Leonardo is the greatest, most multi-faceted and most mysterious of all Renaissance artists, but extraordinarily, considering his enormous reputation, this is the first full-length biography in English for several decades. Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself in manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an intimate portrait of Leonardo.

He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made many discoveries about him, his work and his circle of associates.

The book identifies what Nicholl argues is an unknown portrait of the artist hanging in a church near Lodi in northern Italy. It also contains new material on his eccentric assistant Tomasso Masini, his homosexual affairs in Florence, and his curious relationship with a female model and/or prostitute from Cremona. A masterpiece of modern biography.