Leonardo da Vinci Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Who was Leonardo da Vinci?
A: Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance, whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography!

He has been variously called the father of paleontology, iconology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest what?
A: Painters of all time.

Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter and tank, he epitomized the what?
A: Renaissance humanist ideal.

Many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the what?
A: "Universal Genius".

According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were what?
A: Without precedent in recorded history.

Who were his parents?
A: He was born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina.

Where was he born?
A: In Vinci in the region of Florence.

Where was Leonardo educated?
A: In the studio of the renowned Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio.

Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of whom?
A: Ludovico il Moro in Milan.

He later worked in Rome, Bologna and where?
A: Venice.

Where did he spend his last years?
A: In France.

In France, where did he stay?
A: At the home awarded to him by Francis I of France.

Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a what?
A: A painter.

Among his works, which is the most famous?
A: The Mona Lisa.

Which of his paintings is the most reproduced religious painting of all time?
A: The Last Supper.

Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on what items?
A: Items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts.

How many of Leonardo’s paintings have survived?
A: About fifteen.

His paintings together with his notebooks compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivaled only by that of whom?
A: His contemporary, Michelangelo.

Aside from painting, Leonardo is revered for his what?
A: Technological ingenuity.

Why were relatively few of his designs constructed or even feasible during his lifetime?
A: Modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance.

Some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, did what?
A: Entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.

A number of Leonardo's most practical inventions are nowadays displayed as what?
A: Working models at the Museum of Vinci.

He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not what?
A: Publish his findings and thus they had no direct influence on later science.

What is Leonardo's earliest known drawing?
A: The Arno Valley (1473), Uffizi.

When was Leonardo born?
A: On 15 April 1452.

He was the out-of-wedlock son of whom?
A: The wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant.

Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense – "da Vinci" simply meaning what?
A: "of Vinci".

What was his full birth name?
A: It was "Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci".

The inclusion of the title "ser" indicated what?
A: That Leonardo's father was a gentleman.

Little is known about Leonardo's what?
A: His early life.

Where did he spend his first five years?
A: In the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother.

From 1457 he lived where?
A: In the household of his father, grandparents and uncle in the small town of Vinci.

His father had married whom?
A: A sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera Amadori, who loved Leonardo but died young in 1465 without children.

When Leonardo was sixteen (1468), his father married again to whom?
A: Twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini, who also died without children.

Piero's legitimate heirs were born from whom?
A: His third wife Margherita di Guglielmo who gave birth to six children, and his fourth and final wife, Lucrezia Cortigiani (who bore him another six children.

In all, Leonardo had twelve half-siblings, who were much younger than he and with whom he had very few contacts, but they caused him what?
A: Difficulty after his father's death in the dispute over the inheritance.

Leonardo received an informal education in what?
A: Latin, geometry and mathematics.

In later life, Leonardo recorded only two what?
A: Childhood incidents.

One, which he regarded as an omen, was what?
A: When a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face.

The second occurred while he was exploring in the mountains: he discovered what?
A: A cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.

In 1466, at the age of 14, Leonardo was apprenticed to whom?
A: The artist Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio, whose bottega (workshop) was "one of the finest in Florence".

He apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading what?
A: Florentine painter and sculptor of his day (and would do so for 7 years).

Leonardo would have been exposed to both theoretical training and a vast range of what?
A: Technical skills, including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modeling.

According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus' robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio did what?
A: He put down his brush and never painted again, although this is believed to be apocryphal.

Leonardo may have been the model for what two works by Verrocchio?
A: The bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the Archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel.

Florentine court records of 1476 show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with what?
A: Sodomy but acquitted.

From that date until 1478, there is no record of what?
A: His work or even of his whereabouts.

In 1478, he left Verrocchio's studio and was no longer what?
A: A resident at his father's house.

During what years did Leonardo work in Milan?
A: From 1482 until 1499.

He was commissioned to paint what?
A: The Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Between 1493 and 1495, Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his what?
A: Dependents in his taxation documents.

When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditures suggests that she was who?
A: His mother.

In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a what?
A: A military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.

On 19 December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of whom?
A: Francis I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna.

Leonardo was commissioned to make for Francis a what?
A: A mechanical lion that could walk forward then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.

In 1516, he entered Francis' service, being given the use of what?
A: The manor house Clos Lucé, now a public museum, near the king's residence at the royal Château d'Amboise.

He spent the last three years of his life here, accompanied by whom?
A: His friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi.

When did Leonardo die?
A: On 2 May 1519 at the age of 67.