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 :. | The Annunciation | Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci | The Battle of Anghiari | Horses with horsemen | Madonna of the Rocks |
Related Artists:
Giuseppe Antonio Petrini
(October 23, 1677- c. 1755-9) was a painter of the late-Baroque, active mainly in Lugano, present-day Switzerland. St. Andrew City Museum of Rimini, ItalyWhile born in Carona in Canton Ticino and died in Lugano, both in Switzerland, Petrini belongs to the Northern Italian or Lombard heritage of baroque painting. He possibly apprenticed with Bartolomeo Guidobono after 1700. While some works can be found in Como and Bergamo, most are located in Lugano and the surrounding area. He is also listed between 1711 and 1753 as fabbriciere of the church of Madonna deOnegro in Carona. He often painted "portraits" of historical figures including saints, philosophers, and scientists for patrons. One of his more prominent examples is his depiction of an auster St. Peter emerging from the shadows to pinpoint some lines in the gospel. He painted another St. Peter for the parish church of Dubino. Pietro Ligari classified him among the speculative painters, since these portraits, by nature, were imagined.
MANDER, Karel van
b. 1548, Meulebeke, d. 1606, Amsterdam Dutch painter, poet, and writer. Born of a noble family, after much wandering he settled in Haarlem in 1583 and founded a successful academy of painting with Hendrik Goltzius and Cornelis Cornelisz (1562 C 1638). He is best known for The Book of Painters (1604), which contains about 175 biographies of Dutch, Flemish, and German painters of the 15th C 16th centuries; it became for the northern countries what Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Painters had been for Italy.
Parentino, Bernardo
Italian Painter, 1437-1531 was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period, active mainly in Padua. Born in Parenzo, then a Venetian town in Istria and died in Vicenza. He was influenced, if not a pupil, of the painter Andrea Mantegna. He became an Augustinian monk under name of Lorenzo. He painted Scenes of the life of San Benedetto for the cloister of Santa Giustina at Padua, and a Nativity once at the Accademia in Venice. He painted a nightmarish Temptation of St. Anthony Abbot found at the Doria Pamphilj Gallery. An Adoration of the Magi