La Vita di Leonardo da Vinci â in English, The Life of Leonardo da Vinci â is a 1971 Italian miniseries created by Renato Castellani. The series is based largely on a biography in Giorgio Vasari's Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori.
The life and development of Leonardo da Vinci are presented and analyzed with lingering myths being addressed and laid to rest along the way.
This was written and directed by Renato Castellani and produced by RAI, Televisión Española, ORTF and Istituto Luce. Everything was filmed entirely on location in Italy and France.
The final credits feature Ornella Vanoni singing Leonardo's famous aphorism, put to music by Romanian composer Roman Vlad as "La canzone di Leonardo."
In Italy, the series was broadcast in five episodes from October 24 to November 21, 1971, on Programma Nazionale. It was made in color, even though the Italian government had not yet adopted this technique. Later, CBS distributed the series in the United States with English-language dubbing, airing it from August 13, 1972, to September 10, 1972. In Quebec, the series was broadcast from September 7, 1973, on Radio-Canada Television, and in France from May 2, 1974, on the second channel of ORTF and rebroadcast in April 1980 on the first channel.
Italy officially began rebroadcasts in color in 1977.
In the English-dubbed narration, Milan is said to have fallen in 1499 to Louis VII (reigned 1137âÂÂ1180) instead of XII (reigned 1498âÂÂ1515).
The Life of Leonardo da Vinci was the first wholly non-English language series to win a Golden Globe and be nominated to an Outstanding Series category; the latter not repeated until Squid Game.