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 :. | Self Portrait | Details of Mona Lisa | Waiter flat anatomy of the shoulder | Madonna in the cave | Battle of Anghiari |
Related Artists:
David Vinckboons
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1576-ca.1632 was a Dutch painter of Flemish origin. Vinckboons was one of the most prolific and popular painters and print designers in the Netherlands. Himself influenced by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, he was instrumental together with "Hans Bol and Roelant Savery" in the development of genre painting in the northern Netherlands. The family moved to Antwerp around 1580, and then to Middelburg after the Spanish occupation of Antwerp in 1585. It is not likely they moved for religious reasons to Amsterdam. His father became a citizen in 1591, but none of his grandchildren were baptized in a Calvinist church. In 1602 David married in Leeuwarden to Agneta van Loon, the daughter of a notary. Then he lived in Sint Antoniesbreestraat like many other artists and painters. According to Karel van Mander he did not have any teacher other than his father Phillipe, a painter on canvas with watercolors, an art form practised mainly in his birthplace of Mechelen. David specialized in elegant figures in park-like landscapes (Outdoor Merry Company, 1610; Vienna, Akademie der Bildenden Kenste) as well as Kermis and other village festivals. His landscapes reflect his contact with Gillis van Coninxloo. Vinckboons attracted a number of students; among them were Gillis d'Hondecoeter, Claes Janszoon Visscher and probably Esaias van de Velde.
August Hagborg
1852 - 1925,Swedish painter. He studied at the Konstakademi in Stockholm (1871-5), then went to Paris in the autumn of 1875, where he lived until 1909. He began to exhibit at the Salon as early as 1876 and became one of its most industrious contributors. In 1877 he showed at the Salon his painting Waiting (1877; priv. col., see S. Strembom: Konstnersferbundets historia [History of the Federation of Artists], i (Stockholm, 1945), pl. 35), developed from a study made in Bohuslen on the west coast of Sweden. It shows a young fisherman's wife, her child on her arm, gazing out over the sea and waiting for her husband. This introduced what was to become Hagborg's favourite subject-matter: the fishing community, mostly in Normandy and Brittany. Typical elements of his paintings are young women, depicted in idealized and heroic manner, in theatrical poses, and a realistic background, usually of shallow beaches at ebb tide; in his later works, he painted in more delicate and exquisite, silvery colours.
Leon Joseph Florentin Bonnat
(20 June 1833 - 8 September 1922) was a French painter. He was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Madrid, where his father owned a bookshop. While tending his father's shop, he copied engravings of works by the Old Masters, developing a passion for drawing. In Madrid he received his artistic training under Madrazo. He later worked in Paris, where he became known as a leading portraitist, never without a commission. His many portraits show the influence of Velezquez, Jusepe de Ribera and other Spanish masters, as well as Titian and Van Dyke, whose works he studied in the Prado. Following the period in Spain Bonnat worked the ateliers of the history painters Paul Delaroche and Leon Cogniet (1854) in Paris. Despite repeated attempts, he failed to win the prix de Rome, finally receiving only a second prize. However, a scholarship from his native Bayonne allowed him to spend three years in Rome (1858 - 60) independently. During his stay in Rome, he became friends with Edgar Degas, Gustave Moreau, Jean-Jacques Henner and the sculptor Henri Chapu. He won a medal of honor in Paris in 1869, going on to become one of the leading artists of his day. Bonnat went on to win the Grand Officer of the Legion d'honneur and became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1882. Bonnat was quite popular with American students in Paris. In addition to his native French, he spoke Spanish and Italian and knew English well, to the relief of many monolingual Americans. In May 1905 he succeeded Paul Dubois as director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Bonnat "was a liberal teacher who stressed simplicity in art above high academic finish, as well as overall effect rather than detail," explains Julius Kaplan (see References). Bonnat's emphasis on overall effect on the one hand, and rigorous drawing on the other, put him in a middle position with respect to the Impressionists and academic painters like his friend Jean-Leon Gerôme.