After his years of apprenticeship under Andrea del Verrocchio and the creation of his earliest works (the Annunciation, the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, several Madonnas), Leonardo decides to establish himself independently as a painter. He starts work on some of his first commissions (the Vision of San Bernardo in the Palazzo Vecchio, the Adoration of the Magi, and Saint Jerome), all of which would remain incomplete. At the same time he comes into contact with intellectuals and engineers, marking in his notes the name of Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. This was the period of his first, impassioned readings (Dante’s Commedia, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pliny the Elder’s Storia naturale translated into Italian by Cristoforo Landino,) and his first literary compositions (the cavern and the sea monster).
