Leonardo da Vinci

‘The domain of biography, too, must become ours…. The riddle of Leonardo da Vinci's character has suddenly become transparent to me. That, then, would be the first step in biography.’

Sigmund Freud, letter to Carl Gustav Jung, October 1909

‘Freud's Leonardo changed the art of biography forever. Henceforth none would be complete without a rummage through the subject's childhood origins.’

Oliver James

Leonardo's Madonna and Child with St Anne. Photo Scala, Florence.