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Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519) was one of the greatest painters and most versatile geniuses in history. He was one of the key figures of the Renaissance, a great cultural movement that had begun in Italy in the 1300's. His portrait Mona Lisa and his religious scene The Last Supper rank among the most famous pictures ever painted. Leonardo, as he is almost always called, was trained to be a painter. But his interests and achievements spread into an astonishing variety of fields that are now considered scientific specialties. Leonardo studied anatomy, astronomy, botany, geology, geometry, and optics, and he designed machines and drew plans for hundreds of inventions. Because Leonardo excelled in such an amazing number of areas of human knowledge, he is often called a universal genius. However, he had little interest in literature, history, or religion. He formulated a few scientific laws, but he never developed his ideas systematically. Leonardo was most of all an excellent observer. He concerned himself with what the eye could see, rather than with purely abstract concepts. Leonardo's life. Early career. Leonardo was probably born outside the village of Vinci, near Florence in central Italy. The name da Vinci simply means from Vinci. At that time, Florence and its surrounding villages and farms made up a nearly independent area called a city-state. Florence was also a commercial and cultural center. Leonardo was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a legal specialist, and a peasant woman named Caterina. Ser Piero's family raised the boy in Vinci. During the late 1460's, Leonardo became an apprentice to Andrea del Verrocchio, a leading painter and sculptor in Florence. He remained with Verrocchio as an istant for several years after completing his apprenticeship. Verrocchio and Leonardo collaborated on the painting The Baptism of Christ about 1472. From about 1478 to 1482, Leonardo had his own studio in Florence. During this period, he received an important commission to paint a church altarpiece now known as the Adoration of the Kings. In 1499, the French overthrew Ludovico Sforza and forced him to flee Milan. Leonardo also left the city. He visited Mantua, where he made a famous drawing of Isabella d'Este, the wife of the Duke of Mantua. He also visited Venice briefly before returning to Florence. Leonardo's paintings during his stay in Milan had made him famous, and the people of Florence received him with great respect. The early work Leonardo had done in Florence before he left for Milan had strongly influenced a number of young artists, including Sandro Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo. These artists had become the leaders of the next generation of Florentine painters. The work Leonardo was to create after his return to Florence would inspire yet another generation of artists. This generation included Andrea del Sarto, Michelangelo, and Raphael. When Leonardo returned, Florence was building a new hall for the city council. The Florentine government hired Leonardo and Michelangelo to decorate the walls of the hall with scenes of the city's military victories. Leonardo chose the Battle of Anghiari, in which Florence had defeated Milan in 1440. His painting showed a cavalry battle, with tense soldiers, leaping horses, and clouds of dust. In painting the Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo tried an experimental technique that did not work. The paint began to run, and he never finished the project. The painting no longer exists. Its general appearance is known from Leonardo's sketches and from copies made by other artists. About 1503, while working on the Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa, probably the most famous portrait ever painted. Last years. In 1513, Pope Leo X gave Leonardo rooms for his use in the Vatican Palace. Leonardo did little painting during his later years. However, about 1515, he completed The Deluge, a series of drawings in which he portrayed the destruction of the world in a tremendous flood. These drawings are the climax of Leonardo's attempts to visualize the forces of life and nature. Renaissance rulers competed to surround themselves with great artists and scholars. In 1516, Francis I, the king of France, invited Leonardo to become "first painter and engineer and architect of the king." He provided Leonardo a residence connected to the Palace of Cloux at Amboise, near Tours. Leonardo devoted his time to doing anatomical drawings, drafting architectural plans, and designing sets for court entertainments. He died on May 2, 1519. Leonardo's works Drawings and scientific studies. Leonardo used drawings both as a tool of scientific investigation and as an expression of artistic imagination. He changed forever the art of drawing. He made drawings in much greater numbers than any artist before him, and he was one of the first artists to use sketches to work out his artistic and architectural compositions. Drawing was indispensable to Leonardo's processes of observation, creation, and invention. Physical sciences. Leonardo was interested in mechanics (the science of motion and force), and many of his ideas and designs were far ahead of their time. For example, he drew plans for aircraft, including a helicopter, and for a parachute. Like many Renaissance artists, Leonardo sometimes worked as an engineer or military architect. He produced designs for a variety of war machines, among them tanks, machine guns, and movable bridges. Life sciences. Leonardo studied anatomy by dissecting human corpses and the bodies of animals. He made scientific drawings that clarify not only the appearance of bones, tendons, and other body parts, but also their function. These drawings are considered the first accurate portrayals of human anatomy. Leonardo tried to understand the human body as a mechanism. As his studies progressed, he also tried to understand the forces of life that animated the body. His drawings of anatomy, for example, extended to investigations of human reproduction and embryology and the circulation of the blood. None of these things were understood at the time. His anatomical drawing of a female, which he made about 1508, is his attempt, partly erroneous in detail, to illustrate the body's circulatory and other systems in a single image. Like other artists, Leonardo was interested in the proportions of the human body. He drew a famous study of human proportions based on the statement of the Roman architect Vitruvius that the "well-shaped man" fits into the perfect shapes of the square and circle. According to Vitruvius, the parts of the body are related to one another in ratios of whole numbers, and these ratios should be used in the design of architecture. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian man, done about 1487, is one of the most famous images in European art. Leonardo also worked to understand the relation between the life of the human body and that of the larger world. For Leonardo, principles of proportion similar to those that shaped the human body also governed the growth of trees, the flight of birds, and the flow of water. When Leonardo drew the leaves of a plant, he intended the lines to show living energy responding to light, water, and soil. The mystery of life was the unifying theme of his work. Mona Lisa, shown in this article, is probably a portrait of the young wife of a rich Florentine silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. Mona Lisa is a shortened form of Madonna Lisa (my lady, Lisa). The woman is also often called La Gioconda, which is the feminine form of her husband' s last name. The portrait shows a young woman seated on a balcony high above a landscape. Leonardo used a pyramid design to place the woman simply and calmly in the space of the painting. Her folded hands form the front corner of the pyramid. Her , neck, and face glow in the same light that softly models her hands. The light gives the variety of living surfaces to an underlying geometry of spheres and circles, which includes the arc of her famous smile. Behind the figure, a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The landscape reflects Leonardo's studies of geology. He was one of the first people to grasp that geological time is revealed in rock layers and to understand such processes as erosion. Leonardo's importance Leonardo had one of the greatest scientific minds of the Italian Renaissance. He wanted to know the workings of what he saw in nature. Many of his inventions and scientific ideas were centuries ahead of his time. For example, he was the first person to study the flight of birds scientifically. Leonardo's importance to art was even greater than his importance to science. He had a strong influence on many leading artists, including Raphael and Michelangelo. Leonardo's balanced compositions and idealized figures became standard features of later Renaissance art. Painters also tried to imitate Leonardo's knowledge of perspective and anatomy, and his accurate observations of nature. What most impresses people today is the wide range of Leonardo's talent and achievements. He turned his attention to many subjects and mastered nearly all. His inventiveness, versatility, and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity have made Leonardo a symbol of the Renaissance spirit. Related articles in World Book Encyclopedia include: Aerodynamics - Pioneers of aerodynamics; Helicopter - Early designs and experiments; Painting - The 1400's; Renaissance - The fine arts;
http://www.leonardo-davinci.info/leonardo-da-vinci/
Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, and scientist, b. near Vinci, a hill village in Tuscany. The versatility and creative power of Leonardo mark him as a supreme example of Renaissance genius. He depicted in his drawings, with scientific precision and consummate artistry, subjects ranging from flying machines to caricatures; he also executed intricate anatomical studies of people, animals, and plants. The richness and originality of intellect expressed in his notebooks reveal one of the greatest minds of all time.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0829434.html
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) made far-reaching contributions in many areas of science, technology and art. Leonardo's pioneering research into the brain led him to make discoveries in neuroanatomy (such as the maxillary antrum) and neurophysiology (he was the first to pith a frog). His injection of hot wax into the brain of an ox provided a cast of the ventricles and represents the first known use of a solidifying medium to define the shape and size of an internal body structure. Leonardo developed an original, mechanistic model of sensory physiology. He undertook his research with the broad goal of providing physical explanations of how the brain processes visual and other sensory input, and integrates that information via the soul.
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