Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter draughtsman engineer scientist theorist sculptor and architect While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter he has also become known for his notebooks in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects including anatomy astronomy botany cartography painting and palaeontology Leonardo is widely regarded as a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal and his collective works contributed to the development of European art to an extent rivalled only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo