Italian polymath Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, who lived from April 15, 1452, to May 2, 1519, was a member of the High Renaissance.
He was an architect, sculptor, painter, engineer, scientist, and draughtsman.
Even though his fame was mostly based on his achievements as a painter, Leonardo was well-recognized for his writings.
He drew drawings and thoughts on several subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, painting, and paleontology.
Only his younger contemporary, Michelangelo, widely regarded as a genius and the epitome of the Renaissance humanist ideal, has had a higher influence on later ages of artists than Leonardo.
He received his schooling in Florence under the direction of the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio.
He was unmarried and born in or near Vinci to a wealthy notary and a peasant wife.
He first lived in the city but later spent a lot of time in Milan serving Ludovico Sforza. After that, he resumed work in Florence, Milan, and Rome. He amassed a considerable fan base of imitators and students throughout this time.
At Francis I's invitation, he lived his final three winters in France, where he died in 1519. His achievements, wide range of interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have never ceased to pique attention and admiration after his departure, giving him the title of a frequent namesake.
Leonardo, one of the greatest historical artists, is generally referred to as the High Renaissance founder. The Last Supper is the religious artwork that has been reproduced the most frequently throughout history, and his design of the Vitruvian Man is likewise regarded as a cultural emblem.
In 2017, Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo that was either fully or partially sold at auction for US$450.3 million, broke the previous record for the most expensive artwork ever sold.
He was revered for his technological prowess and invented the double hull, a form of armored war vehicle, concentrated solar power, flying machines, and ratio machines that could be utilized in addition to machines.
Only some of his concepts were completed or useful during his lifespan because modern scientific techniques for metallurgy and engineering remained in their youth during the Renaissance.
However, other of his less significant inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a tool to measure the tensile strength of wire, made their way into the manufacturing industry unnoticed.
He made significant discoveries in optics, tribology, hydrodynamics, geology, and civil engineering; yet, because he never shared his results with the scientific community, they had little to no immediate influence on the following research.
Birth and Background
Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci was the artist's real name. On April 15, 1452, in or around the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, which was 30 km from Florence, the son of ser Piero from Vinci was born.
He was Piero da Vinci's abandoned child. While Caterina, a woman of modest social standing, functioned as a legal notary in Florence from 1434 to 1494, Ser Piero da Vinci d'Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido held that position from 1426 until 1504.
The conventional story derived from a native oral history that historian Emanuele Repetti documented asserts that Leonardo was birthed in Anchiano. This small rural village would have provided sufficient seclusion for the unauthorized birth, though it is still possible that he was born in a home.
The year Leonardo was born, his parents wed in separate ceremonies. Most people think that Caterina Buti del Vacca, also known as "L'Accattabriga," who married the neighborhood craftsman Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, is Caterina. Leonardo later referred to Caterina as "Caterina" or "Catalina" in his notebooks.
Numerous theories have been put forth, most notably by art historian Martin Kemp, who suggests Caterina di Meo Lippi as a candidate. Caterina di Meo Lippi, an orphan, allegedly obtained aid from Ser Piero and his family to be married.
Following their engagement the previous year, Ser Piero engaged Albiera Amadori once and three additional times following her funeral in 1464. Leonardo eventually had 16 half-siblings from all his marriages, 11 of whom reached maturity and were much younger than he was. The youngest was born when Leonardo was 46, and they didn't spend much time together.
First Floerentine Period
Leonardo was 20 years old when he gained master rank in the Guild of Saint Luke, an association for painters and surgeons.
Leonardo lived and worked with Verrocchio even after his father had placed him in his workshop, thanks to their close connection.
Leonardo's oldest work with a date is a pen-and-ink sketch of the Arno valley dated 1473.
Vasari asserts that Leonardo was the first to propose using the Arno river as a canal for moving goods between Florence and Pisa when he was still young.
An early biographer named Anonimo Gaddiano asserts that Leonardo lived with the Medici in Florence in 1480 and frequently worked in the Piazza San Marco garden where the Medici's Neoplatonic academy of poets, artists, and philosophers convened.
The monks of San Donato in Scopeto gave him a contract for The Adoration of the Magi in March 1481. These early projects were shelved when Leonardo traveled to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, to offer his talents. Leonardo addressed Sforza in a letter listing his many accomplishments in engineering and weapon design and his ability to paint. He had a horse-head-shaped lute or lyre made of silver that he carried with him.
When Leonardo visited the Medici residence with Alberti, he got to know several of the more established Humanist philosophers, John Argyropoulos, an Aristotelian translator and teacher of Greek; Cristoforo Landino, a Neoplatonist, and Marsiglio Ficino, a supporter of Neoplatonism.
Pico Della Mirandola, a brilliant young poet, and philosopher who lived during Leonardo's era was a part of the Medici Platonic Academy. Until Ludovico il Moro ruled Milan from 1479 to 1499, Lorenzo de Medici dispatched Leonardo as an ambassador in 1482.
First Milanese Period
From 1482 through 1499, Leonardo was a laborer in Milan. The Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and Santa Maria Delle Grazie monasteries commissioned The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper.
King Matthias Corvinus hired Leonardo to paint a Madonna after he met with him in Hungary in the spring of 1485 while acting on behalf of Sforza. Together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, he was enlisted as a consultant in 1490 for the cathedral construction site at Pavia. He drew the Regisole equestrian statue there after being moved by it.
According to contemporary letters, the Duke of Milan commissioned Leonardo and his colleagues to paint the Sala delle Asse at the Sforza Castle. The undertaking turned into a trompe-l'oeil décor that gave the impression that the great hall was covered in a pergola formed of the intertwined branches of sixteen mulberry trees, whose canopy included a complex labyrinth of leaves and knots on the ceiling. The decoration was completed in 1498.
In 1500, when France overthrew Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo, his friend the mathematician Luca Pacioli, and his assistant Sala escaped Milan for Venice.
Leonardo worked in Venice as a military architect and engineer, developing strategies to protect the city against naval assault.
The Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata welcomed him and his family as guests in 1500. They gave them access to a workshop where, according to Vasari claimed that Leonardo's drawing of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist was so highly regarded that "men and women, young and old," rushed to see it "as if they were going to a solemn festival."
Personal Life
Leonardo rarely discussed his personal life, despite the thousands of pages he left in notes and writings. Vasari's description of Leonardo's "great physical beauty" and "infinite grace," as well as all other facets of his existence, piqued people's interest throughout his lifetime. Leonardo also had amazing inventive abilities. One of these characteristics was his love of animals, which probably included his vegetarianism and, according to Vasari, his practice of buying caged birds and releasing them.
One of Leonardo's many acquaintances was mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he co-wrote the book Divina proportions in the 1490s. Many other friends are today famous in their areas or for their historical significance. Except for his connection with Cecilia Gallerani and the Este sisters, Beatrice and Isabella, Leonardo doesn't seem to have had many intimate interactions with women. While traveling through Mantua, he sketched an image of Isabella, which appears to have been used to construct a lost painted picture.
This style was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud in Leonardo da Vinci's mid-16th-century painting A Memory of His Childhood.
Beyond friendship, Leonardo hid the details of his personal life. His sexual orientation has been the focus of ridicule, research, and conjecture.
Leonardo probably had the closest relationships with Sala and Melzi, two of his students. Leonardo had intense and loving feelings for his students, according to Melzi, who wrote to inform Leonardo's brothers of his passing. Since the 16th century, it has been asserted that these interactions were sexual or erotic.
For more than 400 years, Leonardo's legacy was mostly based on his accomplishments as a painter, despite his recent recognition and awe as a scientist and inventor.
A few of his certified or ascribed works have been hailed as some of the greatest masterpieces. These paintings are renowned for several characteristics that pupils have often reproduced and are extensively analyzed by critics and connoisseurs. By the 1490s, Leonardo was already referred to as a "Divine" painter.
Among the qualities that distinguish Leonardo's work are his inventive painting techniques, in-depth knowledge of anatomy, light, botany, and geology, interest in physiognomy and how people express emotion through expression and gesture, inventive use of the human form in figurative composition, and use of subtle tonal gradation.
The Virgin of the Rocks, the Last Supper, and the Mona Lisa are three of his most well-known works with all four components.
Early Work
The Baptism of Christ, a painting Leonardo collaborated on with Verrocchio, is what initially attracted their attention to him. Two other pieces, both Annunciations, seem to be from when he worked in Verrocchio's studio. One is little, measuring 14 cm (5.5 in) high by 59 centimeters (23 in) in length. A " predella " belongs at the bottom of a bigger composition in a Lorenzo di Credi painting from which it has been torn. The other piece is 217 cm (85 in) long and significantly bigger. In the smaller image, Mary's hands and eyes are folded in a gesture of resignation to God's will.
However, Mary is not obedient in the bigger picture. When this unexpected messenger interrupts the girl as she reads, she marks the spot in her bible with her finger and lifts her hand in a polite welcome or expression of surprise. This composed young lady seems to embrace her duty as the Mother of God with confidence rather than resignation. The humanist aspect of the Virgin Mary is depicted in this picture by the young Leonardo, who acknowledges the part played by humans in the incarnation of God.
Saint Jerome in the Wilderness was one of these works, which Bortolon links to a trying time in Leonardo's life as demonstrated by his journal entry, "I believed I was learning to live; I was merely learning to die." Though the painting has only just begun, its stunning composition is already apparent.
As a penitent, Jerome is depicted in the center of the image, somewhat off-center and from above. With one arm extended to the edge of the picture and his eyes directed in the opposite direction, his kneeling body becomes the shape of a trapezoid. Leonardo's anatomical studies are connected to this artwork, according to J. Wasserman.
Paintings In the 1480s
Leonardo started another project of groundbreaking compositional importance in the 1480s while also accepting 2 very important assignments. Two of the three projects were never completed, and because the third took so long, there were protracted discussions about completion and payment.
Saint Jerome in the Wilderness would be one of those works, which Bortolon links to a trying time in Leonardo's life as demonstrated by his diary entry, "I believed I was learning to live; I was merely learning to die."The painting's remarkable composition is visible even though it has just begun.
As a penitent, Jerome is depicted in the center of the image, somewhat off-center and from above. His reclining form resembles a trapezoid because he has one arm extended to the edge of the painting and looks oppositely.
Leonardo's well-known picture from the 1490s, The Last Supper, was commissioned for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria Delle Grazie in Milan. It illustrates the time when Jesus just announced, "One of you will betray me," and the confusion that this revelation generated. Additionally, it recalls the final meal Jesus had with his disciples before being taken into custody and killed.
