of the wife of a Florentine official. Evidently he ordered music to be played at every sitting so the lady'south smiling would remain! Little did Da Vinci know that this was to become arguably the earth's nearly famous painting!
One of today'south most successful figures, Nib Gates, the man behind Microsoft computers, was patently inspired by Leonardo'due south mind. He paid a cool 30.eight million dollars for a 500-year-sometime manuscript written past Da Vinci.
Leonardo'due south surname Da Vinci simply means 'of Vinci', a Tuscan village not far from Florence, which is where his father's family unit took their name.
There are actually ii versions of Da Vinci's famous painting The Virgin of the Rocks. The first, which he began painting in 1478, hangs in the Louvre. He later painted another version which is in London'south National Gallery.
Leonardo was tall, at least 5 ft viii, athletic and handsome! Every bit he grew older he wore his hair long, grew a beard downwards to his chest and wore brightly-coloured clothes, which was very different to other men of his time.

Timeline

1452

Leonardo Da Vinci is born near the hamlet of Vinci in Italy.
1466

Leonardo becomes apprentice to Vercocchio.
1472

Leonardo's work is loved then much that he is asked to join the Painters' Guild of Florence.
1482

Da Vinci moves to Milan.
1485

The plague kills thousands in Milan.
1495

Leonardo begins work on his great painting The Terminal Supper.
1499

The French capture Milan.
1500

Leonardo returns to Florence to become architect and chief engineer to Duke Cesare Borgia.
1503

Da Vinci begins to paint the Mona Lisa.
1506

Leonardo returns to Milan to work for the French governor there.
1513

The French are forced out of Milan and Leonardo moves also, heading for Rome.
1515

Francois I becomes Rex of France.
1516

Francois asks Da Vinci to come and paint for him and so he moves to France, where he stays for the rest of his life.
1519

Leonardo Da Vinci dies and is buried in French republic.
1800

During the French Revolution, troops destroy the church building and grounds where Da Vinci was buried.

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Did you know?

Leonardo Da Vinci never married or had children (which is probably why he had so much time to dedicate to his incredible drawings, ideas and inventions!).
He manifestly could draw with i paw and write with the other – imagine how useful that would exist at schoolhouse!
Da Vinci was the brains backside the bike, the airplane, the helicopter and the parachute – amazingly he drew designs for all these machines about 500 years earlier their time!
Leonardo is commonly known as the 'Renaissance man'. Renaissance is really a french word pregnant 'rebirth' and information technology describes the fourth dimension in history which began in Italy in the 14th century when there was lots of excitement about art, scientific discipline and architecture.
Different many well known artists, Da Vinci was actually famous for his paintings when he was alive but it was only much much later that people realised that he was such a talented scientist and inventor besides.
The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by a one-time employee who felt the painting belonged in Italy. He actually walked out of the gallery with the painting under his clothes and it was two years before the painting was returned safely!
The Mona Lisa was one of Da Vinci's favourite paintings and he plain carried information technology with him until he died.
By studying the homo body in so much detail, Leonardo became rather an expert in anatomy (how the body is made upwardly). The Vitruvian man is Da Vinci's famous pencil cartoon of a man with ideal human proportions and information technology's reproduced on Italy's 1 euro coin.

See if you can find the post-obit in the gallery beneath:

A statue of Leonardo
Da Vinci'south most famous painting, the Mona Lisa
Portrait of Ginevra Benci
Da Vinci'due south Vitruvian man
The Last Supper
A statue of Da Vinci outside the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The Louvre in Paris
Florence, where Da Vinci was born
A statue of Leonardo in Florence
A bust portrait of Da Vinci

Gallery

Virtually

Leonardo Da Vinci was undoubtedly ahead of his time, with incredibly forward-thinking ideas and discoveries.

Equally a young male child, Leonardo enjoyed cartoon and music. His father must have thought his son talented because he showed his drawings to an creative person named Andrea del Verrocchio, who immediately recognised that Da Vinci should exist trained equally an artist.

Leonardo showed a great interest in the world effectually him. He was inspired by people and nature and used what he saw to create his wealth of ideas. He studied the human body in great depth, in fact in more particular than the doctors of his time! And he was already working on the idea of flight. Can you lot believe he actually designed the bicycle, the aeroplane, the helicopter and the parachute?

Leonardo wasn't just interested in what things looked like – he wanted to know how things worked too. Besides as being adamant to draw things exactly as they looked, he was fascinated by how the human middle worked, how plants grew and how birds flew.

In about 1478, Leonardo set his own studio and was asked by the church to create a big altarpiece, the Adoration of the Magi. He never finished this painting equally he was offered a chore past the Duke of Milan as court artist and he accustomed. In Milan he non only created famous paintings such as Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper merely turned his hand to theatre design, too, and created some marvellous machinery.

It was while he painted The Last Supper that Da Vinci experimented with new oil-based paints. Merely the pigment didn't stick well to the walls and began to flake off. What is left of the famous painting at present is largely a reconstruction.

When Leonardo returned to Florence in 1500, he returned equally a very well-known and respected man. It was during this fourth dimension that he painted the Mona Lisa.

After this Da Vinci produced no new paintings and spent virtually of his time filling his notebooks with scientific drawings and ideas. He was interested in firearms, the action of water, the human body and how it worked, how birds could fly and how plants grew and his amazing ideas and drawings continue to inspire united states today.

Da Vinci spent his terminal years in French republic, having been invited by King Francis I who not only gave him a firm but the championship of first painter, builder and mechanic to the King!

Leonardo suffered a lot of sickness in the later on years of his life and his right hand was partially paralysed due to a stroke. He had hoped to organise all his drawings, notebooks and ideas before he died just he never managed to achieve his goal and information technology was many, many years before all his incredible notebooks were properly discovered and the extent of his genius realised.

Leonardo died on May 2, 1519 at Clos Luce in France where he had spent the last few years of his life, just a few weeks after his 67th birthday.

Just for fun...

Leonardo Da Vinci has left a coded message – apply the central to see if you tin can crack it!
Notice out about the man heart's beefcake using Leonardo's drawings in an interactive game
Hear the Mona Lisa sing her story in a Horrible Histories song
Color in Da Vinci'southward famous Mona Lisa
Which of Leonardo's flying machines will wing like a bird or sink like a rock? Find out in this online game
Leonardo da Vinci produced the offset beefcake drawings of homo muscle and basic; make his skeleton drawings dance by answering quiz questions
Find out well-nigh what went on inside the head of "the most curious homo who always lived" in an interactive game
Explore Leonardo da Vinci's studio and find 12 objects in it
Play a game to understand the grid structure and rules Leonardo used to assist him when drawing heads and faces
Be inspired by Leonardo to create your own flying machine
Make your own Leonardo da Vinci newspaper glider
Try some Leonardo-inspired activities: mirror writing, drawings with perfect linear perspective, inventing gadgets and more
Download Leonardo Da Vinci activity sheets and worksheets to help y'all learn how to draw like Leonardo

Children's books about Leonardo Da Vinci

Detect out more

Listen to (an actor playing) Leonardo talk virtually his passion for cartoon and his ideas for flight machines!
Read the Kiddle Encyclopaedia entry virtually Leonardo Da Vinci
Look at Leonardo's anatomical drawings, including his pictures of babies
Observe out more about this astonishing artist, inventor and scientist in Boston'south Museum of Science Leonardo micro-site
Run across the notebooks where Leonardo drew his designs for the aeroplane, the helicopter, the parachute, the submarine and the car. Y'all tin can fifty-fifty "turn the pages" of Leonardo's notebook online yourself!
150 models of Leonardo's inventions are exhibited in Italy, but you can see them online as well
Look at some of Leonardo'south drawings
Lookout man a video lesson nigh Leonardo and his life and work
Discover the amazing work of Da Vinci with Dick and Dom
Details of Leonardo'due south most famous paintings, including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper
Join historian Greg Jenner for a BBC Sounds kids' homeschool history lesson near Leonardo Da Vinci
Watch a slideshow of 17 of Leonardo'due south paintings
Run across the Mona Lisa upwards close in a virtual look bout of the painting
Spotter an animation near the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911
Find out more about some of Leonardo'due south amazing inventions: driverless vehicles, homo-like robots and even a primitive computer
Curt films about Leonardo the polymath and his drawings

Leonardo Da Vinci: famous quotes

'Atomic number 26 rusts from decay; stagnant water loses its purity and in common cold weather becomes frozen; even then does inaction sap the vigour of the listen."

"Human subtlety... will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions null is defective, and nothing is superfluous."

"Every man at three years sometime is half his acme."

See for yourself

Visit London's National Gallery to come across Da Vinci'southward impressive The Virgin of the Rocks (the second version he painted) or look at images of it on the museum'south website
Be inspired by Da Vinci's notebooks, five of which are displayed in London's V&A Museum.
If you ever accept a trip to Paris, y'all can see the Mona Lisa hung in the Louvre gallery – Da Vinci'south and arguably i of the globe'due south nearly famous paintings.
A full length statue of Da Vinci stands outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy and there is a room within dedicated to some of his early on work.
There is a museum dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci in Milan, Italia