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 :. | The Virgin and the Nino with Holy Ana | Madonna Litta (detail sdg | Master of the Pala Sforzesca, profile of an old man | Last Supper (mk08) | Six studies fur naked or clothed men |
Related Artists:
Girolamo da Carpi
(1501-1556) was an Italian painter and decorator who worked at the Court of the House of Este in Ferrara. He began painting in Ferrara, by report apprenticing to Benvenuto Tisi (il Garofalo); but by age 20, he had moved to Bologna, and is considered a figure of Early Renaissance painting of the local Bolognese School. He trained in the studio of a local painter who showed the influence of Lorenzo Costa and Raphael. In the 1520s Girolamo visited Rome and Bologna and was inspired by the Mannerist style of Giulio Romano. Geographically and stylistically he straddles the various influences. He returned to Ferrara and collaborated with Dosso Dossi and Garofalo among others on commissions for the d'Este family. Girolamo became the architect to Pope Julius III in 1550 and supervised the remodeling of the Vatican's belvedere. Returning to Ferrara, he was charged of the enlargements of the Castello Estense. Da Carpi's paintings include a Descent of the Holy Spirit, in the church of St Francis at Rovigo; a Madonna, an Adoration of the Magi, and a St. Catharine at Bologna; and the St. George and the St. Jerome at Ferrara.
BEYEREN, Abraham van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1620-1690 Dutch painter. He painted seascapes as well as fruit, flower, fish, game and banquet still-lifes. He almost always signed these works with his monogram AVB, but he dated only a few. This, together with the fact that he painted diverse subjects simultaneously and his style changed little, makes it difficult to establish a chronology. He became a master in The Hague in 1640 and was related by marriage to the fish painter Pieter de Putter (before 1600-59). Van Beyeren lived in Delft from 1657 to 1661 and was again in The Hague between 1663 and 1669.
Vigilius Eriksen
(b Copenhagen, 2 Sept 1722; d Copenhagen, 23 or 24 May 1783). Danish painter, active also in Russia. He was apprenticed to the portrait painter Johann Salomon Wahl in Copenhagen. In 1755 he competed unsuccessfully for the gold medal at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen with a historical painting, Lot and his Wife (untraced). In a letter he complained that the rules did not allow him to enter a portrait, a genre more suited to his talents. Presumably in 1756 he completed the portraits of the registrar of the royal art collections, Lorenz Spengler and his Wife (Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst).