Born illegitimate without a legal name to Caterina, a fifteen year old servant girl, the name of Leonardo da Vinci is now the most famous on the planet.

Leonardo didn’t compartmentalise his experiments. For example, before him, only apothecaries created fragrances which were not meant to be put directly on to the skin.

Not only is her smile strange, just about everything about her is strange.

Leonardo did not give this, or any other of his paintings, a title. He simply said it is of a Florentine lady.

Before we dive into the nitty gritty of what lies behind the painting, it never hurts to point out that the first people to see Mona Lisa outside Italy lived in Amboise in the beautiful Loire Valley.

He imagined vertical flight long before the necessary technology to make it work saw the light of day.

It is not too fanciful to say that the world owes a huge debt of gratitude to Francis I, King of France for Leonardo's Notebooks, or at least some of them.

Francesco Melzi was an Italian aristocrat. His family took the name from their home town, Melzo near Milan (Francesco has a street named after him).

In 1494 Leonardo da Vinci started working for Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan.