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 :. | Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) sdg | Mona Lisa (mk45) | St John in the Wilderness | Last Supper (mk08) | Last Supper |
Related Artists:
P.C. Skovgaard
(known as P.C. Skovgaard), (4 April 1817 - 13 April 1875), Danish national romantic landscape painter, was born near Ringsted to farmer Tham Masmann Skovgaard and his wife Cathrine Elisabeth. He is one of the main figures associated with the Golden Age of Danish Painting. He is especially known for his large scale portrayals of the Danish landscape. The family had to leave the farm when he was six years old. They moved to Vejby in north Sjælland where his father earned his living as a grocer. Already as a young child he impressed his family with his artistic abilities. His mother, who had studied art under flower painter Claudius Ditlev Fritsch, gave him instructions in drawing until he was confirmed and could be sent to Copenhagen for training at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi).
Amico Aspertini
(c. 1474 - 1552) is an Italian Renaissance painter whose complex, eccentric, and eclectic style anticipates Mannerism. He is considered among the first of the Bolognese School of painting. He was born in Bologna to a family of painters (Guido Aspertini and Giovanni Antonio Aspertini, his father), and studied under masters such as Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia. He is briefly documented in Rome between 1500 - 1503, returning to Bologna and painting in a style influenced by Pinturicchio. In Bologna in 1504, he joined Francia and Costa in painting frescoes for the newly restored Oratory of Santa Cecilia in San Giacomo Maggiore, a work commissioned by Giovanni II Bentivoglio. In 1507-09, he painted a fresco cycle in San Frediano in Lucca. Asperini painted in 1508-1509 the splendid frescoes in the Chapel of the Cross in the Basilica di San Frediano in Lucca. Aspertini was also one of two artists chosen to decorate a triumphal arch for the entry into Bologna of Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V in 1529.
BERRUGUETE, Pedro
Spanish Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1450-1504 Pedro Berruguete (c. 1450 ?C 1504) was a Spanish painter, his art is regarded as a transitional style between gothic and renaissance. Born in Paredes de Nava, Spain, he went to Italy in 1480 and worked in Federigo da Montefeltro's court in Urbino. He came back Spain 1482 and painted in several cities as Sevilla, Toledo and Ávila. He was father of an important sculptor, Alonso Berruguete, considered the most important sculptor in Renaissance Spain.