Leonardo da Vinci in 20 dates
From the child born near Vinci to the "king's first painter, engineer and architect" based in Amboise: a visual chronology to follow his movements, his commissions, his investigations into the body and his major works.
Leonardo never followed a linear career
Each trip changes his work
In Florence, Leonardo learned in a workshop where painting, sculpture and mechanics mixed. In Milan, he became a court man and undertook monumental decorations. Back in Tuscany, he mapped, dissected and designed two paintings that had become legendary. Rome offered him fewer commissions than hoped; France, finally, gave him a status, a house and the freedom to advise Francis Ier. The twenty markers below show these shifts rather than a simple succession of masterpieces.
Twenty dates, twenty turning points
A specific date appears when a document confirms it. When the work has been developed over several years, the range is preserved: to date Leonardo honestly is to accept that notebooks and paintings have often accompanied several journeys.
Da Vinci in Florence
April 15, 1452
Born in the Tuscan countryside
Leonardo was born the natural son of notary Ser Piero and Caterina. Tradition places his birth in Anchiano, a hamlet of Vinci, while the first years take place in the territory dominated by hills, torrents and rocky outcrops of Montalbano.
We must not transform this landscape into a magical explanation of its genius. However, it offers a first repertoire of observations: water circulation, plant growth, mountain profiles and agricultural machines.
1469
Entrance to Verrocchio's workshop
As a teenager, Leonardo joined Florence and Andrea del Verrocchio's studio. We don't just learn to paint: we draw, model, cast bronze, prepare parties and solve construction problems. This workshop culture explains why he will refuse any clear boundary between art and technique.
In The Baptism of Christa collective work performed later, the angel on the left and parts of the landscape are traditionally attributed to him. The image summarizes the student's transition to a collaborator capable of transforming light and atmosphere.
1472
Registration with the Saint-Luc company
Leonardo's name appears in the registers of the Florentine brotherhood of painters. He now has professional status, even if he still remains linked to Verrocchio for several years. It's the time of theAnnunciation : enclosed garden, wings studied like a mechanism, precise drapes and bluish horizon.
The work already shows its double gaze. The objects in the foreground are clearly described; the distant landscape softens in the air. Perspective is no longer just geometric, it becomes atmospheric.
August 5, 1473
The first dated drawing
A feather represents a stream, rocks, fields and a fortified city. The inscription of August 5, 1473 makes it Leonardo's first work with a certain date. The Uffizi often refer to it as the first autonomous landscape in Western art.
The most important thing is not the record, but the movement: the lines do not mechanically fill the sheet. They record erosion, folds of the terrain and variations in distance. The landscape becomes a phenomenon to be understood.
around 1478
The portrait becomes mental presence
Around 1478, Leonardo worked more on his own account. THE Portrait of Ginevra by 'Benci, painted in this phase, does not just identify a young Florentine woman. The juniper tree behind her plays on her first name, while the closed face and the damp landscape give the model an unusual inner life.
The exact chronology of the first Madonnas and portraits remains debated. We must therefore read "around 1478" as a phase of emancipation, not as a day of rupture with Verrocchio.
july 1481
The large order left unfinished
The Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopeto ordered one Adoration of the Magi. Leonardo organizes a swirling crowd around the Virgin and Child, with horsemen, ruins and chained gestures. The painting is not finished when he leaves Florence.
Its current state allows us to see the process: preparatory drawing, brown values, areas taken up and barely sketched passages. Incompletion here is not a voluntary style, but the trace of a departure and a method which multiplies the problems.
The first stay in Milan
around 1482
In the service of Ludovic Sforza
Leonardo goes to Milan, probably carrying a letter where he highlights bridges, fortifications, weapons and machines before mentioning painting. The court of Ludovico the More offers him a larger plot of land than the Florentine workshop: portraits, festivals, hydraulics, town planning and monumental decor.
This trip lasted almost seventeen years. He met mathematicians, musicians and doctors, developed his notebooks and learned to design for power as much as for the church.
April 25, 1483
The Virgin of the Rocks contract
A preserved contract asks Leonardo and the brothers of Predis for an altarpiece for the chapel of the brotherhood in San Francesco Grande. The central panel becomes The Virgin of the Rocks. The figures are not aligned in front of a setting: gestures, looks, plants, water and cave make up a single organism.
Two main versions remain, at the Louvre and the National Gallery in London. Their complex contractual history reminds us that masterpieces are also born from negotiations, deadlines and payment disagreements.
1489
See inside body
Leaves dated 1489 show the human skull in successive sections. Leonardo seeks the seat of the senses and the way in which the eye transmits an image. His conclusions combine observation, ancient heritage and sometimes false hypotheses, but the graphic language is revolutionary.
In the same years, he prepared the immense equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza. Skull and horse come from the same gesture: turning around a shape, cutting it mentally and understanding how it holds.
around 1490
Vitruvian Man connects text and experience
Based on the treatise by the Roman architect Vitruvius, Leonardo places a man in a circle and a square. He does not simply copy an ancient authority: he corrects, measures and imagines two positions of the body. The navel organizes the circle; the square follows another geometry.
The leaf condenses the Renaissance ideal, but its strength comes from physical precision. The body is not a perfect abstraction: shoulders, knees, feet and spacings are observed.
around 1495 -1498
The Last Supper turns a wall into an event
For the Dominican convent protected by Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo represents the moment when Christ announces that a disciple will betray him. The apostles react in waves, grouped in threes, while all lines lead to the calm face of Christ.
He experiments with a dry wall technique in order to work slowly and multiply the nuances. The choice allows him exceptional finesse but weakens the work, which begins to deteriorate during his lifetime.
1499
The French conquest dispersed the projects
Louis XII's troops take Milan. Ludovico Sforza flees, the court collapses and Leonardo leaves the city. The large clay horse prepared for the smelting of the Sforza monument was unsuccessful; later sources say it was damaged by soldiers.
Leonardo passes through Mantua and Venice before returning to Florence. This departure reveals the fragility of court work: years of calculations and models can disappear with a change of regime.
Between Florence and Milan
1502
Engineer by Caesar Borgia
Leonardo traveled the territories of Caesar Borgia as an architect and military engineer. He inspects fortresses, roads, rivers and ports. His plan of Imola adopts a vertical view of remarkable accuracy, obtained by measurements and surveys rather than by a picturesque perspective.
The map must allow you to govern, defend and move around. It shows that its aerial gaze is not a fantasy: it is a way of making a territory calculable.
1503
The Mona Lisa and the Battle of Anghiari
The Florentine Republic commands Leonardo to do a huge Battle of Anghiari for the Grand Council room; Michelangelo must paint the opposite wall. The production fails and the image is only known through studies and copies.
In the same period the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, begins. Leonardo kept the panel, took it back for years and finally won in France. THE sfumato unites face, hands and landscape without brutal outline.
1506
The French demand Leonardo
French Governor Charles d'Amboise requests his return to Milan. Between 1506 and 1513, Leonardo still shared his time with Florence before settling more permanently in Lombardy. He continues there Saint Anne, where three generations fit together in a spiral movement.
The painting resists instant reading: the gaze circulates from Anne's smile to Marie's body, then to the Child and the Lamb. The composition seems natural while being constructed with extreme density.
around 1510 -1511
The great anatomical campaign
Alongside Marcantonio della Torre, professor of anatomy in Pavia, Leonardo intensified the dissections. He studies bones, muscles, heart, lungs, brain and fetus. Its leaves superimpose external views, cuts and details like a modern manual.
However, he did not publish this planned treatise. The observations remain in the manuscripts transmitted to Francesco Melzi. Their graphic precision will be rediscovered much later, without having immediately transformed European medicine.
At the same time, Leonardo can smile again, draw a heart valve, calculate the flow of a canal and organize a party. His notebooks are not a secondary activity: they constitute the common laboratory of painting, engineering and observation.
Rome and France
september 1513
Under the protection of Julien de Medici
Leonardo moved to the Vatican Belvedere with his assistants, protected by Giuliano de' Medici. Raphael and Michelangelo then dominated the major Roman construction sites. Leonardo received fewer major pictorial commissions and mainly pursued research in optics, geometry, hydraulics and botany.
Saint John the Baptist, developed in recent years, concentrates his art of chiaroscuro: the body emerges from the black, the smile remains undecidable and the raised finger leads out of the frame.
1516
Francis I invites him to France
Leonardo crossed the Alps and settled at the Cloux manor, today Clos Lucé, near the Château d'Amboise. Francis Ier grants him a pension and the title of "first painter, architect and mechanic to the king". Age and health reduce his manual activity, but not his role as advisor.
He brings manuscripts and several paintings, probably there Mona Lisa, there Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist. He works on projects for festivals, canals and royal residences in Romorantin.
October 10, 1517
The visit that describes the old master
Cardinal Louis of Aragon visits Leonardo. His secretary Antonio de Beatis notes that the artist's right hand is paralyzed, while admiring paintings and drawings. Left-handed, Leonardo could still draw, but his ability to paint was diminished.
The last flood leaves show masses of water, air and rock driven into a cosmic rotation. They are not only pessimistic: they push to the extreme a question pursued since 1473, that of the forces which transform the Earth.
May 2, 1519
Death, will and transmission
On April 23, Leonardo dictated his will. He bequeathed manuscripts, instruments and drawings to his faithful student Francesco Melzi. He died at Clos Lucé on May 2, 1519, at the age of sixty-seven, then was buried in Amboise; his presumed remains rest today in the Saint-Hubert chapel.
The famous scene of Francis Ier holding Leonardo Dying belongs to legend: the king was elsewhere. The reality is less theatrical but more important. Melzi receives a huge paper workshop, the future dispersion of which will shape our knowledge of Leonardo.
Four precautions for reading the timeline
A work has several dates
Order, first drawings, execution and last retouching can be separated by years. There Mona Lisa is the best example.
Unfinished does not mean failed
Adoration, the horse Sforza and Anghiari interrupt for different reasons: departure, political, technical.
Notebooks are not finished books
They record essays, corrections and contradictions. Current collections were often reassembled after his death.
The myth comes after the fact
Turin self-portrait remains presumed; Francis Ier don't witness Leonardo's death; not all machines were built.
Three portraits to follow the evolution of the gaze
From the Milanese court to the latest research on smiles and movement, these works extend three essential moments of the chronology. The links lead to the reproductions actually available in the store.
Leonardo in dates, without legend
When and where was Leonardo da Vinci born?
He was born on April 15, 1452 in the territory of Vinci, Tuscany. Tradition associates his birth with the house of Anchiano, a few kilometers from the town.
Why did Leonardo leave Florence for Milan?
Around 1482, Ludovico Sforza's court offered him opportunities in engineering, architecture, festivals and monumental art. His departure leaves him in particularAdoration of the Magi unfinished.
When did Leonardo paint The Mona Lisa?
He generally began portraiture around 1503 in Florence, but kept and reworked it for several years. He won in France in 1516; there is therefore not a single date of execution.
How long did he live in Milan?
His first stay lasted approximately from 1482 to 1499. He returned to work in French Milan from 1506, more permanently between 1508 and 1513.
Did Leonardo da Vinci die in the arms of Francis I?
No. Historical research at the Royal Castle of Amboise shows that Francis Ier was not present at Clos Lucé on May 2, 1519. This scene is an artistic invention that has become legend.
Where is Leonardo da Vinci buried?
After the disappearance of the old Saint-Florentin collegiate church, presumed bones of Leonardo were transferred to the Saint-Hubert chapel of the Royal Castle of Amboise, where his tomb is located today.
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