In 1515, Leonardo da Vinci built a mechanical lion to entertain King Francis I of France and his guests. Until now, no one knows what happened to this amazing clockwork creation. Over half a century later, when a ten year old boy discovers the lion in a royal storeroom, young Chev doesn’t know he will soon embark on a strange and dangerous mission. His quest will lead him many leagues through a French countryside devastated by religious war in search of Leonardo’s greatest secrets of all, hidden mysteries that could affect the future of all humanity.

The story of a lion, born lopsided, who overcomes adversity. Black-and-white versions of the pictures from the story are presented at the end as a coloring book.

“... (Payne) has the gift, as does John Keegan, of using prose to elevate facts, figures, dates and events into the realms of the dramatic.” —Book Reviewer Based on entirely fresh primary research. Leonardo presents important new information and perspectives on one of the most interesting men and greatest geniuses of all time. The following are only a few of the new and controversial findings offered by Payne in this highly readable book. The portrait of a bearded man universally accepted as a self-portrait is actually a drawing of Leonardo’s father. The subject of the Mona Lisa was not the wife of a merchant but the Duchess of Milan. (Among the illustrations in the book are two earlier, seldom-seen Mona Lisas.) Leonardo was not the son of a peasant woman, as it is generally thought he was, but of a high-born woman. Payne paints an extraordinarily convincing Picture of Leonardo not only as a giant of his age, but also as a man, human, real, simple and natural. Besides dispelling many myths about him, the author places his subject realistically in his own time—the summit of the Italian Renaissance with its wars and sudden upheavals, its unsurpassed artists and architects, its ambitious and often warring princes. Leonardo is a meticulously accurate book and it reads like a swiftly paced novel.