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 :. | Portrait de Mona Lisa dit La joconde | Study of the proportion of horses | The Madonna of the Carnation (detail) sg | St John the Baptist t | Lady with Ermine |
Related Artists:
Napoletano, Filippo
Italian, approx. 1587-1629 Italian painter and engraver. From 1600 until at least 1613 he was in Naples, where the naturalism of landscape painters from northern Europe, particularly Paul Bril, Goffredo Wals ( fl 1615-31) and Adam Elsheimer, influenced his early development. After 1614 he was in Rome and became acquainted with the landscapes and seascapes of Agostino Tassi. In 1617 Cosimo II de' Medici summoned him to Florence, where he worked closely with Jacques Callot. Filippo sketched in the Tuscan countryside, and pen-and-wash drawings such as the Landscape with a Rustic House (Florence, Uffizi) capture effects of bright sunlight. He developed a new kind of realistic landscape, showing small scenes that suggest the charm of country life; examples are the Country Dance (1618; Florence, Uffizi), the Mill (Florence, Pitti) and the Fair at Impruneta (Florence, Pitti). In 1620-21 he produced a series of etchings of Skeletons of Animals, dedicated to the scientist Johann Faber, and in 1622 twelve etchings of Caprices and Military Uniforms (signed Teodor Filippo de Liagno).
Louis Carrier-Belleuse
(1848-1913) was a French painter and sculptor. He was son and pupil of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. He designed the patterns of the Faïencerie (earthenware factory) from Choisy-le-Roi, where he was artistic director. He was also the sculptor of the Equestrian monument to General Manuel Belgrano
Kole Idromeno
Kolë Idromeno (1860-1939) was an Albanian painter, sculptor, photographer, architect and engineer. He was born in Shkodër, where he learned the first elements of photography from Pietro Marubi. In 1876 he stayed for some months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia), and then worked in the studio of an Italian painter. When back in Albania (1878), he engaged himself in a number of different activities, working as an architect, sculptor, photographer, scene-painter, engineer and painter. He was the initiator of the first art exhibition in Shkodër (1923) and was represented in the first national art exhibition in Tirana (1931). He established a very active photographic studio. Idromeno was the first painter to show motion pictures in Albania in 1912. He had kept up a correspondence with the Lumiere brothers in Paris.