Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance polymath that many scholars regard as the finest example of the “Universal Genius” or “Renaissance Man”. He was possessed of an insatiable curiosity and incentive imagination that he deployed in a wide range of fields including painting, sculpture, science, mathematics, engineering, architecture, anatomy, geology, astronomy, art, cartography and more.  He has been called the father of architecture and the inventor of the parachute, helicopter, and armored tank. Born out of wedlock to a notary and a peasant woman in the Florence region, he was educated in the studio of Florentine painter Andrea del Verrochio.  His professional life was wide ranging, taking him to Milan, Bologna, and Venice, and Rome, including a residency at the Vatican and ending in a chateau in France lent to him by his close friend King Francis I of France. Giorgio Vasari, in the Lives of the Artists, introduced his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words:

    In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.