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 :. | The Last Supper sgu | Hi Hieronymus | Lady with Ermine | Madonna with the Yarnwinder after 1510 | Muscles and bone of leg and Hufte |
Related Artists:
Juan Rizi
was a Spanish painter of the Baroque period. He was born in Madrid in 1600. He was a brother of Francisco Rizi, and a pupil of Juan Bautista Mayno. In 1628 he entered the Benedictine Order, studied in Salamanca, and became Abbot of the Medina del Campo in Madrid (?). He painted several works for St. Juan Bautista in Burgos, St. Martin in Madrid, and Monte Cassino in Italy. In the Madrid Museum is a St. Francis of Assisi by him (?). He afterwards went to Rome, where he was made an Archbishop (?) by pope Clement X. He died at Monte Cassino in 1681.
Bastiano da Sangallo
(1481 - May 31, 1551) was an Italian sculptor and painter of the Renaissance period, active mainly in Tuscany. He was a nephew of Giuliano da Sangallo and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder. He is usually known as Aristotile, a nickname he received from his air of sententious gravity. He was at first a pupil of Perugino, but afterwards became a follower of Michelangelo. Mentioned by Vasari as one who made a small copy of the Cartoon of Michelangelo Battle of Cascina (1506).
Paulus Moreelse
(1571, Utrecht - 6 March 1638, Utrecht) was a Dutch painter, mainly of portraits. Moreelse was a pupil of the Delft portrait painter Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, who had himself been a pupil of Anthonie van Blocklandt. He took a study-trip to Italy, where he received many portrait commissions. Back in Utrecht, in 1596 he became a member of the zadelaarsgilde, which was the traditional name in Utrecht for the Guild of Saint Luke. In 1611, along with Abraham Bloemaert, he was one of the founders of a new painters' guild, called "St. Lucas-gilde", and became its first deken. Moreelse was a well known portrait painter who received commissions from right across the Dutch Republic. His earliest work dates to 1606. Other than portraits, he also painted a few history paintings in the Mannerist style and in the 1620s produced pastoral scenes of herders and shepherds. He belonged to the same generation as Abraham Bloemaert and Joachim Wtewael, and like Wtewael he played an important role in the public life of their city. His version of Diana and Callisto was engraved by Jan Saenredam. In 1618, when the anti-remonstrants came to power in Utrecht, he was raadslid.