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A view of the villa in which Leonardo grew up, near the town of Vinci.

Leonardo’s father spent much of his time in Florence. His house was within earshot of the roaring lions kept at the back of the Palazzo Vecchio, the city’s government offices. Leonardo’s interest in lions was lifelong. Years later, he related, “I once saw how a lamb was licked by a lion in our city of Florence, where there are always from twenty-five to thirty of them . . . With a few strokes of his tongue the lion stripped off the whole fleece with which the lamb was covered, and having thus made it bare, ate it.” Leonardo’s education was unusual because he was not taught Latin or Greek. This made it difficult for him to mix with the learned people of Florence. He regretted this, and tried to teach himself. His early notebooks contain long lists of Latin words. But there are no lists of Greek words. He must have found this language too difficult. While Leonardo had many talents, the ability to learn languages was not among them. Leonardo explained his own unusual outlook on the world by likening himself to one who arrives last at a fair. “I will do like one who, because of his poverty, is the last to arrive at the fair, and . . . takes all the things that others have already seen and not taken but refused as being of little value. I will load my modest pack with these despised and rejected wares, the leavings of many buyers.” The “despised and rejected wares” Leonardo referred were the wonders of nature. We call this “science” today, but in Leonardo’s time it was called natural philosophy . Few were interested in it, but to Leonardo it was something to marvel at.

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