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 :. | Mona Lisa | Madonna and Child | Madonna Litta ey | Study fur the Sforza-Reiterstandbild | Madonna with the Yarnwinder |
Related Artists:
Geertgen Tot Sint Jans
Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1460-1490 Geertgen tot Sint Jans is also known as Geertgen van Haarlem, Gerrit van Haarlem, or Gerrit Gerritsz.[citation needed] Alternative spellings of his first name are Gheertgen, Geerrit, and Gheerrit, where G(h)eertgen is the diminutive form of G(h)eerrit. Presumably, he was born in Leiden, then in the Burgundian Netherlands in the Holy Roman Empire, around the year 1465. The assignment of Leiden as his birth place is traceable to a 17th century print by Jacob van Matham. There is no known archival evidence for this claim by Jacob van Matham. The modern acceptance of Leiden as Geertgen's birth place is roughly traceable to Johann Kessler's dissertation of 1930. Probably, Geertgen was a pupil of Albert van Ouwater, who was one of the first oil painters in the northern Low Countries. Both painters lived in the city of Haarlem. Geertgen was attached to the monastery of the Knights of Saint John, for whom he painted an altarpiece. Although Geertgen was not a member of the Order of Saint John, his last name "tot Sint Jans" was derived from the order's name and means "unto Saint John". Geertgen died in Haarlem, then the Habsburg Netherlands in the Holy Roman Empire, around the year 1495, when he was approximately 28 years old. He was buried in the monastery of the Knights of Saint John. Modern scholars have attempted to calculate the artist's death date with the information from The Painting-Book (Middle Dutch: Het Schilder-Boeck) by Karel van Mander, published in 1604. There are some archival traces that suggest he may in fact have lived into the 16th century.
Julius von Blaas
1845-1923,was an Italian painter, the second son of Karl, born at Albano, Italy. He studied under his father, devoted himself principally to equestrian subjects, and went to Rome where he painted genre scenes from the Campagna. His "Race of Intoxicated Slavonic Peasants" (1869) is in the Imperial Museum of Vienna, as is "Antlassritt" (1899). Julius von Blaas was much employed by the Austrian court as a portrait painter and became professor in the Academy of Vienna.
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
1725-1802 French Joseph Siffred Duplessis Locations French painter. He trained with his father, an amateur painter, and then with Joseph-Gabriel Imbert (1666-1749), a pupil of Charles Le Brun. In 1744 he went to Rome and worked with Pierre Subleyras. He remained there until at least 1747 and possibly until the death of his master in 1749. He must have learnt portrait painting in Rome, but he also painted landscapes, because Joseph Vernet advised him to specialize in this genre.