Tribute to Leonardo da Vinci
A tiny Renaissance workshop that punches way above its piece count.
Brick Rated Score
Set 40902 · 2026
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I did not expect a gift-with-purchase freebie to make me stop and actually look at a printed tile, but the Mona Lisa piece did exactly that.
This little workshop packs in the painting, an ornithopter you can hang above the scene, a geode, a pear, and a minifigure of the man himself, all inside a build you can finish in one sitting. It will never be a display centerpiece the way a big set is, but as a small tribute to one specific person's whole strange genius, it lands. If you missed the spending threshold to get it free, hunting it down secondhand for a fair price is worth it for the printed pieces alone.
Best for: history buffs and GWP collectors who want the Mona Lisa tile more than a huge display piece
What it is
This one caught me off guard. I went in expecting a forgettable little GWP filler, the kind of set that exists so LEGO can put something in the box on a big spend threshold, and instead I got a genuinely thoughtful diorama of Leonardo da Vinci's workshop. There is a small easel holding a printed Mona Lisa, a desk, a side table with a pear on it, shelves stacked with painting supplies, a crystal, and a geode, all sitting on a mosaic floor that is more colorful than I expected from something this size. Leonardo himself comes as a minifigure, and he can be pulled off his workbench and clipped into an ornithopter that hangs above the whole scene like he just took flight mid-thought.
The catch
I do want to be honest about what this is and is not. It is 251 pieces, so you will be done building it before your coffee gets cold, and it was a promotional gift rather than a set you could simply walk in and buy, available free only when you spent US$150 or more on LEGO.com for about nine days in June 2026. That means most people reading this are looking at the secondary market now, where it is trading for modest money, nothing wild, but not nothing either. A handful of builders also pointed out that the printing on Leonardo's minifigure reuses an existing torso design rather than being fully bespoke, which is a fair nitpick given how special the rest of the printing is.
Who it's for
Get this one if you love the idea of small, dense tribute builds, the kind of thing you display on a shelf next to a book about the Renaissance rather than in the middle of your LEGO city. Skip it if you only care about piece count value or need a full-size display model, because at this scale it is a mood piece, not a masterwork.
The parts story
What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.
Building it is quick and calm, more like assembling a diorama than following an engineering challenge. You start with the mosaic floor tile pattern, then layer in the desk, easel, and shelving in short bursts, and the whole thing comes together in well under an hour. Nothing here demands technique, it is really about enjoying the small vignettes as they appear, the pear on the side table, the little jars of paint, the geode tucked into a corner.
The standout is the Mona Lisa herself, printed on a 2x3 tile rather than stickered, which is the detail every review I found kept circling back to. It is the first time LEGO has printed the painting this way, and it is genuinely useful afterward in any minifigure-scale gallery, museum, or house build you want to drop it into. Only two pieces in the whole set are specially printed for this model, plus a single sticker for a mirror, which for a promotional freebie is an unusually generous ratio of real printing over decals.
Fun facts
- 01The set was a gift-with-purchase available free for orders of US$150 or more on LEGO.com from June 19 to 28, 2026, while stocks lasted.
- 02It includes LEGO's first printed rendition of the Mona Lisa as a 2x3 tile, something fans on Reddit said was long overdue given how iconic the painting is.
- 03Only two elements in the set are specially printed and just one sticker is used, an unusually high printed-to-sticker ratio for a promotional set.
- 04The build includes a small ornithopter, a nod to Leonardo's real flying machine sketches, that can be posed above the workshop with his minifigure attached.
What other builders say
This write-up is grounded in real reviews and builder discussion, not just one opinion. A few worth reading:
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