Leonardo da Vinci

is origins can scarcely have been less auspicious. He was the illegitimate son of a well-to-do notary and a peasant girl. The appellation ‘da Vinci’ simply indicates the place where Leonardo grew up, then a pretty, small walled hilltop town some 42 kilometres from Florence. It was here, in his father’s birthplace, that he spent much of his childhood. It did not take long for the boy’s remarkable talents to be recognised. Leonardo was fascinated by . He was seldom without charcoal, pen or brush in his hand, compulsively noting in detail flowers, birds, animals, human faces–whatever at the moment attracted his attention. It is this universal fascination for all aspects of nature that explains one of the apparent paradoxes of Leonardo’s life: he left an enormous body of work–paintings, drawings, written analysis, notes and sketches, but much of it was unfinished. His butterfly mind flitted from subject to