Leonardo da Vinci
A painter, engineer and naturalist for whom drawing was a way of thinking. The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa changed painting, while the thousands of pages of his notebooks — anatomy, water, flight, the working of machines — stayed almost unknown to his contemporaries and were read through only centuries later. He served the Sforza in Milan, Cesare Borgia and the king of France, took on a great deal and finished little. He wrote in mirror script, right to left.
Born in Vinci on 24 April 1452 by the present reckoning (15 April in the Julian calendar then in use) at 22:30 local mean time. The hour comes from the note of his grandfather, the notary Antonio da Vinci, who recorded in the family book that his grandson was born 'at the third hour of the night' — three hours after sunset; such a record is rare for the fifteenth century.