“Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.”

Italian polymath of the High Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance, active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. Born Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, he is best known simply as Leonardo. His reputation first rested on painting, but his notebooks made him famous in a broader sense. In them, he set down drawings and notes on subjects ranging from anatomy and astronomy to botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. He is widely regarded as a genius who embodied the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his work helped shape European art.