The masters behind our paintings
Leonardo da Vinci – the genius behind the world's most famous smile
* 15 April 1452, Vinci near Florence · † 2 May 1519, Amboise
He designed flying machines, dissected bodies, planned canals and fortresses – and completed fewer than twenty paintings in his whole life. One of them is known to everyone on earth today.
A life full of ideas
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A child from the country
Leonardo is born in 1452 in or near the Tuscan village of Vinci, the illegitimate son of the notary Ser Piero. He never attends a Latin school – later he calls himself “a man without letters”. His teacher is nature, which he observes tirelessly.
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In Verrocchio's workshop
In Florence he trains with Andrea del Verrocchio, one of the city's most important artists. Young Leonardo paints an angel in Verrocchio's “Baptism of Christ”. The biographer Vasari claims Verrocchio never touched a brush again – a lovely but unproven legend.
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At the court of Milan
Around 1482 Leonardo goes to Milan to serve Ludovico Sforza. In his letter of application he praises himself above all as an engineer of bridges, cannons and fortresses – he mentions painting only at the end. For the duke he plans a gigantic bronze equestrian statue that is never cast.
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The Last Supper
In the 1490s he paints the “Last Supper” for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Instead of painting into wet plaster, as usual for frescoes, he experiments on a dry wall – which allows the finest transitions, but the paint starts flaking even in his lifetime.
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Mirror writing and flying machines
Thousands of pages of his notebooks survive, most in mirror writing from right to left. They contain studies of bird flight and water eddies, designs for flying and war machines, and anatomical drawings far ahead of their time.
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The picture he never delivered
Around 1503 in Florence Leonardo begins the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of the merchant Francesco del Giocondo. He apparently never delivers it: he keeps working on it for years and takes it with him wherever he goes.
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Final years in France
In 1516 Leonardo accepts the invitation of the French king Francis I and moves with his paintings to Amboise on the Loire. He dies there on 2 May 1519. That is how the Mona Lisa came to France – and eventually to the Louvre.
His most famous paintings
Five of fewer than twenty pictures – today in Milan, Florence, Kraków, Washington and Paris.
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The Last Supper The moment after “One of you will betray me” – thirteen people, thirteen reactions. -
The Annunciation An early masterpiece: the angel, Mary and a landscape dissolving into haze. -
Lady with an Ermine Cecilia Gallerani holding a white ermine – an early pet portrait, if you like. -
Ginevra de' Benci Leonardo's only painting in the Americas: a young woman in front of a juniper bush. -
Mona Lisa The most famous painting in the world – painted with the soft sfumato that knows no hard lines.
The story behind the picture
The day the Mona Lisa vanished
In August 1911 there are suddenly only four hooks on a wall in the Louvre. The Mona Lisa is gone. Paris is in uproar, newspapers around the world report it. Even the poet Guillaume Apollinaire is held for a few days, and Pablo Picasso is questioned – both are innocent.
The thief is the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia, who had worked at the Louvre. For over two years he hides the picture in his room in Paris. In December 1913 he offers it to an art dealer in Florence – and is caught.
It is the theft that turns the Mona Lisa into a global star. Today millions of people see her every year behind bulletproof glass. And now we paint her mysterious smile for your pet too.
Your pet as the Mona Lisa
We keep Leonardo's composition – the folded hands, the hazy landscape, the mysterious smile – and put your pet into it. Fur, markings and expression come from your photo. The preview is free.
Images of the original paintings and the drawing: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.