FRA Angelico

Léonard de Vinci ( Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci in Italian) born with Vinci the April 15th 1452 and died in Amboise the May 2nd 1519 is a Polymathe, man of universal spirit, at the same time Artiste, Scientifique, Mathématicien, Engineer, Inventeur, Anatomiste, painter, Sculpteur, Architecte, Urbaniste, Botaniste, Musicien, Poète, Philosophe and writer.

After his childhood with Vinci, Léonard is pupil near the famous painter Florentin Andrea del Verrocchio. Its first important work is completed with the service of the duke Ludovic Sforza with Milan. It works then with Rome, Bologna and Venice, and spends the last years of its life to France, with the invitation of the king François I {{er}}.

Léonard de Vinci is often described like the Archétype and the Symbole of the man of the Renaissance, a universal genius and a Philosophe Humaniste whose infinite curiosity is only equalized by the force of invention. He is regarded as one of the great painters of all times and perhaps the most talented person in the greatest number of different fields having ever lived.

It is initially as painter who Léonard de Vinci was famous and is still currently. Two of its works, the Mona Lisa and Cène are the two most recopied most famous paintings, and most parodied. Nevertheless, these some works, united with its notebooks which contain drawings, diagrams scientific and reflections on the nature of painting are a contribution to the following generations artists only equalized by Michel-Angel.

As engineer and inventor, Léonard develops ideas very advances some over his time, since the Hélicoptère, the Tank, the Sous-marin until the Bicyclette and the Automobile. He describes also a rudimentary theory of the Plate tectonics . Very few of its projects were built or were even only possible of alive sound, but some of its smaller inventions as a automatic Bobine or a machine to measure the elastic Limite of a cable entered the world of manufacture. As a scientist, Léonard de Vinci makes much progress knowledge in the fields of the Anatomie, the Civil engineering, the Optique and the Hydrodynamique.

Biography

Childhood

Léonard de Vinci was born saturdays April 15th 1452 “per third hour from the night”, i.e. three hours after the Ave Maria, that is to say 22:30, of an illegitimate love affair between his father, Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, notary, chancellor and ambassador of the Republic florentine and descendant of a rich person family of notable Italy NS, and his mother, Caterina, a humble girl of peasants, in the Tuscan small village of Anchiano, a village located at two kilometers of Vinci, on the territory of Florence in Italy . Léonard, or rather Lionardo according to its Christian name. It has five godmothers and five godfathers, all inhabitants the village.

At that time, modern conventions of name did not develop yet in Europe. Only the big families make use of the name of their patronymic membership. The man of the people is designated by his first name with which one associates any useful precision: the name of the father, the place of origin, a nickname, the name of the Master for a craftsman, etc Consequently, the name of the artist is Leonardo di ser Piero Da Vinci , which means Leonardo, wire of Master Piero De Vinci ; nevertheless the “Da” carries a capital letter in order to distinguish which it is about a patronym.

Formation with the workshop of Verrochio

In 1466, Léonard is 14 years old and its family settles with Florence. The Léonard young person is close to the nature, which it observes with a sharp curiosity and is interested in all. He draws already caricatures and writing with back (writing out of mirror) in Tuscan Dialecte. Giorgio Vasari, in its biography of Léonard, tells an anecdote on the first steps in the artistic career of that which was going to become one of the great painters of the Renaissance. One day, the father of Léonard, Ser Piero, “took several of its drawings and submitted them to his/her friend Andrea del Verrocchio whom he urged to say to him if Léonard were to devote itself to the art of the drawing and if he could arrive to something in this matter. Andrea was extremely astonished by the extraordinary beginnings of Léonard and exhorted Ser Piero to be allowed to him to choose this trade, on what, Ser Piero solved that Léonard would enter to the workshop of Andrea. Léonard was not made request twice; nonglad to exert this trade, he exerted then all those which are attached to the art of the drawing. ” Thus Léonard was placed as raises apprentice in one of the most prestigious workshops of art of the Rebirth of Florence under the patronage of Andrea del Verrocchio with which it owes its multidisciplinary formation of excellence, where it côtoya of other artists like Sandro Botticelli, Pérugin and Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Verrocchio was a very eclectic famous artist: goldsmith and blacksmith of formation. Léonard also works with Antonio Pollaiuolo to which the workshop is close to that of Verrocchio.

After one year spent to the cleaning of the brushes and other small work of apprentice, Léonard is initiated by Verrocchio with the many techniques which were practiced in a traditional workshop, in spite of the fact that certain craftsmen were specialized in certain tasks such as the framing, gildings and the work of the Bronze. He thus on the occasion to learn in particular from the bases of the Chimie, of the Métallurgie, the work of the Cuir and the Plâtre, the Mécanique and the Menuiserie, as well as artistic techniques of Dessin, Peinture and Sculpture on Marbre and Bronze. He is also initiated with the preparation of the colors, engraving, the painting of the frescos. Thereafter, Verrocchio entrusts to its pupil, whom it finds exceptional, the privileged care to finish its tables.

There is no work of Léonard known for this period but, according to Vasari, it would have collaborated in a named painting the Baptism of Christ (1472-1475). The Néoplatonisme sails about it at the time in Florence perhaps also plays a part in its departure towards a more academic and pragmatic city like Milan. It will be accompanied most probably accompanied by the musician Atalante Migliorotti. Louis XII plans to cut out the wall representing Cène to carry it in France. With the fall of Sforza, Léonard and his assistant Salai flee Milan for Mantoue then Venice.

Artist and engineer

In March 1500, it is with Venice for two months after having remained with Mantoue in company of the scientific Moine Luca Pacioli where it was strongly noticed for a portrait of Isabelle d' Este. Léonard is then employed as architect and military engineer. He makes a short stay with Rome with the Tivoli Villa for the study of the Antiques, realization for the powerful Secretary of State of Louis XII of France, Florimond Robertet, of a Virgin to the spindle in 1510 .

In 1502, it is called by the prince César Borgia, duke of Valentinois and wire of the pope Alexandre VI, with the title of “captain and general engineer” and the painting of Léonard is known only starting from preparatory sketches and several copies of the center section, of which most known is probably that of Pierre Paul Rubens, its opinion is opposed to that of “divine” and this last obtains win. It returns to work in Milan which is from now on under the control of Maximilien Sforza thanks to the support of the Swiss Mercenaires. Many the pupils and the followers more in sight in painting know or work with Léonard in Milan.

His/her father dies and Léonard is isolated heritage by his illegitimacy. The same year, Louis XII of France requests Florence, where of Vinci makes anatomical studies and tries to classify its innumerable notes so that the Master returns to Milan. Léonard starts to work the Mona Lisa (1503-1506 then 1510-1515)) who is a portrait of Mona LISA del Giocondo born LISA Maria Gherardini. However, of many interpretations about this table are still discussed.

In 1505, it studies the flight Oiseau X and writes the Codex Turin. One year later, the government of Florence allows him to join the Gouverneur French of Milan Charles d' Amboise, which retains it near him in spite of the protests of the seigniory. The painter becomes the heir to his uncle Francesco in 1507, but its nephews set in motion a procedure to break the will. Louis XII of France is with Milan and Léonard is again the director of the festivals given in the capital lombarde. In 1508, beginning of the design of the holy Anne , today with the Museum of Louvre. At the time, he saw in his house in Milan, Porta Eastern in the parish of Santa Babila. In November 1515, it considers a new project of installation of the Médicis district to Florence. December 19th, Léonard is present at Bologna for the meeting between François 1st and the pope Leon X. François 1st Léonard load to conceive a mechanical Lion which can go and whose chest opens to reveal Lys.

It leaves to work in France in 1516 with its assistant painter Francesco Melzi where its new Mécène and guard, the king of France François I {{er}} installs it with the Clos Lucé near the Château of Amboise, the residence of the king, as a “first painter, first engineer and first architect of the king” but that are disputed because the epitaph brought back by Giorgio Vasari, and which seen forever on any monument, contains “Sinu Regio”, an expression extremely vague, and probably metaphorical, which can be translated by at king or like an allusion to died of Léonard in a royal castle. In the same way, at that time, the court is with the Château of Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer, where the queen is confined of the king Henri II of France, the March 31st, and the royal decrees given on May 1st are gone back to this place. Besides the newspaper of François 1st does not announce any voyage of the king until July. To finish, the pupil of Léonard de Vinci, Francesco Melzi, to which it bequeaths its books and its brushes and which is agent of its will, writing with the brother of the great painter a letter where it tells the death of his Master. Not a word referred there to the circumstance mentioned above and which, if it had been proven, would certainly not have been forgotten.

According to its last wills, soixantes beggars follows his procession and it is buried with the Saint-Hubert vault, in the enclosure of the Château of Amboise. Léonard de Vinci, all his unmarried life and not having never had neither woman nor children, bequeathed the whole of its considerable work to make them publish. Its manuscripts, notebooks, documents and instruments were offered to its preferred disciple, Francesco Melzi, raises since its 10 years. After having accompanied it in France, it remained close to Léonard de Vinci until his death and managed its heritage during the fifty years following the death of its Master. However, it will not publish anything the work of Léonard and many paintings, whose Joconde , were still in its possession in its workshop. The vines of Léonard will be divided between Salai, another pupil and disciple very appreciated by Vinci and entered to its service at the 15 years age and, its serving Battista di Vilussis. The ground will be bequeathed to the brothers of Léonard and its maidservant accepted a black coat with the edges in fur.

It is the beginning of dispersion and the loss of two thirds of the fifty thousand multidisciplinary original documents compiled in old Tuscan and encrypted by Léonard de Vinci. Each notebook, manuscript, page, sketch, drawing, text and note are regarded as a work of art to whole share. There would approximately remain only thirteen thousand documents, including one major part is filed with the the Vatican.

Twenty years after the death of Léonard, François Ier will say to the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini:

“It there forever have another man born with the world which knew some as much as Léonard, not as much in painting, sculpture and architecture, as he was a large philosopher”.

Relations and influences

Florence - artistic and social Context of Léonard

Léonard began his Apprentissage with Andrea del Verrocchio in 1466, year when the Master of Verrocchio, the large sculptor Donatello, died. The painter Paolo Uccello, whose first experiments with the prospect influenced the development of the painting of the landscapes, was very old. The painters Piero della Francesca and FRA Filippo Lippi, the sculptor Luca della Robbia and of the architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti were approximately 60 years old. The most famous artists of the following generation were the Master of Léonard Andrea del Verrocchio, Antonio Pollaiuolo and the sculptor Mino da Fiesole.

The youth of Léonard occurred in a Florence decorated by works from these artists and the contemporaries from Donatello, Masaccio of which frescos figurative and realistic were impregnated of emotion, and Lorenzo Ghiberti, whose Portes of the Paradise showed the complexity of the compositions combining architectural work and care of the details. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of the prospect and was the first painter to make a scientific study of the Lumière. These studies and the treaties of Leone Battista Alberti were to have a deep effect on the young artists and in particular on the proper observations of Léonard and his works of art.

The representation of the naked of Massaccio showing Adam and Eve leaving the paradise without having their genitals masked by a vineleaf created a very expressive image of the human forms which will influence much painting, in particular because they were expressed in three dimensions by an innovative use of the light and shade, that Léonard will develop in his own works. The Humanisme of the Rebirth influencing David of Donatello can be seen in the latest paintings of Léonard, in particular Saint Jean Baptiste . Léonard wrote later in the margin of a newspaper “Médicis made me and Médicis destroyed me”; but the direction of this comment remains discussed, known as “ it Salaino ” (“little devil”) or Salai, was described by Giorgio Vasari like “gracious and beautiful young man with fine and buckled hair, in which Léonard was largely delighted”. Nevertheless, the notebooks of Léonard of the first years of their relation contain many images of the teenager. Salted remained his/her companion, his servant and his assistant during the thirty following years.

Salted carried out a certain number of tables under the name of “Andrea Salai”, but, although Giorgio Vasari claims that Léonard “learned to him much from things on painting”. The Joconde , pertaining to Salai, its death in 1525, was estimated at five hundred and five to read S, which is an exceptionally high value for a portrait of small size.

The closest relations of Léonard were with his pupils: Salted and Francesco Melzi. Melzi wrote that the feelings of Léonard were a mixture of love and passion. It was asserted since the 16th century that these relations were of an erotic nature. Since this date, he was written much of things about his supposed homosexuality and the role of that in his art, in particular in the impression Androgyne and the erotic which appear in Bacchus and more explicitly in a certain number of his drawings.

Vinci was impassioned by nature and the animals at the point to become Végétarien and to buy birds out of cage about it to return their freedom to them. It was moreover very good musician.

It is also allowed that Léonard was Gaucher and Ambidextre, which would explain its use of the specular writing, and which it was enough scorning towards the children born of the lust instead of the love.

These paintings are famous for many reasons and qualities which were imitated much by the students and were discussed very lengthily by the experts and the critics. Among qualities which make work of Léonard of the single parts is often quoted the innovative techniques which it used in the application of painting, his thorough knowledge of the Anatomie human and animal, of botany and geology but also its use in the light, its interest for the Physiognomonie and the way in which the human ones use the register of the emotions and the gestural expressions , its direction of the composition and its subtle direction of the color gradations. It controlled in particular the techniques of “Clearly-obscure Sfumato” and “”. All these qualities are joins together in its most known tables, the Mona Lisa , Cène and the Virgin with the rocks .

Léonard carried out very many portraits of women but only one portrait of man, that of a musician, was found to date. The following sentence is often lent to him: “The character worthiest of praises is that which, by his movement, translated best passions of the heart”, which explains its thought of painter well. However, it also drew caricatural sketches of its contemporaries in the fashion of the grotesque .

Léonard is especially famous for his drawings and his paintings into which it introduces his concepts of mathematics, in particular the Golden section, and uses the perspective . Vinci estimated that painting was a science.

In the smallest table, Marie diverts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture which symbolizes the tender with the will of God. In the largest table, however, Marie does not seem also flexible. The young woman, stopped in her reading by this unexpected messenger that is the angel, places her finger in her Bible to locate where it is and raises of it the hand in a gesture of greeting or surprise. This last table is obviously worked by several people, since certain discontinuities of style are perceptible, like a “error” of prospect on the right-hand man of Marie, the pre one flowered like a Broderie or the wings of Rapace S with the angel. The table depicts the penitence of Jerome de Stridon in the desert. Penitent, Jerome occupies the medium of the image, the body slightly in diagonal. Its knelt posture takes a trapezoidal form , with an arm tended towards the edge external of painting and its glance going in the opposite direction. Jack Wasserman underlines the bond between this painting and the anatomical studies of Léonard. The table is almost as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of San Donato, even if it has only four characters and not fifty and if it depicts a landscape rather than an architectural bottom. The table was completed; but, in fact, two versions of painting were made, that which remained with the vault of the brotherhood and the other that Léonard in France carrycarried. But the brothers did not have their painting before the next century.

The other characteristics found in this work are vestimentary severity, leaving the eyes and the hands not competed with by other details, the spectacular basic landscape, the work of the colors and the nature of the technique of painting very soft employing oils, but posed a little as the Tempera and mixed with surface so that the blows of brushes seem indissociable. Vasari expressed the opinion that the way of painting would even make “most trustful of the Masters painting… despair and lose courage”. These faces are often contrasts about it with that of a warrior. The Codex Leicester is the only great scientific work of Vinci which is between the hands of an private owner (Bill Gates).

The newspapers of Léonard seem to be intended for the publication, because much of sheets a form and an order have which would facilitate it. In many cases, only one topic, for example, the heart or the human fetus, is treated in detail at the same time in the words and the images, on only one sheet. This mode of organization also minimizes the loss of data if the pages would be mixed or destroyed. The reason for which these newspapers were not published whereas Léonard was still life is unknown. The aspects of its work on the studies of the anatomy, the Light and the landscapes were gathered for the publication by its pupil Francesco Melzi and finally published in 1651 in Italy, a long time after its death, under the name of “Treaty of painting by Léonard de Vinci”.

According to Daniel Arasse, the treaty was published in France well later but had sixty two editions in fifty years, with the result that Léonard is often regarded as “the precursor of the French university thought on art”

Medicine and anatomy

The initial training of Léonard to the Anatomie of the human body started at the time of its training with Andrea del Verrocchio, its Master insistent on the fact that all its pupils learn the anatomy. As artist, he quickly became Master of the topographical anatomy, while taking as a starting point many studies of the muscles, the tendons and other anatomical characteristics visible. He poses the bases of the scientific Anatomie, in particular dissecting corpses of criminals in most strict discretion, to avoid the Inquisition. The work conditions are particularly painful because of the problems of hygiene and conservation of the bodies.

As known artist, it received the authorization to dissect human corpses at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, and later in the hospitals of Milan and Rome. Of 1510 with 1511, it collaborated in its research with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre and, both, they compiled a whole of theoretical work on the anatomy with more than two hundred drawings of Léonard. He was published under the not very obvious name of “Treaty of painting” in 1680.

Léonard drew many human skeletons, Os, as well as the Muscle S and the Tendon S, the Cœur and the vascular system, the action of the eye, the sexual organs and other internal bodies. These observations contain sometimes inaccuracies which had with knowledge of the time. Its reviews include/understand a great number of inventions, at the same time practical and realistic, in particular of the hydraulic pumps, crank gear, wings for the mortar shells, a gun with vapor.

During the major part of its life, Léonard be, like Icare, fascinate by the flight. It produced many studies on this phenomenon while taking as a starting point the birds and the flight plans of several apparatuses, of which first steps of named Hélicoptère the “air Vis”, the Parachute and an hang glider or to create a tower Lanterne for the Cathédrale of Milan while the biographer known under the name of Anonimo Gaddiano wrote, towards 1540: “Its genius is so rare and universal that one can say that nature made a miracle on its behalf”.

The 19th century introduced a certain admiration for the genius Léonard, Johann Heinrich Füssli wrote in 1801: “Thus was the paddle of the modern art, when Léonard de Vinci appeared with a splendor which outdistanced usual excellence: composed of all the elements which constitute the gasoline even genius”. This is taken again by A.E. Rio, which wrote in 1861: “It was above all the other artists thanks to the force and the nobility of its talents”. The variety of the field of application of Léonard, transmitted by his notebooks was known, like its paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: “There cannot be not to be in the world an example of a so universal genius, if able to open out, if fills up nostalgia towards the infinite one, so naturally refined, so as much advances some over its own century and the following centuries”. The famous historian of art Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896: “Léonard is an artist which one can say with a perfect literality: Nothing of what it touched, was transformed into a thing of an eternal beauty. That it is about the cross section of a cranium, the structure of a bad grass, or a study of the muscles, he has it, with his direction of the line and the light and the shade, transformed forever into values which communicate the life”.

The interest for the Léonard genius continued without slackening; experts study and represent its writings, analyze its tables by using scientific techniques, argue on works that one him attribute and seek works which were recorded but ever found. Liana Bortolon, written in its book The Life and Times off Leonardo (1967): “Because of the multiplicity of the interests which one incited to continue all the fields of knowledge, Léonard can be considered, rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and, with all the harmonics inherent in this term. The Man is also uncomfortable today, vis-a-vis a genius, as it was at the 16th century. Five centuries were passed and we still see Léonard with a great fright”. Crowd always makes the tail to see its more famous works of art, as for the Mona Lisa , one of works most famous of the Musée of Louvre.

Dan Brown with the best-seller Da Vinci Code , mixing novel made historical and scenaristic artifices, gave a new dash to the interest for Vinci in 2003. The novel also was adapted to the cinema by Ron Howard.

Lately in 2007, an Italian couple of researchers put forth an assumption on the presence of a partition hidden inside Cène . The provision of the hands of the characters and the breads on the table would give a small melody, whose a forty seconds extract to the organ is on sale.

Notable works

This classification makes some according to the general tendencies of the experts. The difficulty being that work “of workshop” is signed only by the owner of the workshop and that it misses works of references for Vinci, in particular in the sculpture.

Signed by Léonard de Vinci or allotted to him

Not signed by Vinci but with its participation

  • Baptism of Christ of Andrea del Verrocchio, (between 1472 and 1475), oil on wood, Gallery of the Offices, Florence.
  • the Child with the dolphin of Andrea del Verrochio, (towards 1475 and 1481), Palazio Veccho, Florence.
  • Christ child of Andrea del Verrochio, (towards 1477).
  • Horse of Léonard , unfinished sculpture.

More discussed paternity

  • Madonna Litta (towards 1490 or 1491), could be of Marco d' Oggiono, Musée of the Hermitage, Saint-Pétersbourg.
  • Madonna off the Yarnwinder (towards 1501), exists in three versions of seems T there various hands but could be copies of a lost work of Léonard.
  • the Madonna Dreyfus , allotted before to Andrea del Verrocchio or Lorenzo di Credi.
  • The Holy Infants Embracing , (between 1486 and 1490), several versions exist, private collections.
  • Madonna with the Child and Holy Joseph Joseph , in the past allotted to FRA Bartolomeo, Gallery Borghèse, Rome.
  • Marie-madeleine , generally allotted to Giampietrino.
  • Christ Carrying the Cross , private collection.

See too

Related articles

  • Pierino da Vinci, nephew of Léonard.
  • Da Vinci Code, delivers writes by Dan Brown.
  • Closed Lucé, last remains of Léonard de Vinci.
  • Codex Leicester, it is a collection of primarily scientific writings of Léonard de Vinci.
  • Vinci, city in which Léonard de Vinci is originating and it is the pride.

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