"Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the hill town of Vinci, in the region of Florence. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina."

"At fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to the renowned artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, one of the great workshops of the Renaissance."

"In 1476 Leonardo was accused of sodomy in an anonymous denunciation — the charges were dropped, but the incident left a mark. He spent much of his life hiding his personal life."

"In 1482, at age thirty, Leonardo left Florence for Milan, where he would spend the next seventeen years at the court of Ludovico Sforza, working as a painter, engineer, and entertainer."

"Around 1490, Leonardo began the Vitruvian Man — his famous drawing of a man inscribed in a circle and square, an attempt to reconcile human proportions with geometry."

"Leonardo began The Last Supper in 1495 and completed it around 1498. It remains the most analyzed and copied painting in history."

"In 1499 the French invaded Milan and Ludovico Sforza fled. Leonardo left, beginning a decade of wandering — Florence, Venice, Rome — that would define his middle years."

"In 1503 Leonardo returned to Florence and began the Mona Lisa — a work he would carry with him and continue refining for over a decade."

"Leonardo began dissecting human corpses around 1487, eventually studying more than thirty bodies. His anatomical drawings remained the most accurate in the world for over a century."

"In 1516, at age sixty-four, Leonardo accepted the invitation of King Francis I of France and moved to Amboise, where he would spend the last three years of his life."

"Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519, at Château du Clos Lucé, Amboise, France. He was sixty-seven years old. Francis I, the king of France, is said to have held him in his arms."

"At his death, Leonardo left behind over 7,200 pages of notebooks — less than a quarter of what he likely produced. They contain the most extraordinary record of a genius at work in all of human history."

"Leonardo never married, had no known romantic relationships with women, and likely had a decades-long intimate relationship with his pupil Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known as Salaì."

"The Battle of Anghiari, commissioned in 1503, was never finished. The cartoon — the preparatory drawing — was considered by many contemporaries the greatest drawing ever made. It is lost."