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 | The organs of the woman | Mona Lisa | Madonna in the rock grottos | Annunciation (detail) ey79 |
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William Ranney
(May 9, 1813 - November 18, 1857) was a 19th-century American painter, known for his depictions of Western life, sporting scenery, historical subjects and portraiture. In his 20-year career, he made 150 paintings and 80 drawings, and is considered the first major genre painter to work in New Jersey, and one of the most important pre-Civil War American painters.His work is on display in several museums across the United States. One of his contemporaries opined, "A specimen of Ranney is indispensable wherever a collection of American art exists."
Fyodor Rokotov
(1736 - 1809) was a distinguished Russian painter who specialized in portraits. Fyodor Rokotov was born into a family of peasant serfs, belonging to the Repnins. Much in his biography is obscure. He studied art in Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. After buying back his freedom in the end of 1750s he became established as a fashionable painter. In 1765, Rokotov was elected an Academician, but he did not work as a professor in the Academy long, because it interfered with his painting. He returned to Moscow in 1765, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had a lot of commissions there, becoming one of the best portrait painters of his time. Among his best-known portraits are Portrait of Alexandra Struyskaya (1772), sometimes called the Russian Mona Lisa and admittedly the most celebrated piece of the 18th-century Russian painting; Portrait of Countess Elisabeth Santi (1785), and Lady in a Pink Dress.
Nasi
Italian, 19th century Born in the town of Castel del Piano, near Grossetto, Giuseppe Nicola Nasini trained under Ciro Ferri at the Accademia Medicea in Rome in the early 1680??s. He also studied at the Accademia di San Luca, where he won several prizes, and later worked extensively in Rome. In 1689 he entered the service of the Grand Duke Cosimo III de?? Medici in Florence, for whom he painted a series of four large canvases on the theme of the Last Judgement for the Salone dei Novissimi of the Palazzo Pitti, executed between 1690 and 1694. Transferred at the end of the 18th century to a church in Siena, these are now lost. In the first quarter of the 18th century Nasini painted a number of works for churches in Rome, including an altarpiece of The Madonna and Child with Saints for the Chiesa dei Re Magi in 1707, and a Baptism of Christ for San Lorenzo in Lucina, completed in 1716. In 1718 Nasini was one of twelve leading painters working in Rome (including Benedetto Luti, Francesco Trevisani, Sebastiano Conca and Pier Leone Ghezzi) who were commissioned by Pope Clement XI to paint seated prophets in the oval niches of the nave of the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. One of Nasini??s last Roman works was a frescoed Glory of Saint Anthony for the church of SS. Apostoli, painted between 1721 and 1722. By the late 1720??s Nasini had risen to a position as the leading painter in Siena, where he headed a large and busy workshop. In such works as the decoration of the Oratorio del Crocifisso and the church of the Visitation he introduced the Baroque manner of Luca Giordano to his native city. His older brother Antonio was also a painter; the two collaborated on the decoration of the vault of the church of San Gaetano di Thiene in Siena, completed in 1734.