A marked development in Leonardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works.

Two early copies of The Last Supper are known to exist, presumed to be work by Leonardo's assistants.

The High Renaissance period is traditionally taken to begin in the 1490s, with Leonardo's fresco of the Last Supper in Milan and the death of Lorenzo de ' Medici in Florence, and to have ended in 1527 with the sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles V. This term was first used in German ( Hochrenaissance ) in the early nineteenth century, and has its origins in the " High Style " of painting and sculpture described by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

The library of the Abbey, which contains some 50, 000 volumes, has a paper conservation Laboratorio di Restauro, which was entrusted with the conservation of Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana ; the library houses writings of St. Nilus and his pupils and a rare copy of Alvise Cadamosto's collected travel accounts, printed in the early sixteenth century.

The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated ; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.

Another of Leonardo's compositional inventions, the pyramidal Holy Family, was repeated in a series of works that remain among his most famous easel paintings.

Whether Vasari is correct in saying he learned it from Leonardo's works is unclear — he is always keen to ascribe all advances to Florentine sources.

Martin Davies, former director of the National Gallery, described the painting in the Louvre as being stylistically close to Leonardo's earlier works and the London painting more suggestive of his maturer style, and therefore that later of the two, and derivative of the Louvre painting.

Upon Leonardo's death, Melzi inherited the artistic and scientific works, manuscripts, and collections of Leonardo, and would henceforth faithfully administer the estate.

When Orazio died on his estate in Vaprio d ' Adda, his heirs sold the collection of Leonardo's works.

This meeting of the two Holy Children was to be painted many artists during the Renaissance period, after being popularized by Leonardo da Vinci and then Raphael with works like Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks.

A bestselling 2003 novel by Dan Brown, adapted and released as a major motion picture in 2006, The Da Vinci Code revolves around a conspiracy based on elements of Leonardo's Last Supper and other works.

Films which refer to Leonardo's works or inventions:

* In Blackadder: Back & Forth, Baldrick builds a time machine to Leonardo's exact design specifications and it actually works.

Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence, and he remained in Leonardo's household for the next thirty years.

He travelled to France with Leonardo and remained with him until Leonardo's death.

Bortolon associates this picture with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, as evidenced in his diary: " I thought I was learning to live ; I was only learning to die.

Leonardo's formal training in the anatomy of the human body began with his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, who insisted that all his pupils learn anatomy.

It was left incomplete at the time of Melzi's death more than fifty years later, with only a small amount of the material on anatomy included in Leonardo's Treatise on painting, published in France in 1632.

The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: " Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius ..." This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: " He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents.

In response to warping and swelling experienced during its storage during World War II, and to prepare the picture for an exhibit to honor the anniversary of Leonardo's 500th birthday, the Mona Lisa was fitted in 1951 with a flexible oak frame with beech crosspieces.

Among his 300 paintings by moderns, most notably, he owned Leonardo's Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, The Family of the Virgin by Andrea del Sarto, the two famous Bacchanales of Nicolas Poussin, as well as paintings by Veronese and Titian, and Diana at the Bath by Rubens, for which he was so glad to pay the artist's heirs 3, 000 écus, that he made a gift to Rubens ' widow of a diamond-encrusted watch.

Leonardo's drawing combines a careful reading of the ancient text with his own observation of actual human bodies.

Despite this, Raphael usually served as a contrast to Leonardo's gung-ho do-gooder persona with his pessimistic sarcastic remarks.

His relatively small role was probably due to the need to establish Leonardo's role as " leader " along with the fact that Donatello was Peter Laird's favorite Turtle, and Raphael was Kevin Eastman's favorite.

He picked up the guitar after a 35-year hiatus and is currently a professional jazz guitarist and now performs Monday and Thursday nights with various ensembles at Leonardo's 706, a Gainesville restaurant.

This tactic, quite unusual on Italian football, and greatly focusing on creative players such as Ronaldinho, Andrea Pirlo and Clarence Seedorf, led Milan to improved results at both Serie A and UEFA Champions League level, including a remarkable 3 – 2 win at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium against Real Madrid and a 3 – 0 away win to Juventus which enabled Leonardo's side to finish in second place at the half-way point of the season, six points shy of leaders Inter with a game in hand.

* Leonardo's Last Supper ( 1969 ) portrayed Leonardo da Vinci being prematurely declared dead, with his subsequent " resurrection " in a filthy charnel-house.

According to Taylor, the London painting is stylistically the earlier of the two, being more meticulous, in keeping with the product of Leonardo's Florentine training, while the Louvre painting has more in common with the Last Supper and the Virgin and Child with St Anne, including the delicate use of sfumato.

The Louvre website and various authors suggest that the entire painting is by Ambrogio de ' Predis, painted under Leonardo's supervision between 1485-1508, or perhaps largely the work of de Predis, with minor intervention by Leonardo.

Jana 19 ), world-famous for Leonardo's painting of Lady with an Ermine.

Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, painted for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan.

Originally thought to have been partially painted by Leonardo's assistants, study of the painting during the recent restoration have led the conservators to conclude that the greater part of the work is by the hand of Leonardo.

Leonardo's personality is pointed out also in the beautiful drapery of the Virgin and the Angel, while the marble table in front of her probably quotes the tomb of Piero and Giovanni dei Medici in the church of San Lorenzo sculpted by Verrocchio in this period.

Though no records exist of this design being built during Leonardo's lifetime, contemporary enthusiasts have reconstructed it.

In 1999 the horse alone was cast from Leonardo's original designs in bronze and placed in Milan outside the racetrack of Ippodromo del Galoppo.

The colossal outlines of Leonardo's nature can never be more than dimly and distantly conceived.

Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed Salai or Il Salaino (" The Little Unclean One " i. e., the devil ), entered Leonardo's household in 1490.

Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo " taught him a great deal about painting ", his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils, such as Marco d ' Oggione and Boltraffio.

Annunciation ( Leonardo ) | Annunciation ( 1475 – 1480 )— Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo's earliest complete work.

Among the qualities that make Leonardo's work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition, and his use of the subtle gradation of tone.

Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre, demonstrates Leonardo's interest in nature.

J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo's anatomical studies.

The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called " sfumato " or Leonardo's smoke.

Renaissance humanism recognized no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.

These studies were recorded in 13, 000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy ( the forerunner of modern science ), made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.

Leonardo's writings are mostly in mirror-image cursive.

A page showing Leonardo's study of a foetus in the womb ( c. 1510 ) Royal Library, Windsor Castle

The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands.

Leonardo's notes appear to have been intended for publication because many of the sheets have a form and order that would facilitate this.

Why they were not published within Leonardo's lifetime is unknown.