Publisher's Synopsis
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the great Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mechanician, engineer and natural philosopher, was the son of a Florentine lawyer, born out of wedlock by a mother in a humble station, variously described as a peasant and as of gentle birth. The place of his birth was Vinci, a castello or fortified hill village in the Florentine territory near Empoli, from which his father's family derived its name......