Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was born at Anchiano near Vinci, trained in the Florentine workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, and worked in Florence, Milan and Mantua before dying at Clos Lucé in France. The scope of his interests is well known and easy to let overshadow the painting. What matters for the pictures is his study of how light behaves on a curved surface and how edges dissolve in atmosphere — sfumato, the technique of transition without line, which he developed further than anyone before him. He finished very few paintings. The ones he did, and the many he left unresolved, redirected European art almost immediately; his Milanese followers, Luini among them, spent careers working in their idiom. Four works here, including the Annunciation, the Portrait of a Musician, and the cartoon for The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne — a full-scale preparatory drawing, and among the most studied sheets in existence.