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 :. | Study of a child | Portrait of Ginerva de'Benci-u | Studies for a Nativity | Last Supper | Portrait of Cecilia Gallarani |
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Willem de Zwart
(16 May 1862 The Hague - 11 December 1931 The Hague) was a Dutch painter, engraver, watercolorist, with many connections to the Hague School. Willem De Zwart was born in The Hague on 16 May 1862, the eldest of eight children. His youngest brother, Pieter, would also become a painter. His father painted carriages for a living, and in 1875 the fourteen-year-old Willem was apprenticed to a carriage maker to learn the same trade. In his spare time, he copied prints he found in magazines, and a year later he enrolled in the evening class at the Royal Academy of Visual Art in The Hague. The following year, he was admitted at the studio of Jacob Maris. In the three years that he remained here, it is probable that he got to know many of the leading lights of the Hague School. Maris also sent De Zwart on a journey to the coast, without drawing materials, and had him work out his impressions directly on canvas when he returned to the studio. De Zwart made several copies of works by 16th and 17th century masters in the Mauritshuis. He was most interested in the works of Johannes Vermeer, Paulus Potter, and Rembrandt, but studied paintings by German and Italian masters, as well. Sometimes he produced copies on commission. In this period, he also made detailed studies of animals, concentrating particularly on their legs, heads and snouts. De Zwart developed a fastidious painting style with a sober, predominantly brown palette. Willem de Zwart lived and worked until 1894 in The Hague and from 1900 to 1905 in Amsterdam. His work has a wide range of subjects: landscapes, cityscapes, portraits and still life, rendered in a naturalistic or impressionist style. His work shows affinity with the people and city-oriented Amsterdam Impressionism. In his choice of subjects belonged to the Hague School and in his style and his exuberant use of color to the school of Amsterdam Impressionism. He is also known as the "Hague Breitner" because of the similarity of his work to that of George Hendrik Breitner. He painted his landscapes, figure paintings and still lifes with smooth, bold brushstrokes. De Zwart applied the paint thickly, sometimes straight from the tube, with bright colors, exuberant reds, yellows and blues, giving his paintings special vibrancy.
Murano, Andrea da
Russian, approx. 1670-1740
Hermon Atkins Macneil
American Sculptor, 1866-1947,American sculptor, b. Chelsea, Mass., studied in Paris and in Rome. His first work of importance was for the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, but he is perhaps best known for his Native Americans and Western pioneers. Among his monuments are The Coming of the White Man (Portland, Oreg.); the McKinley Memorial (Columbus, Ohio); the Soldiers and Sailors Monument (Albany, N.Y.); and the Marquette Memorial (Chicago). Among smaller sculptures is The Sun Vow (Metropolitan Mus.).