Last Words: Leonardo da Vinci

 

"I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have."

-  Leonardo da Vinci

According to Wikipedia:

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance polymath:  painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".  He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.  According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".

Trivia:

Leonardo had no family name in the modern sense.    Da Vinci means “from Vinci”, so that he was “Leonardo from Vinci”.  He was the out of wedlock son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant.