"Vetruvian Man" Print
Provided by Art.com

Leonardo Da Vinci - The Inventor

As an apprentice in the studio of the artist Verrocchio, Leonardo observed and used a variety of machines. By studying them he gained practical knowledge about their design and structure. He set out to write the first systematic explanations of how machines work and how the elements of machines can be combined. His tremendous talents as an illustrator allowed him to draw his mechanical ideas with exceptional clarity. 500 years after they were put on paper, many of his sketches can easily be used as blueprints to create perfect working models. After his death, his notebooks were hidden away, scattered, or lost, and his wonderful ideas were forgotten.

Leonardo Da Vinci - A Bit Of History

After the fall of his patron in 1499, Leonardo left Milan to find employment. In April 1500 he stopped in Florence, before working in Central Italy as a mapmaker and military engineer for Cesare Borgia. Traveling back to Florence in 1503, Da Vinci completed several significant projects including the "Mona Lisa". It is said that the Mona Lisa was Leonardo's favorite painting and that he held onto it all his life.

The most talked about painting of Leonardo DaVinci is not his most famous. Everyone talks about the "Mona Lisa" but "The Last Supper" is his most famous masterpiece.

Leonardo Da Vinci - Timeline

Born in the village of Vinci in Italy in 1452 - the middle of the Renaissance (known as the rebirth of learning period), he is considered to be one of the finest painters and sculptors in all of mankind. Born as the illegitimate son of a local lawyer, his father acknowledged him and paid for his training but some wonder whether the strangely self-sufficient tone of Leonardo's mind was not perhaps affected by his early ambiguity of status. He began his career as an artist at the age of 8 as an apprentice in Florence.

At about the age of 25, Leonardo caught the attention and patronage of the richest and most powerful man in Florence, Lorenzo the Magnificent. The five years that followed Leonardo painted many subjects for Lorenzo, mostly religious in nature.

Sometime during the 1480's, Leonardo moved to Milan to do paintings and sculptures for the ruler of Milan, Duke Ludovico. While he was in Milan, Leonardo painted what is considered to be greatest work, "The Last Supper". It was done in tempera and unlike many of the paintings from that era, is has chipped and faded away.

Following The "Mona Lisa"

Leonardo da Vinci brought the "Mona Lisa" painting from Italy to Paris when Francis I summoned him to the French court, and da Vinci lived there for the remainder of his life.

And where is the Mona Lisa now? And what was the daring "risk" Da Vinci took as an artist to paint her? What tricks to the eye are accomplished in his painting?...

Continue...

Page 1    Page 2    Page 3    Page 4    Page 5    Page 6