Italy at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries. Renaissance. The fate of the great Florentine painter, sculptor and scientist Leonardo da Vinci was no less incredible and mysterious than the works and projects themselves that he bequeathed to humanity. The book by Dmitry Merezhkovsky attempts to answer some questions related to the personality of Leonardo. What power did Gioconda have over the artist’s soul? Why did the great Michelangelo hate the author of The Last Supper so much? Is it true that Leonardo was a heretic and atheist who, through mathematics and black magic, managed to penetrate the deepest secrets of nature? A whole string of colorful historical characters appears on the pages of the novel: the furious preacher Savonarola and the dissolute Pope Alexander Borgia, the wise and ruthless politician Niccolo Machiavelli and the brilliant French king Francis I. All of them played their fateful role in the life of the brilliant artist, who inexplicably managed to get ahead of his time.