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 :. | Madonna Benois Madonna with a Flower | Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci | Portrait of Ginerva de'Benci | Virgin of the Rocks (mk10) | Detail of Madonna of the Rocks |
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BARTOLOMEO DI GIOVANNI
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, active 1475-1511 Bartolomeo di Giovanni, also known as Bartolommeo di Giovanni and as Alunno di Domenico, was an early renaissance Italian painter of the Florentine School who was active from about 1480 until his death in 1501. He studied with and assisted Domenico Ghirlandaio, painting the predella of Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Magi in the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Foundling Hospital) in Florence, in 1488. Bartolomeo di Giovanni also worked under the guidance of Sandro Botticelli.
Pieter de Kempener
Pedro Campana (1503-1586) was a Flemish painter of the Renaissance period, mainly active in Italy and Spain. His actual name was Pieter de Kempeneer, translated into French as Champaigne, and was also known as Peter Van de Velde. Born in Brussels, he trained there with Bernard Van Orley. His early life appears to have been spent in Italy, where he carefully studied the paintings of Raphael, and declared himself as his pupil. In 1530 he was at work at some scene-painting, representing a triumphal arch to be erected on the occasion of the coronation of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Bologna, and he then left for Spain, on the advice, it is said, of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, and spent the rest of his life in that country, only returning to Brussels about 1563 or 1565. Between 1537 and 1562 he was associated with Luis de Vargas and the Italian sculptor Torregiano in establishing a school of painting in Seville, which eventually became the academy of the place; amongst the pupils educated in it was Morales. He painted for the monastery of St. Mary of Grace, Church of Santa Cruz, in the city, an altar-piece representing the Descent from the Cross (1548), which is now in the cathedral, having been removed there when the church fell into ruins. There are other works by the same painter in Seville Cathedral, especially two representing the Purification of the Virgin and the Resurrection; and the various churches of the city, S. Isidoro, S. Pedro, S. Catalina, and S. Juan, all possess paintings by this artist. One of his last works was the restoration and repainting of a chapel belonging to Hernando de Jaen, an important resident of Seville. Murillo requested that he be buried near Campana's picture, and his burial took place in the Church of Santa Cruz, close underneath the Descent from the Cross, but the whole building was burned to the ground during the Napoleonic Wars, and the tomb perished.
Paul Brill
Flemish painter , 1554-Rome 1626 were brothers, both born in Antwerp, who were landscape painters who worked in Rome after earning papal favor. They are also described as painters of capricci (whims or fancies) or vedute ideate or veduta di fantasia, with typical rustic hills with a few ruins. Mattheus began work on several frescoes in Rome from 1570 onwards, and his work includes the Vatican's Seasons. Mattheus died young, and his brother continued his work around 1574. Paul, a student of Damiaen Oertelmans, painted frescoes such as the landscapes in the Casino Rospigliosi (Rome), and The Roman Forum, which showed this site for what it had become: a slum for squatters and pasture for livestock (so much so that the place was nicknamed Campo Vaccino, or "The Cowfield"). His masterpiece may be a fresco in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican. Paul also did engravings and small cabinet paintings on copper, some of which are signed with a pair of spectacles (a pun on the French word brilles, "spectacles"). Some of these were collaborations with Johann Rottenhammer, who according to a dealer's letter of 1617 painted the figures in Venice and then sent the plates to Rome for Bril to complete the landscape. He collaborated with his friend Adam Elsheimer, who he both influenced and was influenced by, on one painting.