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 :. | Portrait of Ginerva de'Benci | The Virgin and Child with Anne (mk05) | Bacchus | Lady with Emine | Madonna and Child with a Pomegranate |
Related Artists:
Barna da Siena
Italian Painter, active ca.1350 Barna da Siena, also known as Barna di Siena, was a Sienese painter active from about 1330 to 1350, and was the painter in Siena during this period. He learned his trade from Simone Martini. Barna is believed to have paint the frescoes depicting the life of Jesus in the Collegiata di San Gimignano and is generally credited with Christ Bearing the Cross, with a Dominican Friar in the Frick Collection in New York City. He was killed in a fall from the scaffolding. Barna's figures are more dramatic and vigorous than any in previous Sienese painting.
Domenico Feti
1589-1625 Italian Domenico Feti Locations Italian painter. Court painter to the Gonzaga family in Mantua, Feti was influenced by the chiaroscuro technique of Caravaggio. His later works, such as Melancholia (Louvre), belong, in their use of color, to the Venetian tradition.
MAZZOLINO, Ludovico
Italian Painter, 1480-1528 .Italian painter. He may have served an apprenticeship with Ercole de' Roberti (Morelli) before he left Ferrara to study in Bologna with Lorenzo Costa (i). The earliest surviving documentation is from 20 May 1504, when he received a first payment for frescoes (destr. 1604) in eight chapels in S Maria degli Angeli, Ferrara, commissioned by Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara and Modena. Between 1505 and 1507 he was paid for works, presumably decorative, in the Este guardaroba and the camerini of the Duchessa Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara Castle (untraced). His first surviving dated painting is the triptych of the Virgin and Child with SS Anthony and Mary Magdalene