Leonardo Vinci was born in April 15 1452. In 1469 he moved with his family to Florence, here joined the workshop of Verrocchio, where he remained for eight years and where he learned the art of drawing, the use of perspective and anatomy.  This is well attested in his speech in the Baptism of Christ del Verrocchio, where the angel made with extreme wisdom and balance of composition and also in one of his first achievements: The Annunciation of Monteoliveto today at the Uffizi gallery in Florence, painted between 1475 and 1478, where we have an extraordinary quality color, and a careful study to the details above all natural. Skilful in drawing, his gift is evident in two works commenced in 1482 and remained unfinished about: St. Jerome and the Adoration of the Magi. Even the Florentine period are the Portrait of Ginevra Benci, whose face is outlined by delicate chiaroscuro effects while in the background stands out a landscape of water and plants. We still have the Madonna of the carnation and the Benois Madonna.

Leonardo arrived in Milan in 1482 and remained there for sixteen years in the service of Ludovico il Moro and where they occupied the various fields of science and art, but mainly devoted himself to the painter, in fact, we realized very important works where the Virgin of the rocks in which environmental his characters in an almost unreal, in a shady place and closed by large rocks in which the light barely filtering, the atmosphere is so masterful performance thanks to its particular technical chiaroscuro is that a key feature of his art. Executed many other works including the Lady with the ermine of Krakow, The Last Supper, Portrait of a Woman of the Louvre, but the masterpiece of the activity in Milan is considered the Last Supper that builds around 1495-1497 in the refectory the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The subject is treated in an innovative way, representing the moment when Christ announces that it will be betrayed.

In the Treaty of painting Leonardo writes: "The painter has bono by painting two main things, namely the homo and the concept of his mind. The first is easy, the second difficult to figure because has gestures and movements of the limbs" . Leonardo painted the Last Supper in full this idea, representing Christ as the fulcrum of the composition, around which the Apostles are distributed in different attitudes that reveal their thoughts and their emotions. In 1499 Ludovico il Moro fled from Milan, after the invasion of the duchy by the French, and Leonardo undertook a series of journeys, he went to Mantua to Venice, and then returned to Florence. In recent years, began the famous portrait of Mona Lisa, a painting dear to him which brought with it also in France where it remains today, at the Louvre museum. It is the portrait of a Florentine gentlewoman, identified as Mona Lisa Giocondo, the figure represented a half and three quarters against the backdrop of a rocky landscape with two lakes placed on a different level. In 1506 he went again to Milan, in the last years of his life the artist alternated his residence in this city with short trips to Florence. His last works are Saint Anne with the Madonna and Child, which it had already prepared a cartoon 1,501th in the San Giovanni Battista.

Leonardo died on 2 May 1519 in Ambois (France).