Leonardo da Vinci was born in Tuscany in 1452, the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary. By the age of 20 he was in Florence where he became a pupil of Verrocchio. Around 1482 he left Florence for Milan, where he was to live for the next seventeen years. It was here that he undertook many of his scientific investigations and painted many of his greatest pictures, including The Last Supper. He returned to Florence in 1500 and stayed there for several years, during which time he painted the Mona Lisa. He returned to Milan where he stayed until 1513 when he went to Rome. His final years were spent in France, where he died in 1519. As well as a great artist, Leonardo was a deeply curious scientist and passionately interested in all branches of knowledge. His notebooks—covered in sketches of flowers, clouds, birds, human anatomy, and designs for flying machines, fortifications, and waterways—testify to his unquenchable curiosity and restless, acute intelligence.

Irma A. Richter was the daughter of Jean Paul Richter, who first translated Leonardo’s writings in The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci.

Thereza Wells is a Research Fellow at the University of the Arts, London. She has worked on exhibitions at a number of museums in Britain and America, and was associate curator of the V&A’s exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, and Design. She is one of the founders, with Martin Kemp, of the Universal Leonardo project.

Martin Kemp is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Leonardo, and Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man and the driving force behind the Universal Leonardo project.