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Leonardo was born on 15 th April 1452, in the little town of Vinci in Tuscany.
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Leonardo was born on 15th April 1452, in the little town of Vinci in Tuscany. Although as a boy Leonardo received a good education, there was a limit to what could be learnt in a small village. His father could see that Leonardo had artistic talent, and by 1469 sent him to Florence to be an apprentice in the workshop of the painter and sculptor Andrea Verrocchio, a well-known artist who worked for Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruler of Florence.
This was the period in history called as the Renaissance, when, after hundreds of years of selfdom and superstition, there was at last a renewal in the study of sciences. Europe had left the Dark Ages and the feudal system behind. New schools of learning were opening and people were leaving the countryside for cities.
The Renaissance reached Verrocchio’s workshop, where painting and sculpting went together with being a goldsmith, making fine mechanical objects and musical instruments. Elementary engineering was a basic part of an artist’s job.
As an apprentice in the workshop, Leonardo learned these skills as well as painting and sculpting, and became familiar with a wide assortment of tools for activities such as lifting, carrying and digging. Later in life he would use this knowledge as a starting point for numerous ideas and inventions.
After living and working in Florence for 14 years, Leonardo was looking for new challenges. His years in Florence had given him the opportunity to study and perfect his art, as well as time to design inventions that would later make him famous. Milan, a city state north of Florence, was threatened by enemies and Leonardo wanted to put his designs to work for the benefit of the city.
In a letter to Francesco Sforza, the ruler of Milan, Leonardo praised his own ability to make cannons, catapults, war ships, to dig tunnels under the enemies, drain moats and scale castle walls. Sforza hired the artist and aspiring inventor, but Leonardo soon found that his employer was mostly concerned with making Milan a beautiful city like Florence. And so Leonardo worked as an artist once again.
THE BRONZE HORSE Leonardo’s first project in Milan was to build a huge statue of Sforza’s father on horseback. Leonardo had a brilliant plan to make a statue like no other – the largest ever of a man on horseback. Here we begin to see that his marvelous plans were not always realized. For several years he planned the statue, and it took eleven years for him to complete a clay model of the horse, 26 feet high- as tall as two storey house.
Once the model was completed, Leonardo had the task of making the actual statue. He had to find a way of pouring 200,000 tons of melted bronze into a mold without ruining the job. Before Leonardo was able to solve his problem, the bronze he needed was used to make cannons, and then in 1499 the French took over Milan and destroyed the clay model. Despite 16 years of planning and working on the statue Leonardo had to give up.
THE LAST SUPPER The horse only took up part of Leonardo’s attention; he was also painting the walls of a monastery. The painting was of the last supper of Christ. For many years Leonardo had thought about how to make this painting. Many other artists before him had made their own versions of Jesus Christ having his last meal with the 12 disciples.
When Leonardo painted the picture, however, the scene was alive with action and new meaning that no one else was able to give, or has been able to give since. Five hundred years later the “Last Supper” is one of Leonardo’s most famous works. Although Leonardo’s “Last Supper” must have been incredibly beautiful when just finished, it soon began to flake and fall apart.
There was too much moisture in the walls of the monastery, and to make matters worse a heavy rainstorm caused a flood in the room. In the centuries after Leonardo completed his work the painting was restored many times, sometimes poorly, causing more harm to the work. During World War II, a bomb hit the monastery ,but missed the painting. In recent years the “Last Supper” was again restored, and it is now possible to see Leonardo’s original forms and colors .
THE COURT ENTERTAINER Leonardo was busy with many other projects while he lived in Milan. He continued to paint, but he was also a court entertainer for the rulers of Milan playing the lute, singing and reciting poetry. When there was a festival he would make costumes and art work.
THE MILITARY INVENTOR He was forever busy with the drawing of plans for military inventions; missiles, mortar bombs, tanks and fortresses. The tank , for example, was not used until World War I, almost 450 years after his drawing of a horseless armored car. He also planned a sewage system for Milan and devised how to rebuild the city so that the Black Plague would not be as dangerous a threat.
THE MONA LISA In 1500, Leonardo returned to Florence, and three years later he completed his most famous painting “Mona Lisa”. She sits above a landscape of rocks, trees and water, her eyes gazing off to the side and her mouth forming her ageless half smile.
What does that smile mean? And what is she looking at? The more we look at her the more we wonder. But it is not only this woman who is so mysterious to us. Twenty years before the “Mona Lisa” was painted, the same curious smile was on the face of The Virgin, her mother and the angel in “The Madonna of the Rocks”.
THE ENGINEER In 1506, Leonardo returned to Milan. The French were still in control of the city state, and he came to work for Charles d’Amboise, the commander of the French troops. For the next seven years he painted little, but spent most of his time studying mechanics, optics, anatomy and Mathematics.
Leonardo spent his last years in France at the court of King Francis I. Living in a small castle next to the royal residence at Amboise, he had a perfect place to pursue his art, work on his notes, and conduct scientific experiments. He died on 2nd May 1519, at the age of 67.
HIS NOTEBOOKS AND MIRROR WRITING When Leonardo da Vinci died, he left behind over 5,000 pages of drawings and notes. He wrote his notes in a backwards “secret” handwriting which he taught himself. Why did he disguise his writings? We must not forget that even though the Renaissance was a period of learning, the Church was still very powerful.
Much of what Leonardo wrote went against the teaching of the Church, and it is a wonder that he did not find himself in great trouble. Another theory is that, as a left-handed person, the eccentric Leonardo simply found more comfortable to write this way, and no teacher had ever tried to change him.
LEONARDO – THE WEDDING OF ARTS TO SCIENCE “He is not well rounded who does not have an equally keen interest in all of the things within the compass of painting”, wrote Leonardo in his notes. Leonardo definitely had an interest in “all things”. Biology, anatomy, botany and engineering are part of his paintings. Take for example his painting “Adoration of the Magi”, made in 1481-1482, in which the baby Jesus first appears before the world.
The painting includes dozens of men and women, several horses, a camel, trees, rocks and a structure made of columns, stairs and arches. When painting a man leaning over in the “Adoration”, Leonardo was concerned with the details of every muscle. To paint this correctly meant that he had to understand the human body.
To paint a horse rearing up on its hind feet also required that Leonardo knew the anatomy of a horse. The building in the background is both graceful and exact, showing Leonardo’s knowledge of architecture and engineering. A painting for Leonardo was therefore as much an exercise in science as it was in art.
TREATISE ON PAINTING An important part of his notes were devoted to helping others learn to paint. He believed that there are rules of painting just as there are laws of Mathematics. His Treatise on Painting includes a study of geometry, optics, perspective and proportion, all of which were central to his work.
ANATOMICAL STUDIES One of Leonardo’s greatest contributions was in the study of human anatomy. While most artists thought of anatomy as a tool for their drawings, Leonardo was interested in understanding how the human body worked. From his studies he was able to make a model of the human heart, eye and brain. He wrote detailed notes of the dissection of corpses which show that his understanding of the human body was far ahead of his time.
Leonardo made many sketches from these studies. One is an open womb with the embryo inside. The position of the umbilical cord and embryo were surprisingly correct. He was also the first to draw parts of the body in cross-section, labeling the individual parts. This method is still used today.
He paid special attention to the eye, and understood what are now known to be basic principles of optics. He noted for examples that images are reversed on the retina, and remarked on the bending properties of light. He also understood that the eye is a lens which is connected by nerves to brain.
THE BOTONIST Before Leonardo only magicians and makers of medicines were concerned with plants. He studied them and made detailed observations and drawings. His discoveries in botany included that the age of a tree could be determined by the number of rings in its trunk. At Leonardo’s times the Church followed the traditional belief that the earth and sea were created only a few thousands ago. Walking in the mountains of Italy, it is not unusual to find fossils of sea creatures in the rocks.
Leonardo wondered how fish and other animals of the sea had come to be in the mountains. He noted that there must have been a primeval sea which covered the rocks. He proposed that sediments fell to the bottom of the ancient sea and later became rocks, enclosing fossilized fish. He saw that this must have happened long ago, longer than the Church claimed.
LEONARDO AND FLIGHT Another of Leonardo’s interests was flight. His notebook, On the Flight of Birds, was a study of birds and bats. He spent a lot of time trying to invent a way for humans to fly as birds do. His designs failed because they featured flapping wings instead of the stiff design that modern airplanes have, and because he lacked a modern power source, but his drawings show that he had given some thought to the concept of gliding.
With more work, Leonardo might have succeeded in putting humans in the sky. He also drew designs for a helicopter and a parachute, hundreds of years before they were constructed.
“I WISH TO WORK MIRACLES” Leonardo’s many discoveries and inventions were truly marvelous. When he was still young he wrote” I wish to work miracles”. The Renaissance was an age when people were just beginning to discover and rediscover the world around them. They were artists, musicians, scientists, architects, mathematicians, engineers, inventors and philosophers, but only Leonardo da Vinci was all of these at once.
He had endless imagination and original thoughts. “Whoever in discussion cities authority uses not intellect but memory”, he wrote. Leonardo, the true Renaissance man, used his intellect to look to the future and help make the world we live in today.
