Leonardo da Vinci
From Metapedia
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician and writer. Born at Vinci in the region of Florence, the illegitimate son of a notary, Messer Piero, and a peasant girl, Caterina, 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 Milan where several of his major works were created. He also worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home given him by King François I.
Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" or universal genius, a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.
It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. Perhaps fifteen paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualizing a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.
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Early Life, 1452–1466
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of Florence and probably lived for his first five years in the nearby hamlet of Anchiano. He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant. There is some evidence that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci." Little is known about his early life, which has been the subject of historical conjecture by Vasari and others. At the age of five, he went to live in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci, where his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but unfortunately died young.
Leonardo was later to record only two incidents of his childhood. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face. The second incident occurred while he was exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and recorded his emotions at being, on one hand, terrified that some great monster might lurk there and on the other, driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.
Vasari, the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters, tells the story of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque. Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a plaque decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow which he gave to the peasant.
1466–1476
In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. The workshop of this renowned master was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Among the painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop and also to become famous, were Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.
In a Quattrocento workshop such as Verrocchio's, artists were regarded primarily as craftsmen and only the master such as Verrocchio had social standing. The products of a workshop included decorated tournament shields, painted dowry chests, christening platters, votive plaques, small portraits, and devotional pictures. Major commissions included altarpieces for churches and commemorative statues. The largest commissions were fresco cycles for chapels, such as those created by Ghirlandaio and his workshop in the Tornabuoni Chapel, and large statues such as the equestian monuments of Gattemelata by Donatello and Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio.
Although Verrocchio appears to have run an efficient and prolific workshop, he was primarily a goldsmith and metalworker. Most of the painted production of his workshop was done by his employees, and few paintings can be ascertained as coming from his hand. On one of those, according to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated. The painting is the Baptism of Christ. According to Vasari, Leonardo painted the young angel holding Jesus’ 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 tempera using the new technique of oil paint. The landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bears witness to the hand of Leonardo.
The other creation of Verrocchio’s which is pertinent to the young Leonardo is the bronze statue of David, now in the Bargello Museum, which according to tradition is a portrait of the apprentice, Leonardo. If this is the case, then in the figure of David we see Leonardo as a thin muscular boy, quite different to the rounded androgynous figure made by Verrocchio’s teacher, Donatello and with which it is often compared. It is also suggested that the Archangel Michael in Verrocchio's Tobias and the Angel is a portrait of Leonardo.
There are few records from this period of Leonardo's life. One is his earliest known dated work, a drawing done in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473. In 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.
As an apprentice, Leonardo would have been trained in all the countless skills that were employed in a traditional workshop. Although many craftsmen specialized in tasks such as frame-making, gilding and bronze casting, Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the obvious artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.
1476–1513
It is assumed that Leonardo had his own workshop in Florence between 1476 and 1481. Court records of 1476 show that, with three other young men, he was charged with sodomy, of which charges all were acquitted. From this date there is no record of his work or even his whereabouts until 1478.
In 1478 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard and in 1481 by the Monks at Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi. In 1482 Leonardo, whom Vasari tells us was a most talented musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici was so impressed with this that he decided to send both the lyre and its maker to Milan, in order 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.
Between 1482 and 1499, when Louis XII of France occupied Milan, much of Leonardo’s work was in that city. It was here that he was commissioned to paint two of his most famous works, the Virgin of the Rocks 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 as among his dependants in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the detailed list of expenditure on her funeral suggests that she was his mother rather than a servant girl.
For Ludovico, he worked on many different projects which included 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. Leonardo modelled a huge horse in clay, which became known as the "Gran Cavallo". It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello’s statue of Gattemelata in Padua and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not in the least unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay model of the horse was completed, and Leonardo was making detailed plans for its casting.[14] Michelangelo rudely implied that he was unable to cast it. In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannons to defend the city from invasion under Charles VIII.
The French returned to invade Milan in 1499 under Louis XII and the invading French 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 Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice. In Venice he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.
Returning 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 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 services of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.[8] He returned to Florence where he rejoined the Guild of St Luke on 18th October 1503 and spent two years involved in designing and painting a great mural of The Battle of Anghiari 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, which was in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries had driven out the French. Many of Leonardo’s most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan,including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione. However, he did not stay in Milan for long, as his father died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his fathers estate. By 1508 he was living in his own house in Milan, in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.
Later Years
From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. In October 1515, François I of France recaptured Milan. On 19th December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francois I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna. It was for Francois that Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical lion 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 Lucé next to 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 scudi.
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I 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 by Ingres in a romantic painting, has been shown to be legend rather than fact. 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 Amboise. 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 vineyards, 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, François 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."
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 in order to flood Pisa. His journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells and a steam cannon.
In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. 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 bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On 17 May 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn.
For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, and plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a light hang glider. Of these, most were impractical, but the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated.
List of Painting
None of Leonardo's paintings are signed. Certain works still in existence are cited by Vasari or are referred to in contracts.
Entirely by Leonardo
- The Last Supper (1498)—Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
- Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1505/1507)—Louvre, Paris, France
- Adoration of the Magi unfinished painting (1481)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy
- The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510)—Louvre, Paris, France
- Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre, Paris, considered by most historians to be the earlier of two versions and to therefore date from 1483–1486.
- The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist large drawing (c. 1499–1500)—National Gallery, London, UK.
- St. Jerome in the Wilderness, (c.1480), Vatican, unfinished painting.
Leonardo with other hands
- The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Cited by Vasari as by Verrocchio, with the angel on the left-hand side by Leonardo.[13] It is generally considered that Leonardo also painted the background landscape and the torso of Christ. One of Leornardo's earliest extant works.
- Virgin of the Rocks, National Gallery, London, generally accepted as postdating the version in the Louvre, possibly 1505–1508, with collaboration of de Predis and perhaps others.
Accepted attributions
- Annunciation (1475–1480)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Generally thought to be the earliest extant work entirely by Leonardo.
- The Benois Madonna (1478–1480)—Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
- The Madonna of the Carnation, (1478–1480) Alte Pinakothek, Munich
- St. John the Baptist (c. 1514)—Louvre, Paris, France.
Attribution dependent upon each other
These two paintings are almost certainly by the same artist, generally accepted to be Leonardo, but not without critics.
- Ginevra de' Benci (c. 1475)—National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., United States
- Lady with an Ermine (1488–1490)—Czartoryski Museum, Kraków, Poland.
Disputed
Of the following paintings, the first two are cited by Angela Ottino della Chiesa as having more general acceptance than the others. All have been claimed at some time to be Leonardos.
- La belle Ferronière (1495–1498)—Louvre, Paris, France
- Portrait of a Musician (c. 1490)—Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy
- Madonna Litta (1490–91)—Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia, thought perhaps to be by Marco d'Oggiono
- Madonna of the Yarnwinder 1501. Three versions exist, apparently by different hands, perhaps copies of a lost work that is described by Leonardo.
- The Dreyfus Madonna, previously attributed to Verrocchio or Lorenzo di Credi. The anatomy of the Christ Child is so poor as to discourage firm attribution by most critics while some believe that it is a work of Leonardo's youth.
- Bacchus (or St. John in the Wilderness) (1515)—Louvre, Paris, France, is generally considered to be a workshop copy of a drawing.
Recent attribution
- The Holy Infants Embracing c. 1486–1490 private collection.
- Madonna and Child with St Joseph, Borghese Gallery, previously attributed to Fra Bartolomeo. After recent cleaning, the gallery sought attribution as a work of Leonardo's youth, based on the presence of a fingerprint similar to one that appears in The Lady with the Ermine. Result of investigation not available.
- Mary Magdalene, recently attributed as a Leonardo by Carlo Pedretti. Previously regarded as the work of Giampietrino who painted a number of similar Magdalenes. This attribution is not accepted by other scholars, eg Carlo Bertelli, (former director of the Brera Art Gallery in Milan), who said this painting is not by Leonardo and that the subject could be a Lucretia with the knife removed.
- Christ Carrying the Cross, date unknown, private collection. Attribution by Carlo Pedretti.
Known only as a copy
- Leda and the Swan (1508)—(Only copies survive—best-known example in Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy. Another is in Wilton House, England.)
