Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Florentine Renaissance man, genius, artist in all media, architect, military engineer. Possibly the most brilliantly creative man in European history, he advertised himself, first of all, as a military engineer. In a famous letter dated about 1481 to Ludovico Sforza, of which a copy survives in the Codice Atlantico in Milan, Leonardo asks for employment in that capacity. He had plans for bridges, very light and strong, and plans for destroying those of the enemy. He knew how to cut off water to besieged fortifications, and how to construct bridges, mantlets, scaling ladders, and other instruments. He designed cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, designed to fire small stones, almost in the manner of hail??grape- or case-shot (see ammunition, artillery). He offered cannon of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use and, where it is not possible to employ cannon ?? catapults, mangonels and trabocchi and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. And he said he made armoured cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with their artillery ?? and behind them the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed, and without any opposition. He also offered to design ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke. The large number of surviving drawings and notes on military art show that Leonardo claims were not without foundation, although most date from after the Sforza letter. Most of the drawings, including giant crossbows (see bows), appear to be improvements on existing machines rather than new inventions. One exception is the drawing of a tank dating from 1485-8 now in the British Museum??a flattened cone, propelled from inside by crankshafts, firing guns. Another design in the British Museum, for a machine with scythes revolving in the horizontal plane, dismembering bodies as it goes, is gruesomely fanciful. Most of the other drawings are in the Codice Atlantico in Milan but some are in the Royal Libraries at Windsor and Turin, in Venice, or the Louvre and the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Two ingenious machines for continuously firing arrows, machine-gun style, powered by a treadmill are shown in the Codice Atlantico. A number of other sketches of bridges, water pumps, and canals could be for military or civil purposes: dual use technology. Leonardo lived at a time when the first artillery fortifications were appearing and the Codice Atlantico contains sketches of ingenious fortifications combining bastions, round towers, and truncated cones. Models constructed from the drawings and photographed in Calvi works reveal forts which would have looked strikingly modern in the 19th century, and might even feature in science fiction films today. On 18 August 1502 Cesare Borgia appointed Leonardo as his Military Engineer General, although no known building by Leonardo exists. Leonardo was also fascinated by flight. Thirteen pages with drawings for man-powered aeroplanes survive and there is one design for a helicoidal helicopter. Leonardo later realized the inadequacy of the power a man could generate and turned his attention to aerofoils. Had his enormous abilities been concentrated on one thing, he might have invented the modern glider.  Related Paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci :. | Detail of Madonna of the Rocks | Leda | Studies for a Nativity | Adoration of the Magi | Study of a child |
Related Artists:
Maurycy Gottlieb
Drohobytsch, February 21/28, 1856 - Krakew, July 17, 1879) was a Jewish painter, of Polish-speaking Galician Jews from the western part of Ukraine. He was born in Drohobych (at that time Austria-Hungary), Galicia, modern Lviv region, western Ukraine. Maurycy was one of Isaac and Fanya Tigerman Gottlieb's eleven children. At fifteen, he was enrolled at the Vienna Fine Arts Academy. Later, he would study under Jan Matejko in Krakew. However, he experienced anti-semitism from his fellow students, and left Matejko's studio after less than a year, he then traveled to Norway settling in Molde. After several years he returned to Vienna to pursue his Jewish roots. At twenty, he won a gold medal from a Munich art competition for Shylock and Jessica (at right), showing a scene from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. He based Jessica's face on that of Laura Rosenfeld, to whom he had proposed marriage. However, Rosenfeld rejected his proposal, and wed a Berlin banker. Gottlieb then planned to marry Lola Rosengarten, but when he heard about Rosenfeld's marriage he committed suicide by exposure to the elements, dying of complications from a cold. Despite his early death, more than three hundred of his works survive, though not all are finished. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, many Polish collections unknown in the West were discovered, and his reputation grew greatly. His brother, painter Leopold Gottlieb, was born five years after his death.
Jan victors
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1619-1676 was a Dutch Baroque painter that focused mainly on painting subject from the Bible. He was a student of Rembrandt van Rijn.
gosta adrian-nilsson
Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, GAN, född 2 april 1884 i Lund, död 29 mars 1965 i Stockholm, svensk konstnär och författare. Räknas som en betydande pionjär inom den svenska modernistiska konsten. GAN debuterade som konstnär 1907 med en utställning på Lunds universitets konstmuseum. Efter studier i bl.a. Köpenhamn for han 1913 till Berlin för att studera modernismen. I Berlin kom han genom författaren Herwarth Waldens galleri Der Sturm i kontakt med futurism, expressionism och kubism. Influerad av dessa ismer skapade GAN sedan sin nya, modernistiska stil. 1916 flyttade han till Stockholm där han genom sin modernistiska konst och sin propaganda för den nya konsten, väckte stor uppmärksamhet. Att GAN var homosexuell avspeglas i flera av hans verk. Till exempel var han periodvis nästan maniskt fixerad vid sjömän och han dyrkade maskulin kraft. Andra favoritmotiv var manliga idrottsutövare. Samtidigt var den homosexuella erotiken både förbjuden och tabubelagd och GAN tvingades att leva ett dubbelliv. Mellan 1920 och 1925 bodde och arbetade GAN i Paris där han kom i kontakt med Fernand L??ger. Kontakten med denne ledde till att GAN:s inriktning mot kubismen förstärktes. Under 1930-talet anslöt han sig till surrealismen. Förutom oljemålningar finns akvareller med folkvisemotiv samt gobelängkartonger bland hans verk. Dessa "säljbara" verk gjorde GAN dock i de flesta fall av ekonomiska skäl snarare än konstnärliga. Han skrev även dikter, noveller och barnböcker.