Everyone knows Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and drew the Vitruvian Man. But the “Renaissance Man” was so prolific, so curious, and so unconventional that many of his life facts remain surprising even today. Here are nine things you probably didn’t know about the world’s most famous polymath:

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1. He Was Illegitimate and Received No Formal Education

Despite his father being a prosperous Florentine legal notary, Leonardo was born out of wedlock to his father and a peasant woman named Caterina. This meant he didn’t receive the formal humanist education in Latin and Greek that many of his wealthy contemporaries did. Ironically, this lack of formal schooling allowed his mind to develop freely, unconstrained by traditional scholastic dogma, paving the way for his reliance on empirical observation (esperienza).

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2. He Was a Lifelong Vegetarian

Da Vinci was a vocal advocate for animal rights and adopted a strict vegetarian diet centuries before it became a popular movement. He recorded in his notebooks that he refused to consume “any dead creatures” and found the practice of killing animals for food abhorrent. He even reportedly bought caged birds in markets just to set them free.

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3. He Wrote Backwards (Mirror Writing)

The vast majority of Da Vinci’s surviving 7,000 pages of notes and journals are written in mirror writing, reading from right to left. He was naturally left-handed, and writing backwards was his personal preference, allowing him to avoid smudging the ink. Some historians also theorize it was a form of self-encryption to protect his revolutionary (and often heretical) scientific ideas from the Church.

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4. He Was a Master Musician and Instrument Maker

Da Vinci was not only a gifted visual artist but also an accomplished musician who played the lyre. He was a talented improviser and was known for inventing and building new instruments. When he first went to Milan to seek patronage from the Duke Ludovico Sforza, he presented himself not as a painter, but as a musician and inventor of military machinery.

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5. He Was a Notoriously Slow and Unfinished Worker

Despite his immense talent, Da Vinci was infamous among his patrons for his inability to finish commissions—a trait likely due to his restless perfectionism and easily distracted curiosity. He often abandoned paintings to pursue tangential scientific interests. Masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper took years, while other works, such as the Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Anghiari, were never completed.

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6. He Practiced Illegal Human Dissections

To perfect his anatomical drawings, Da Vinci performed numerous dissections of human corpses—an act that was both religiously taboo and illegal under Papal law. He dissected around 30 human bodies, developing an understanding of the circulatory, skeletal, and muscular systems that was hundreds of years ahead of medical science at the time.

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7. He Designed a Robot Knight

Among his engineering plans was a detailed design for an automaton, or mechanical knight, intended to entertain the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. The robot was apparently capable of sitting up, moving its head and arms, and opening its visor. This early design is considered one of the first known blueprints for a humanoid robot in Western history.

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8. He Was Likely Gay and Accused of Sodomy

While he never married, the closest relationships in his life were with his male assistants, like Salai and Francesco Melzi. Historical documents show that in 1476, Da Vinci was anonymously accused of sodomy (a serious crime at the time) with a male prostitute in Florence. The charges were dismissed due to lack of witnesses, but the record is one of the few insights into his private life, leading many historians to believe he was homosexual.

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9. His Most Expensive Painting Sells for Nearly Half a Billion Dollars

While Da Vinci himself was only comfortably wealthy from his patrons, one of his completed works holds the record for the most expensive piece of art ever sold. In 2017, his painting Salvator Mundi (whose attribution is still debated by some) sold at auction for $450.3 million. It’s a staggering figure that underscores his enduring, incalculable value to the world.