Virgin of the Rocks

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519 was an Italian polymath, being a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose "unquenchable curiosity" was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and... perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. Helen Gardner says "The scope and depth of his interests were without precedentHis mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by King François I. Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter.
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The Musée du Louvre —in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre—is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, France, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement . Nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 19th century are exhibited over an area of 60,600 square metres . The museum is housed in... the Louvre Palace which began as a fortress built in the late 12th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of antique sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years.
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