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 :. | Woman portrait | Annunciation | Master of the Pala Sforzesca, profile of an old man | Mona Lisa (detail) dhu | Leda |
Related Artists:
Albert Fitch Bellows
Nov.29.1829-Nov.24.1883, American landscape painter of the Hudson River School, was born at Milford, Massachusetts. He first studied architecture and opened his own architectural firm in 1849, but quickly turned to painting. From 1850 to 1856 he taught at the New England School of Design in Boston. He resigned his post to travel and study abroad, and spent time in Paris and at the Royal Academy at Antwerp as well as in England. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1857, becoming a full member in 1861, and he settled in New York City in 1858 on his return to America. Bellows spent most of his remaining career in New York, though he briefly moved to Boston. He visited Europe again in 1867. In New York he kept a studio in the same building as many of the notable Hudson River School artists of the time. His landscape work of the 1860s is fully in the late Hudson River School tradition, though Bellows depicted people more prominently in his landscapes than most other artists. He excelled at figurative scenes. Bellows also differed from most Hudson River School artists in that he became skilled at watercolor, and authored a respected book on the subject titled "Water-Color Painting: Some Facts and Authorities in Relation to Its Durability". He eventually maintained two studios, one for oil paintings and one for watercolor. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society, and an honorary member of the Royal Belgian Society of Water-Colorists. Bellows also mastered etching??along with Samuel Colman he was possibly the only other Hudson River School artist to do so??and became a member of the New York Etching Club, the Philadelphia Society of Etchers and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in London, England, an esteemed professional organization whose members included James McNeil Whistler and Francis Seymour Haden. He died in Auburndale,
BEERT, Osias
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1580-1624 Flemish painter. In 1596 he went to study with Andries van Baseroo and in 1602 became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke; these two dates suggest his probable date of birth. Beert married Marguerite Ykens on 8 January 1606. Contemporary documents describe him as a cork merchant. The esteem enjoyed by Beert is indicated by the large number of pupils he had, including, in 1610, Frans van der Borch; in 1615, Frans Ykens; in 1616, Paulus Pontius; and, in 1618, Jan Willemssen. Beert's son, Osias Beert the younger (1622-78), was also a painter and became a master in 1645.
Bohumil Kubista
(1884 - 1918) was a Czech painter and art critic, one of the founders of Czech modern painting. He studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague, but left in 1906 to study at the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti in Florence. He, Emil Filla, Antonin Prochezka, and five others founded Osma (The Eight), an Expressionist-oriented group of artists. Kubišta came to his individual expression gradually, at first he was influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. He educated himself in in philosophy and optics, and studied colour and the geometrical construction of painting. Kubišta, like several other Czech artists of his generation, was strongly affected by the 1905 Edvard Munch exhibition in Prague. Together with Emil Filla he established the artistic group Osma in 1907. He worked in an Expressionist style until 1910, and exchanged ideas with German painters in Die Bre - ke. He also developed visual ideas learned from the work of Cezanne. His later style (approximately from 1911) was strongly influenced by cubism and expressionism. Expressionist elements, particularly his use of color but also his subject matter, immediately distinguish Kubištaes cubist work from that of founding Paris Cubists Picasso and Braque. He studied color theory, analyzing the harmonic and compositional principles of painters such as El Greco, Eugene Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, and Edvard Munch. He also paid close attention to mathematical and geometric principles. Around 1911, he became acquainted with Jan Zrzavý and the artistic group Sursum. He died prematurely during the global 1918 flu pandemic which ravaged Europe after the First World War.