As mentioned on the previous page much of Leonardo's influence came from Andrea Del Verrocchio. But, even before his becoming an apprentice, his family and friends encouraged him to take his talent to a whole other level. At his home he had access to scholarly texts and he was also part of the Vinci Family which had a history of being talented painters. Spending his childhood with his family also helped him to have a great appreciation for nature and he began to admire the qualities and colors that it had to offer. It was fortunate that Leonardo was given the best education that Florence could offer as the intellectual and artistic center of Italy. This, no doubt, contributed a great deal to his success as a great artist, inventor, and scientist that will be remembered throughout history.

Leonardo's Character and Personality Throughout his youth Leonardo was a very attractive man. He had a very unusual character, though. For instance he wrote in such a style that if you held it up to a mirror you could read it. He was left handed and writing backwords from right to left was most comfortable for him. Freud even tried to evaluate his character by using the background of his complicated childhood. But, some of Freud's theories were faulty and have been seriously challenged. The abnormality of Leonardo's personality could be a source of his incredible creativity. For example, Leonardo had a great love for nature. He would buy birds just to set them free. He was very tender and caring. He was against war. Yet, he depicted human and animal conflict often in his art. "Leonardo's delineation of idealized human beauty is balanced by his study of human deformity... conceiving of nature as a moving organic process, the laws of which he sought to understand and record, Leonardo recognized and accepted such contrariety as a dynamically necessary process. His art and thought represent a constant attempt to accomodate such oppositions within a flexible but regular system, to harmonize diverse phenomena into an essentially unified vision (Ency. Americana, 230)."