Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci[b] (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.[3] While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal,[4] and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.[3][4]

Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance.[3] In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo,[5] was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.

Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine,[6][7] and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.[8]

“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

“Intellectual passion drives out sensuality. ”

“A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
“Time stays long enough for those who use it.“
“Life well spent is long.”
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.”

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”