Leonardo da Vinci - painter of the Mona Lisa, visionary designer of flying machines, and draftsman of the ideally proportioned human - is world-famous as the prototypical universal genius of the Renaissance. Volker Reinhardt, on the other hand, discovers an artist who lived primarily against his time: against the word-loving humanists, against the world-averse Christianity, against the alchemists' belief in the hidden powers of nature. For Leonardo, only what the eye sees mattered, and his mission was to become the eye of the world through seeing, drawing, and painting. Leonardo grew up in Florence, worked in Verrocchio's workshop, served as court artist in Milan, as a military engineer for Cesare Borgia, and spent a luxurious twilight of life at the court of the French king. The stages of his life are well-researched yet full of riddles: Why did he hardly finish any work and write in Sp.