Leonardo’s places

Leonardo was born in Vinci on April 15, 1452, the illegitimate son of the notary Ser Piero da Vinci and a woman named Caterina. It was his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, who recorded the memory of Leonardo’s birth and baptism—after those of his own children—on the last page of his father’s notarial register. The house where Leonardo is traditionally believed to have been born is located in Anchiano and is part of the Leonardo Museum itinerary.

Leonardo’s baptism took place in the Church of Santa Croce in Vinci, in the presence of as many as ten godparents. The church still preserves the 15th-century baptismal font where Leonardo is believed to have been baptized.

From the 1458 land registry, we learn that Leonardo spent his childhood in Vinci with his paternal family, who owned a house with a garden near Conti Guidi’s Castle. The residence is today identifiable as one of the first buildings on the left side of Via Roma when descending towards the lower part of the village.

After Leonardo’s birth, Ser Piero married Albiera Amadori, his first of four wives, while Caterina married a brickmaker called Accattabriga and moved to the locality of San Pantaleo, a few kilometers from Vinci.

In the 15th century, over twenty water mills were active in Vinci, along with a pescaia (a stepped stone fish trap) still partly preserved and reachable by a short detour from the Strada Verde path that connects the village to Anchiano— a path likely walked several times by the young Leonardo.

Along the mills’ trail near Anchiano, it’s not hard to imagine how Leonardo’s curiosity about the movement of water, and more generally his observation of nature, began during his childhood years in Vinci. His passion for nature later led him, as an adult, to deepen his studies in geology and fossils, which he wrote about having seen in large quantities at Collegonzi.

The evocative power of Leonardo’s childhood places is evident when observing his earliest known drawing, the Landscape 8P, which recalls some views of these lands and which the artist dated August 5, 1473, the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows. This religious celebration was widely observed in the 15th century in the small village of Montevettolini, where a small oratory dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows still exists today.

It is certain that Leonardo was in Vinci, at the Conti Guidi’s Castle, on May 3, 1478, for the signing of a contract that named him a possible heir to his father Ser Piero and his uncle Francesco.

The lease concerned the communal mill, located in the premises beneath the current tourist office, which the da Vinci brothers committed to renovating.

In the early 1500s, in a memorandum written in preparation for a journey, Leonardo noted his intention to leave a blanket in Vinci where, perhaps, he had a place to stay. It may have been a place to which he wished to return, as suggested by a major project dated between 1505 and 1507 for a water basin to be built at the gates of Vinci, in the Serravalle area, involving the construction of a dam at the limits of the engineering possibilities of the time. From the same period dates a sheet depicting a ritrecine (water wheel) and a plan sketch of the Mulino della Doccia in Vinci.

During those same years, both his father Ser Piero and his uncle Francesco died; the latter left Leonardo his properties in Vinci. This inheritance led Leonardo to undertake a serious legal battle with his half-brothers.