The traditional view of Leonardo da Vinci’s career is that he enjoyed a promising start in Florence and then moved to Milan to become the celebrated court artist of Duke Ludovico Sforza. Young Leonardo proves all of this wrong. It reveals how the struggling painter was repeatedly snubbed by the prevailing trends of Florentine style before escaping to Milan empty-handed. But Milan offered little more; Sforza’s patronage was lukewarm, to say the least, and all the major commissions went to artists whose names are now forgotten.
How did the amateur become one of the all-time greatest masters? Slowly, meticulously, disastrously. Focusing on an often neglected period in Leonardo’s life, here is a fascinating window into the artist’s mind as he develops the techniques that will transform Western art forever. Because before there could be a Last Supper, a Mona Lisa, a St. Anne, there had to be a young Leonardo.
