Folio I · Bottega · Painter, engineer, anatomist
Leonardoda Vinci
I paint slowly, draw constantly, and take machines apart to see how the world works. Half a millennium of practice in art, engineering and the science of the body — collected here as one portfolio.
- Painting & sfumato
- Mechanical engineering
- Human anatomy
- Hydraulics
- Cartography
- Stage & festival design
About the practice
One studio for art and science — I never saw a line between them.
My training began in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop in Florence, grinding pigments and casting bronze. Since then I have painted for dukes, designed war machines for a Borgia, mapped rivers for a republic, and dissected the human body to draw it truthfully.
Painting, for me, is a science: of light, of optics, of the muscles beneath a smile. Engineering is a kind of drawing. This portfolio is arranged as my notebooks are — by curiosity rather than by category.
The folios · where to go next
Six disciplines, one curiosità.

Dipinti
Eight panels and one wall — the slowest, most deliberate studio practice in Europe.
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Macchine
Flight, armour, hydraulics and city planning. Prototypes, concepts and field surveys.
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Anatomia
Dissection-led studies of the skull, the heart and the child in the womb.
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Codici
Over seven thousand pages of open lab notes — written right to left.
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Vita
From Verrocchio’s apprentice to First Painter, Engineer and Architect to the King.
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Commissioni
Portraits, machines, festivals and fortresses. Now taking letters for 2027.
Open the folio →The Last Supper
Featured · Dipinti
“The painter has the universe in his mind and hands.”— From my notes on painting
Thirteen figures caught at the instant after one sentence. I worked in tempera and oil on a dry wall so I could revise — an experiment that taught me as much about chemistry as about composition.
See every painting →Patrons & collaborators