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 :. | Buste one frontal to seeing man and head of a Lowen | Anatomy of the Schadels | Equestrian monument | Profile one with book leaves gekroten of old man | Study fur the adoration of the Konige |
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Benedito Calixto
(14 October 1853 -- 31 May 1927) was a Brazilian painter. His works usually depicted figures from Brazil and Brazilian culture, including a famous portrait of the bandeirante Domingos Jorge Velho in 1923, and scenes from the coastline of São Paulo. Unlike many artists of the time, Calixto's patron was an individual other than the state, who were "the most dependable source of patronage."
Ignacio Zuloaga
Spanish Painter, 1870-1945 was a Spanish Basque painter, born in Eibar, in the Basque country, near the monastery of Loyola. He was the son of metalworker and damascener Placido Zuloaga and grandson of the organizer and director of the royal armoury in Madrid. In his youth, he drew and worked in his father's workshop. He was educated by the Jesuits in France. His father wanted him to be an architect, and with this objective in mind, he was sent to Rome, where he immediately followed the strong impulse that led him to painting. After only six months' work he completed his first picture, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1890. Continuing his studies in Paris, where he lived for five years, he was strongly influenced by Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Only upon returning to his native land did he find his true style, which is based on the national Spanish tradition embodied in the work of Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Zurbaran, El Greco, and Francisco Goya. Bleeding Christ; or Blood Christ (El cristo de la Sangre) (1911)His own country was slow in acknowledging the young artist whose strong, decorative and rugged style stood in opposition to the styles of well-known modern Spanish artists such as Fortuny, Madrazo,
Georges Rouget
Georges Rouget (1781, Paris - 1869, Paris) was a neoclassical French painter. After studying in the ? - ole des beaux-arts, Rouget entered David's studio in 1797 and rapidly became his favourite student. Rouget began his professional career as his master's main assistant until David's exile to Brussels, collaborating with him on the canvases Bonaparte at the Grand-Saint-Bernard, The Coronation of Napoleon (of which he made a copy signed by David), Leonidas at Thermopylae and on one of the three copies of the Portrait of Pope Pius VII. Though winning the second prize in the prix de Rome contest in 1803, he failed three times to win the first prize. He produced many canvases for the First French Empire and the Bonapartes, such as The Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1811. A minor painter, he spent his whole career producing paintings of great moments in French history for whatever regime was in power at the time. Many of his paintings adorned the musee de Versailles opened by Louis-Philippe in 1837.