Thinkers Timeline

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian artist, scientist, and inventor. He was born in 1452 in the small town of Vinci, near Florence, in what is now Italy. His name means 'Leonardo from Vinci'. He was the son of a young woman named Caterina, who was probably a peasant or servant, and a wealthy notary named Ser Piero. His parents never married. Leonardo grew up in his father's family but was treated as a separate, somewhat outside figure. He showed great talent young. As a teenager he was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. He learned painting, sculpture, and many practical crafts. Around the age of 30, he moved to Milan to work for the Duke, Ludovico Sforza. He stayed in Milan for nearly 20 years. He painted, designed weapons, planned buildings, and filled notebooks with ideas. When French armies invaded Milan, Leonardo moved on. He worked in Florence, Rome, and other Italian cities. He served various rulers, including Cesare Borgia and the Medici. In 1516, the king of France, Francis I, invited him to come and live in France. Leonardo accepted. He spent his last three years in a small castle near the king's palace at Amboise. He died there in 1519, aged 67. He never married and had no children. He was probably gay, though the evidence is indirect. He was vegetarian, unusual for his time. He left thousands of notebook pages full of drawings and ideas, most of which were not read for centuries.

Sin Saimdang was a Korean artist, calligrapher, poet, and Confucian scholar of the mid-Joseon period. She is widely regarded as the most accomplished female artist of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) and one of the most celebrated women in Korean history. She has been the first woman depicted on a South Korean banknote (the 50,000 won note, issued from June 2009). Her real personal name was Sin In-seon. 'Saimdang' was her pen name, taken from Tairen, the mother of King Wen of Zhou in classical Chinese tradition; her name signalled her aspiration to be like that exemplary figure. Her other pen names included Saim, Inimdang, and Imsajae. She was born on 29 October 1504 (5 December by the Western calendar) in Bukpyeong-chon village, Jukheon-ri, Gangneung, Gangwon Province, at her maternal grandparents' home (Ojukheon, still preserved as a historic site). Her father was Sin Myeong-hwa, a government official and friend of the reformist scholar Jo Gwang-jo, who chose not to be politically active during the factional struggles of his time. Her mother was Lady Yi. She was the eldest of five sisters; her parents had no sons. Her maternal grandfather, recognising her early talent, taught her as he would have taught a grandson: classical Chinese, history, philosophy, and the Confucian canon. She also developed exceptional skill in calligraphy, embroidery, and painting from childhood. At nineteen she married Yi Won-su, a man from a respectable but poor family. Her father had specifically chosen Yi because he was willing to let her continue her artistic work. The marriage produced eight children, five sons and three daughters. Her third son was Yi I (1536-1584), pen name Yulgok, who would become one of the two greatest Neo-Confucian philosophers in Korean history. Saimdang continued painting and writing throughout her marriage. She died of sudden illness in Pyongan region on 17 May 1551 at age 47.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a German composer and organist usually regarded as the supreme master of Baroque music and one of the greatest composers in any tradition. He was born in Eisenach into a large and distinguished family of working musicians — the name Bach had become almost a synonym for musician in parts of central Germany. He was orphaned at ten and raised by an older brother who trained him in the organ and in composition. From fifteen he worked continuously as a professional musician: as a choirboy, as a church organist in small towns, as a court musician at Weimar and then Cothen, and from 1723 until his death as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, where he was responsible for the music at several city churches, the Thomasschule, and important civic occasions. He wrote music almost constantly. His output includes more than two hundred sacred cantatas, the St Matthew and St John Passions, the B minor Mass, the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, dozens of organ works, and hundreds of other pieces. He married twice and had twenty children, several of whom became important composers in the following generation. He went blind in his last year and died after an unsuccessful eye operation. His music was not widely celebrated after his death and had slipped into relative obscurity by 1800; its revival in the nineteenth century, launched by Felix Mendelssohn's 1829 performance of the St Matthew Passion, began a long process by which Bach came to be regarded as a central figure of world music.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer. He is one of the most celebrated composers in European classical music. He was born in 1756 in Salzburg, then a small city in the Holy Roman Empire. He died in 1791 in Vienna, aged only 35. Mozart was a child prodigy. He showed an astonishing musical gift very young. By the age of five he was composing simple pieces. His father, Leopold Mozart, was also a musician. Leopold took young Wolfgang and his older sister Maria Anna, also gifted, on long tours across Europe. They performed for kings, queens, and audiences in many cities. As an adult, Mozart settled in Vienna, the musical capital of his time. He worked as a freelance musician. He gave concerts, taught pupils, and wrote music on commission. This was a difficult way to live. Mozart often had money worries, even though his music was admired. In a short career he wrote an enormous amount: over 600 works, including operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and church music. He died young, possibly of a fever or kidney illness. The exact cause is not known. He was buried in a common grave, in the standard way of his time. He was not poor or forgotten when he died, despite later myths.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was a Japanese painter and printmaker of the Edo period, widely regarded as the greatest artist of the ukiyo-e tradition and one of the most influential artists in world history. He was born in the commoner district of Edo (modern Tokyo) to an artisan family. Apprenticed at fifteen to a woodblock cutter, he entered the studio of the print designer Katsukawa Shunsho at eighteen and spent his twenties learning the trade. He changed his artistic name over thirty times across his long career, each change marking a stylistic shift or a new artistic ambition. The name Hokusai, meaning north studio, dates from his middle years. He produced an enormous body of work: book illustrations, sketches, paintings, and the printed series for which he is most famous. In his early seventies he began the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes the Great Wave off Kanagawa and Red Fuji — two of the most widely recognised images in the world. He also produced the Hokusai Manga, fifteen volumes of drawings covering every conceivable subject, from birds and fish to grimacing faces and imaginary creatures. He lived in poverty for much of his life, moved house more than ninety times, and continued working into his late eighties. He died at eighty-eight, lamenting that he had not been given another ten years of life to become a true artist.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He was born in 1770 in Bonn, in what is now Germany. He is one of the most important composers in the history of Western music. He was baptised on 17 December, so he was probably born a day or two earlier. He came from a musical family. His grandfather was a respected court musician. His father, Johann, was also a musician but a difficult man and a heavy drinker. Johann saw young Ludwig's talent and pushed him hard, sometimes cruelly, hoping to create a child star like Mozart. Beethoven gave his first public performance at the age of seven. In 1792, aged 21, he moved to Vienna, the music capital of Europe. He studied briefly with Joseph Haydn. He soon became famous in Vienna, first as a pianist and then as a composer. Wealthy noble families paid him to write music. He never took a full court post. He preferred to work as a freelance composer, which was unusual for his time. In his late twenties, he began to lose his hearing. By his forties he was almost completely deaf. He kept composing, often using a notebook to communicate with visitors. His later works, including the Ninth Symphony, were written when he could no longer hear them properly performed. He never married, though he loved several women, often unhappily. He died in Vienna in 1827, aged 56. Around 20,000 people attended his funeral.