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 :. | Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist | Portrait of a Musician | Pod of cherry and forest strawberry | Lady with Emine | The Virgin of the Rocks |
Related Artists:
Michael Sweerts
Flemish 1618-1664 Michiel Sweerts (September 29, 1618 - 1664), also known as Michael Sweerts, was a Flemish painter of the Baroque period, active in Rome (1645-1656) in the style of the Bamboccianti. The Bamboccianti were known for depicting genre scenes of daily life. Born in Brussels, he arrived in Rome in the mid 1640s, and rapidly moved into the circle of Flemish painters that had arrayed around Pieter van Laer, and that resided near Santa Maria del Popolo. In 1647, he attended meetings of the Accademia di San Luca, although not as a member. By 1659, he had returned to Brussels, where he joined the painter's guild. He appears to have become mentally unstable in his last years. In Amsterdam, he joined the Jesuits as a "lay Brother" rather than a priest, and sailed from Marsaille to the East with a missionary group. Travelling to Jerusalem, and from there to Goa, where after causing tribulations to those around him, he died. Sweerts is an enigmatic and difficult artist to categorize, since he seems to have absorbed a variety of influences to create an eclectic hybrid that can be described as a Netherlandish genre adaptation of an early tenebrist styles: a blend of Vermeer's genre of painting and Caravaggio-influenced full bodied figures.
mattsleiderstam
Adolf Ludvig Stierneld, född den 1 september 1755 i Stockholm död den 31 juli 1835 på Gripsholm, var en svensk friherre, politiker, hovman och samlare av historiska dokument, vilken av senare historisk forskning avslöjats som en av Sveriges mest förslagna och produktiva dokumentförfalskare. Stierneld var son till Samuel Gustaf Stierneld, vilken var chef för Västmanlands regemente, och vilken lär ha antecknat sitt regemente bland den nyföddes faddrar. Sonen inskrevs även endast sex månader gammal som volontär i samma kår. Oaktat denna militärståtliga början hann sonen ej längre än till ryttmästare vid livregementet, vartill han utnämndes 1781. Inom hovet anställdes Stierneld som kammarherre hos drottning Sofia Magdalena 1778. Han kom dock snart på mindre vänlig fot med Gustav III och tillhörde vid 1786 och 1789 års riksdagar ledarna för oppositionen inom adelsståndet. När kungen beredde sig att genomföra sina envåldsplaner, hörde Stierneld till de motståndare som arresterades. Till följd av sina förbindelser med ryske ministern hade han åsamkat sig konungens synnerliga ovilja, och när de övriga arresterade frigavs, sändes Stierneld till Varbergs fästning, där han kvarhölls till 1790. Genom sitt 1790 ingångna giftermål med grevinnan Kristina Charlotta Gyldenstolpe, dotter till Gustav III:s gunstling Nils Philip Gyldenstolpe, kom Stierneld snart åter på mera vänlig fot med hovet och blev 1792 överkammarherre. Vid riksdagen 1800 sågs han också, i likhet med andra ur 1789 års opposition (Magnus Fredrik Brahe, Claes Axel Lewenhaupt med flera) i hovpartiets främsta led.
Thomas Moran
b1837 UK d1926 Thomas Moran Locations Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 - August 25, 1926) from Bolton, England was an artist of the Hudson River School who often painted the Rocky Mountains. Thomas Moran's vision of the Western landscape was critical to the creation of Yellowstone National Park. Thomas Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.