Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 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 :. | Funf studies of grotesque faces | Virgin of the Rocks | The Annunciation | Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci sg | Mona Lisa (mk08) |
Related Artists:
Shalva Kikodze
Shalva Kikodze (Georgian: შალვა ქიქოძე) (1894 - 1921) was a Georgian expressionist painter, graphic artist and theatre decorator. Together with Lado Gudiashvili and David Kakabadze, he is considered a key figure in Georgian art of the early 20th century. He was born in a remote Georgian village Bakhvi, Guria, then part of the Russian Empire. From 1914 to 1918, he studied at Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1916, he took part in an expedition to the Georgian village Nabakhtevi and made copies of the 15th-century murals from the local church. He stayed in his motherland for a short period of 1918-1920, and worked chiefly as a theater decorator for Jabadari Theater in Tbilisi. Afterwards he moved to Paris, where he, together with his fellow painters, Gudiashvili and Kakabadze, held an exhibition in 1921. He died in Freiburg, Germany, on November 7, 1921
James Guthrie
Scottish Painter, 1859-1930 Sir James Guthrie (June 10 1859?CSeptember 6 1930) was a Scottish painter known, later on in his career, for his portraiture, although primarily known for his work in the realm of Scottish Realism. Born in Greenock, Guthrie, the son of a clergyman, originally enrolled at Glasgow University to study law, but abandoned this in favour of painting in 1877. Unlike many of his contemporaries he did not study in Paris, being mostly self-taught, although he was mentored for a short time by James Drummond in Glasgow and then John Pettie in London. He lived most of his life in the Scottish Borders, most notably in Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, where he painted some of his most important works, including A Hind Daughter (1883), and Schoolmates. He was strongly influenced by the French Realists, especially Jules Bastien-Lepage, and was associated with the Glasgow Boys. He was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1888, and a full member in 1892. In 1902 he succeeded Sir George Reid as RSA president in 1902, and he was knighted the following year. He died in Rhu, Dunbartonshire in 1930
BUGIARDINI, Giuliano
Italian painter, Florentine school (b. 1475, Firenze, d. 1554, Firenze) Italian painter and draughtsman. He trained in Florence in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio. The influence of Ghirlandaio is apparent in his earliest known works, datable between c. 1495 and 1500, which include part of the altarpiece of the Nativity (Florence, Santa Croce) painted for the Castellani family. Apart from Ghirlandaio, his two most important early influences were Fra Bartolommeo and Mariotto Albertinelli. In 1503 Bugiardini joined the Compagnia di S Luca and began an association with Albertinelli that continued until 1509 when Albertinelli moved to the workshop of Fra Bartolommeo. Bugiardini's paintings of the Virgin and Child (e.g. c. 1510; Kansas City, MO, Nelson-Atkins Mus. A.) show the influence of the balanced classical compositions executed by Raphael in Florence between 1504 and 1508 (e.g. the Madonna of the Meadow, 1505, Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.; La Belle Jardini?re, 1507, Paris, Louvre). From Ghirlandaio's workshop and his study of antique sculpture in the Medici garden, Bugiardini would have known Michelangelo early in his career. Vasari mentioned Bugiardini as among the artists who went to Rome in 1508 to assist Michelangelo with the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Vatican) and who were almost immediately sent back to Florence. The influence of Franciabigio is clear in such works as the Birth of John the Baptist (1512; Stockholm U., Kstsaml.; autograph copy, Modena, Gal. & Mus. Estense) in which nature is not idealized, as compared to contemporary works in Rome. The signed and dated Madonna della palma (Virgin and Child with the Infant John the Baptist, 1520; Florence, Uffizi) suggests his familiarity with such contemporary Roman paintings by Raphael and his workshop as the Madonna of Divine Love (Naples, Capodimonte) or the Madonna of the Rose (c. 1518; Madrid, Prado).