Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located partly on the European Continent and partly on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland,...
polymathA polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
:
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects may be used. In art the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting...
, sculptor,
architectAn architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings, and is licensed to practice architecture...
,
musicianA musician is a person who writes, performs, or makes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.* A singer is a vocalist....
,
scientistA scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
,
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study or research, or both, is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with particular problems related to logic, space, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts.Some notable mathematicians...
,
engineerEngineers are those who develop devices that serve as solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics, scientific knowledge and ingenuity while considering technical, safety and cost constraints....
, inventor, anatomist,
geologistFor other uses, see Geologist .A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology...
, cartographer, botanist and
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
.
Leonardo has often been described as the
archetypeAn archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior....
of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the
greatest Greatness is a concept of a state of superiority affecting a person, object or place. The concept carries the implication that the particular person or object, when compared to others of a similar type, has clear and perceivable advantage. As a descriptive term it is most often applied to a person...
paintersPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects may be used. In art the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting...
of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian
Helen GardnerHelen Gardner was an American art historian and educator. Her Art Through the Ages remains a standard text for American art history classes....
, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
Born the illegitimate son of a
notaryA notary is a lawyer or person with legal training who is licensed by the state to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents...
, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at
VinciVinci is a town and comune of Firenze province in the Italian region of Tuscany. The birthplace of Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci lies just outside the town.-Geography:The town is surrounded by the Tuscan Hills...
in the region of
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence...
, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in
MilanMilan is a city in Italy and the capital of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1,300,000, while the urban area is the first in Italy and the fifth largest in the European Union with a population of 4,345,000 over an area of...
. He later worked in
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in...
,
BolognaBologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy...
and
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy known both for tourism and for industry, and is the capital of the region Veneto, with a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area...
and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by
Francis IFrancis I was King of France from 1515 until his death.Francis I is considered to be France's first Renaissance monarch. His reign saw France make immense cultural advances...
.
Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the
Mona LisaMona Lisa is a sixteenth-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel in Florence, Italy by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci during the Renaissance...
and
The Last SupperThe Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este...
, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer...
's
Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the
Vitruvian ManThe Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs...
is also regarded as a
cultural iconA cultural icon can be a symbol, a logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized, and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group....
, being reproduced on everything from the
euroThe euro is the official currency of the Eurozone: 16 of the 27 Member States of the European Union and is the currency used by the EU institutions. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal,...
to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.
[There are 15 significant artworks which are ascribed, either in whole or in large part, to Leonardo by most art historians. This number is made up principally of paintings on panel but includes a mural, a large drawing on paper and two works which are in the early stages of preparation. There are a number of other works that have also been variously attributed to Leonardo.] Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary,
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer...
.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the
double hullA double hull is a ship hull design and construction method where the bottom and sides of the ship have two complete layers of watertight hull surface: one outer layer forming the normal hull of the ship, and a second inner hull which is somewhat further into the ship, perhaps a few feet, which...
and outlined a rudimentary theory of
plate tectonicsPlate tectonics is a scientific theory which describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...
. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,
[Modern scientific approaches to metallurgy]Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...
and engineeringEngineering is the discipline, art and profession of acquiring and applying technical, scientific, and mathematical knowledge to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective or invention.The American Engineers' Council...
were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated
bobbinA bobbin is a spindle or cylinder, with or without flanges, on which wire, yarn, thread or film is wound. Bobbins are typically found in sewing machines, cameras, and within electronic equipment....
winder and a machine for testing the
tensile strengthTensile strength is indicated by the maxima of a stress-strain curve and, in general, indicates when necking will occur. As it is an intensive property, its value does not depend on the size of the test specimen. It is, however, dependent on the preparation of the specimen and the temperature of...
of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.
[A number of Leonardo's most practical inventions are displayed as working models at the Museum of Vinci.] As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of
anatomyAnatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy...
,
civil engineeringCivil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works such as bridges, roads, canals, dams and buildings...
,
opticsOptics is the branch of physics which studies the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...
, and
hydrodynamicsIn physics, fluid dynamics is a sub-discipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the natural science of fluids in motion. It has several subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics and hydrodynamics...
.
Childhood, 1452–1466
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, "at the third hour of the night" in the
TuscanTuscany is a region in Central Italy. It has an area of 22,990 square kilometres and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence....
hill town of
VinciVinci is a town and comune of Firenze province in the Italian region of Tuscany. The birthplace of Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci lies just outside the town.-Geography:The town is surrounded by the Tuscan Hills...
, in the lower valley of the
Arno RiverThe Arno is a river in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is the most important river of central Italy after the Tiber.- Source and route :The river originates on Mount Falterona in the Casentino area of the Apennines, and takes initially a southward curve...
in the territory of
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence...
. He was the illegitimate son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine
legal notaryCivil-law notaries, or Latin notaries, are lawyers of voluntary private civil law who draft, take, and record legal instruments for private parties, provide legal advice and give attendance in person, and are vested as public officers with the authentication power of the State...
, and Caterina, a peasant.
[It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East]The Middle East is a region that encompasses southwestern Asia and Egypt. In some contexts, the term has recently been expanded in usage to sometimes include Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and North Africa. It's often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far...
"or at least, from the Mediterranean". According to Alessandro Vezzosi, Head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, there is evidence that Piero owned a Middle Eastern slave called Caterina. That Leonardo had Middle Eastern blood is claimed to be supported by the reconstruction of a fingerprint as reported by Marta Falconi, Associated Press Writer, "Experts Reconstruct Leonardo Fingerprint" December 12, 2006", accessed 2010-01-06. The evidence as stated in the article is that 60% of people of Middle Eastern Origin share the pattern of whorls found on the reconstructed fingerprint. The article also states that the claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine. "You can't predict one person's race from these kinds of incidences," he said, especially if looking at only one finger." Leonardo had no
surnameA surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name; the family-name meaning of "surname" first appeared in 1375. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
in the modern sense, "
da Vinci" simply meaning "of
VinciVinci is a town and comune of Firenze province in the Italian region of Tuscany. The birthplace of Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci lies just outside the town.-Geography:The town is surrounded by the Tuscan Hills...
": his full birth name was "Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci".
Little is known about Leonardo's early life. He spent his first five years in the
hamletA hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. The name comes from Anglo-Norman hamelete; Old French hamelet, the diminutive of Old French hamel. Another diminutive of Old French ham is...
of Anchiano in the home of his mother, then from 1457 lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but died young. Leonardo received an informal education in Latin, geometry and mathematics but did not show any particular signs of aptitude.
When Leonardo was sixteen his father married again, twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini. It was not until his third and fourth marriages that Ser Piero produced legitimate heirs. In later life, Leonardo only recorded two childhood incidents. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a
kiteKites are raptors with long wings and weak legs which spend a great deal of time soaring. Most feed mostly on carrion but some take various amounts of live prey.They are birds of prey which, along with hawks and eagles, are from the family Accipitridae....
dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face. The second occurred while exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there, and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.
Leonardo's early life has been the subject of historical conjecture. Vasari, the 16th-century biographer of Renaissance painters tells of how a local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo responded with a painting of monster spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of
MilanMilan is a city in Italy and the capital of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1,300,000, while the urban area is the first in Italy and the fifth largest in the European Union with a population of 4,345,000 over an area of...
. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a shield decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow, which he gave to the peasant.
Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476
In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio whose workshop was "one of the finest in Florence". Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include
Domenico GhirlandaioDomenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.-Early years:Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi...
, Perugino, Botticelli, and
Lorenzo di CrediLorenzo di Credi was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor. He first influenced Leonardo da Vinci and then was greatly influenced by him.-Life:...
. Leonardo would have been exposed to both theoretical training and a vast range of technical skills including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.
[The "diverse arts" and technicall skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th century text On Divers Arts by Theophilus Presbyter]Theophilus Presbyter was a Benedictine monk and author of a Latin text containing detailed descriptions of various medieval arts. The collection of his writings is designated Schedula diversarum artium or De diversibus artibus and was written between 1100 and 1120...
and in the early 15th century text Il Libro Dell'arte O Trattato Della Pittui by Cennino Cennini.
Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his
Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding
JesusJesus of Nazareth ,also known as Jesus Christ or simply Jesus, is the central figure of Christianity, which views him as the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament, with most Christian denominations believing him to be the Son of God and God incarnate who was raised from the dead.Islam and the...
's robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again. This is probably an exaggeration. On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the
temperaTempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the first centuries AD still...
using the new technique of
oil paintOil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil — especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their...
, the landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.
Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio, including the bronze statue of
DavidAndrea del Verrocchio's bronze statue of David was most likely made between 1473 and 1475. It was commissioned by the Medici family. It is sometimes claimed that Verrocchio modelled the statue after a handsome pupil in his workshop, the young Leonardo da Vinci.The statue represents the youthful...
in the
BargelloThe Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace or Palazzo del Popolo is a former barracks and prison, now an art museum, in Florence, Italy.-Terminology:...
, and the Archangel Michael in
Tobias and the AngelTobias and the Angel is an altar painting, finished around 1470-1480, attributed to the workshop of the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Verrocchio. It is housed in the National Gallery of London...
.
By 1472, at the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him. Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of the
ArnoThe Arno is a river in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is the most important river of central Italy after the Tiber.- Source and route :The river originates on Mount Falterona in the Casentino area of the Apennines, and takes initially a southward curve...
valley, drawn on August 5, 1473.
[This work is now in the collection of the Uffizi]The Uffizi Gallery , is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world. It is housed in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, a palazzo in Florence, Italy.-History:...
, Drawing No. 8P.
Professional life, 1476–1513
Florentine court records of 1476 show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with
sodomySodomy is a term used in the law to describe the act of "unnatural" sex, which depending on jurisdiction can consist of oral sex or anal sex or any non-genital to genital congress, whether heterosexual, or homosexual, or with human or animal....
, and acquitted.
[Homosexual acts were illegal in Renaissance Florence.] From that date until 1478 there is no record of his work or even of his whereabouts. In 1478 he left Verroccio's studio and was no longer resident at his father's house. One writer, the "Anonimo" Gaddiano claims that in 1480 he was living with the Medici and working in the garden of the Piazza San Marco in Florence. In January 1478 he received his first independent commission, to paint an altarpiece in 1478 for the Chapel of St Bernard in the
Palazzo VecchioThe Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence, Italy. This massive, Romanesque, crenellated fortress-palace is among the most impressive town halls of Tuscany...
and
The Adoration of the MagiThe Adoration of the Magi is an early painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was given the commission by the Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopeto in Florence, but departed for Milan the following year, leaving the painting unfinished...
in March 1481 for the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. Neither important commission was completed, the second being interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.
In 1482 Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a most talented musician, created a silver
lyreThe lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The word comes from the Greek "λύρα" and the earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists", written in Linear B syllabic script. The recitations of the Ancient...
in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici sent Leonardo, bearing the lyre as a gift, to Milan, to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint.
Leonardo continued work in Milan between 1482 and 1499. He was commissioned to paint the
Virgin of the RocksThe Virgin of the Rocks is the usual title used for both of two different paintings with almost identical compositions, which are at least largely by Leonardo da Vinci. They are in the Louvre, Paris, and the National Gallery, London.-Louvre version:This version is in the Louvre painted around...
for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and
The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditures suggests that she was his mother.
He worked on many different projects for Ludovico, including the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor. Seventy tons of
bronzeBronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other elements such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminium, or silicon. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, giving its name to the Bronze Age...
were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's statue of Gattemelata in
PaduaPadua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice , in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area, having a population of c...
and Verrocchio's
Bartolomeo ColleoniBartolomeo Colleoni was an Italian condottiero.-Life:Colleoni was born at Solza, in the countryside of Bergamo , where he prepared his magnificent mortuary chapel, the Cappella Colleoni, in a shrine that he seized when it was refused him by the local confraternity, the Consiglio della Misericordia...
in Venice, and became known as the "Gran Cavallo".
[Verrocchio's statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni was not cast until 1488, after his death, and after Leonardo had already begun work on the statue for Ludovico.]
Leonardo began making detailed plans for its casting, however, Michelangelo rudely implied that Leonardo was unable to cast it. In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannons to defend the city from invasion by
Charles VIIICharles VIII, called the Affable, , was King of France from 1483 to his death in 1498. Charles was a member of the House of Valois...
.
At the start of the
Second Italian WarThe Second Italian War , sometimes known as Louis XII's Italian War or the War over Naples, was the second of the Italian Wars; it was fought primarily by Louis XII of France and Ferdinand I of Spain, with the participation of several Italian powers...
in 1499, the invading French troops used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician
Luca PacioliFra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and seminal contributor to the field now known as accounting, for which he is often regarded as the "Father of Accounting"...
, fled Milan for
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy known both for tourism and for industry, and is the capital of the region Veneto, with a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area...
, where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.
On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival". In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of
Cesare BorgiaCesare Borgia , Duke of Valentinois, was a Spanish-Italian condottiero, nobleman, politician, and cardinal. He was the son of Pope Alexander VI and his long-term mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei...
, the son of
Pope Alexander VIPope Alexander VI , born Roderic Llançol, later Roderic de Borja i Borja was Pope from 1492 to 1503...
, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. Leonardo created a
mapA map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....
of Cesare Borgia’s
strongholdA stronghold is a strongly fortified defensive structure.The history of fortified buildings extends from antiquity to modern times.From Celtic Europe, an example of a stronghold is the hill fort, a large structure, with walls made of wooden stakes, and built on a steep hill...
, a town plan of
Imolathumb|250px|The Cathedral of Imola.Imola is a town and comune in the province of Bologna, located on the Santerno river, in the Emilia-Romagna region of north-central Italy...
in order to win his patronage. Maps were extremely rare at the time and it would have seemed like a new concept; upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief
military engineerA military engineer is a soldier whose occupation involves military engineering. According to NATO, "Military Engineering is that engineer activity undertaken, regardless of component or service, to shape the physical operating environment." Military Engineering incorporates support to maneuvre...
and
architectAn architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings, and is licensed to practice architecture...
. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley, Tuscany so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. Leonardo created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a
damA dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions...
from the
seaA sea generally refers to a large body of salt water, but the term is used in other contexts as well. Most commonly, the term refers to a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, and is commonly used as a synonym for ocean...
to
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence...
in order to allow a supply of
waterWater is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H
2O. Its molecule contains one oxygen and to hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state, water vapor or...
to sustain the
canalCanals are human-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Aqueduct canals that are used for the conveyance and delivery of fresh water, for human consumption, agriculture, etc....
during all seasons.
He returned to Florence where he rejoined the Guild of St Luke on October 18, 1503, and spent two years designing and painting a great mural of
The Battle of AnghiariThe Battle of Anghiari is a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci at times referred to as, "The Lost Leonardo", which some commentators believe to be still hidden beneath later frescoes in the Hall of Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...
for the Signoria, with Michelangelo designing its companion piece,
The Battle of Cascina. In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of David.
In 1506 he returned to Milan. Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, including
Bernardino LuiniBernardino Luini was a North Italian painter from Leonardo's circle. Both Luini and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio were said to have worked with Leonardo directly; he was described to have taken "as much from Leonardo as his native roots enabled him to comprehend". Consequently many of his works were...
,
Giovanni Antonio BoltraffioGiovanni Antonio Boltraffio was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio...
and Marco D'Oggione.
[D'Oggione is known in part for his contemporary copies of the Last Supper.] However, he did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 he was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.
Old age, 1513-1519
From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer...
were both active at the time. In October 1515,
Francis I of FranceFrancis I was King of France from 1515 until his death.Francis I is considered to be France's first Renaissance monarch. His reign saw France make immense cultural advances...
recaptured Milan. On December 19, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna. It was for Francis that Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical
lionThe lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
which could walk forward, then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies. In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house
Clos LucéClos Lucé is a mansion in Amboise, France, located 500 metres from the royal Château d'Amboise, to which it is connected by an underground passageway. Built by Étienne le Loup in the middle of the fifteenth century, it was acquired in 1490 by Charles VIII of France for his wife, Anne de Bretagne...
[Clos Lucé, also called Cloux, is now a public museum.] near the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, supported by a pension totalling 10,000
scudiThe scudo was the name for a number of coins used in Italy until the 19th century. The name, like that of the French écu and the Spanish and Portuguese escudo, was derived from the Latin scutum . From the 16th century, the name was used in Italy for large silver coins...
.
Leonardo died at
Clos LucéClos Lucé is a mansion in Amboise, France, located 500 metres from the royal Château d'Amboise, to which it is connected by an underground passageway. Built by Étienne le Loup in the middle of the fifteenth century, it was acquired in 1490 by Charles VIII of France for his wife, Anne de Bretagne...
, on May 2, 1519.
Francis IFrancis I was King of France from 1515 until his death.Francis I is considered to be France's first Renaissance monarch. His reign saw France make immense cultural advances...
had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed in romantic paintings by
IngresJean Auguste Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest...
, Ménageot and other French artists, as well as by
Angelica KauffmannMaria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffmann was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter.- Early years :...
, may be legend rather than fact.
[On the day of Leonardo's death, a royal edict was issued by the King at Saint-Germain-en-Laye]Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris 19.1 km from the center.Inhabitants are called Saint-Germanois...
, a two-day journey from Clos LucéClos Lucé is a mansion in Amboise, France, located 500 metres from the royal Château d'Amboise, to which it is connected by an underground passageway. Built by Étienne le Loup in the middle of the fifteenth century, it was acquired in 1490 by Charles VIII of France for his wife, Anne de Bretagne...
. This has been taken as evidence that King François cannot have been present at Leonardo's deathbed. However, White in Leonardo: The First Scientist points out that the edict was not signed by the king himself. Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament. In accordance to his will, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the
castle of AmboiseThe royal Château at Amboise is a château located in Amboise, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France.-Origins and royal residence:...
. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's
vineyardA vineyard is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice...
s, his brothers who received land, and his serving woman who received a black cloak "of good stuff" with a fur edge.
Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."
Relationships and influences
Florence — Leonardo's artistic and social background
Florence, at the time of Leonardo's youth was the centre of Christian
HumanistRenaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform, engaged in by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and turn-of-the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Medieval scholastic education,...
thought and culture. Leonardo commenced his
apprenticeshipApprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor
DonatelloDonatello was a famous early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence...
, died. The painter Uccello whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters
Piero della FrancescaPiero della Francesca was an Italian artist of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries, he was known as a mathematician and geometer as well as an artist, though now he is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its serene humanism and its use of geometric forms,...
and Fra Filippo Lippi, sculptor
Luca della RobbiaLuca della Robbia was an Italian sculptor from Florence, noted for his terracotta roundels.Luca Della Robbia developed a pottery glaze that made his creations more durable in the outdoors and thus suitable for use on the exterior of buildings. His work is noted for its charm rather than the drama...
, and architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio,
Antonio PollaiuoloAntonio del Pollaiolo , also known as Antonio di Jacopo Pollaiuolo or Antonio Pollaiolo, was an Italian painter, sculptor, engraver and goldsmith during the Renaissance.-Biography:...
and the portrait sculptor,
Mino da FiesoleMino da Fiesole , also known as Mino di Giovanni, was an Italian sculptor from Poppi, Tuscany. He is noted for his portrait busts. His work was influenced by his master Desiderio da Settignano and by Antonio Rossellino, and is characterized by its sharp, angular treatment of drapery...
whose lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni.
Leonardo's youth was spent in a Florence that was ornamented by the works of these artists and by Donatello's contemporaries,
MasaccioMasaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance...
whose figurative
frescoFresco is any of several related mural painting types, done on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the Germanic-derived adjective frisch...
es were imbued with realism and emotion and Ghiberti whose
Gates of Paradise, gleaming with
gold leafright|thumb|250px|[[Burnishing]] gold leaf with an [[agate]] stone tool, during the water gilding processGold leaf is gold that is beaten into extremely thin sheets. The thin gold sheets are commonly used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades...
, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective, and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and
Alberti'sLeon Battista Alberti was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath...
Treatise were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.
Massaccio's depiction of the naked and distraught
Adam and EveAdam and Eve were, according to the Book of Genesis of the Bible and the Qur'an, the first man and woman created by God.-Narrative:...
leaving the Garden of Eden created a powerfully expressive image of the human form, cast into three dimensions by the use of
light and shadeChiaroscuro in art is characterized by strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition...
which was to be developed in the works of Leonardo in a way that was to be influential in the course of painting. The Humanist influence of Donatello's David can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly
John the BaptistSt. John the Baptist is an oil painting on walnut wood by the artist Leonardo da Vinci. Completed from 1513 to 1516, when the High Renaissance was metamorphosing into Mannerism, it is believed to be his last painting. The original size of the work was 69x57 cm. It is now exhibited at the Musée du...
.
A prevalent tradition in Florence was the small altarpiece of the Virgin and Child. Many of these were created in
temperaTempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the first centuries AD still...
or glazed terracotta by the workshops of Filippo Lippi, Verrocchio and the prolific
della RobbiaLuca della Robbia was an Italian sculptor from Florence, noted for his terracotta roundels.Luca Della Robbia developed a pottery glaze that made his creations more durable in the outdoors and thus suitable for use on the exterior of buildings. His work is noted for its charm rather than the drama...
family. Leonardo's early Madonnas such as the
The Madonna with a carnationThe Madonna of the Carnation, a.k.a. Madonna with vase or Madonna with child, is an oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci created around 1478-1480 . It is permanently displayed at the Alte Pinakothek gallery in Munich, Germany since 1889 after it was in private ownership.The central motif is young...
and
The Benois MadonnaMadonna and Child with Flowers, otherwise known as the Benois Madonna, could be one of two Madonnas started by Leonardo da Vinci, as he remarked himself, in October 1478. The other one could be Madonna with the Carnation from Munich....
followed this tradition while showing idiosyncratic departures, particularly in the case of the Benois Madonna in which the Virgin is set at an oblique angle to the picture space with the Christ Child at the opposite angle. This compositional theme was to emerge in Leonardo's later paintings such as
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne.
Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli,
Domenico GhirlandaioDomenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.-Early years:Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi...
and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was. He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the Academy of the
MediciThe House of Medici or de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside, gradually...
. Botticelli was a particular favourite of the Medici family and thus his success as a painter was assured. Ghirlandaio and Perugino were both prolific and ran large workshops. They competently delivered commissions to well-satisfied patrons who appreciated Ghirlandaio's ability to portray the wealthy citizens of Florence within large religious frescoes, and Perugino's ability to deliver a multitude of saints and angels of unfailing sweetness and innocence. These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the
Sistine ChapelSistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture, evocative of Solomon's Temple of the Old Testament, and its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists...
, the work commencing with Perugino's employment in 1479. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. His first significant commission, The
Adoration of the MagiThe Adoration of the Magi is an early painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was given the commission by the Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopeto in Florence, but departed for Milan the following year, leaving the painting unfinished...
for the Monks of Scopeto, was never completed.
In 1476, during the time of Leonardo's association with Verrocchio's workshop, the Portinari Altarpiece by
Hugo van der GoesHugo van der Goes was a Flemish painter. He was, along with Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Gerard David, one of the most important of the Early Netherlandish painters....
arrived in Florence, bringing
new painterly techniquesEarly Netherlandish painting is the work of those painters who were active in the Low Countries during the 15th and early 16th century Northern renaissance, especially in the flourishing cities of Bruges and Ghent...
from Northern Europe which were to profoundly effect Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others. In 1479, the Sicilian painter
Antonello da MessinaAntonello da Messina, properly Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio was an Italian painter from Sicily, active during the Italian Renaissance...
, who worked exclusively in oils, traveled north on his way to
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy known both for tourism and for industry, and is the capital of the region Veneto, with a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area...
, where the leading painter,
Giovanni BelliniGiovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
adopted the technique of
oil paintingOil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil — especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their...
, quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo was also later to visit Venice.
Like the two contemporary architects, Bramante and
Antonio da Sangallo the ElderAntonio da Sangallo the Elder was a Florentine architect active during the Italian Renaissance. His father Francesco Giamberti was a woodworker, and his brother Giuliano da Sangallo and nephew Antonio da Sangallo the Younger were architects. To a great extent he worked in partnership with his...
, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.
Leonardo's political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478. Ludovico il Moro who ruled
MilanMilan is a city in Italy and the capital of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1,300,000, while the urban area is the first in Italy and the fifth largest in the European Union with a population of 4,345,000 over an area of...
between 1479–1499 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo's age.
With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neo Platonism,
Cristoforo LandinoCristoforo Landino was an Italian humanist and an important figure of the Florentine Renaissance.-Biography:A member of a noble family from the Casentino, Landino was born in Florence in 1424. He studied law and Greek...
, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and
John ArgyropoulosJohn Argyropoulos was a Greek lecturer, philosopher and humanist, one of the émigré scholars who pioneered the revival of Classical learning in Western Europe in the 15th century...
, teacher of Greek and translator of
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is...
were foremost. Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo was to receive his important Milanese commissions, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment.
Although usually named together as the three giants of the
High RenaissanceThe High Renaissance, in the history of art, denotes the culmination of the art of the Italian Renaissance between 1450 and 1527. Because Pope Julius II patronized many artists during this time, the movement was centered in Rome; it had previously been centered in Florence.The High Renaissance is...
, Leonardo,
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer...
and
RaphaelRaffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings...
were not of the same generation. Leonardo was twenty-three when Michelangelo was born and thirty-one when Raphael was born. Raphael only lived until the age of 37 and died in 1520, the year after Leonardo, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45 years.
Personal life
Within Leonardo's lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his "outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind" as described by Vasari, as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect is his respect for life evidenced by his
vegetarianismVegetarianism is the practice of following a plant-based diet including fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, nuts, and seeds, with or without dairy products and eggs. A vegetarian does not eat meat, including red meat, game, poultry, fish, crustacea, shellfish, or products of animal slaughter such...
and his habit, described by Vasari, of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.
Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned either in their fields or for their historical significance. They included the mathematician
Luca PacioliFra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and seminal contributor to the field now known as accounting, for which he is often regarded as the "Father of Accounting"...
, with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s, as well as
Franchinus GaffuriusFranchinus Gaffurius was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was an almost exact contemporary of Josquin des Prez and Leonardo da Vinci, both of whom were his personal friends...
and
Isabella d'EsteIsabella d'Este was Marchesa of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure...
. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Isabella d'Este. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through
MantuaMantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the whole country itself...
, and which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait now lost.
Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by
Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry...
.
Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi describing Leonardo's feelings for him as both loving and intensely passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with
sodomySodomy is a term used in the law to describe the act of "unnatural" sex, which depending on jurisdiction can consist of oral sex or anal sex or any non-genital to genital congress, whether heterosexual, or homosexual, or with human or animal....
, and acquitted. Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in
John the Baptist and
Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.
Assistants and pupils
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed
Salai or
Il Salaino ("The Little Unclean One" i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo's household in 1490. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton", after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on clothes. Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence and he remained in Leonardo's household for the next thirty years. Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him a great deal about painting", his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils, such as Marco d'Oggione and Boltraffio. In 1515, he painted a nude version of the
Mona LisaMona Lisa is a sixteenth-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel in Florence, Italy by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci during the Renaissance...
, known as
Monna Vanna. Salai owned the
Mona Lisa at the time of his death in 1525, and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.
In 1506, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count
Francesco MelziFrancesco Melzi was an Italian painter, beloved assistant and pupil of Leonardo da Vinci.The son of a Milanese noble family, Melzi joined the household of Leonardo da Vinci in 1506. Melzi accompanied Leonardo on trips to Rome in 1513 and to France in 1517. As a painter, Melzi worked closely with...
, the son of a
LombardLombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country...
aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo, and remained with him until the latter's death. Upon Leonardo's death, Melzi inherited the artistic and scientific works, manuscripts, and collections of Leonardo, and faithfully administered the estate.
Painting
Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his enormous fame rested on his achievements as a painter and on a handful of works, either authenticated or attributed to him that have been regarded as among the supreme masterpieces ever created.
These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities which have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. Among the qualities that make Leonardo's work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in
physiognomyPhysiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...
and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the
Mona Lisa, the
Last Supper and the
Virgin of the Rocks.
Early works
Leonardo's early works begin with the
Baptism of ChristThe Baptism of Christ is a painting finished around 1475 by the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci and his workshop. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence....
painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at the workshop, both of which are
AnnunciationAnnunciation is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary that she would become the Theotokos . Despite being a virgin, Mary would miraculously conceive a child who would be called the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Jesus, meaning "YHWH delivers"...
s. One is small, long and high. It is a "predella" to go at the base of a larger composition, in this case a painting by
Lorenzo di CrediLorenzo di Credi was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor. He first influenced Leonardo da Vinci and then was greatly influenced by him.-Life:...
from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, long. In both these Annunciations, Leonardo has used a formal arrangement, such as in Fra Angelico's two well known pictures of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now almost universally attributed to Leonardo.
In the smaller picture Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God's will. In the larger picture, however, Mary is not in the least submissive. The beautiful girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise. This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the Mother of God not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting the young Leonardo presents the
HumanistHumanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. The term can mean several things, for example a historical movement associated especially with the Italian Renaissance; an approach to education that uses literary means or a focus on the...
face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity's role in God's incarnation.
Paintings of the 1480s
In the 1480s Leonardo received two very important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Unfortunately two of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One of these paintings is that of
St. Jerome in the WildernessSt Jerome in the Wilderness is an unfinished painting by Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Vatican Museums, Rome.-Description:The painting depicts Saint Jerome during his retreat to the Syrian desert, where he lived the life of a hermit...
. Bortolon associates this picture with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, and the signs of melancholy in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die."
Although the painting is barely begun the composition can be seen and it is very unusual. Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo's anatomical studies. Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.
The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the
Adoration of the MagiThe Adoration of the Magi is an early painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was given the commission by the Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopeto in Florence, but departed for Milan the following year, leaving the painting unfinished...
, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a very complex composition about . Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined
classical architectureClassical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...
which makes part of the backdrop to the scene. But in 1482 Leonardo went off to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro and the painting was abandoned.
The third important work of this period is the
Virgin of the RocksThe Virgin of the Rocks is the usual title used for both of two different paintings with almost identical compositions, which are at least largely by Leonardo da Vinci. They are in the Louvre, Paris, and the National Gallery, London.-Louvre version:This version is in the Louvre painted around...
which was commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece, already constructed. Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the Infant
John the BaptistJohn the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene, as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.
While the painting is quite large, about , it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de Predis their payment, until the next century.
Paintings of the 1490s
Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is
The Last SupperThe Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este...
, also painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death. It shows specifically the moment when Jesus has said "one of you will betray me". Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.
The novelist
Matteo Bandello-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...
observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat, and then not paint for three or four days at a time. This, according to Vasari, was beyond the comprehension of the prior, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the Duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.
When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation, but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined". Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface which was subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos.
Paintings of the 1500s
Among the works created by Leonardo in the 1500s is the small portrait known as the
Mona LisaMona Lisa is a sixteenth-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel in Florence, Italy by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci during the Renaissance...
or "la Gioconda", the laughing one. In the present era it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman's face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called "
sfumatoSfumato is one of the four canonical painting modes of the Renaissance . It corresponds to the concept of 'low-contrast' in photography. The Italian word sfumato captures the idea precisely...
" or Leonardo's smoke. Vasari, who is generally thought to have known the painting only by repute, said that "the smile was so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original".
Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing
oilsOil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...
, but laid on much like
temperaTempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the first centuries AD still...
and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable. Vasari expressed the opinion that the manner of painting would make even "the most confident master ... despair and lose heart." The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is extremely rare in a panel painting of this date.
In the
Virgin and Child with St. Anne (see below ) the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape which Wasserman describes as "breathtakingly beautiful" and harks back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice. This painting, which was copied many times, was to influence
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer...
,
RaphaelRaffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings...
, and
Andrea del SartoAndrea del Sarto was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early-Mannerism...
, and through them
PontormoJacopo Carucci , usually known as Jacopo da Pontormo, Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo, was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine school. His work represents a profound stylistic shift from the calm perspectival regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine...
and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters
TintorettoTintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was an Italian painter and a notable exponent of the Venetian Renaissance school...
and
VeronesePaolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...
.
Drawings
Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as
The Adoration of the Magi,
The Virgin of the Rocks and
The Last Supper.
His earliest dated drawing is a
Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.
Among his famous drawings are the
Vitruvian ManThe Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs...
, a study of the proportions of the human body, the
Head of an Angel, for
The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre, a botanical study of
Star of Bethlehem and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of the
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London. This drawing employs the subtle
sfumatoSfumato is one of the four canonical painting modes of the Renaissance . It corresponds to the concept of 'low-contrast' in photography. The Italian word sfumato captures the idea precisely...
technique of shading, in the manner of the
Mona Lisa. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne in the Louvre.
Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that if Leonardo saw a person with an interesting face he would follow them around all day observing them. There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salai, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile".
[The "Grecian profile" has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many Classical Greek]Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages.-Geometric:The origins of Greek sculptures have been ascribed to the wooden cult statues described by Pausanias as xoana. No such statue survives, and the descriptions of them are vague...
statues. These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior. Salai is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de'Medici, in the Pazzi Conspiracy. With dispassionate integrity Leonardo has registered in neat
mirror writingMirror writing is formed by writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language, such that the result is the mirror image of normal writing: it appears normal when it is reflected in a mirror. It is sometimes used as an extremely primitive form of cipher...
the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.
Leonardo as observer, scientist and inventor
Journals
Renaissance humanismRenaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform, engaged in by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and turn-of-the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Medieval scholastic education,...
saw no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and
natural philosophyNatural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...
(the forerunner of modern science). These notes were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.
The journals are mostly written in mirror-image cursive. The reason may have been more a practical expediency than for reasons of secrecy as is often suggested. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it is probable that it was easier for him to write from right to left.
[Left-handed writers using a split nib or quill pen experience difficulty pushing the pen from left to right across the page.]
His notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirl pools, war machines, helicopters and architecture.
These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes, distributed by friends after his death—have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at
Windsor CastleWindsor Castle, in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, is the largest inhabited castle in the world and, dating back to the time of William the Conqueror, is the oldest in continuous occupation. The castle's floor area is about ....
, the Louvre, the
Biblioteca Nacional de EspañaThe Biblioteca Nacional de España is a major public library, the largest in Spain.It is located in Madrid, on the Paseo de Recoletos.-History:...
, the
Victoria and Albert MuseumThe Victoria and Albert Museum , in The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. Named after Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, it was founded in 1852, and has...
, the
Biblioteca AmbrosianaThe Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo , whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books...
in
MilanMilan is a city in Italy and the capital of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1,300,000, while the urban area is the first in Italy and the fifth largest in the European Union with a population of 4,345,000 over an area of...
which holds the twelve-volume
Codex AtlanticusThe Codex Atlanticus is a twelve-volume, bound set of drawings and writings by Leonardo da Vinci, the largest such set; its name indicates its atlas-like breadth. It comprises 1,119 pages dating from 1478 to 1519, the contents covering a great variety of subjects, from flight to weaponry to...
, and
British LibraryThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. The library is one of the world's largest research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, patents, databases, maps, stamps,...
in
LondonLondon is the capital of England and the United Kingdom . It is Britain's largest and most populous metropolitan area. A major settlement for two millennia, its history goes back to its founding by the Romans, who called it Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, or the 'square mile'...
which has put a selection from its notebook
BL Arundel MS 263 online. The
Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands. It is owned by
Bill GatesWilliam Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen....
, and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world.
Leonardo's journals appear to have been intended for publication because many of the sheets have a form and order that would facilitate this. In many cases a single topic, for example, the heart or the human foetus, is covered in detail in both words and pictures, on a single sheet.
[This method of organisation minimises of loss of data in the case of pages being mixed up or destroyed.] Why they were not published within Leonardo's lifetime is unknown.
Scientific studies
Leonardo's approach to science was an observational one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or
theoreticalIn philosophy, theory refers to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action, including "practice" actions done for their own sake, or actions done because instrumental to some other aim...
explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and
mathematicsMathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. In the 1490s he studied mathematics under
Luca PacioliFra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and seminal contributor to the field now known as accounting, for which he is often regarded as the "Father of Accounting"...
and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book
De Divina Proportione, published in 1509.
It appears that from the content of his journals he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on
anatomyAnatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy...
was said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis D'Aragon's secretary in 1517. Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by his pupil Francesco Melzi and eventually published as
Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da VinciA Treatise on Painting is a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's writings entered in his notebooks under the general heading "On Painting". The manuscripts were gathered together by Francesco Melzi sometime before 1542 and first printed in French and Italian as Trattato della pittura by Raffaelo du...
in France and Italy in 1651, and Germany in 1724, with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicholas Poussin. According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into sixty two editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art".
A recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as Scientist by Frtijof Capra argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him. Leonardo's experimentation followed clear scientific method approaches, and his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting; these, and Leonardo's unique integrated, holistic views of science make him a forerunner of modern systems theory and complexity schools of thought.
Anatomy
Leonardo's formal training in the
anatomyAnatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy...
of the
human bodyThe human body is the entire structure of a human organism, and consists of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs.By the time the human reaches adulthood, the body consists of close to 50 trillion cells, the basic unit of life...
began with his apprenticeship to
Andrea del VerrocchioAndrea del Verrocchio , born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, was an Italian sculptor, goldsmith and painter who worked at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi, but he also influenced Michelangelo...
, his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of
topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of
muscleMuscle is the contractile tissue of animals and is derived from the mesodermal layer of embryonic germ cells. Muscle cells contain contractile filaments that move past each other and change the size of the cell. They are classified as skeletal, cardiac, or smooth muscles. Their function is to...
s,
tendonA tendon is a tough band of fibrous connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and is capable of withstanding tension. Tendons are similar to ligaments and fascia as they are all made of collagen except that ligaments join one bone to another bone, and fascia connect muscles to other...
s and other visible anatomical features.
As a successful artist, he was given permission to
dissectDissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components.-In biology:...
human corpses at the
Hospital of Santa Maria NuovaHospital of Santa Maria Nuova is the oldest hospital still active in Florence.-Origins:The hospital was founded in 1288 by Folco Portinari, the father of Beatrice beloved by Dante...
in
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence...
and later at hospitals in Milan and
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in...
. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor
Marcantonio della TorreMarcantonio della Torre was a Renaissance Professor of Anatomy who lectured at Pavia and at the University of Padua.It is believed that della Torre and Leonardo da Vinci, who studied the human anatomy by dissecting corpses, were intending to publish a book, but this did not eventuate as della...
and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading
Treatise on painting.
Leonardo drew many studies of the
human skeletonThe human skeleton consists of both fused and individual bones supported and supplemented by ligaments, tendons, muscles and cartilage. It serves as a scaffold which supports organs, anchors muscles, and protects organs such as the brain, lungs and heart....
and its parts, as well as muscles and sinews, the heart and
vascular systemThe circulatory system is an organ system that passes nutrients , gases, hormones, blood cells, etc. to and from cells in the body to help fight diseases and help stabilize body temperature and pH to maintain homeostasis.This system may be seen strictly as a blood distribution network, but some...
, the sex organs, and other internal organs. He made one of the first scientific drawings of a
fetusA fetus is a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate after the embryonic stage and before birth....
in utero. As an artist, Leonardo closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He also drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.
Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many other animals as well, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.
Engineering and inventions
During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River, a project on which
Niccolò MachiavelliNiccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher/writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, musician, and a playwright, but foremost, he was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
also worked. Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include
musical instrumentsThe viola organista was an experimental musical instrument invented by Leonardo da Vinci. It was the first bowed keyboard instrument ever to be devised....
, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a
steam cannonA steam cannon is a cannon that launches a projectile using only heat and water. The first steam cannon was designed by Archimedes during the Siege of Syracuse. Leonardo da Vinci was also known to have designed one....
.
In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span bridge as part of a
civil engineeringCivil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works such as bridges, roads, canals, dams and buildings...
project for Ottoman
SultanSultan is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain Muslim rulers who...
Beyazid II of
IstanbulIstanbul is the largest city in Turkey and fourth largest city proper in the world with a population of 12.8 million, also making it the second largest metropolitan area in Europe by population, and the largest metropolitan city proper...
. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the
BosporusThe Bosphorus or Bosporus , also known as the Istanbul Strait , is a strait that forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with the Dardanelles...
known as the
Golden HornThe Golden Horn is a historic inlet of the Bosphorus dividing the city of Istanbul and forming the natural harbor that has sheltered Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and other ships for thousands of years...
. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a
smaller bridgeThe Da Vinci Project by Norwegian painter and artist Vebjørn Sand consists of a number of installations in Norway.The most well known of these is the reconstruction in a smaller scale of a 240 m span Leonardo bridge project that Leonardo proposed in 1502 as part of a civil engineering project for...
based on his design was constructed in Norway. On May 17, 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the
Golden HornThe Golden Horn is a historic inlet of the Bosphorus dividing the city of Istanbul and forming the natural harbor that has sheltered Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and other ships for thousands of years...
.
For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of
flightFlight is the process by which an object moves either through the air, or movement beyond earth's atmosphere , by generating lift, propulsive thrust or aerostatically using buoyancy, or by simple ballistic movement....
, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c. 1505
Codex on the Flight of BirdsCodex on the Flight of Birds is a relatively short codex of circa 1505 by Leonardo da Vinci. It comprises 18 folios and measures 21 × 15 centimetres. Now held at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, Italy, the codex begins with an examination of the flight behavior of birds and proposes mechanisms for...
, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a
helicopterA helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine driven rotors. In contrast with fixed-wing aircraft, this allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards and laterally...
and a light hang glider. Most were impractical, like his aerial screw helicopter design that could not provide lift. However, the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated.
Leonardo the legend
Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. The interest in Leonardo has never slackened. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks,
T-shirtA T-shirt is a shirt which is pulled on over the head to cover most of a person's torso. A T-shirt is usually buttonless and collarless, with a round neck and short sleeves. However, many people incorrectly use the term T-shirt to describe any short sleeved shirt or blouse; a polo shirt or other...
s bear his most famous drawing and writers, like Vasari, continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in.
Giorgio VasariGiorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian and architect, who is today famous for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
, in the enlarged edition of
Lives of the ArtistsThe Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, or Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, as it was originally known in Italian, is a series of artist biographies written by 16th century Italian painter and architect...
, 1568, introduced his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words:
The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes.
Baldassare CastiglioneBaldassare Castiglione, count of Novilara was an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissance author.-Biography:...
, author of
Il Cortegiano ("The Courtier"), wrote in 1528: "... Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled ..." while the biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote, c. 1540: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf ...".
The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing
Henry FuseliHenry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of German-Swiss origin.-Biography:...
to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius ..." This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."
By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo's notebooks was known, as well as his paintings.
Hippolyte TaineHippolyte Adolphe Taine was a French critic and historian. He was the chief theoretical influence of French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism, and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate...
wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."
The famous art historian
Bernard BerensonBernard Berenson was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".-Personal life:...
wrote in 1896: "Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values."
The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found. Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: "Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge ... Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe."
About Leonardo
- Cultural depictions of Leonardo da Vinci
- Leonardo da Vinci's personal life
The personal life of Leonardo da Vinci, , has been a subject that has excited interest, enquiry and speculation since within a few years of his death...
- List of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci
- Category:Leonardo da Vinci paintings
- Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath, regarded as the epitome of the "Renaissance Man", displaying skills in numerous diverse areas of study. Whilst most famous for his paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, Leonardo is also renowned as a scientist, engineer and inventor...
- Codex Arundel
Codex Arundel, is a bound collection of pages of notes written by Leonardo da Vinci and dating mostly from between 1480 and 1518. The codex contains a number of treatises on a variety of subjects, including mechanics and geometry...
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External links