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 Annunciation | Madonna with the Yarnwinder (detail) dft | Study fur a women head | Battle of Anghiari | Madonna and Child with a Pomegranate et |
Related Artists:
Barabas Miklos
(February 10, 1810 in Mărcuşa, now Romania - February 12, 1898 in Budapest) was a Hungarian painter. He his mostly known for his portrait paintings. He was born in Kezdimerkosfalva. He spent most of his life in Pest, where he was director of the art society from 1862 until his death. He became a member of the Parliament of Hungary in 1867. He died in Budapest.
Raphaelle Peale
1774-1825 Peale was born in Philadelphia as the son and first child of Rachel and Charles Willson Peale, a famous portraitist. Lived in Philadelphia, on a home at the corner of 3rd and Lombard. Married Martha (Patty) McGlathery at the age of 20. First first professional exhibition was in 1795 at the age of 21. Artist. Born Raphaelle Peale in Annapolis, Maryland on February 17, 1774, the fifth child, though eldest surviving, of Charles Willson Peale and his first wife Rachel Brewer. As with all the Peale children, Raphael was trained by his father as an artist. Early in his career, the pair collaborated on portraits. On some commissions, Raphael painted miniatures while his brother, Rembrandt, painted full size portraits. In 1792, he made a trip to South America in order to collect specimens for the Peale's Museum. In 1797, with his brother Rembrandt, he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, where they attempted to establish another museum. The plan fell through, however, and Raphael returned to painting miniatures. He married Martha McGlathery at about that same time, and with her had eight children. For about two years beginning in 1803, Raphael toured Virginia with the ??physiognotrace,' a profile making machine, with which he was briefly successful. In August 1808, he was hospitalized with delirium tremens, exacerbated by severe gout. By 1813, he was unable to walk without crutches. After the downturn in his health, in an era when most artists considered still life a subject worthy only of amateurs, he devoted himself almost exclusively to still life painting. It is for these works he is best known. Raphael Peale is today considered the founder of the American Still Life school. His work was on frequent exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts between 1814 and 1818. After reportedly indulging in a night of heavy drinking, his health destroyed, Raphael died on March 3, 1825 at age 51 at his home in Philadelphia. Peale's tightly grouped still lifes are often permeated with a delicate melancholy akin to that which characterized the life of the artist; he was an alcoholic who suffered the effects of arsenic and mercury poisoning caused by his work as a taxidermist in his father's museum. His spare, essential style may have been influenced by the Spanish still lifes he studied in Mexico and by the works of Juan Sanchez Cotan, exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1818.
Girolamo Genga
Italian Painter and Architect , 1476-ca.1551 was an Italian painter and architect of the late Renaissance, Mannerist Genga was born near Urbino. According mainly to Giorgio Vasari's biography, by age thirteen Genga had gained an apprenticeship in Orvieto under Luca Signorelli. He was afterwards for three years with Pietro Perugino, in company with Raphael. He next worked in Florence and Siena (where he decorated the Petrucci palace c. 1508), along with Timoteo della Vite; and in the latter city he painted various compositions for Pandolfo Petrucci, a leading local statesman. Returning to Urbino, he was employed by Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro in the decorations of his palace, and showed extraordinary aptitude for theatrical adornments. He is recorded as having help design the decorations for the Duke's funeral in 1508. From Urbino, he went to Rome and painted church of Santa Caterina da Siena one of his masterpieces: The Resurrection. Francesco Maria I della Rovere, duke of Urbino, recalled Genga, and commissioned him to execute works in connection with his marriage to Eleonora Gonzaga in 1522. This prince being soon afterwards expelled by Pope Leo X, Genga followed him to Mantua, whence he went for a time to Pesaro. The duke of Urbino was eventually restored to his dominions; he took Genga with him, and appointed him the ducal architect and decorator. He worked extensively on the Villa Imperiale on Mount Accio . Among his work in Urbino, was the scenography of plays,