How did Leonardo da Vinci die?

Perhaps the most storied account of Leonardo da Vinci’s death in 1519 comes from Giorgio Vasari. In Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects—the first edition of which was published in 1550, several decades after the artist died—Vasari narrates that Leonardo, while living in Amboise, France, under the patronage of King Francis I, grew old and became ill. Sensing that death was near, the 67-year-old artist asked for instruction in Christian doctrine, confessed his sins, and received the Eucharist. Vasari concludes by stating that, in a final paroxysm, Leonardo died in the arms of the king, who had visited the artist frequently and happened to be there on this consequential occasion. The biographer’s account was popularized by such paintings as The Death of Leonardo da Vinci in the Arms of François I (c. 1781) by François-Guillaume Ménageot and Francis I Receives the Last Breaths of Leonardo da Vinci (1818) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, but it is ahistorical. Royal records indicate that Francis was not in Amboise on May 2, the location and date of Leonardo’s death, but in Saint-Germain-en-Laye for the birth of his second son.

Although Vasari’s romantic telling is inaccurate, a few medical professionals writing in the 21st century suggest that his description of Leonardo’s final paroxysm satisfactorily describes a stroke. Indeed, many historians, drawing on reports of paralysis in Leonardo’s right hand in his later years, speculate that he probably experienced one or more strokes. Perhaps one was fatal. However, this remains a hypothesis; the immediate cause of his death is not reliably documented. As a result, scholarship tends to present a stroke as a plausible but not definitive cause or avoids specifying a cause altogether.