Celebrated painter and sculptor of the Florentine school, born at Vinci in the Val d'Arno; showed early a wonderful aptitude for art; studied under Andrea del Verrocchio, but so surpassed him in his work as to drive him to renounce the painter's art; his great work, executed by him at Milan, was the famous picture of the "Last Supper," which he painted in oil about 1497 on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican convent of the Madonna delle Grazie; it perished from the dampness of the wall almost as soon as it was finished, but happily copies were taken of it before decay had ruined it; besides, Leonardo did in 1503 at Florence the famous cartoon of the Battle of the Standard; he was a man of imposing personal appearance, of very wide range of ability, and distinguished himself in engineering as well as art; he wrote a "Treatise on Painting," which has been widely translated (1452-1519).