Biography of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is an Italian painter, sculptor, architect and scientist born in Vinci in 1452 and died in Amboise in 1519. At the age of five, his father, having noted his gifts for drawing, placed him as an apprentice in the studio of Verrocchio, in Florence.
He entered the Guild of Painters at the age of twenty, and began his career with immediately remarkable works such as The Virgin with a Carnation, or The Annunciation (1473). At the same time, he also improved the technique of sfumato (impression of mist) to a point of refinement never before achieved.

In 1481, the monastery of San Donato commissioned The Adoration of the Magi from him, but Leonardo never finished this painting and left Florence for Milan. After the realization of The Virgin of the Rocks, for the chapel of San Francesco Grande, and that of the Equestrian Statue of Francesco Sforza, he finds glory throughout Italy. In 1495, the Dominicans of Sainte-Marie-des-Grâces commissioned The Last Supper from him. In 1498, he made the ceiling of the Sforza Palace. The Mona Lisa and The Battle of Anghiari also date from this period.

Leonardo also carries out a large number of studies on zoology, botany, anatomy, geology. He imagines multiple devices and machines, including the first flying machine, which will remain at the drawing stage. More than as a scientist proper, Leonardo da Vinci impressed his contemporaries and subsequent generations with his methodical approach to knowledge. The approach he deployed in all the activities he tackled proceeded from a preliminary accumulation of detailed observations, of knowledge scattered here and there, which tended towards a surpassing of what already existed, with perfection for objective. Many of the sketches,

In 1516, he joined the court of François I, where he took part in urban planning projects. He died of illness on May 2, 1519.


Leonardo da Vinci – The detailed biography

Italian painter born in 1452 in Vinci, a town lost in the folds and folds formed by the Albano mountains. His father, notary, son of notary, was Ser Piero; his mother, a beautiful peasant girl named Catarina. His birth put an end to the idyll. Leonardo was brought up by his father and early on showed the rarest aptitudes. In 1470, he joined Verrocchio’s workshop. It is said that, commissioned by his master to paint the face of an angel, he succeeded so well in the commission that the figure he had painted attracted all eyes and stood out from the work instead of standing out. confuse there. It has been argued that Verocchio himself was influenced by his pupil.

We know almost nothing about the early works of Leonardo da Vinci. The cartoon of the Fall (according to which a tapestry was to be executed in Flanders for the King of Portugal), the dragon molto orribile e spaventoso painted on the rondache (shield in fig tree wood), the Head of Medusa, are only known than by Vasari’s descriptions. But these descriptions are enough to show us that he was already looking for what all his life he would strive to achieve by dint of accuracy and precision in imitation, he wanted to equal nature, to speak with as much relief the language of lines , shapes and colors, but to express by this language his own emotion and to transmit it to men. He is now what he will remain, the incomparable realist who fixes the most clairvoyant eye on things and meets the ideal without effort, by continuing the real, by linking his creations to those of nature. We generally agree to see one of his first works in the small Annunciation of the Louvre, of a charming intimacy. by linking his creations to those of nature. We generally agree to see one of his first works in the small Annunciation of the Louvre, of a charming intimacy. by linking his creations to those of nature. We generally agree to see one of his first works in the small Annunciation of the Louvre, of a charming intimacy.

On one of his handwritten pages, we read: “… bre 1478 incominciai le due Virgine Marie”. Who are these two virgins? We don’t know. However, from the drawings which remain to us, we can conclude that Leonardo must already have extracted from the legend of the Virgin those scenes of familiar grace in which religious feeling is no longer distinguished from the delicacy and elevation of natural feelings.

For a long time it was almost unanimously affirmed that the Virgin of the Rocks was prior to the departure for Milan. It is disputed today on the basis of a document which seems to relate to this table. We can say that in any case it was executed at the beginning of the stay in Milan and that it is still in the Florentine manner. It would take long pages to expose the discussions and polemical nonsense that have multiplied around this masterpiece: the date has been pushed back beyond measure; it has been called a copy and even a “bad copy”, the original of which would be: the Virgin on the Rocks acquired in 1880 by the National Gallery in London. L’

That before his departure for Milan Leonardo was in possession of his genius, this is what the unfinished painting The Adoration of the Magi, today in the Uffizi museum, would establish, if it were possible to fix the date. for sure. But the freedom of execution, the great mastery to which it testifies, and the beauty of the horses which make one think of the studies for the statue of F. Sforza, are precisely the reasons which have led certain critics to postpone this work until around 1500. The Adoration of the Magi is full of movement and life, we already find there this psychological realism, this effort to create living beings, possible men,

Leonardo da Vinci: His work in Milan

Leonardo was thirty years old when he left for Milan and entered the service of L. Sforza, to whom he offered his services in a famous letter in which he exposed with quiet audacity the incredible diversity of his talents. Ambitious, greedy for glory, the duke strove to justify his usurpation by attracting to his court the most eminent men of Italy. Da Vinci’s great picturesque work in Milan is The Last Supper, which he painted in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Saint Mary of the Graces. We know that this famous painting has suffered all the outrages of time and the hands of men. Half erased, the original appeals to our curiosity more than it satisfies it.

In his letter to Ludovico le More, Leonardo offered him to execute The Equestrian Statue in honor of François Sforza, the founder of the dynasty. We no longer know this work except through the drawings which show us the research, the hesitations of the artist, without allowing us to decide on which side he stopped. Was the horse galloping? Was he walking with a proud and raised step? It is probable that there were two models of this colossal statue on which Leonardo worked during all his stay in Milan. In 1493, on the occasion of the marriage of Maria Bianca Sforza with the Emperor Maximilian, the statue was exhibited in the Castle Square,

Besides these great works, Leonardo painted a few portraits in Milan, the duke, his wife, his mistresses, Cecilia Gallerani, Lucrezia Crivelli, who is perhaps none other than La Belle Ferronnière in the Louvre. Organizer of ducal festivals, painter, sculptor, Leonardo was also an architect and engineer. This life of work was abruptly interrupted by the fall of Ludovic who had been the first to call the French to Italy and who, in return, was driven from his states by his former allies. Delivered to people of war, Milan was no longer a residence for artists. Thus in March 1500, Da Vinci found himself in Venice. Passing through Mantua,

Leonardo da Vinci: From The Battle of Anghiari to The Mona Lisa

In 1501, he was in Florence and composed a cartoon of Saint Anne, of which several contemporaries spoke. We don’t know what became of this cartoon, which cannot be identified as that of the Royal Academy in London – a composition probably earlier and executed in Milan – but the superb painting in the Louvre can console us for the loss of the cartoon that he reproduces. In 1503, he had completed for Louis XII’s powerful secretary of state, Robertet, “a seated Madonna, working with a spindle, while the child Christ, one foot on the basket of wool, smiling, grasps the spindle he seeks to take away from his mother”.

On the same date, he was commissioned, with Michelangelo, to decorate the council chamber in the palace of the Signoria. Michelangelo chooses a scene from the war against Pisa: bathing soldiers surprised by the enemy. Leonardo – so long the host of Milan – had him to treat The Battle of Anghiari, won by the Florentines over the Milanese in 1440. Also, he set to work with ardor and worked on the cartoon of Oct. 1503 to Feb. 1505. The cartoon completed, he began the mural painting in the council chamber; in the month of May 1506, he abandoned it. Only the episode of the standard that Vasari describes, and which occupied the center of the composition in the foreground, was finished. “According to certain indications which he found in Pliny, he prepared a kind of mastic to extend his colors.

After painting on the wall, he lit a large fire so that the heat allowed the colors to be absorbed and dry. But he succeeds in this only for the lower part; he could not heat the upper part sufficiently, which was too far from the fire. We only have a reproduction of the episode of the standard. The oldest engraving, that of Lorenzo Zacchia, dates from 1558; the best known, that of Edelinck, was made either after a drawing by Rubens which is in the Louvre, or after an older Flemish drawing which is in the Uffizi and which perhaps served as a model for the two artists. The cartoons of Michelangelo and Leonardo which, according to the famous expression of Benvenuto Cellini, “were the school of the world”, as long as they could be studied, have both disappeared.

Also, the last news we have of the painting is from 1513, it probably sank with the coating that carried it. The statue of Francis Sforza, The Last Supper, The Battle of Anghiari, all of Da Vinci’s great works are no longer known to us except through sketches, drawings, copies and the enthusiasm they aroused. Also, the last news we have of the painting is from 1513, it probably sank with the coating that carried it. The statue of Francis Sforza, The Last Supper, The Battle of Anghiari, all of Da Vinci’s great works are no longer known to us except through sketches, drawings, copies and the enthusiasm they aroused. Also, the last news we have of the painting is from 1513, it probably sank with the coating that carried it. The statue of Francis Sforza, The Last Supper, The Battle of Anghiari, all of Da Vinci’s great works are no longer known to us except through sketches, drawings, copies and the enthusiasm they aroused.

In 1505, he had also completed La Joconde, an illustrious portrait to which one must always return to understand this extraordinary genius who sacrifices nothing, who mixes composure and emotion, curiosity and tenderness, and whose very reverie is a wealth of clear ideas. Müntz places the now lost painting of La Léda, of which we know little, at this time. Brought to France, it seems that this painting was kept for some time at the Château de Fontainebleau, whose inventories mention it until 1691. We only know of it from a drawing by Raphaël (Windsor), and two or three copies old.

Leonardo da Vinci: From 1505 to 1515

During the summer of 1506, Leonardo obtained permission from the Lordship to go to Milan, where the French governor, Charles d’Amboise, called him. A little later, after some resistance from the Council of Florence, to which he had not kept his commitments, he entered the service of Louis XII. A long lawsuit with his brothers, who disputed his share of the inheritance of a paternal uncle, for several years, caused him to lose precious time and called him back to Florence several times. When the trial was over, he returned to Milan “with two Madonnas of different sizes which he had painted for the Most Christian King”, but on the same date,

“On September 24, 1513, writes Leonardo, I left Milan for Rome with Giovanni, Francesco Melzi, Salaï, Lorenzo and the Fanfoïa”. A Florentine, Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had been elected pope under the name of Leo X. The youngest brother of the new pope, Giuliano de’ Medici, loved Leonardo and had attached him to his service. It seems that at this time his scientific work absorbed him greatly. Vasari mentions two paintings that he executed for the pope’s heir, Messire Baldasare Turini: one represented the Madonna with the child, the other “a child of marvelous grace and beauty”. Among the last works of the master,

Leonardo da Vinci: End of life

On September 13, 1515, the victory of Marignan gave Francis I the Duchy of Milan. Barely informed of the arrival of the French, Da Vinci left Rome and went to join the king in Pavia. In Dec. 1515, he saw Milan, his second homeland, for the last time, and he went to France, where Francis I, who loved him, gave him the Hôtel du Cloux as his residence, in the vicinity of the Château d’Amboise, and guaranteed him a pension of 700 crowns. It was there that after several months of illness, on May 2, 1519, he expired.

We know the legend that caused the great artist to die in the arms of the King of France. The truth is that, on the day of Leonardo’s death, the king was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Of the great works of Vinci, as we have seen, most have been destroyed or are lost; his sketches, full of verve, his numerous drawings, which are sometimes worth finished works, a few precious paintings, suffice to put him among the number of painters who can dispute the first rank. His rare genius is made of the harmony of contrary gifts which equal in him the scholar to the artist. His feelings constantly pass through his mind and his ideas through his heart: “The more one knows, the more one loves”. The rare charm of his works is in the subtle blend of analysis and emotion, accuracy and fantasy, naturalness and spirituality, in this psychological realism of

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