1 _The Shield_ 1 2 _Florence_ 9 3 _A Studio of His Own_ 20 4 _Years of Frustration_ 28 5 _Milan_ 37 6 _The Monument_ 49 7 _Success_ 60 8 _The French_ 73 9 _Cesare Borgia_ 86 10 _Shattered Hopes_ 98 11 _The Return to Milan_ 114 12 _Rome_ 129 13 _The Last Years_ 147 14 _Mankind’s Debt to Leonardo_ 159 _Significant Dates in Leonardo’s Life_ 162 _Index_ 164 1 _The Shield_ Dusk was beginning to gather in the valley at the foot of Monte Albano as young Leonardo turned toward home. Stopping by a rushing stream to wash the dust of the day’s explorations from his face, he laid aside his cap and his leather pouch and plunged his hands into the cold mountain water. He felt the force of the current and watched the whirl and flow of bubbles around his bare arms. There was the same feeling, he thought, to the flow of air he had experienced blowing around the rocky crags of the mountains. This evening, however, there was no time to sit awhile and think. He was in a hurry to get home. Hastily scooping the water in his cupped palms, he splashed it over his head and face, then shaking the water from his hair he rose and picked up his cap. He took a satisfied look in his pouch, slung it over his shoulder and headed down the stony trail to the village of Vinci. Vinci was a small hill town situated on a spur of Monte Albano. Its castle and the bell tower above the houses seemed like sentinels guarding the slopes of vineyards and olive groves spreading down into the valley. Leonardo da Vinci, which means “Leonardo from the town of Vinci,” thought about his home. He knew that he had been born in Anchiano, near Vinci, on April 15 of the year 1452, to a peasant girl named Caterina. At the age of five, he had been sent for by his natural father, Piero da Vinci, to come and live at his family’s house in Vinci, a comfortable and roomy place with a spacious garden. Piero, five years before, had married Albiera di Giovanni Amadori, a girl of sixteen. They had had no children of their own, and Leonardo was welcomed into the home with affection by his young stepmother.