Virgin and Child with St Anne by Leonardo da Vinci Postcard

Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci, drawing in charcoal with black and white chalk on several sheets of paper glued together, is a large preparatory cartoon for transfer to canvas. Leonardo adapts a traditional subject matter of Christian art with innovative poses and composition based on the sinuous contrapposto of figures from the art of classical antiquity. Leonardo produced no known finished painting from this lively, expressive preparatory drawing. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was the greatest master of the High Italian Renaissance and quintessential "Renaissance Man" whose work as painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, anatomist and much more is without comparison. Born near Florence, Italy, and apprenticed to the painter Verrocchio, Leonardo invented many new ideas and extended the principles of perspective drawing, aerial perspective, the human figure and anatomy and much else to heights never seen since, during the period of rediscovery of the arts and philosophy of classical antiquity. Widely regarded as possibly the greatest artist who ever lived, Leonardo left very few completed paintings, due to either his restless experiments with painting technique that sometimes failed, or his infamous habit of procrastination.