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 :. | Leda h | Study fur the Trivulzio-monument | The muscles of Thorax and shoulders in a lebnden person | Leda | Profile of a man |
Related Artists:
Lambert Jacobsz
1598-1636 Dutch Lambert Jacobsz Gallery Dutch painter. He was the son of a well-to-do Mennonite cloth merchant in Amsterdam. He served his apprenticeship there among the artists now called the Pre-Rembrandtists. After his marriage in 1620, commemorated by the poet Joost van den Vondel (1587-1639), he settled in Leeuwarden, his wife's native city, where he became a preacher in the Mennonite community and worked primarily as a painter. He was also active as an art dealer, as is known from his estate inventory, which records transactions in Amsterdam with the Mennonite art dealer and patron of Rembrandt, Hendrick van Uylenburgh. Two of Jacobsz.'s pupils were Govaert Flinck and Jacob Backer. His son, the painter ABRAHAM VAN DEN TEMPEL probably also studied with him before becoming Backer's pupil c. 1642-6.
villon
French artist.
Hans Cranach
(ca. 1513-1537), also known as Johann Lucas Cranach, was a German painter, the oldest son of Lucas Cranach the Elder. German art historian Christian Schuchardt, who discovered his existence, credits him with an altar-piece at Weimar, signed with the monogram "H. C.", and dated 1537. He died at Bologna in 1537. Luther mentions his death in his "Table Talk", and Johann Stigel, a contemporary poet, celebrates him as a painter.