Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519)
Leonardo da Vinci was a Florentine artist, one of the great masters of the High
Renaissance, who was also celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect,
engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the
keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavors. His innovations in the
field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century
after his death, and his scientific studiesparticularly in the fields of
anatomy, optics, and hydraulicsanticipated many of the developments of modern
science.
Early Life in Florence
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the small Tuscan town of Vinci, near
Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. In
the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best
education that Florence, the intellectual and artistic center of Italy, could
offer. He rapidly advanced socially and intellectually. He was handsome,
persuasive in conversation, and a fine musician and improviser. About 1466 he
was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading
Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo
was introduced to many activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel
pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze. In
1472 he was entered in the painter's guild of Florence, and in 1476 he is still
mentioned as Verrocchio's assistant. In Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (circa
1470, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), the kneeling angel at the left of the
painting is by Leonardo.
In 1478 Leonardo became an independent master. His first commission, to paint
an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall,
was never executed. His first large painting, The Adoration of the Magi (begun
1481, Galleria degli Uffizi), left unfinished, was ordered in 1481 for the
Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, Florence. Other works ascribed to his youth
are the so-called Benois Madonna (c. 1478, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg), the
portrait Ginerva de' Benci (c. 1474, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), and
the unfinished Saint Jerome (c. 1481, Pinacoteca, Vatican).
Years in Milan
About 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza,
having written the duke an astonishing letter in which he stated that he could
build portable bridges; that he knew the techniques of constructing
bombardments and of making cannons; that he could build ships as well as
armored vehicles, catapults, and other war machines; and that he could execute
sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. He served as principal engineer in the
duke's numerous military enterprises and was active also as an architect. In
addition, he assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated
work Divina Proportione (1509).
Evidence indicates that Leonardo had apprentices and pupils in Milan, for whom
he probably wrote the various texts later compiled as Treatise on Painting
(1651; trans. 1956). The most important of his own paintings during the early
Milan period was The Virgin of the Rocks, two versions of which exist (1483-85,
Musée du Louvre, Paris; 1490s to 1506-08, National Gallery, London); he worked
on the compositions for a long time, as was his custom, seemingly unwilling to
finish what he had begun. From 1495 to 1497 Leonardo labored on his
masterpiece, The Last Supper, a mural in the refectory of the Monastery of
Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Unfortunately, his experimental use of oil on
dry plaster (on what was the thin outer wall of a space designed for serving
food) was technically unsound, and by 1500 its deterioration had begun. Since
1726 attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, to restore it; a concerted
restoration and conservation program, making use of the latest technology, was
begun in 1977 and is reversing some of the damage. Although much of the
original surface is gone, the majesty of the composition and the penetrating
characterization of the figures give a fleeting vision of its vanished
splendor. During his long stay in Milan, Leonardo also produced other paintings
and drawings (most of which have been lost), theater designs, architectural
drawings, and models for the dome of Milan Cathedral. His largest commission
was for a colossal bronze monument to Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico, in
the courtyard of Castello Sforzesco. In December 1499, however, the Sforza
family was driven from Milan by French forces; Leonardo left the statue
unfinished (it was destroyed by French archers, who used it as a target) and he
returned to Florence in 1500.
Return to Florence
In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna and son
and chief general of Pope Alexander VI; in his capacity as the duke's chief
architect and engineer, Leonardo supervised work on the fortresses of the papal
territories in central Italy. In 1503 he was a member of a commission of
artists who were to decide on the proper location for the David (1501-04,
Accademia, Florence), the famous colossal marble statue by the Italian sculptor
Michelangelo, and he also served as an engineer in the war against Pisa. Toward
the end of the year Leonardo began to design a decoration for the great hall of
the Palazzo Vecchio. The subject was the Battle of Anghiari, a Florentine
victory in its war with Pisa. He made many drawings for it and completed a
full-size cartoon, or sketch, in 1505, but he never finished the wall painting.
The cartoon itself was destroyed in the 17th century, and the composition
survives only in copies, of which the most famous is the one by the Flemish
painter Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1615, Musée du Louvre). During this second
Florentine period, Leonardo painted several portraits, but the only one that
survives is the famous Mona Lisa (1503-06, Musée du Louvre). One of the most
celebrated portraits ever painted, it is also known as La Gioconda, after the
presumed name of the woman's husband. Leonardo seems to have had a special
affection for the picture, for he took it with him on all of his subsequent
travels.
Later Travels and Death
In 1506 Leonardo went again to Milan, at the summons of its French governor,
Charles d'Amboise. The following year he was named court painter to King Louis
XII of France, who was then residing in Milan. For the next six years Leonardo
divided his time between Milan and Florence, where he often visited his half
brothers and half sisters and looked after his inheritance. In Milan he
continued his engineering projects and worked on an equestrian figure for a
monument to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commander of the French forces in the city;
although the project was not completed, drawings and studies have been
preserved. From 1514 to 1516 Leonardo lived in Rome under the patronage of Pope
Leo X: he was housed in the Palazzo Belvedere in the Vatican and seems to have
been occupied principally with scientific experimentation. In 1516 he traveled
to France to enter the service of King Francis I. He spent his last years at
the Château de Cloux, near Amboise, where he died on May 2, 1519.
Paintings
Although Leonardo produced a relatively small number of paintings, many of
which remained unfinished, he was nevertheless an extraordinarily innovative
and influential artist. During his early years, his style closely paralleled
that of Verrocchio, but he gradually moved away from his teacher's stiff,
tight, and somewhat rigid treatment of figures to develop a more evocative and
atmospheric handling of composition. The early The Adoration of the Magi
introduced a new approach to composition, in which the main figures are grouped
in the foreground, while the background consists of distant views of imaginary
ruins and battle scenes.
Leonardo's stylistic innovations are even more apparent in The Last Supper, in
which he re-created a traditional theme in an entirely new way. Instead of
showing the 12 apostles as individual figures, he grouped them in dynamic
compositional units of three, framing the figure of Christ, who is isolated in
the center of the picture. Seated before a pale distant landscape seen through
a rectangular opening in the wall, Christwho is about to announce that one of
those present will betray himrepresents a calm nucleus while the others
respond with animated gestures. In the monumentality of the scene and the
weightiness of the figures, Leonardo reintroduced a style pioneered more than a
generation earlier by Masaccio, the father of Florentine painting.
The Mona Lisa, Leonardo's most famous work, is as well known for its mastery of
technical innovations as for the mysteriousness of its legendary smiling
subject. This work is a consummate example of two techniquessfumato and
chiaroscuroof which Leonardo was one of the first great masters. Sfumato is
characterized by subtle, almost infinitesimal transitions between color areas,
creating a delicately atmospheric haze or smoky effect; it is especially
evident in the delicate gauzy robes worn by the sitter and in her enigmatic
smile. Chiaroscuro is the technique of modeling and defining forms through
contrasts of light and shadow; the sensitive hands of the sitter are portrayed
with a luminous modulation of light and shade, while color contrast is used
only sparingly.
An especially notable characteristic of Leonardo's paintings is his landscape
backgrounds, into which he was among the first to introduce atmospheric
perspective. The chief masters of the High Renaissance in Florence, including
Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, and Fra Bartolommeo, all learned from Leonardo; he
completely transformed the school of Milan; and at Parma, Correggio's artistic
development was given direction by Leonardo's work.
Leonardo's many extant drawings, which reveal his brilliant draftsmanship and
his mastery of the anatomy of humans, animals, and plant life, may be found in
the principal European collections; the largest group is at Windsor Castle in
England. Probably his most famous drawing is the magnificent Self-Portrait (c.
1510-13, Biblioteca Reale, Turin).
Sculptural and Architectural Drawings
Because none of Leonardo's sculptural projects was brought to completion, his
approach to three-dimensional art can only be judged from his drawings. The
same strictures apply to his architecture; none of his building projects was
actually carried out as he devised them. In his architectural drawings,
however, he demonstrates mastery in the use of massive forms, a clarity of
expression, and especially a deep understanding of ancient Roman sources.
Scientific and Theoretical Projects
As a scientist Leonardo towered above all his contemporaries. His scientific
theories, like his artistic innovations, were based on careful observation and
precise documentation. He understood, better than anyone of his century or the
next, the importance of precise scientific observation. Unfortunately, just as
he frequently failed to bring to conclusion artistic projects, he never
completed his planned treatises on a variety of scientific subjects. His
theories are contained in numerous notebooks, most of which were written in
mirror script. Because they were not easily decipherable, Leonardo's findings
were not disseminated in his own lifetime; had they been published, they would
have revolutionized the science of the 16th century. Leonardo actually
anticipated many discoveries of modern times. In anatomy he studied the
circulation of the blood and the action of the eye. He made discoveries in
meteorology and geology, learned the effect of the moon on the tides,
foreshadowed modern conceptions of continent formation, and surmised the nature
of fossil shells. He was among the originators of the science of hydraulics and
probably devised the hydrometer; his scheme for the canalization of rivers
still has practical value. He invented a large number of ingenious machines,
many potentially useful, among them an underwater diving suit. His flying
devices, although not practicable, embodied sound principles of aerodynamics.
A creator in all branches of art, a discoverer in most branches of science, and
an inventor in branches of technology, Leonardo deserves, perhaps more than
anyone, the title of Homo Universalis, Universal Man.
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