History of art

Leonardo is among the greatest painters in the history of art. Despite having many lost works and less than 25 attributed major works—including numerous

unfinished works—he created some of the most influential paintings in Western art.[3] His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work and often

regarded as the world’s most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man

drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo,[5] was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.

Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power,

an adding machine,[6] and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance.

Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He is also sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute,

helicopter, and tank.[7][8] He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, tribology, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.[9]