Leonardo da Vinci designed chariots with spinning blades and bought caged birds at market just to set them free. This episode strips away the superhuman aura to examine the actual person: born out of wedlock in 1452 near Vinci to a notary father and a lower-class mother, locked out of the guild path, denied Latin and formal schooling, and therefore shielded from the flawed scholastic science of his day. That accident of birth pushed him to trust his own eyes over ancient texts.

We follow him from Verrocchio's Florentine workshop and the terrifying painted shield that sold for 100 ducats, to his 1482 pitch letter offering Milan's Duke Ludovico Sforza portable bridges and armored vehicles, with painting mentioned almost as an afterthought. Along the way: the doomed 24-foot bronze horse whose metal became cannons, the scaled map of Imola made  ...