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 :. | Portrat of Isabella d-Este | Cecila Gallerani (mk45) | Mona Lisa | The Refectory with the Last Supper after restoration g | Mona Lisa (mk08) |
Related Artists:
Georges Laugee
Georges Laugee was born in Montivilliers on December 19, 1853. His father, Desire Laugee, was an important French Realist artist; a contemporary of Jules Breton and specialized in portraying the workers in the field. Georges received his early training with his father and then, like many artists of his time, continued his studies at le Ecole des Beaux-Arts. There he studied at the ateliers of Isidore Pils and Henri Lehmann where he mastered the art of life studies and sketching. In 1877 he made his debut at the Paris Salon and in 1881 was awarded the bronze medal for his Salon entries of that year: En Octobre and Pauvre aveugle. Following his love of nature and the farm worker, Laugee focused on scenes of everyday life. His works, often featuring the peasants tending their animals or working in the fields, are filled with light and realism. Among the works that Georges chose to exhibit at the Paris Salons were; his 1890 submissions Le Repos and Le Retour des Champs; 1897 submission Sous leaverse (In the Storm) and his 1904 works Deux Amies and Au Temps des bles murs, which portrayed peasant girls in the country. At the Salon of 1906 he exhibited Soleil Couchant (Sunset) and Heure doree (Golden Hour) and continued to exhibit works of similar subject matter through 1928. In 1889 he participated in the Exposition Universelle, where he received a bronze medal and in the Exposition Universelle of 1900 was awarded the silver medal for his painting entitled Au printemps de la vie (In the Springtime). From 1907 -- 1909 Laugee was a Membre du Comite de la Societe des Artistes Français and was a member of the Jury at the Salon from 1908 -- 1910. Laugee painting entitled The Favorite. exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1891 and a very similar composition to Bergere et Mouton (featured below) - was illustrated in Famous Paintings of the World, published in 1894. The accompanying caption reads as follows: In every family, however impartial the parents try to feel, there is always one child for whom, could she bring herself to confess it, the mother has a place in her heart a little warmer than she keeps for any other. The little shepherdess in this charming picture is exemplifying this universal truth of human nature, in her quiet encouragement of the approaches of the favorite lamb of her little flock. This is the pet lamb that she helps over all the stony places, and with which she shares even her own frugal meal. It is a simple story the artist has chosen to tell; but he has set it in a scene of tender and idyllic beauty, thoroughly appropriate to the gentle theme of affection he has selected for the central thought. He has contrasted effectively the simplicity of the shaded hillside nook, speckled with daisies and peopled with the inoffensive flock, and the ripe, full glory of the day, resplendent in the high-banked clouds, and reflected from the still surface of the breezeless summer lake. The photograph reproduction of this canvas has very successfully preserved the painty qualities of the original, so completely transferring to the engraving the technique of the artist that it is impossible that this should be anything other than what it is -- a direct engraving from a masterly painting in oil colors. Laugee first atelier, located at 20, boulevard Flandrin, Paris, was also the home of the great realist artist Julien Dupre brother-in-law) and just after Dupre death in 1910, Laugee moved to 23, boulevard Lannes. By 1923 he had relocated to 123, Rue de la Tour; where it appears that he remained for the rest of his life.
Cohoon Hannah
American painter b.1788 d.1864
Paolo Veronese
Italian Mannerist Painter, ca.1528-1588 Italian painter and draughtsman. With Titian and Tintoretto he makes up the triumvirate of great painters of the late Renaissance in Venice. He is known as a supreme colourist and for his illusionistic decorations in both fresco and oil. His large paintings of biblical feasts executed for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially celebrated. He also produced many altarpieces, history and mythological paintings and portraits. His compositional sketches in pen, ink and wash, figure studies in chalk, and chiaroscuro modelli and ricordi form a significant body of drawings.