Leonardo da Vinci was born at night.

On April 15, 1452, at exactly 10:30 p.m., in a small village called Vinci just outside Florence, a child arrived quietly into the world—illegitimate, unnamed, and unremarkable by the standards of his time. His father, Ser Piero, was a wealthy Florentine notary. His mother, Caterina, was a fourteen-year-old peasant girl. They were never married. And so the boy carried no family name, only a place: da Vinci—from Vinci.

That single accident of birth would change everything.

Had Leonardo been legitimate, his life would have been decided for him. He would have followed his father into law, trained in rules, contracts, and obedience. Instead, he belonged nowhere. And because he belonged nowhere, he was free.

He did not thrive in school. Letters slipped away from him. Numbers blurred. His mind wandered constantly, abandoning lessons the moment something more interesting caught his eye. His grandfather and uncle noticed this and, rather than punishing him, did something rare: they encouraged it. They sent him into fields and vineyards, told him to watch animals, study insects, follow lizards across rocks, observe how glowworms lit the night.

That was the first twist of Leonardo’s life: his weakness was mistaken for failure, when it was actually the engine of genius.

He learned by looking.

When Leonardo moved to Florence around the age of twelve, the city was exploding with ideas. The Medici family ruled not just with money, but with patronage—funding artists, architects, and thinkers who were rewriting how the world could be seen. Leonardo drew constantly. Faces. Muscles. Plants. Machines that did not exist.

His father saw enough to take a portfolio of the boy’s sketches to Andrea del Verrocchio, the most respected artist in Florence. Verrocchio took one look and urged Ser Piero not to waste this talent.

Leonardo entered Verrocchio’s workshop as an apprentice. There, art was not just painting. It was chemistry, metalwork, engineering, anatomy. Leonardo absorbed everything. And when Verrocchio painted The Baptism of Christ, Leonardo was tasked with painting one angel.

That angel changed history.

It was softer. More alive. The folds of skin, the expression, the light—it surpassed the rest of the painting. Legend claims Verrocchio never painted again after seeing it.

Leonardo was twenty years old.

But brilliance came with shadows.

In 1476, Leonardo was arrested and charged with sodomy—an accusation that could have ended his life. The charges were dismissed, likely due to Medici influence. The incident left no conviction, but it left scars. Leonardo never married. He formed deep, lasting relationships with male assistants—Salai and later Francesco Melzi—relationships historians still debate.

What mattered more was this: Leonardo learned how fragile reputation was, and how easily society could turn on those who did not conform.

Around this time, he began writing obsessively.

Thousands of pages. Drawings. Observations. Questions. Nearly all written in mirror script, right to left—not as a code, but because Leonardo was left-handed and refused to smear ink for anyone’s convenience.

His notebooks reveal the second major twist: Leonardo was not confident—he was often deeply unhappy.

At around thirty, he wrote, “What I thought I was learning how to live, I was learning how to die.” Friends wrote poems asking why such a gifted man looked so troubled. He questioned meaning. He feared wasted time. He struggled to finish anything.

And yet, he never stopped beginning.

In 1481, Leonardo left Florence for Milan, writing an extraordinary letter to Duke Ludovico Sforza. He barely mentioned art. Instead, he listed weapons, bridges, armored vehicles, secret tunnels, siege machines. Only at the very end did he casually note that he could also paint.

This was no accident.

Leonardo saw art as labor—but understanding the world itself was his obsession.

In Milan, he became everything at once: artist, engineer, musician, theater producer. He designed mechanical birds for stage performances and then wondered if humans could fly. He observed birds for years, filling pages with wing mechanics. He designed parachutes, helicopters, and ball bearings—five centuries before the technology existed to build them.

Most were never constructed.

That was the third twist: Leonardo’s mind ran centuries ahead of his world, and the world could not keep up.

He painted The Virgin of the Rocks twice due to payment disputes. He designed a colossal bronze horse statue that would have been the largest in history—until all the bronze was melted into cannons during war. He envisioned a hygienic, layered city with underground sewers to stop plagues—ignored entirely.

In 1490, he created the Vitruvian Man, placing the human body at the center of geometry, earth, and divinity. Man as a microcosm of the universe.

Leonardo was not just studying anatomy—he was redefining humanity’s place within nature.

Then came The Last Supper.

Leonardo chose a risky technique, rejecting traditional fresco in favor of oil-based experimentation. The result was emotionally unmatched—and structurally doomed. Within decades, the painting began to decay. Over centuries, it survived neglect, vandalism, war, and bombs.

Like Leonardo himself: brilliant, fragile, and nearly lost.

Leonardo dissected over thirty human corpses. He injected wax into brains to map cavities. He drew the heart with astonishing accuracy—discovering blood vortices only confirmed by science in 2014. He cataloged muscles, nerves, expressions. He studied death not morbidly, but meticulously.

Yet he never published any of it.

That may be his greatest tragedy.

Had Leonardo shared his anatomical discoveries, medical science could have advanced centuries earlier. Dentistry, neurology, cardiology—fields he touched without leaving fingerprints for his own time.

Money never motivated him. He once calculated he could earn the modern equivalent of millions from a textile machine—and then walked away, satisfied by the idea alone.

Leonardo freed caged birds in markets. He refused to wear leather. He believed animals felt pain. A vegetarian in a violent century, designing weapons he hoped would never be used.

Contradictions lived comfortably inside him.

In his final years, Leonardo moved to France at the invitation of King Francis I, who treated him not as a servant but as a mentor. Leonardo painted little. He designed cities. He thought. He talked. He ate soup with friends.

On one of the final pages of his notebooks, mid-calculation, he wrote: “The soup is getting cold.”

On May 2, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci died at age 67.

Centuries later, his notebooks were finally read. His machines understood. His anatomy confirmed. His genius revealed—not as magic, but as relentless curiosity.

Leonardo did not change the world by finishing things.

He changed it by asking questions no one else dared to ask, and by refusing to stop wondering—even when the world was not ready for the answers.