Leonardo da Vinci was basically the ultimate procrastinator. People talk about him like he was this tireless machine of divine inspiration, but honestly, the guy struggled to finish anything. If you look at the catalog of leonardo da vinci pieces that actually exist today, the list is surprisingly short. We're talking maybe 15 to 20 paintings that experts actually agree are his. That’s it. For a guy who lived to be 67 in the Renaissance, that’s a pretty low output. But what he did leave behind changed how we see the human face and the physical world.
He wasn't just a painter. He was a guy obsessed with how light hits a curved surface and how water swirls around an obstacle. He’d spend years—literally years—obsessing over the muscles in a neck just to get a single sketch right. This wasn't "art" in the way we think of it now; it was more like a lifelong science experiment that happened to produce some of the most expensive canvases on the planet.
The Messy Reality of the Mona Lisa
You’ve seen it. It’s on magnets, t-shirts, and probably in your middle school art textbook. But the Mona Lisa (or La Gioconda) is weird. It’s small. It’s behind bulletproof glass. And it’s falling apart in a very specific way. Leonardo used a technique called sfumato, which basically means "smoky." He didn't want harsh lines. He wanted the edges of the face to disappear into the shadows.
He carried this painting with him for years. He started it around 1503 in Florence and was still tinkering with it in France right before he died in 1519. Think about that. He kept a client's portrait for sixteen years. Most modern artists would be sued. But for Leonardo, the piece was never "done." He was constantly adding thin glazes of oil—layers so thin they are measured in microns—to capture the way the human eye perceives depth.
The "smile" isn't a secret code. It's optics. Because of the way he painted the corners of the mouth using that blurry sfumato, your peripheral vision sees a smile, but when you look directly at it, the expression seems to shift. It’s a biological trick. He was hacking your brain.
✨ Don't miss: Stereotypes About British People: What Most People Get Wrong
Why Some Leonardo da Vinci Pieces are Disappearing
This is the part that breaks art historians' hearts. Leonardo was a terrible chemist. He hated fresco—the standard way of painting on wet plaster—because you had to work fast before the plaster dried. Leonardo didn't do "fast." He wanted to take his time, layering oils and experimenting with different binders.
Take The Last Supper in Milan. It’s a disaster, technically speaking. Instead of painting on wet plaster, he tried painting on a dry wall with a mix of tempera and oil. It started peeling almost immediately. Within fifty years, it was described as a muddle of dots. What you see today in the Santa Maria delle Grazie is a ghost. It’s been restored so many times that some critics argue there’s more modern paint on that wall than actual Leonardo pigment.
Then there’s the Battle of Anghiari. It was supposed to be his masterpiece, a massive mural in the Palazzo Vecchio. He tried a weird experimental wax-based paint, got worried it wasn't drying fast enough, and brought in giant charcoal braziers to heat the walls. The paint literally melted and ran down the wall. He just walked away from it. One of the greatest leonardo da vinci pieces ever conceived is likely hidden behind a false wall today, or simply gone forever.
The Notebooks: A Brain on Paper
If the paintings are the "hits," the notebooks are the "demos." There are over 7,000 pages of his notes scattered across collections like the Codex Arundel and the Codex Leicester (which Bill Gates bought for over $30 million back in the 90s).
These aren't organized journals. They are chaos. He wrote in mirror-image script, from right to left. Some people think it was for secrecy, but honestly, he was left-handed and didn't want to smudge the ink. It was practical. In these pages, you see him jumping from a sketch of a human heart to a design for a giant crossbow, then to a shopping list for salad greens and stockings.
The Anatomy Obsession
Leonardo performed actual dissections. This was pretty grizzly work in the 1500s. No refrigeration. Just a guy in a basement with a candle and a corpse. But he was the first to accurately draw the human spine's "S" curve. He figured out how heart valves work centuries before medical science caught up. When you look at the St. Jerome in the Wilderness, an unfinished painting, the neck muscles are so anatomically perfect it’s unsettling. He wasn't guessing. He knew exactly what was under the skin.
Salvator Mundi: The $450 Million Question
We have to talk about the Salvator Mundi. It sold at Christie’s in 2017 for $450.3 million. It’s the most expensive painting ever sold. But is it actually one of the authentic leonardo da vinci pieces?
The art world is split. Some experts, like Martin Kemp, are convinced it’s the real deal. Others think it’s mostly the work of his students, Boltraffio or Luini, with maybe a few touches from the master himself. The painting was "lost" for years, heavily overpainted, and at one point sold for about $60 because people thought it was a bad copy.
The controversy usually settles on the glass orb Christ is holding. It doesn't show the correct refraction of light. Leonardo, who was a literal expert in optics and spent pages of his notebooks studying how light bends through glass, wouldn't have made that mistake. Or did he? Maybe he thought the "correct" physics would be too distracting? It’s these kinds of mysteries that keep his name in the headlines.
The "Studio" Problem
In the Renaissance, art was a team sport. Leonardo had a workshop full of apprentices. A "Leonardo" might actually be 30% Leonardo and 70% a talented 19-year-old kid following instructions.
- The Virgin of the Rocks: There are two versions. One is in the Louvre, one is in the National Gallery in London. They look almost identical but have subtle differences in lighting and botany.
- The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne: He worked on this for two decades. It’s a masterclass in composition—a literal pyramid of humans—but parts of it remain unfinished.
- The Lady with an Ermine: This one is definitely his, and it’s arguably better than the Mona Lisa. The way the ermine (a type of weasel) is muscled shows his grasp of animal anatomy.
Making Sense of the Legacy
Leonardo’s influence isn't just about pretty pictures. It’s about the "Leonardo look." He invented the way we represent the "ideal" human form in motion. Before him, figures in paintings looked a bit like wooden dolls. After him, they had weight. They had psychology. They looked like they were caught in the middle of a thought.
He also pioneered the "aerial perspective." He noticed that as things get further away, they don't just get smaller; they get bluer and blurrier because of the atmosphere. Look at the background of any of his major works. The mountains are always a hazy, misty blue. That seems obvious now, but in 1500, it was a revolution.
How to Actually See These Works
If you want to see leonardo da vinci pieces in person, you have to be ready to travel. There is no "Leonardo Museum" that has everything.
📖 Related: Outdoor Ideas for Birthday Party: Why Most People Overthink the Backyard
- The Louvre (Paris): Home to the Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, and John the Baptist. It’s a zoo. Go early or late.
- The Uffizi (Florence): You’ll find the Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation. These are early works where you can see him still finding his style.
- The National Gallery (London): Holds the second Virgin of the Rocks and the incredible Burlington House Cartoon (a massive charcoal drawing).
- The Czartoryski Museum (Krakow): This is where Lady with an Ermine lives. It’s worth the trip just for this one.
Practical Steps for Art Enthusiasts
If you’re fascinated by Leonardo, don't just look at the finished paintings. The real genius is in the process.
- Study the drawings: The Royal Collection Trust has a massive digital archive of his sketches. Looking at his studies of hands or water is often more revealing than looking at the Mona Lisa.
- Look for the "Unfinished": Pieces like the Adoration of the Magi are great because you can see the underdrawing. You can see how he built the scene from the bones up.
- Read the translations: Don't just look at the pictures in the notebooks. Read his thoughts on why the sky is blue or how to paint a storm. It bridges the gap between the "artist" and the "man."
- Check for local exhibits: Leonardo's drawings are fragile and don't stay on display forever. They are usually rotated in and out of dark storage to protect the paper. Keep an eye on museum calendars for "Works on Paper" exhibitions.
Leonardo was a man who wanted to know everything. He failed at a lot of things. He left many projects half-done. He frustrated his patrons and his friends. But the few leonardo da vinci pieces that survived are the result of that refusal to settle for "good enough." He wasn't trying to make art; he was trying to solve the puzzle of reality.