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 :. | Madonna in the rock grottos(Details | The Annunciation | Mona Lisa | Our Lady and St Anne | Reverse side of the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci sg |
Related Artists:
John Pynas
1583-1631 Dutch John Pynas Gallery
Arthur Dove
American 1880-1946 Dove returned to America in 1909 and met Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz, the eldest child of a New York rich family and was send to study in Germany at the age of 16 where he was overtaken with the passion of photography. In 1905 he returned to New York with 15 years of experience he was at the front lines to make photography respected as one of the fine art. Alfred Stieglitz was a well known photographer and gallery owner who was very active in promoting modern art in America. In his attempt to educate the art public, he started to introduce other art besides photography. Along with American modernists he would show European work. These pieces had never been seen in the United States.[1] Stieglitz was a New York art world celebrity.[1] Dove made the decision to quit his career as an illustrator but was in need of artistic identity along with emotional bolstering and Stieglitz filled both.[5] The photographer was 61, 16 years younger than Dove and with Anglo-Saxon heritage, being Protestant with a small town background was in contrast to Stieglitz??s experience being urban, Jewish and rooted in European culture. Dove was gentle, quite, and a good friend while Stieglitz was argumentative and shrewd. They both had in common that they believed art forms should embody modern spiritual values not materialism and tradition. Stieglitz was later the husband of the famed painter Georgia O??Keeffe. With Stiegliz??s support, Dove produced what are known as the first purely abstract paintings to come out of America. Dove exhibited his works at Stieglitz??s ??291?? gallery in 1910 and in 1912 when he had his first one-man exhibition. The 1910 show ??Younger American Painters?? put Dove in the company of his old friend Maurer. Dove showed one painting, a large still life painted in France ??The Lobster??, which would be his last representational work. The 1912 show at the ??291??, Doves only one man showed a group of pastels that came to be know as ??Ten Commandments??, would be the first public display of nonillusionistic art by an American. In the two years since meeting Stieglitz Dove found himself as a leader in international art developments. From 1912 to 1946 Dove showed his work yearly at Stieglitz??s galleries, ??291??, ??intimate Gallery?? and ??An American Place.?? Dove??s works were based in natural forms and he referred to his form of abstraction as ??extraction,?? in essence, extracting the essential forms of a scene from a nature.
Evans, De Scott
American, 1847-1898 was an American artist who worked in Indiana, Ohio and New York. He was known for portraits, still lifes, landscapes and other genres. Born in Boston, Indiana to David S. and Nancy A. (Davenport) Evans. His father was a physician. Evans changed his signature to D. Scott Evans and later to De Scott Evans. He also signed paintings with the names David Scott, S. S. David, and Stanley S. David. He attended Miami University's preparatory school in the 1860s, studying with professor Adrian Beaugureau at Miami and later in Cincinnati. In 1873, he became head of the art department at Mount Union College and after several terms there, he moved to Cleveland to teach and to paint. From Cleveland, he moved to New York. He died along with 500 other passengers and crew, including his daughters when the French steamer La Bourgogne was rammed by a sailing ship in July 1898.