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.

Giovanni Maria Pala, an Italian musician, has indicated that the positions of hands and loaves of bread can be interpreted as notes on a musical staff, and if read from right to left, as was characteristic of Leonardo's writing, form a musical composition.

According to Leonardo's notes in the accompanying text, written in mirror writing, it was made as a study of the proportions of the ( male ) human body as described in a treatise by the Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote that in the human body:

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

Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died.

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.

His lectures on modern art ( now known as the Paul Klee Notebooks ) at the Bauhaus have been compared for importance to Leonardo's Treatise on Painting and Newton's Principia Mathematica, constituting the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art ;

It is known as the Isleworth Mona Lisa http :// en. wikipedia. org / wiki / Isleworth_Mona_Lisa, and has for years been the subject of much debate because it has many qualities that fit the history of the Mona Lisa, which the Louvre version does not possess, including the columns depicted in Raphael's 1504 sketch of the Mona Lisa, done in Leonardo's studio while visiting there, and showing a younger woman ( in her 20s ) which better suits the age Lisa Gherardini http :// en. wikipedia. org / wiki / Lisa_Gherardini would have been in 1504.

According to Leonardo's contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "... after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished ...." Leonardo, later in his life, is said to have regretted " never having completed a single work ".

The work is presumed to have been commenced around 1495 and was commissioned as part of a scheme of renovations to the church and its convent buildings by Leonardo's patron Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.

Sabrina Sforza Galitzia, a Vatican researcher, claimed to have deciphered the " mathematical and astrological " puzzle in Leonardo's The Last Supper.

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.

Leonardo, who is now married, returns to his home after work, where his Mother-In-Law and Wife have been singing a lullaby to Leonardo's son.

The Father orders the house searched, but Leonardo's Wife bursts into the room and announces that her husband and the Bride have run off together.

In the town, the women ( including Leonardo's Wife and Mother-in-Law ) have gathered near the church to whisper of the events.

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.

The geologist Ann C. Pizzorusso argues that there are geological inaccuracies in the London version, unlike the Louvre version, which mean it is unlikely to have come from Leonardo's hand.

Leonardo's fingerprints have been found in the surface of the paint, indicating he used his fingers to blend his delicate brushstrokes.

It is presumed to have been executed by an unknown follower, perhaps in Leonardo's workshop.

It had been written by Leonardo's contemporary Agostino Vespucci and likened Leonardo to Apelles, who is mentioned in the text.

At his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant Salai owned a portrait named in his personal papers as la Gioconda which had been bequeathed to him by the artist.

Although the sitter has traditionally been identified as Lisa del Giocondo, a lack of definitive evidence has long fueled alternative theories, including Leonardo's mother Caterina in a distant memory and the possibility that Leonardo used his own likeness.

Since the discovery of the sketchbook, the robot has been built faithfully based on Leonardo's design ; this proved it was fully functional, as Leonardo had planned.

Since then, he has been less likely to challenge Leonardo's leadership, and on the whole is more friendly towards his family and allies.

Since the recent cleaning, the National Gallery's curator Luke Syson has stated that the quality which has been revealed indicates that the work is mostly by the hand of Leonardo, and that participation of members of Leonardo's workshop was almost certainly less than previously thought.

Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, has also been known by this name.

The sitter has been identified with reasonable security as Cecilia Gallerani, who was the mistress of Leonardo's employer, Lodovico Sforza, known as Lodovico il Moro.

However, like Leonardo's, Young's device was not intended to correct refraction errors.

This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo's alleged homosexuality.

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

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.

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

These papers were left to his heir, Francesco Melzi, for publication, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo's idiosyncratic writing.

The British television station Channel Four commissioned a documentary Leonardo's Dream Machines, for broadcast in 2003.

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.

1506, using Leonardo's pyramidal composition for subjects of the Holy Family.

Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed Leonardo's painting should be returned to Italy for display in an Italian museum.

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.

A study for The Last Supper from Leonardo's notebooks showing nine apostles identified by names written above their heads

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.

A special assembly of crystals needed for the machine to function are hidden in a variety of Leonardo's artworks: the maquette of the Sforza, the Da Vinci Codex, and a scale model of DaVinci's helicopter design.

The family resided for the most part in Bilbao, where Leonardo's father worked as a railway engineer, although they also spent long periods in his mother's family home in the Cantabria's mountain region.

He chose as a model for clear, precise but schematic illustration of anatomic dissections the drawings by Leonardo da Vinci conserved in the Royal Collection at Windsor: Kenneth Clark considered him responsible for the Eighteenth-century rediscovery of Leonardo's drawings in England.

In the Discovery Channel show " Doing Da Vinci ," the team built Leonardo's design for a scythed chariot and proved the functionality of the weapon.

At Optomystic, Sims developed software for the Connection Machine 2 ( CM-2 ) that animated the water from drawings of a deluge by Leonardo da Vinci, used in Mark Whitney's film Excerpts from Leonardo's Deluge.

Leonardo's Wife tells the Groom that her husband left on horseback, but the Groom brushes her off, saying that Leonardo simply went for a quick ride.

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

There are two of Leonardo's preliminary sketches for this piece in the British Museum.

Melzi wrote to Leonardo's brothers to notify them of his death, and in this letter he described Leonardo's love for his pupils as " sviscerato e ardentissimo amore " a selfless and incandescent love.