LIONARDO DA VINCI.
Reading edition
This illustrious artist, denominated by Lanzi “the Father of Modern Painting,” was also an eminent sculptor, architect, and engineer, the natural son of Pietro da Vinci, notary to the Florentine Republic. Vasari and his annotators place his birth in 1445; but Durazzini, in his Panegyrics on Illustrious Tuscans, satisfactorily proves that he was born in Lower Valdarno, at the castle of Vinci, in 1452.