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 :. | Leda | The Portinari Altarpiece | Profile of an old man | Last Supper | Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) sdg |
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SANCHEZ COELLO, Alonso
Spanish Painter, ca.1531-1588 was a portrait painter of the Spanish Renaissance and one of the pioneers of the great tradition of Spanish portrait painting. Alonso Senchez Coello spent his childhood in Benifair de les Valls, until the death of his father when he was around ten years old. He was educated in Portugal at his grandfather's home. Coello's years in Portugal and his family name of Portuguese origin led to a long-standing belief that he was in fact Portuguese. His grandfather (after whom he was named) was in the service of King John III of Portugal who sent the young painter to study with Anthonis Mor (also known as Antonio Moro) in Flanders around 1550. He was under the service of Antoine de Granville, bishop of Arras, learning from Mor. While studying in Flanders, Coello also spent time copying some of Titian's works. In 1552, the painter went to Lisbon with Anthonis Mor when Charles V commissioned Mor to paint the Portuguese royal family. For a few years, Senchez Coello remained in Portugal working for the court of the heir to the throne, John, Crown Prince of Portugal. After the prince's death, Senchez Coello moved to the Spanish court of Philip II, having been recommended by the widow of John, Juana, who was the sister of the Spanish king. In 1555, S??nchez Coello was in Valladolid working for the Spanish court, and when Mor left Spain in 1561, Senchez Coello took his former master's place as Court Painter. Senchez Coello married Louisa Reyaltes in either 1560 or 1561 in Valladolid, and they had seven children. Coello's daughter, Isabel Senchez (1564-1612),
Peter Monamy
was an English marine painter who lived between 1681 and 1749. Peter Monamy was baptised at the church of St Botolph's-without-Aldgate, London, England, on 12 January 1681 (new style). He was the last known surviving child of Peter, or Pierre, Monamy, born 1650 in Guernsey, and his English wife, Dorothy Gilbert; and the grandson of Andre Monamy, 1612-1680, who had been a strongly committed Commonwealth Parliamentarian in Guernsey during the 1650s. Dorothy Gilbert was the daughter of James Gilbert, who was Master of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers in 1670 and 1672. The Monamy family had been prominent merchants and residents of Guernsey since at least the 1560s, and in the Channel Islands since the 1530s. The painter's father, Pierre, had a brother named Andre, or Andrew, who was active in London as a merchant trader in salt and wool, during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In December, 1696, Andrew Monamy, together with his cousin, Daniel Le Febvre, is described as "guardian" of the children of Peter (i.e. Pierre) Monamy, deceased. The elder Peter Monamy appears to have died in about 1685. On 3 September 1696, Peter Monamy, aged 15, was bound as an apprentice for seven years by indenture to William Clark, a former (1687) Master of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, one of London's ancient guilds of craftsmen. Clark is recorded in several capacities in the London of the late 17th century, as a constable and juryman, with premises in Thames Street, and on London Bridge, and practised as what would today be called an interior decorator, with a thriving business. House decoration comprised a wide range of activities, including the provision of paintings as overdoors, and on panelling, house murals on canvas as well as decorative sign-boards for trade establishments. William Clark died before January, 1704, when his will was proved.
Samuel Palmer
1805-1881 British Samuel Palmer Galleries English painter, draughtsman and etcher. Palmer was a key figure of English Romantic painting who represented, at least in his early work, its pastoral, intuitive and nostalgic aspects at their most intense. He is widely described as a visionary and linked with his friend and mentor William Blake, though he stood at an almost opposite extreme in his commitment to landscape and his innocent approach to its imagery. He had none of Blake irony or complexity and was inspired by a passionate love of nature that found its philosophical dimension in unquestioning Neo-Platonism.