Leonardo da Vinci

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" In high enough doses, That what heals, kills."

―Explaining to Ezio what poison has to do with a Doctor

Leonardo di ser Prero, better known as Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist and writer in the Italian Renaissance. He is generally considered the most talented person who ever lived.

Biography

Early Life

Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He started painting at the age of 14, and in 1472 enrolled at the Guild of St. Luke, where he received a master degree in Medicine and Botany. After university, his father set up his workshop, where Leonardo would work for most of his life. Many political figures and armies would often call for his help to design various items and buildings. In 1476, he met a young nobleman named Ezio Auditore at Florence, and began a friendship that lasted their whole lifes.

Assassin's Creed II

Leonardo's concept art

He and Ezio met for the first time in the beginning of the game during one of Ezio's errands for his mother. Ezio carries a box of his paintings for him back to Ezio's house and the two became friends quite quickly after this. They don't see each other again until after Giovanni, Federico and Petruccio's execution and Ezio becomes notorious throughout Florence. Ezio showed him one of the codex pages to show how to fix the Hidden Blade, which he does, while joking that Ezio must give up his ring finger so that it may function correctly (which was previously required). Leonardo is then questioned by a city guard and beat up by him until Ezio came and saved him using his new hidden blade. After this, Leonardo and Ezio don't see each other much unless you bring him codex pages to decrypt for you and to upgrade your Hidden Blade by making another one and the Poison Blade for you. A few years later, he meets up with Ezio who helps Leonardo get through the mountains safely from the attacking Templars. Leonardo is then taken to Venice and is escorted to his new home and given a tour of the city with Ezio by Alvise Da Vilandino. Leonardo stays at Venice for the remainder of the game and still does very little except for decrypting codex pages for you. He does not have another role for a while until Ezio asks to use his prototype Flying Machine to break into the Doge's palace in an attempt to save him. At first, it only flies for a short time until Leonardo gets an idea of lighting fires across Venice to lift the machine higher into the air. This works until it is shot down just as Ezio got into palace. A few years later, he saw Ezio once more during the carnival season and built him the Hidden Gun and gave him a mask to wear while out in the city. This is the last of his important roles throughout the game except for decrypting codex pages for you, but after that you are unable to see him again in the game.

Legacy

He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I. His most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, was taken with him when he retired to France in 1513. His death is so far unspecified; It is unknown how he actually died, as it is presumed he could have died of a blood infection when he was diagonsed with Gout.

Leonardo is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo. Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Hidden Blade upgrades

• Hidden Blade
• Dual Hidden Blade
• Poison Blade
• Hidden Gun

Gallery

• Ezio having a chat with Leonardo
  Ezio having a chat with Leonardo
• Leonardo in his workshop
  Leonardo in his workshop
• The modified Hidden Blade concept art
  The modified Hidden Blade concept art

Trivia

thumb|left|250px|Leonardo Da Vinci - Genius Inventor

• All of Leonardo's modifications on previously existing assassin gear are designs created by Altaïr I. Leonardo just follows the designs detailed in Altaïr's codex, which only he and Giovanni Auditore can decipher and translate.
• Leonardo, like some of the main characters, doesn't seem to experience any changes for the 23 years of the game he appears, from their first encounter to the decoding of the the Codex in the villa in 1499. (1476-1499).
• Unless it is a codex page or something important to the story, such as the design for two hidden blades, the cutscene is the same when Ezio visits Leonardo each time (even after Leonardo moves to Venice).
• Leonardo's last name isn't actually da Vinci, he was adopted by a prostitute (courtesan), and Vinci being the town he was born in, he took on the name Leonardo da Vinci (meaning Leonardo of Vinci).
• In his biography, it is speculated that Leonardo is homosexual. However, at a certain points in the game he himself implies that he regularly visits the girls at La Rosa Della Virtù, the ambiguity lives on.
• In 1476, 1 year after Assassins Creed II took place, it was speculated that he was convicted of sodomy, along with three other unknown people.
• Ironically, in Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code, it is speculated that Leonardo da Vinci was the Grand Master of a secret society known as The Priory of Sion, an organization that was alleged to have Templar connections.
• Also ironically Leonardo would later become a close friend and military enginner for Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo Borgia.