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 :. | Madonna with the Yarnwinder | Leda h | The Last Supper | Madonna in the rock grotto | Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani |
Related Artists:
Leonhard Beck
German Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1480-1542, Illuminator, painter, draughtsman and woodcutter, son of Georg Beck. He first appears as an illuminator and collaborator with his father in two Psalters for the Augsburg monastery of SS Ulrich and Afra in 1495, producing 35 coloured initial letters for each of them (Augsburg, Staats- & Stadtbib., Cod. 49a). These are vigorously coloured but fairly uniform in character, with small, lively biblical scenes excellently adapted to the letters. Red, green and blue predominate; ochre tones provide a link with the gold ground. The initial letter X is composed of splendidly curled, entwining foliage with birds and half-figures of prophets; the Virgin, Joseph, the Christ Child in the manger and the choir of angels are each enclosed in one of its sectors. The figures are presented in a light, easy manner; the draughtsmanship avoids unnecessary detail.
Henry Otto Wix
Henry Otto Wix (1866 - 1922), also known as Otto Wix, was a German-born landscape and portrait painter who emigrated to the United States in the late 1890s. He studied in New York, but visited Hawaii in 1907 and 1908-9. About 1910, he moved to San Francisco, but visited Hawaii again in 1912. He also made several sketching trips to Mexico. Wixes marriage ended in divorce, resulting in depression and alcoholism. He died by his own hand in Santa Barbara, California on March 13, 1922. Wix is best known for his landscapes in watercolor. The Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Smithsonian American Art Museum are among the public collections holding paintings by Henry Otto Wix
Paul Raud
(22 October 1865 in Kirikukela, Viru-Jaagupi Parish C 22 November 1930 in Tallinn) was an Estonian painter. The twin brother of painter Kristjan Raud, he studied in Desseldorf beginning in 1886, becoming influenced by the work of Eduard Gebhardt. After his return to Estonia, he painted mainly portrait commissions for some time, before traveling with his brother and Amandus Adamson to the islands of Muhu and Pakri in 1896. His works of this period are reminiscent of those of Max Liebermann. In 1899 he returned to work in Germany, taking on some of the stylistic trappings of Impressionism; this, coupled with time spent working with Ilya Repin, influenced his later style. Later in his career, most especially during and after World War I, he began to teach, from 1915 working as a drawing instructor at the Tallinn Institute of Commerce and from 1923 at the State School of Industrial Art in Tallinn.