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 :. | Studies fur the adoration of the Konige | The Last Supper | Portrat of a Madchens | The Annunciation | Study of the proportion of horses |
Related Artists:
Cornelis Bega
1632-1664 Dutch Cornelis Bega Galleries Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was born into prosperous circumstances; his mother, Maria Cornelis, inherited half the estate (gold, silver, paintings, drawings and prints) and all of the red chalk drawings of her father, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, a renowned Mannerist artist. Begas father was Pieter Jansz. Begijn (d 1648), a gold- and silversmith. Like other family members, Bega was probably Catholic. Houbrakens claim that Bega studied with Adriaen van Ostade is likely to be correct; this was probably before 24 April 1653, when Bega joined Vincent Laurentsz. van der Vinne in Frankfurt for a journey through Germany, Switzerland and France. Bega had returned to Haarlem by 1 September 1654, at which time he joined the Guild of St Luke; he was already a competent draughtsman, as indicated by his first extant dated work, Interior with a Nursing Mother (1652; Frankfurt am Main, Stedel. Kstinst.), and by a remarkable double portrait (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) drawn by him and Leendert van der Cooghen in 1654.
Otto Scholderer
(25 January 1834 - 22 January 1902) was a German painter. He was born in Frankfurt am Main. On completing his schooling, Scholderer went to the Städel academy of arts in 1849, where he remained until 1851. Among his teachers were the art historian Johann David Passavant and the painter Jakob Becker. Subsequently, Scholderer established himself in Städel as a freelance painter. During this period his friendship with Victor Meller began; Scholderer became his brother-in-law in 1868. Through Meller, Scholderer became acquainted with the works of Gustave Courbet. Scholderer made several short study trips to Paris between 1857 and 1858, where he became friends with Henri Fantin-Latour and Édouard Manet, whose influence can be seen in his subsequent work. Fantin-Latour depicted Scholderer in his picture Studio aux Batignolles . Starting from 1858, Scholderer worked and lived predominantly in Kronberg in Taunus, where his colleagues included Anton Burger, Peter Burnitz and Louis Eysen; he was close to the Kronberger painter colony. In 1866, Scholderer established himself in Desseldorf and made friends with Hans Thoma. With Thoma, Scholderer went in 1868 to Paris and returned to Germany only shortly before the outbreak of the French-German War. First Scholderer established himself in Munich, renewing his friendship with Wilhelm Leibl and becoming one of the artists of the Leibl-Kreis (Leibl circle). At the beginning of 1871 he went to London and worked there till the autumn of 1899. After 1899, Scholderer returned to his hometown of Frankfurt, where he died at the age of almost 68 years on 22 January 1902. Otto Scholderer's art, initially dominated by landscapes, later consisted primarily of portraits and still lifes. The important connection between the romantic period and the Impressionists is evident in his work.
Jules Rigo
(1810 -1892 ) - Drawer