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 :. | Portrait de femme,dit a tort La belle ferronniere | Lorenzo de Medici between Antonio Pucci and Francesco Sassetti, with Giulio de Medici, fresco by Ghirlandaio | Madonna with the Yarnwinder (detail) dft | Mona Lisa | The muscles of arm, shoulder and neck |
Related Artists:
Max, Gabriel Cornelius von
Czechoslovakian, 1840-1915 Painter, illustrator and teacher, nephew of (1) Emanuel Max. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (1855-8), and the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste, Vienna (1858-61), and under Karl Theodor von Piloty at the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste, Munich (1863/4-7). He settled in Munich, where he opened a private school of painting in 1869. His paintings and book illustrations of the second half of the 1860s show an affinity with the late Romanticist movement. He illustrated works of German literature by Wieland, Lenau and Schiller, as well as producing illustrations for Goethe's Faust (1867-8; Prague, N.G., Kinsky Palace). As well as literary and even musical sources, religious themes frequently occur in his work, including his first great success, the Crucifixion of St Julie (1867; ex-Sotheby's, London, 1976). In numerous female figures and portraits Max explored the tension between the inner state and the charm of the physical appearance or surroundings of his subjects. His interest in the artistic perception of relationships between physical reality and the spiritual world led him to a study of anthropology and contemporary occultism and mysticism, as in his portraits of the Seer of Prevorst
Arturo Michelena
16 June 1863 - 29 July 1898) was a Venezuelan painter born in Valencia, Carabobo State. He began to paint at a young age under his father's tutelage. Traveled to Paris where he studied in the famous Academie Julian. He was the first Venezuelan artist to succeed overseas and, with Cristebal Rojas (1857-1890) and Marten Tovar y Tovar (1827-1902), one of the most important Venezuelan painters of the 19th century. His first great success occurred in Paris at Le Salon des Artistes Français in 1887. Encouraged by his teacher Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921), Michelena presented a canvas titled L'Enfant Malade (The sick boy) which was awarded the Gold Medal, second class, the highest honor a foreign artist could receive at the salon. The painting was quickly considered a masterpiece and was acquired by the Astors in New York in the late 19th century. Later the painting traveled to South Florida when it was acquired by Owens Burns, a business partner of John Ringling, the circus magnate. After Burns' death the painting was stored in the Ringling Museum's vaults where it remained away from public view for more than 60 years. In 2004 Sotheby's rescued the canvas and arranged for it to be included in an auction of Latin American art.
Pierre Bernard
(1704 -1777 ) - Drawer