Hello and welcome to Home School History. I'm Greg Janna, the historian behind TV's

horrible histories, and the host of the BBC podcast, You're Dead To Me. I'm here to deliver

a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family, who says that homeschooling

can't be fun.

If you were to visit the Louvre Museum in Paris, you might find yourself in a room surrounded

by massive, colourful, exciting paintings by amazing artists. And yet, the biggest crowd

would be gathered around one small, mostly brown, picture of a smiling woman who wasn't

even famous when she was painted. This is the Mona Lisa by the Italian Renaissance artist

Leonardo da Vinci. It is perhaps the most famous artwork ever made.

To find out why, this week we're travelling back to 15th century Italy to learn all about

the extraordinarily talented but very easily distracted Leonardo da Vinci.

No, not Da Vinci. Da Vinci. In fact, Da Vinci wasn't his last name, because Da Vinci

just means from Vinci, the town in Tuscany where Leonardo was born in 1452. Calling him

Da Vinci would be like calling me, Tumberidge Wells. So let's call him Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo wasn't from a particularly fancy family. He was the son of a lawyer called Ser

Pierre-O, and his girlfriend, Catarina. Ser Pierre-O dumped Catarina to marry someone

Pasha, but his new wife died very young and so did his second wife. In fact, Ser Pierre-O

married four times, meaning Leonardo had loads of half-brothers and sisters. And for

a while, he also lived with his strict grandparents and his uncle. From an early age, Leonardo

was interested in combining art and science. There's a story that when he was little, he

wanted to draw a dragon. So he brought loads of insects, lizards and bats into the house

to use them as reference. Clever, but a bit of a nightmare to clean up afterwards.

...