Как пишется леонардо да винчи на английском

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci[b] (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.[3] While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal,[4] and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.[3][4]

Leonardo da Vinci

Francesco Melzi - Portrait of Leonardo.png

This portrait attributed to Francesco Melzi, c. 1515–1518, is the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo.[1][2]

Born

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

15 April 1452

(Anchiano?)[a] Vinci, Republic of Florence

Died 2 May 1519 (aged 67)

Clos Lucé, Amboise, Kingdom of France

Education Studio of Andrea del Verrocchio
Known for
  • Painting
  • drawing
  • engineering
  • science
  • sculpture
  • architecture
Notable work
  • Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483–1493)
  • Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–1491)
  • The Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)
  • The Last Supper (c. 1495–1498)
  • Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1516)
Movement High Renaissance
Signature
Signature written in ink in a flowing script

Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, he worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, all while attracting a large following of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have failed to incite interest and admiration,[3][4] making him a frequent namesake and subject in culture.

Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance.[3] Despite having many lost works and less than 25 attributed major works—including numerous unfinished works—he created some of the most influential paintings in Western art.[3] His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work and often regarded as the world’s most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo,[5] was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.

Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine,[6][7] and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.[8]

Biography

Early life (1452–1472)

Birth and background

The possible birthplace and childhood home of Leonardo in Anchiano, Vinci, Italy

Leonardo da Vinci,[b] properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci),[9][10][c] was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence.[11][12][d] He was born out of wedlock to Piero da Vinci [it] (Ser Piero da Vinci d’Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504),[16] a Florentine legal notary,[11] and Caterina [it] (c. 1434 – 1494), from the lower-class.[17][18][e] It remains uncertain where Leonardo was born; the traditional account, from a local oral tradition recorded by the historian Emanuele Repetti,[21] is that he was born in Anchiano, a country hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the illegitimate birth, though it is still possible he was born in a house in Florence that Ser Piero almost certainly had.[22][a] Leonardo’s parents both married separately the year after his birth. Caterina—who later appears in Leonardo’s notes as only «Caterina» or «Catelina»—is usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca who married the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed «L’Accattabriga» («the quarrelsome one»).[17][21] Other theories have been proposed, particularly that of art historian Martin Kemp, who suggested Caterina di Meo Lippi, an orphan who married purportedly with aid from Ser Piero and his family.[23][f] Ser Piero married Albiera Amadori—having been betrothed to her the previous year—and after her death in 1464, went on to have three subsequent marriages.[21][24][g] From all the marriages, Leonardo eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy)[25] who were much younger than he (the last was born when Leonardo was 46 years old)[25] and with whom he had very little contact.[h]

Very little is known about Leonardo’s childhood and much is shrouded in myth, partially because of his biography in the frequently apocryphal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) by the 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari.[28][29] Tax records indicate that by at least 1457 he lived in the household of his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci,[11] but it is possible that he spent the years before then in the care of his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi in the parish of San Pantaleone.[30][31] He is thought to have been close to his uncle, Francesco da Vinci,[3] but his father was probably in Florence most of the time.[11] Ser Piero, who was the descendant of a long line of notaries, established an official residence in Florence by at least 1469 and had a successful career.[11] Despite his family history, Leonardo only received a basic and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading and mathematics, possibly because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his family decided to focus their attention there.[11]

Later in life, Leonardo recorded his earliest memory, now in the Codex Atlanticus.[32] While writing on the flight of birds, he recalled as an infant when a kite came to his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail; commentators still debate whether the anecdote was an actual memory or a fantasy.[33]

Verrocchio’s workshop

In the mid-1460s, Leonardo’s family moved to Florence, which at the time was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture.[34] Around the age of 14,[26] he became a garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time.[34] This was about the time of the death of Verrocchio’s master, the great sculptor Donatello.[i] Leonardo became an apprentice by the age of 17 and remained in training for seven years.[36] Other famous painters apprenticed in the workshop or associated with it include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.[37][38] Leonardo was exposed to both theoretical training and a wide range of technical skills,[39] including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and woodwork, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting, and modelling.[40][j]

Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was.[41] He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio or at the Platonic Academy of the Medici.[37] Florence was ornamented by the works of artists such as Donatello’s contemporaries Masaccio, whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion, and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective,[42] and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise De pictura were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo’s own observations and artworks.[35][43]

Much of the painting in Verrocchio’s workshop was done by his assistants. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus’ robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master’s that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again,[‡ 1] although this is believed to be an apocryphal story.[14] Close examination reveals areas of the work that have been painted or touched-up over the tempera, using the new technique of oil paint, including the landscape, the rocks seen through the brown mountain stream, and much of the figure of Jesus, bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.[44] Leonardo may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze statue of David in the Bargello, and the Archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel.[14]

Vasari tells a story of Leonardo as a very young man: a local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo, inspired by the story of Medusa, responded with a painting of a monster spitting fire that was so terrifying that his father bought a different shield to give to the peasant and sold Leonardo’s to a Florentine art dealer for 100 ducats, who in turn sold it to the Duke of Milan.[‡ 2]

First Florentine period (1472–c. 1482)

Adoration of the Magi c. 1478–1482,[d 1] Uffizi, Florence

By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,[k] but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate and live with him.[37][45] Leonardo’s earliest known dated work is a 1473 pen-and-ink drawing of the Arno valley.[38][46][l] According to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the first to suggest making the Arno river a navigable channel between Florence and Pisa.[47]

In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio,[48] an indication of his independence from Verrocchio’s studio. An anonymous early biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and often worked in the garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence, where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers organized by the Medici met.[14][m] In March 1481, he received a commission from the monks of San Donato in Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi.[49] Neither of these initial commissions were completed, being abandoned when Leonardo went to offer his services to Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which described the diverse things that he could achieve in the fields of engineering and weapon design, and mentioned that he could paint.[38][50] He brought with him a silver string instrument—either a lute or lyre—in the form of a horse’s head.[50]

With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neoplatonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator of Aristotle were the foremost. Also associated with the Platonic Academy of the Medici was Leonardo’s contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.[41][43][51] In 1482, Leonardo was sent as an ambassador by Lorenzo de’ Medici to Ludovico il Moro, who ruled Milan between 1479 and 1499.[41][14]

  • Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)

First Milanese period (c. 1482–1499)

Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.[52] In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to Hungary (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.[53] In 1490 he was called as a consultant, together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for the building site of the cathedral of Pavia[54][55] and was struck by the equestrian statue of Regisole, of which he left a sketch.[56] Leonardo was employed on many other projects for Sforza, such as preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions; a drawing of, and wooden model for, a competition to design the cupola for Milan Cathedral;[57] and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Ludovico’s predecessor Francesco Sforza. This would have surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello’s Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the Gran Cavallo.[38] Leonardo completed a model for the horse and made detailed plans for its casting,[38] but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal to his brother-in-law to be used for a cannon to defend the city from Charles VIII of France.[38]

Contemporary correspondence records that Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke of Milan to paint the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle. The decoration was completed in 1498. The project became a trompe-l’œil decoration that made the great hall appear to be a pergola created by the interwoven limbs of sixteen mulberry trees,[58] whose canopy included an intricate labyrinth of leaves and knots on the ceiling.[59]

Second Florentine period (1500–1508)

When Ludovico Sforza was overthrown by France in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for Venice, accompanied by his assistant Salaì and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli.[61] In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.[37] On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that «men [and] women, young and old» flocked to see it «as if they were going to a solemn festival.»[‡ 3][n]

In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.[61] Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia’s stronghold, a town plan of Imola in order to win his patronage. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley, Tuscany, so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. He created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a dam from the sea to Florence, in order to allow a supply of water to sustain the canal during all seasons.

Leonardo had left Borgia’s service and returned to Florence by early 1503,[63] where he rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke on 18 October of that year. By this same month, Leonardo had begun working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the model for the Mona Lisa,[64][65] which he would continue working on until his twilight years. In January 1504, he was part of a committee formed to recommend where Michelangelo’s statue of David should be placed.[66] He then spent two years in Florence designing and painting a mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria,[61] with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina.[o]

In 1506, Leonardo was summoned to Milan by Charles II d’Amboise, the acting French governor of the city.[69] There, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count Francesco Melzi, the son of a Lombard aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student.[37] The Council of Florence wished Leonardo to return promptly to finish The Battle of Anghiari, but he was given leave at the behest of Louis XII, who considered commissioning the artist to make some portraits.[69] Leonardo may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of d’Amboise;[70] a wax model survives and, if genuine, is the only extant example of Leonardo’s sculpture. Leonardo was otherwise free to pursue his scientific interests.[69] Many of Leonardo’s most prominent pupils either knew or worked with him in Milan,[37] including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, and Marco d’Oggiono. In 1507, Leonardo was in Florence sorting out a dispute with his brothers over the estate of his father, who had died in 1504.

Second Milanese period (1508–1513)

By 1508, Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.[71]

In 1512, Leonardo was working on plans for an equestrian monument for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, but this was prevented by an invasion of a confederation of Swiss, Spanish and Venetian forces, which drove the French from Milan. Leonardo stayed in the city, spending several months in 1513 at the Medici’s Vaprio d’Adda villa.[72]

Rome and France (1513–1519)

An apocalyptic deluge drawn in black chalk by Leonardo near the end of his life (part of a series of 10, paired with written description in his notebooks)[73]

In March of 1513, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son Giovanni assumed the papacy (as Leo X); Leonardo went to Rome that September, where he was received by the pope’s brother Giuliano.[72] From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere Courtyard in the Apostolic Palace, where Michelangelo and Raphael were both active.[71] Leonardo was given an allowance of 33 ducats a month, and according to Vasari, decorated a lizard with scales dipped in quicksilver.[74] The pope gave him a painting commission of unknown subject matter, but cancelled it when the artist set about developing a new kind of varnish.[74][p] Leonardo became ill, in what may have been the first of multiple strokes leading to his death.[74] He practiced botany in the Gardens of Vatican City, and was commissioned to make plans for the pope’s proposed draining of the Pontine Marshes.[75] He also dissected cadavers, making notes for a treatise on vocal cords;[76] these he gave to an official in hopes of regaining the pope’s favor, but was unsuccessful.[74]

In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan.[49] Leonardo was present at the 19 December meeting of Francis I and Leo X, which took place in Bologna.[37][77][78] In 1516, Leonardo entered Francis’ service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé, near the king’s residence at the royal Château d’Amboise. Being frequently visited by Francis, he drew plans for an immense castle town the king intended to erect at Romorantin, and made a mechanical lion, which during a pageant walked toward the king and—upon being struck by a wand—opened its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.[79][‡ 3][q] Leonardo was accompanied during this time by his friend and apprentice Francesco Melzi, and supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi.[71] At some point, Melzi drew a portrait of Leonardo; the only others known from his lifetime were a sketch by an unknown assistant on the back of one of Leonardo’s studies (c. 1517)[81] and a drawing by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino depicting an elderly Leonardo with his right arm wrapped in clothing.[82][r] The latter, in addition to the record of an October 1517 visit by Louis d’Aragon,[s] confirms an account of Leonardo’s right hand being paralytic when he was 65,[85] which may indicate why he left works such as the Mona Lisa unfinished.[83][86][87] He continued to work at some capacity until eventually becoming ill and bedridden for several months.[85]

Death

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67, possibly of a stroke.[88][87][89] Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari describes Leonardo as lamenting on his deathbed, full of repentance, that «he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should have done.»[90] Vasari states that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament.[‡ 4] Vasari also records that the king held Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died, although this story may be legend rather than fact.[t][u] In accordance with his will, sixty beggars carrying tapers followed Leonardo’s casket.[51][v] Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving, as well as money, Leonardo’s paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo’s other long-time pupil and companion, Salaì, and his servant Baptista de Vilanis, each received half of Leonardo’s vineyards.[92] His brothers received land, and his serving woman received a fur-lined cloak. On 12 August 1519, Leonardo’s remains were interred in the Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin at the Château d’Amboise.[93]

Salaì, or Il Salaino («The Little Unclean One», i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo’s household in 1490 as an assistant. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him «a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton,» after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions and spent a fortune on clothes.[94] Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence, and he remained in Leonardo’s household for the next thirty years.[95] Salaì executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo «taught him many things about painting,»[‡ 3] his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo’s pupils, such as Marco d’Oggiono and Boltraffio.

Salaì owned the Mona Lisa at the time of Leonardo’s death in 1524, and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.[96] Some 20 years after Leonardo’s death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini as saying: «There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher.»[97]

Personal life

Despite the thousands of pages Leonardo left in notebooks and manuscripts, he scarcely made reference to his personal life.[2]

Within Leonardo’s lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his «great physical beauty» and «infinite grace,» as described by Vasari,[‡ 5] as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect was his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and according to Vasari, a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.[99][‡ 6]

Leonardo had many friends who are now notable either in their fields or for their historical significance, including mathematician Luca Pacioli,[100] with whom he collaborated on the book Divina proportione in the 1490s. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters, Beatrice and Isabella.[101] While on a journey that took him through Mantua, he drew a portrait of Isabella that appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.[37]

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud in his Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood.[102] Leonardo’s most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salaì and Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo’s brothers of his death, described Leonardo’s feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy in an incident involving a well-known male prostitute. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the dismissal.[103] Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality[104] and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in Saint John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.[105][98]

Paintings

Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his fame rested on his achievements as a painter. A handful of works that are either authenticated or attributed to him have been regarded as among the great masterpieces. These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities that have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. By the 1490s Leonardo had already been described as a «Divine» painter.[106]

Among the qualities that make Leonardo’s work unique are his innovative techniques for laying on the paint; his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology; his interest in physiognomy and the way humans register emotion in expression and gesture; his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition; and his use of subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks.[w]

Early works

Annunciation c. 1472–1476,[d 4] Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo’s earliest extant and complete major work

Leonardo first gained attention for his work on the Baptism of Christ, painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at Verrocchio’s workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 centimetres (23 in) long and 14 cm (5.5 in) high. It is a «predella» to go at the base of a larger composition, a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm (85 in) long.[107] In both Annunciations, Leonardo used a formal arrangement, like two well-known pictures by Fra Angelico of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with a rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now generally attributed to Leonardo.[108]

In the smaller painting, Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God’s will. Mary is not submissive, however, in the larger piece. The girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise.[35] This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the Mother of God, not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting, the young Leonardo presents the humanist face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity’s role in God’s incarnation.

Paintings of the 1480s

In the 1480s, Leonardo received two very important commissions and commenced another work that was of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Two of the three were never finished, and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment.

One of these paintings was Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, which Bortolon associates with a difficult period of Leonardo’s life, as evidenced in his diary: «I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.»[37] Although the painting is barely begun, the composition can be seen and is very unusual.[x] Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo’s anatomical studies.[109] Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.

The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a complex composition, of about 250 x 250 centimetres. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined classical architecture that forms part of the background. In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro, and the painting was abandoned.[14]

The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks, commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece.[110] Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.[111] While the painting is quite large, about 200×120 centimetres, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of San Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished: one remained at the chapel of the Confraternity, while Leonardo took the other to France. The Brothers did not get their painting, however, nor the de Predis their payment, until the next century.[38][61]

Leonardo’s most remarkable portrait of this period is the Lady with an Ermine, presumed to be Cecilia Gallerani (c. 1483–1490), lover of Ludovico Sforza.[112][113] The painting is characterised by the pose of the figure with the head turned at a very different angle to the torso, unusual at a date when many portraits were still rigidly in profile. The ermine plainly carries symbolic meaning, relating either to the sitter, or to Ludovico who belonged to the prestigious Order of the Ermine.[112]

Paintings of the 1490s

Leonardo’s most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, commissioned for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. It represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death, and shows the moment when Jesus has just said «one of you will betray me», and the consternation that this statement caused.[38]

The writer Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat and then not paint for three or four days at a time.[114] This was beyond the comprehension of the prior of the convent, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.[‡ 7]

The painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterization,[‡ 8] but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as «completely ruined.»[115] Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface subject to mould and to flaking.[116] Despite this, the painting remains one of the most reproduced works of art; countless copies have been made in various mediums.

Toward the end of this period, in 1498 da Vinci’s trompe-l’œil decoration of the Sala delle Asse was painted for the Duke of Milan in the Castello Sforzesco.

Paintings of the 1500s

In 1505, Leonardo was commissioned to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Leonardo devised a dynamic composition depicting four men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. Michelangelo was assigned the opposite wall to depict the Battle of Cascina. Leonardo’s painting deteriorated rapidly and is now known from a copy by Rubens.[117]

Among the works created by Leonardo in the 16th century is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or La Gioconda, the laughing one. In the present era, it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality perhaps due to the subtly shadowed corners of the mouth and eyes such that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called «sfumato», or Leonardo’s smoke. Vasari wrote that the smile was «so pleasing that it seems more divine than human, and it was considered a wondrous thing that it was as lively as the smile of the living original.»[‡ 9]

Other characteristics of the painting are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details; the dramatic landscape background, in which the world seems to be in a state of flux; the subdued colouring; and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils laid on much like tempera, and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.[118] Vasari expressed that the painting’s quality would make even «the most confident master … despair and lose heart.»[‡ 10] The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is rare in a panel painting of this date.[119]

In the painting Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape, which Wasserman describes as «breathtakingly beautiful»[120] and harkens back to the Saint Jerome with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, Saint Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice.[38] This painting, which was copied many times, influenced Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto,[121] and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese.

Drawings

Leonardo was a prolific draughtsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper.[122] His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.[37][122][y]

Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body; the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre; a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem; and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London.[122] This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre.[123]

Antique warrior in profile, c. 1472. British Museum, London

Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as «caricatures» because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that Leonardo would look for interesting faces in public to use as models for some of his work.[‡ 7] There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salaì, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called «Grecian profile».[z] These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior.[122] Salaì is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo’s ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de’ Medici, in the Pazzi conspiracy.[122] In his notes, Leonardo recorded the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.

Like the two contemporary architects Donato Bramante (who designed the Belvedere Courtyard) and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.[41][124]

Journals and notes

Renaissance humanism recognised no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo’s studies in science and engineering are sometimes considered as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.[38] These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science). They were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo’s life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.[38] Leonardo’s notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.[38]

These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes—were largely entrusted to Leonardo’s pupil and heir Francesco Melzi after the master’s death.[125] These were to be published, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo’s idiosyncratic writing.[126] Some of Leonardo’s drawings were copied by an anonymous Milanese artist for a planned treatise on art c. 1570.[127] After Melzi’s death in 1570, the collection passed to his son, the lawyer Orazio, who initially took little interest in the journals.[125] In 1587, a Melzi household tutor named Lelio Gavardi took 13 of the manuscripts to Pisa; there, the architect Giovanni Magenta reproached Gavardi for having taken the manuscripts illicitly and returned them to Orazio. Having many more such works in his possession, Orazio gifted the volumes to Magenta. News spread of these lost works of Leonardo’s, and Orazio retrieved seven of the 13 manuscripts, which he then gave to Pompeo Leoni for publication in two volumes; one of these was the Codex Atlanticus. The other six works had been distributed to a few others.[128] After Orazio’s death, his heirs sold the rest of Leonardo’s possessions, and thus began their dispersal.[129]

Some works have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which holds the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, and the British Library in London, which has put a selection from the Codex Arundel (BL Arundel MS 263) online.[130] Works have also been at Holkham Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the private hands of John Nicholas Brown I and Robert Lehman.[125] The Codex Leicester is the only privately owned major scientific work of Leonardo; it is owned by Bill Gates and displayed once a year in different cities around the world.

Most of Leonardo’s writings are in mirror-image cursive.[46][131] Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it was probably easier for him to write from right to left.[132][aa] Leonardo used a variety of shorthand and symbols, and states in his notes that he intended to prepare them for publication.[131] In many cases a single topic is covered in detail in both words and pictures on a single sheet, together conveying information that would not be lost if the pages were published out of order.[135] Why they were not published during Leonardo’s lifetime is unknown.[38]

Science and inventions

Leonardo’s approach to science was observational: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasise experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. His keen observations in many areas were noted, such as when he wrote «Il sole non si move.» («The Sun does not move.»)[136]

In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli’s book Divina proportione, published in 1509.[38] While living in Milan, he studied light from the summit of Monte Rosa.[69] Scientific writings in his notebook on fossils have been considered as influential on early palaeontology.[137]

The content of his journals suggest that he was planning a series of treatises on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on anatomy is said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis d’Aragon’s secretary in 1517.[138] Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by Melzi and eventually published as A Treatise on Painting in France and Italy in 1651 and Germany in 1724,[139] with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicolas Poussin.[4] According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into 62 editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as «the precursor of French academic thought on art.»[38]

While Leonardo’s experimentation followed scientific methods, a recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as a scientist by Fritjof Capra argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him in that, as a «Renaissance Man», his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting.[140]

Anatomy and physiology

Anatomical study of the arm (c. 1510)

Leonardo started his study in the anatomy of the human body under the apprenticeship of Verrocchio, who demanded that his students develop a deep knowledge of the subject.[141] As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.

As a successful artist, Leonardo was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre, professor of Anatomy at the University of Pavia.[142] Leonardo made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words toward a treatise on anatomy.[143] Only a small amount of the material on anatomy was published in Leonardo’s Treatise on painting.[126] During the time that Melzi was ordering the material into chapters for publication, they were examined by a number of anatomists and artists, including Vasari, Cellini and Albrecht Dürer, who made a number of drawings from them.[126]

Leonardo’s anatomical drawings include many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, and of muscles and sinews. He studied the mechanical functions of the skeleton and the muscular forces that are applied to it in a manner that prefigured the modern science of biomechanics.[144] He drew the heart and vascular system, the sex organs and other internal organs, making one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero.[122] The drawings and notation are far ahead of their time, and if published would undoubtedly have made a major contribution to medical science.[143]

Leonardo’s physiological sketch of the human brain and skull (c. 1510)

Leonardo also closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.[38][122] Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.[122]

Leonardo’s dissections and documentation of muscles, nerves, and vessels helped to describe the physiology and mechanics of movement. He attempted to identify the source of ’emotions’ and their expression. He found it difficult to incorporate the prevailing system and theories of bodily humours, but eventually he abandoned these physiological explanations of bodily functions. He made the observations that humours were not located in cerebral spaces or ventricles. He documented that the humours were not contained in the heart or the liver, and that it was the heart that defined the circulatory system. He was the first to define atherosclerosis and liver cirrhosis. He created models of the cerebral ventricles with the use of melted wax and constructed a glass aorta to observe the circulation of blood through the aortic valve by using water and grass seed to watch flow patterns.[145]

Engineering and inventions

An aerial screw (c. 1489), suggestive of a helicopter, from the Codex Atlanticus

During his lifetime, Leonardo was also valued as an engineer. With the same rational and analytical approach that moved him to represent the human body and to investigate anatomy, Leonardo studied and designed many machines and devices. He drew their “anatomy” with unparalleled mastery, producing the first form of the modern technical drawing, including a perfected «exploded view» technique, to represent internal components. Those studies and projects collected in his codices fill more than 5,000 pages.[146] In a letter of 1482 to the lord of Milan Ludovico il Moro, he wrote that he could create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled from Milan to Venice in 1499, he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. In 1502, he created a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno river, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked.[147][148] He continued to contemplate the canalization of Lombardy’s plains while in Louis XII’s company[69] and of the Loire and its tributaries in the company of Francis I.[149] Leonardo’s journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, a mechanical knight, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.[37][38]

Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight for much of his life, producing many studies, including Codex on the Flight of Birds (c. 1505), as well as plans for several flying machines, such as a flapping ornithopter and a machine with a helical rotor.[38] A 2003 documentary by British television station Channel Four, titled Leonardo’s Dream Machines, various designs by Leonardo, such as a parachute and a giant crossbow, were interpreted and constructed.[150][151] Some of those designs proved successful, whilst others fared less well when tested.

Research performed by Marc van den Broek revealed older prototypes for more than 100 inventions that are ascribed to Leonardo. Similarities between Leonardo’s illustrations and drawings from the Middle Ages and from Ancient Greece and Rome, the Chinese and Persian Empires, and Egypt suggest that a large portion of Leonardo’s inventions had been conceived before his lifetime. Leonardo’s innovation was to combine different functions from existing drafts and set them into scenes that illustrated their utility. By reconstituting technical inventions he created something new.[152]

In his notebooks, Leonardo first stated the ‘laws’ of sliding friction in 1493.[153] His inspiration for investigating friction came about in part from his study of perpetual motion, which he correctly concluded was not possible.[154] His results were never published and the friction laws were not rediscovered until 1699 by Guillaume Amontons, with whose name they are now usually associated.[153] For this contribution, Leonardo was named as the first of the 23 «Men of Tribology» by Duncan Dowson.[155]

Legacy

Although he had no formal academic training,[156] many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the «Universal Genius» or «Renaissance Man», an individual of «unquenchable curiosity» and «feverishly inventive imagination.»[157] He is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived.[158] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and «his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote.»[157] Scholars interpret his view of the world as being based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his time.[159]

Leonardo’s fame within his own lifetime was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Interest in Leonardo and his work has never diminished. Crowds still queue to see his best-known artworks, T-shirts still bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to hail him as a genius while speculating about his private life, as well as about what one so intelligent actually believed in.[38]

The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano (The Courtier), wrote in 1528: «…Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled…»[160] while the biographer known as «Anonimo Gaddiano» wrote, c. 1540: «His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf…»[161] Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists (1568), opens his chapter on Leonardo:[‡ 11]

In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.

The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo’s genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: «Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius…»[162] This is echoed by A.E. Rio who wrote in 1861: «He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents.»[163]

By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo’s notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: «There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries.»[164] Art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896: «Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values.»[165]

The interest in Leonardo’s genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.[166] Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: «Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge…Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe.»[37] The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana is a special collection at the University of California, Los Angeles.[167]

Twenty-first-century author Walter Isaacson based much of his biography of Leonardo[103] on thousands of notebook entries, studying the personal notes, sketches, budget notations, and musings of the man whom he considers the greatest of innovators. Isaacson was surprised to discover a «fun, joyous» side of Leonardo in addition to his limitless curiosity and creative genius.[168]

On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, the Louvre in Paris arranged for the largest ever single exhibit of his work, called Leonardo, between November 2019 and February 2020. The exhibit includes over 100 paintings, drawings and notebooks. Eleven of the paintings that Leonardo completed in his lifetime were included. Five of these are owned by the Louvre, but the Mona Lisa was not included because it is in such great demand among general visitors to the Louvre; it remains on display in its gallery. Vitruvian Man, however, is on display following a legal battle with its owner, the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Salvator Mundi [ab] was also not included because its Saudi owner did not agree to lease the work.[171][172]

The Mona Lisa, considered Leonardo’s magnum opus, is often regarded as the most famous portrait ever made.[3][173] The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time,[157] and Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man drawing is also considered a cultural icon.[174]

More than a decade of analysis of Leonardo’s genetic genealogy, conducted by Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato, came to a conclusion in mid-2021. It was determined that the artist has 14 living male relatives. The work could also help determine the authenticity of remains thought to belong to Leonardo.[175]

Location of remains

Tomb in the chapel of Saint Hubert at the Château d’Amboise where a plaque describes it as the presumed site of Leonardo’s remains.

While Leonardo was certainly buried in the collegiate church of Saint Florentin at the Château d’Amboise in 12 August 1519, the current location of his remains is unclear.[176][177] Much of Château d’Amboise was damaged during the French Revolution, leading to the church’s demolition in 1802.[176] Some of the graves were destroyed in the process, scattering the bones interred there and thereby leaving the whereabouts of Leonardo’s remains subject to dispute; a gardener may have even buried some in the corner of the courtyard.[176]

In 1863, fine-arts inspector general Arsène Houssaye received an imperial commission to excavate the site and discovered a partially complete skeleton with a bronze ring on one finger, white hair, and stone fragments bearing the inscriptions «EO», «AR», «DUS», and «VINC»—interpreted as forming «Leonardus Vinci».[93][176][178] The skull’s eight teeth corresponds to someone of approximately the appropriate age and a silver shield found near the bones depicts a beardless Francis I, corresponding to the king’s appearance during Leonardo’s time in France.[178]

Houssaye postulated that the unusually large skull was an indicator of Leonardo’s intelligence; author Charles Nicholl describes this as a «dubious phrenological deduction».[176] At the same time, Houssaye noted some issues with his observations, including that the feet were turned toward the high altar, a practice generally reserved for laymen, and that the skeleton of 1.73 metres (5.7 ft) seemed too short.[178] Art historian Mary Margaret Heaton wrote in 1874 that the height would be appropriate for Leonardo.[179] The skull was allegedly presented to Napoleon III before being returned to the Château d’Amboise, where they were re-interred in the chapel of Saint Hubert in 1874.[178][180] A plaque above the tomb states that its contents are only presumed to be those of Leonardo.[177]

It has since been theorized that the folding of the skeleton’s right arm over the head may correspond to the paralysis of Leonardo’s right hand.[82][88][178] In 2016, it was announced that DNA tests would be conducted to determine whether the attribution is correct.[180] The DNA of the remains will be compared to that of samples collected from Leonardo’s work and his half-brother Domenico’s descendants;[180] it may also be sequenced.[181]

In 2019, documents were published revealing that Houssaye had kept the ring and a lock of hair. In 1925, his great-grandson sold these to an American collector. Sixty years later, another American acquired them, leading to them being displayed at the Leonardo Museum in Vinci beginning on 2 May 2019, the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death.[93][182]

Notes

General
  1. ^ a b See Nicholl (2005, pp. 17–20) and Bambach (2019, p. 24) for further information on the dispute and uncertainty surrounding Leonardo’s exact birthplace.
  2. ^ a b ; LEE-ə-NAR-doh də VIN-chee, LEE-oh-, LAY-oh-
  3. ^ Italian: [leoˈnardo di ˈsɛr ˈpjɛːro da (v)ˈvintʃi] ( listen) The inclusion of the title ‘ser’ (shortening of Italian Messer or Messere, title of courtesy prefixed to the first name) indicates that Leonardo’s father was a gentleman.
  4. ^ The diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio relays a precise account: «There was born to me a grandson, son of Ser Piero [fr], on 15 April, a Saturday, at the third hour of the night.»[13][14] Ser Antonio records Leonardo being baptized the following day by Piero di Bartolomeo at the parish of Santa Croce [it].[15]
  5. ^ It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East «or at least, from the Mediterranean» or even of Chinese descent. According to art critic Alessandro Vezzosi, head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, there is evidence that Piero owned a slave called Caterina.[19] The reconstruction of one of Leonardo’s fingerprints shows a pattern that matches 60% of people of Middle Eastern origin, suggesting the possibility that Leonardo may have had Middle Eastern blood. The claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine: «You can’t predict one person’s race from these kinds of incidences, especially if looking at only one finger». More recently, historian Martin Kemp, after digging through overlooked archives and records in Italy, found evidence that Leonardo’s mother was a young local woman identified as Caterina di Meo Lippi.[20]
  6. ^ See Nicholl (2005, pp. 26–30) for further information of Leonardo’s mother and Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca.
  7. ^ See Kemp & Pallanti (2017, pp. 65–66) for detailed table on Ser Piero’s marriages.
  8. ^ He also never wrote about his father, except a passing note of his death in which he overstates his age by three years.[26] Leonardo’s siblings caused him difficulty after his father’s death in a dispute over their inheritance.[27]
  9. ^ The humanist influence of Donatello’s David can be seen in Leonardo’s late paintings, particularly John the Baptist.[35][34]
  10. ^ The «diverse arts» and technical skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th-century text On Divers Arts by Theophilus Presbyter and in the early 15th-century text Il Libro Dell’arte O Trattato Della Pittui by Cennino Cennini.
  11. ^ That Leonardo joined the guild by this time is deduced from the record of payment made to the Compagnia di San Luca in the company’s register, Libro Rosso A, 1472–1520, Accademia di Belle Arti.[14]
  12. ^ On the back he wrote: «I, staying with Anthony, am happy,» possibly in reference to his father.
  13. ^ Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal, «The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me.»[37]
  14. ^ In 2005, the studio was rediscovered during the restoration of part of a building occupied for 100 years by the Department of Military Geography.[62]
  15. ^ Both works are lost. The entire composition of Michelangelo’s painting is known from a copy by Aristotole da Sangallo, 1542.[67] Leonardo’s painting is known only from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate, is by Peter Paul Rubens.[68]
  16. ^ Pope Leo X is quoted as saying, «This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning!» [74]
  17. ^ It is unknown for what occasion the mechanical lion was made, but it is believed to have greeted the king at his entry into Lyon and perhaps was used for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. A conjectural recreation of the lion has been made and is on display in the Museum of Bologna.[80]
  18. ^ Identified via its similarity to Leonardo’s presumed self-portrait[83]
  19. ^ «… Messer Lunardo Vinci [sic] … an old graybeard of more than 70 years … showed His Excellency three pictures … from whom, since he was then subject to a certain paralysis of the right hand, one could not expect any more good work.» [84]
  20. ^ This scene is portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, as well as Angelica Kauffman.
  21. ^ a b On the day of Leonardo’s death, a royal edict was issued by the king at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a two-day journey from Clos Lucé. This has been taken as evidence that King Francis cannot have been present at Leonardo’s deathbed, but the edict was not signed by the king.[91]
  22. ^ Each of the sixty paupers were to have been awarded in accord with Leonardo’s will.[51]
  23. ^ These qualities of Leonardo’s works are discussed in Hartt (1970, pp. 387–411)
  24. ^ The painting, which in the 18th century belonged to Angelica Kauffman, was later cut up. The two main sections were found in a junk shop and cobbler’s shop and were reunited.[109] It is probable that outer parts of the composition are missing.
  25. ^ This work is now in the collection of the Uffizi, Drawing No. 8P.
  26. ^ The «Grecian profile» has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many Classical Greek statues.
  27. ^ He also drew with his left hand, his hatch strokes «slanting down from left to right—the natural stroke of a left-handed artist».[133] He also sometimes wrote conventionally with his right hand.[134]
  28. ^ Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo depicting Jesus holding an orb, sold for a world record US$450.3 million at a Christie’s auction in New York, 15 November 2017.[169] The highest known sale price for any artwork was previously US$300 million, for Willem de Kooning’s Interchange, which was sold privately in September 2015.[170] The highest price previously paid for a work of art at auction was for Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger, which sold for US$179.4 million in May 2015 at Christie’s New York.[170]
Dates of works
  1. ^ The Adoration of the Magi
    • Kemp (2019, p. 27): c. 1481–1482
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): 1481
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 56): c. 1480–1482
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 222): 1481/1482

  2. ^ Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre version)
    • Kemp (2019, p. 41): c. 1483–1493
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): between 1483 and 1486
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 164): 1483–c. 1485
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 223): 1483–1484/1485

  3. ^ Saint John the Baptist
    • Kemp (2019, p. 189): c. 1507–1514
    • Marani (2003, p. 340): c. 1508
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 63): c. 1500 onwards
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 248): c. 1508–1516

  4. ^ The Annunciation
    • Kemp (2019, p. 6): c. 1473–1474
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): c. 1472–1475
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 15): c. 1472–1476
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 216): c. 1473–1475

  5. ^ Saint Jerome in the Wilderness
    • Kemp (2019, p. 31): c. 1481–1482
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): probably c. 1480
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 139): c. 1488–1490
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 221): c. 1480–1482

  6. ^ Lady with an Ermine
    • Kemp (2019, p. 49): c. 1491
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): 1489–1490
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 111): c. 1489–1490
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 226): 1489/1490

  7. ^ The Last Supper
    • Kemp (2019, p. 67): c. 1495–1497
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): between 1494 and 1498
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 252): 1492–1497/1498
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 230): c. 1495–1498

  8. ^ Mona Lisa
    • Kemp (2019, p. 127): c. 1503–1515
    • Marani (2003, p. 340): c. 1503–1504; 1513–1514
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 48): c. 1502 onward
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 240): c. 1503–1506; 1510

References

Citations

Early
  1. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 287
  2. ^ Vasari 1991, pp. 287–289
  3. ^ a b c Vasari 1991, p. 293
  4. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 297
  5. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 284
  6. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 286
  7. ^ a b Vasari 1991, p. 290
  8. ^ Vasari 1991, pp. 289–291
  9. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 294
  10. ^ Vasari 1965, p. 266
  11. ^ Vasari 1965, p. 255
Modern
  1. ^ «A portrait of Leonardo c.1515–18». Royal Collection Trust. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  2. ^ a b Zöllner 2019, p. 20.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Kemp 2003.
  4. ^ a b c d Heydenreich 2020.
  5. ^ Zöllner 2019, p. 250.
  6. ^ Kaplan, Erez (1996). «Roberto Guatelli’s Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s Adding Machine». Archived from the original on 29 May 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  7. ^ Kaplan, E. (April 1997). «Anecdotes». IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 19 (2): 62–69. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1997.586074. ISSN 1058-6180.
  8. ^ Capra 2007, pp. 5–6.
  9. ^ Brown 1998, p. 7.
  10. ^ Kemp 2006, p. 1.
  11. ^ a b c d e f Brown 1998, p. 5.
  12. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 17.
  13. ^ Vezzosi 1997, p. 13.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 83.
  15. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 20.
  16. ^ Bambach 2019, pp. 16, 24.
  17. ^ a b Marani 2003, p. 13.
  18. ^ Bambach 2019, p. 16.
  19. ^ Hooper, John (12 April 2008). «Da Vinci’s mother was a slave, Italian study claims». The Guardian. Retrieved 16 August 2015.
  20. ^ Alberge, Dalya (21 May 2017). «Tuscan archives yield up secrets of Leonardo’s mystery mother». The Guardian. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  21. ^ a b c Bambach 2019, p. 24.
  22. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 18.
  23. ^ Kemp & Pallanti 2017, p. 6.
  24. ^ Kemp & Pallanti 2017, p. 65.
  25. ^ a b Kemp & Pallanti 2017, pp. 65–66.
  26. ^ a b Wallace 1972, p. 11.
  27. ^ Magnano 2007, p. 138.
  28. ^ Brown 1998, pp. 1, 5.
  29. ^ Marani 2003, p. 12.
  30. ^ Brown 1998, p. 175.
  31. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 28.
  32. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 30, 506.
  33. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 30. See p. 506 for the original Italian.
  34. ^ a b c Rosci 1977, p. 13.
  35. ^ a b c Hartt 1970, pp. 127–133.
  36. ^ Bacci, Mina (1978) [1963]. The Great Artists: Da Vinci. Translated by Tanguy, J. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  37. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bortolon 1967.
  38. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Arasse 1998.
  39. ^ Rosci 1977, p. 27.
  40. ^ Martindale 1972.
  41. ^ a b c d Rosci 1977, pp. 9–20.
  42. ^ Piero della Francesca, On Perspective for Painting (De Prospectiva Pingendi)
  43. ^ a b Rachum, Ilan (1979). The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia.
  44. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 88.
  45. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 13.
  46. ^ a b Polidoro, Massimo (2019). «The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 1». Skeptical Inquirer. Center for Inquiry. 43 (2): 30–31.
  47. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 15.
  48. ^ Clark, Kenneth; Kemp, Martin (26 November 2015). Leonardo da Vinci (Newition ed.). United Kingdom: Penguin. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-14-198237-3.
  49. ^ a b Wasserman 1975, pp. 77–78.
  50. ^ a b Wallace 1972, pp. 53–54.
  51. ^ a b c Williamson 1974.
  52. ^ Kemp 2011.
  53. ^ Franz-Joachim Verspohl [de], Michelangelo Buonarroti und Leonardo Da Vinci: Republikanischer Alltag und Künstlerkonkurrenz in Florenz zwischen 1501 und 1505 (Wallstein Verlag, 2007), p. 151.
  54. ^ Schofield, Richard. «Amadeo, Bramante and Leonardo and the Cupola of Milan Cathedral». Achademia Leonardi Vinci. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  55. ^ Barbieri, Ezio; Catanese, Filippo (January 2020). «Leonardo a (e i rapporti con) Pavia: una verifica sui documenti». Annuario dell’Archivio di Stato di Milano. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  56. ^ Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci: drawings of horses and other animals (Windsor Castle. Royal Library) 1984.
  57. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 79.
  58. ^ Rocky, Ruggiero (6 October 2021). «Episode 142 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Sala delle Asse». rockyruggiero.com. Making Art and History Come to Life, Rebuilding the Renaissance.
  59. ^ «Segui il restauro» [Follow the restoration]. Castello Sforzesco – Sala delle Asse (in Italian). Archived from the original on 16 October 2018. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  60. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 65.
  61. ^ a b c d Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 85.
  62. ^ Owen, Richard (12 January 2005). «Found: the studio where Leonardo met Mona Lisa». The Times. London. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  63. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 124.
  64. ^ «Mona Lisa – Heidelberg discovery confirms identity». University of Heidelberg. Archived from the original on 5 November 2013. Retrieved 4 July 2010.
  65. ^ Delieuvin, Vincent (15 January 2008). «Télématin». Journal Télévisé. France 2 Télévision.
  66. ^ Coughlan, Robert (1966). The World of Michelangelo: 1475–1564. et al. Time-Life Books. p. 90.
  67. ^ Goldscheider, Ludwig (1967). Michelangelo: paintings, sculptures, architecture. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0-7148-1314-1.
  68. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, pp. 106–07.
  69. ^ a b c d e Wallace 1972, p. 145.
  70. ^ «Achademia Leonardi Vinci». Journal of Leonardo Studies & Bibliography of Vinciana. VIII: 243–44. 1990.
  71. ^ a b c Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 86.
  72. ^ a b Wallace 1972, pp. 149–150.
  73. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 151.
  74. ^ a b c d e Wallace 1972, p. 150.
  75. ^ Ohlig, Christoph P. J., ed. (2005). Integrated Land and Water Resources Management in History. Books on Demand. p. 33. ISBN 978-3-8334-2463-2.
  76. ^ Gillette, Henry Sampson (2017). Leonardo da Vinci: Pathfinder of Science. Prabhat Prakashan. p. 84.
  77. ^ Georges Goyau, François I, Transcribed by Gerald Rossi. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved on 4 October 2007
  78. ^ Miranda, Salvador (1998–2007). «The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Antoine du Prat». Retrieved 4 October 2007.
  79. ^ Wallace 1972, pp. 163, 164.
  80. ^ «Reconstruction of Leonardo’s walking lion» (in Italian). Archived from the original on 25 August 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  81. ^ Brown, Mark (1 May 2019). «Newly identified sketch of Leonardo da Vinci to go on display in London». The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  82. ^ a b Strickland, Ashley (4 May 2019). «What caused Leonardo da Vinci’s hand impairment?». CNN. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  83. ^ a b McMahon, Barbara (1 May 2005). «Da Vinci ‘paralysis left Mona Lisa unfinished’«. The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  84. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 163.
  85. ^ a b Lorenzi, Rossella (10 May 2016). «Did a Stroke Kill Leonardo da Vinci?». Seeker. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  86. ^ Saplakoglu, Yasemin (4 May 2019). «A Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci May Reveal Why He Never Finished the Mona Lisa». Live Science. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  87. ^ a b Bodkin, Henry (4 May 2019). «Leonardo da Vinci never finished the Mona Lisa because he injured his arm while fainting, experts say». The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
  88. ^ a b Charlier, Philippe; Deo, Saudamini. «A physical sign of stroke sequel on the skeleton of Leonardo da Vinci?». Neurology. 4 April 2017; 88(14): 1381–82
  89. ^ Ian Chilvers (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 354. ISBN 978-0-19-953294-0.
  90. ^ Antonina Vallentin, Leonardo da Vinci: The Tragic Pursuit of Perfection, (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), 533
  91. ^ White, Leonardo: The First Scientist
  92. ^ Kemp 2011, p. 26.
  93. ^ a b c Florentine editorial staff (2 May 2019). «Hair believed to have belonged to Leonardo on display in Vinci». The Florentine. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  94. ^ Leonardo, Codex C. 15v, Institut of France. Trans. Richter
  95. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 84.
  96. ^ Rossiter, Nick (4 July 2003). «Could this be the secret of her smile?». Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 25 September 2003. Retrieved 3 October 2007.
  97. ^ Gasca, Nicolò & Lucertini 2004, p. 13.
  98. ^ a b Pedretti, Carlo (2009). Leonardo da Vinci : l’Angelo incarnato & Salai = the Angel in the flesh & Salai. Margherita Melani, Daniel Arasse, da Vinci Leonardo. Foligno (Perugia): Cartei & Bianchi. p. 201. ISBN 978-88-95686-11-0. OCLC 500794484.
  99. ^ MacCurdy, Edward, The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci (1928) in Leonardo da Vinci’s Ethical Vegetarianism
  100. ^ Bambach 2003.
  101. ^ Cartwright Ady, Julia. Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497. Publisher: J.M. Dent, 1899; Cartwright Ady, Julia. Isabella D’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539. Publisher; J.M. Dent, 1903.
  102. ^ Sigmund Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, (1910)
  103. ^ a b Isaacson 2017.
  104. ^ «Leonardo, ladies’ man: why can’t we accept that Da Vinci was gay?». The Guardian. 26 March 2021. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
  105. ^ Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships epigraph, p. 148 & N120 p. 298
  106. ^ Arasse 1998, pp. 11–15.
  107. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, pp. 88, 90.
  108. ^ Marani 2003, p. 338.
  109. ^ a b Wasserman 1975, pp. 104–106.
  110. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 108.
  111. ^ «The Mysterious Virgin». National Gallery, London. Archived from the original on 15 October 2007. Retrieved 27 September 2007.
  112. ^ a b «Da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine among Poland’s «Treasures» – Event – Culture.pl». Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  113. ^ Kemp, M. The Lady with an Ermine in the exhibition Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration. Washington-New Haven-London. p. 271.
  114. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 124.
  115. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 97.
  116. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 98.
  117. ^ Seracini, Maurizio (2012). «The Secret Lives of Paintings» (lecture).
  118. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 144.
  119. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 103.
  120. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 150.
  121. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 109.
  122. ^ a b c d e f g h Popham, A. E. (1946). The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.
  123. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 102.
  124. ^ Hartt 1970, pp. 391–392.
  125. ^ a b c Wallace 1972, p. 169.
  126. ^ a b c Keele Kenneth D (1964). «Leonardo da Vinci’s Influence on Renaissance Anatomy». Med Hist. 8 (4): 360–70. doi:10.1017/s0025727300029835. PMC 1033412. PMID 14230140.
  127. ^ Bean, Jacob; Stampfle, Felice (1965). Drawings from New York Collections I: The Italian Renaissance. Greenwich, CT: Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 81–82.
  128. ^ Major, Richard Henry (1866). Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 40, Part 1. London: The Society. pp. 15–16.
  129. ^ Calder, Ritchie (1970). Leonardo & the Age of the Eye. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-671-20713-7.
  130. ^ «Sketches by Leonardo». Turning the Pages. British Library. Retrieved 27 September 2007.
  131. ^ a b Da Vinci, Leonardo (1960). Taylor, Pamela; Taylor, Francis Henry (eds.). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. New York: New American Library. p. x. ISBN 978-0-486-22572-2.
  132. ^ Livio, Mario (2003) [2002]. The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (First trade paperback ed.). New York City: Broadway Books. p. 136. ISBN 0-7679-0816-3.
  133. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 31.
  134. ^ Ciaccia, Chris (15 April 2019). «Da Vinci was ambidextrous, new handwriting analysis shows». Fox News. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
  135. ^ Windsor Castle, Royal Library, sheets RL 19073v–74v and RL 19102.
  136. ^ Cook, Theodore Andrea (1914). The Curves of Life. London: Constable and Company Ltd. p. 390.
  137. ^ Baucon, A. 2010. Da Vinci’s Paleodictyon: the fractal beauty of traces. Acta Geologica Polonica, 60(1). Accessible from the author’s homepage
  138. ^ O’Malley; Saunders (1982). Leonardo on the Human Body. New York: Dover Publications.
  139. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 117.
  140. ^ Capra 2007, pp. XVII–XX.
  141. ^ Davinci, Leonardo (2011). The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Lulu. p. 736. ISBN 978-1-105-31016-4.
  142. ^ «Leonardo da Vinci». Britannica. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  143. ^ a b Alastair Sooke, Daily Telegraph, 28 July 2013, «Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy of an artist», accessed 29 July 2013.
  144. ^ Mason, Stephen F. (1962). A History of the Sciences. New York: Collier Books. p. 550.
  145. ^ Jones, Roger (2012). «Leonardo da Vinci: anatomist». British Journal of General Practice. 62 (599): 319. doi:10.3399/bjgp12X649241. ISSN 0960-1643. PMC 3361109. PMID 22687222.
  146. ^ Guarnieri, M. (2019). «Reconsidering Leonardo». IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. 13 (3): 35–38. doi:10.1109/MIE.2019.2929366. hdl:11577/3310853. S2CID 202729396.
  147. ^ Masters, Roger (1996). Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power.
  148. ^ Masters, Roger (1998). Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-452-28090-8.
  149. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 164.
  150. ^ «Leonardo’s Dream Machines (TV Movie 2003)». IMDb.
  151. ^ British Library online gallery (retrieved 10 October 2013)
  152. ^ Marc van den Broek (2019), Leonardo da Vinci Spirits of Invention. A Search for Traces, Hamburg: A.TE.M., ISBN 978-3-00-063700-1
  153. ^ a b Hutchings, Ian M. (15 August 2016). «Leonardo da Vinci׳s studies of friction». Wear. 360–361: 51–66. doi:10.1016/j.wear.2016.04.019. ISSN 0043-1648.
  154. ^ Isaacson 2017, pp. 194–197.
  155. ^ Dowson, Duncan (1 October 1977). «Men of Tribology: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)». Journal of Lubrication Technology. 99 (4): 382–386. doi:10.1115/1.3453230. ISSN 0022-2305.
  156. ^ Polidoro, Massimo (2019). «The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 2». Skeptical Inquirer. 43 (3): 23–24.
  157. ^ a b c Gardner, Helen (1970). Art through the Ages. pp. 450–56.
  158. ^ See the quotations from the following authors, in section «Fame and reputation»: Vasari, Boltraffio, Castiglione, «Anonimo» Gaddiano, Berensen, Taine, Fuseli, Rio, Bortolon.
  159. ^ Rosci 1977, p. 8.
  160. ^ Castiglione, Baldassare (1528). «Il Cortegiano» (in Italian).
  161. ^ «Anonimo Gaddiani», elaborating on Libro di Antonio Billi, 1537–1542
  162. ^ Fuseli, Henry (1801). «Lectures». II.
  163. ^ Rio, A.E. (1861). «L’art chrétien» (in French). Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  164. ^ Taine, Hippolyte (1866). «Voyage en Italie» (in Italian). Paris, Hachette et cie. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  165. ^ Berenson, Bernard (1896). The Italian Painters of the Renaissance.
  166. ^ Henneberger, Melinda. «ArtNews article about current studies into Leonardo’s life and works». Art News Online. Archived from the original on 5 May 2006. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
  167. ^ Marmor, Max. «The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana.» The Book Collector 38, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 1–23.
  168. ^ Italie, Hillel (7 January 2018). «NonFiction: Biography honors ‘fun, joyous’ sides of genius da Vinci». Richmond Times-Dispatch. Associated Press. p. G6.
  169. ^ Crow, Kelly (16 November 2017). «Leonardo da Vinci Painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ Sells for $450.3 Million». The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  170. ^ a b Leonardo da Vinci painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold for record $450.3 million, Fox News, 16 November 2017
  171. ^ «Leonardo da Vinci’s Unexamined Life as a Painter». The Atlantic. 1 December 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  172. ^ «Louvre exhibit has most da Vinci paintings ever assembled». Aleteia. 1 December 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  173. ^ Turner 1993, p. 3.
  174. ^ Vitruvian Man is referred to as «iconic» at the following websites and many others: Vitruvian Man, Fine Art Classics Archived 9 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Key Images in the History of Science; Curiosity and difference at the Wayback Machine (archived 30 January 2009); «The Guardian: The Real da Vinci Code»
  175. ^ Turner, Ben (6 July 2021). «Scientists may have cracked the mystery of da Vinci’s DNA». Live Science. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
  176. ^ a b c d e Nicholl 2005, p. 502.
  177. ^ a b Isaacson 2017, p. 515.
  178. ^ a b c d e Montard, Nicolas (30 April 2019). «Léonard de Vinci est-il vraiment enterré au château d’Amboise?» [Is Leonardo da Vinci really buried at the Château d’Amboise?]. Ouest-France (in French). Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  179. ^ Heaton 1874, p. 204, «The skeleton, which measured five feet eight inches, accords with the height of Leonardo da Vinci. The skull might have served for the model of the portrait Leonardo drew of himself in red chalk a few years before his death.».
  180. ^ a b c Knapton, Sarah (5 May 2016). «Leonardo da Vinci paintings analysed for DNA to solve grave mystery». The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  181. ^ Newman, Lily Hay (6 May 2016). «Researchers Are Planning to Sequence Leonardo da Vinci’s 500-Year-Old Genome». Slate Magazine. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  182. ^ Messia, Hada; Robinson, Matthew (30 April 2019). «Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘hair’ to undergo DNA testing». CNN. Retrieved 3 May 2019.

Works cited

Early

  • Anonimo Gaddiano (c. 1530). «Leonardo da Vinci». Codice Magliabechiano. in Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists). Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 2019. pp. 103–114. ISBN 978-1-60606-621-8.
  • Giovio, Paolo (c. 1527). «The Life of Leonardo da Vinci». Elogia virorum illustrium. in Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists). Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 2019. pp. 103–114. ISBN 978-1-60606-621-8.
  • Vasari, Giorgio (1965) [1568]. «The Life of Leonardo da Vinci». Lives of the Artists. Translated by George Bull. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-044164-2.
  • —— (1991) [1568]. The Lives of the Artists. Oxford World’s Classics. Translated by Bondanella, Peter; Bondanella, Julia Conway. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283410-X.

Modern

Books
  • Arasse, Daniel [fr] (1998). Leonardo da Vinci. Old Saybrook: Konecky & Konecky. ISBN 978-1-56852-198-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Bambach, Carmen C., ed. (2003). Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-300-09878-5.
  • Bambach, Carmen C. (2019). Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered. Vol. 1, The Making of an Artist: 1452–1500. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-19195-0.
  • Bortolon, Liana (1967). The Life and Times of Leonardo. London: Paul Hamlyn.
  • Brown, David Alan (1998). Leonardo Da Vinci: Origins of a Genius. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07246-4.
  • Capra, Fritjof (2007). The Science of Leonardo. US: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51390-6.
  • Ottino della Chiesa, Angela (1985) [1967]. The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. Penguin Classics of World Art. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-008649-2.
  • Clark, Kenneth (1961). Leonardo da Vinci. City of Westminster: Penguin Books. OCLC 187223.
  • Gasca, Ana Millàn; Nicolò, Fernando; Lucertini, Mario (2004). Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems. Birkhauser. ISBN 978-3-7643-6940-8.
  • Hartt, Frederich (1970). A History of Italian Renaissance Art. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-23136-4.
  • Heaton, Mary Margaret (1874). Leonardo Da Vinci and His Works: Consisting of a Life of Leonardo Da Vinci. New York: Macmillan Publishers. OCLC 1706262.
  • Isaacson, Walter (2017). Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-3915-4.
  • Kemp, Martin (2006) [1981]. Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-920778-7.
  • Kemp, Martin (2011) [2004]. Leonardo (Revised ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280644-4.
  • Kemp, Martin; Pallanti, Giuseppe (2017). Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-874990-5.
  • Kemp, Martin (2019). Leonardo da Vinci: The 100 Milestones. New York: Sterling. ISBN 978-1-4549-3042-6.
  • Magnano, Milena (2007). Leonardo, collana I Geni dell’arte. Mondadori Arte. ISBN 978-88-370-6432-7.
  • Marani, Pietro C. (2003) [2000]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-3581-5.
  • Martindale, Andrew (1972). The Rise of the Artist. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-56006-8.
  • Nicholl, Charles (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-029681-5.
  • O’Malley, Charles D.; Sounders, J.B. de C.M. (1952). Leonardo on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. With Translations, Emendations and a Biographical Introduction. New York: Henry Schuman.
  • Pedretti, Carlo (1982). Leonardo, a study in chronology and style. Cambridge: Johnson Reprint Corp. ISBN 978-0-384-45281-7.
  • Pedretti, Carlo (2006). Leonardo da Vinci. Surrey: Taj Books International. ISBN 978-1-84406-036-8.
  • Popham, A.E. (1946). The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-60462-8.
  • Richter, Jean Paul (1970). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-22572-2. volume 2: ISBN 0-486-22573-9. A reprint of the original 1883 edition
  • Rosci, Marco (1977). Leonardo. Bay Books Pty Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85835-176-9.
  • Syson, Luke; Keith, Larry; Galansino, Arturo; Mazzotta, Antoni; Nethersole, Scott; Rumberg, Per (2011). Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. London: National Gallery. ISBN 978-1-85709-491-6.
  • Turner, A. Richard (1993). Inventing Leonardo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-520-08938-9.
  • Wallace, Robert (1972) [1966]. The World of Leonardo: 1452–1519. New York: Time-Life Books.
  • Wasserman, Jack (1975). Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-0262-6.
  • Williamson, Hugh Ross (1974). Lorenzo the Magnificent. Michael Joseph. ISBN 978-0-7181-1204-2.
  • Vezzosi, Alessandro (1997). Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man. ‘New Horizons’ series. Translated by Bonfante-Warren, Alexandra (English translation ed.). London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-30081-7.
  • Zöllner, Frank (2015). Leonardo (2nd ed.). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-0215-3.
  • Zöllner, Frank (2019) [2003]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (Anniversary ed.). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-7625-3.
Journals and encyclopedia articles
  • Brown, David Alan (1983). «Leonardo and the Idealized Portrait in Milan». Arte Lombarda. 64 (4): 102–116. JSTOR 43105426. (subscription required)
  • Cremante, Simona (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Scientist, Inventor. Giunti. ISBN 978-88-09-03891-2.
  • Giacomelli, Raffaele (1936). Gli scritti di Leonardo da Vinci sul volo. Roma: G. Bardi.
  • Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich (28 April 2020). «Leonardo da Vinci | Biography, Art & Facts | Britannica». Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
  • Kemp, Martin (2003). «Leonardo da Vinci». Grove Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T050401. ISBN 978-1-884446-05-4. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  • Lupia, John N. (Summer 1994). «The Secret Revealed: How to Look at Italian Renaissance Painting». Medieval and Renaissance Times. 1 (2): 6–17. ISSN 1075-2110.

Further reading

See Kemp (2003) and Bambach (2019, pp. 442–579) for extensive bibliographies

  • Vanna, Arrighi; Bellinazzi, Anna; Villata, Edoardo, eds. (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: la vera immagine: documenti e testimonianze sulla vita e sull’opera [Leonardo da Vinci: the true image: documents and testimonies on life and work] (in Italian). Florence: Giunti Editore. ISBN 978-88-09-04519-4.
  • Vecce, Carlo (2006). Leonardo (in Italian). Foreword by Carlo Pedretti. Rome: Salerno. ISBN 978-88-8402-548-7.
  • Winternitz, Emanuel (1982). Leonardo da Vinci As a Musician. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02631-3.
  • Leonardo da Vinci: anatomical drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1983. ISBN 978-0-87099-362-6.

External links

General
  • Universal Leonardo, a database of Leonardo’s life and works maintained by Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace
  • Leonardo da Vinci on the National Gallery website
Works
  • Biblioteca Leonardiana, online bibliography (in Italian)
  • e-Leo: Archivio digitale di storia della tecnica e della scienza, archive of drawings, notes and manuscripts
  • Works by Leonardo da Vinci at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by Leonardo da Vinci at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Complete text and images of Richter’s translation of the Notebooks
  • The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Francesco Melzi - Portrait of Leonardo.png

This portrait attributed to Francesco Melzi, c. 1515–1518, is the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo.[1][2]

Born

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

15 April 1452

(Anchiano?)[a] Vinci, Republic of Florence

Died 2 May 1519 (aged 67)

Clos Lucé, Amboise, Kingdom of France

Education Studio of Andrea del Verrocchio
Known for
  • Painting
  • drawing
  • engineering
  • science
  • sculpture
  • architecture
Notable work
  • Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483–1493)
  • Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–1491)
  • The Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)
  • The Last Supper (c. 1495–1498)
  • Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1516)
Movement High Renaissance
Signature
Signature written in ink in a flowing script

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci[b] (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.[3] While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal,[4] and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.[3][4]

Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, he worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, all while attracting a large following of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have failed to incite interest and admiration,[3][4] making him a frequent namesake and subject in culture.

Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance.[3] Despite having many lost works and less than 25 attributed major works—including numerous unfinished works—he created some of the most influential paintings in Western art.[3] His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work and often regarded as the world’s most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo,[5] was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.

Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine,[6][7] and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.[8]

Biography

Early life (1452–1472)

Birth and background

Photo of a building of rough stone with small windows, surrounded by olive trees

The possible birthplace and childhood home of Leonardo in Anchiano, Vinci, Italy

Leonardo da Vinci,[b] properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci),[9][10][c] was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence.[11][12][d] He was born out of wedlock to Piero da Vinci [it] (Ser Piero da Vinci d’Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504),[16] a Florentine legal notary,[11] and Caterina [it] (c. 1434 – 1494), from the lower-class.[17][18][e] It remains uncertain where Leonardo was born; the traditional account, from a local oral tradition recorded by the historian Emanuele Repetti,[21] is that he was born in Anchiano, a country hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the illegitimate birth, though it is still possible he was born in a house in Florence that Ser Piero almost certainly had.[22][a] Leonardo’s parents both married separately the year after his birth. Caterina—who later appears in Leonardo’s notes as only «Caterina» or «Catelina»—is usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca who married the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed «L’Accattabriga» («the quarrelsome one»).[17][21] Other theories have been proposed, particularly that of art historian Martin Kemp, who suggested Caterina di Meo Lippi, an orphan who married purportedly with aid from Ser Piero and his family.[23][f] Ser Piero married Albiera Amadori—having been betrothed to her the previous year—and after her death in 1464, went on to have three subsequent marriages.[21][24][g] From all the marriages, Leonardo eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy)[25] who were much younger than he (the last was born when Leonardo was 46 years old)[25] and with whom he had very little contact.[h]

Very little is known about Leonardo’s childhood and much is shrouded in myth, partially because of his biography in the frequently apocryphal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) by the 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari.[28][29] Tax records indicate that by at least 1457 he lived in the household of his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci,[11] but it is possible that he spent the years before then in the care of his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi in the parish of San Pantaleone.[30][31] He is thought to have been close to his uncle, Francesco da Vinci,[3] but his father was probably in Florence most of the time.[11] Ser Piero, who was the descendant of a long line of notaries, established an official residence in Florence by at least 1469 and had a successful career.[11] Despite his family history, Leonardo only received a basic and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading and mathematics, possibly because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his family decided to focus their attention there.[11]

Later in life, Leonardo recorded his earliest memory, now in the Codex Atlanticus.[32] While writing on the flight of birds, he recalled as an infant when a kite came to his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail; commentators still debate whether the anecdote was an actual memory or a fantasy.[33]

Verrocchio’s workshop

Painting showing Jesus, naked except for a loin-cloth, standing in a shallow stream in a rocky landscape, while to the right, John the Baptist, identifiable by the cross that he carries, tips water over Jesus' head. Two angels kneel at the left. Above Jesus are the hands of God, and a dove descending

In the mid-1460s, Leonardo’s family moved to Florence, which at the time was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture.[34] Around the age of 14,[26] he became a garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time.[34] This was about the time of the death of Verrocchio’s master, the great sculptor Donatello.[i] Leonardo became an apprentice by the age of 17 and remained in training for seven years.[36] Other famous painters apprenticed in the workshop or associated with it include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.[37][38] Leonardo was exposed to both theoretical training and a wide range of technical skills,[39] including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and woodwork, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting, and modelling.[40][j]

Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was.[41] He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio or at the Platonic Academy of the Medici.[37] Florence was ornamented by the works of artists such as Donatello’s contemporaries Masaccio, whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion, and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective,[42] and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise De pictura were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo’s own observations and artworks.[35][43]

Much of the painting in Verrocchio’s workshop was done by his assistants. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus’ robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master’s that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again,[‡ 1] although this is believed to be an apocryphal story.[14] Close examination reveals areas of the work that have been painted or touched-up over the tempera, using the new technique of oil paint, including the landscape, the rocks seen through the brown mountain stream, and much of the figure of Jesus, bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.[44] Leonardo may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze statue of David in the Bargello, and the Archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel.[14]

Vasari tells a story of Leonardo as a very young man: a local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo, inspired by the story of Medusa, responded with a painting of a monster spitting fire that was so terrifying that his father bought a different shield to give to the peasant and sold Leonardo’s to a Florentine art dealer for 100 ducats, who in turn sold it to the Duke of Milan.[‡ 2]

First Florentine period (1472–c. 1482)

Adoration of the Magi c. 1478–1482,[d 1] Uffizi, Florence

By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,[k] but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate and live with him.[37][45] Leonardo’s earliest known dated work is a 1473 pen-and-ink drawing of the Arno valley.[38][46][l] According to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the first to suggest making the Arno river a navigable channel between Florence and Pisa.[47]

In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio,[48] an indication of his independence from Verrocchio’s studio. An anonymous early biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and often worked in the garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence, where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers organized by the Medici met.[14][m] In March 1481, he received a commission from the monks of San Donato in Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi.[49] Neither of these initial commissions were completed, being abandoned when Leonardo went to offer his services to Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which described the diverse things that he could achieve in the fields of engineering and weapon design, and mentioned that he could paint.[38][50] He brought with him a silver string instrument—either a lute or lyre—in the form of a horse’s head.[50]

With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neoplatonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator of Aristotle were the foremost. Also associated with the Platonic Academy of the Medici was Leonardo’s contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.[41][43][51] In 1482, Leonardo was sent as an ambassador by Lorenzo de’ Medici to Ludovico il Moro, who ruled Milan between 1479 and 1499.[41][14]

  • Madonna of the Carnation, c. 1472–1478, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

  • Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)

    Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)

  • Ginevra de' Benci, c. 1474–1480, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

First Milanese period (c. 1482–1499)

Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.[52] In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to Hungary (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.[53] In 1490 he was called as a consultant, together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for the building site of the cathedral of Pavia[54][55] and was struck by the equestrian statue of Regisole, of which he left a sketch.[56] Leonardo was employed on many other projects for Sforza, such as preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions; a drawing of, and wooden model for, a competition to design the cupola for Milan Cathedral;[57] and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Ludovico’s predecessor Francesco Sforza. This would have surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello’s Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the Gran Cavallo.[38] Leonardo completed a model for the horse and made detailed plans for its casting,[38] but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal to his brother-in-law to be used for a cannon to defend the city from Charles VIII of France.[38]

Contemporary correspondence records that Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke of Milan to paint the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle. The decoration was completed in 1498. The project became a trompe-l’œil decoration that made the great hall appear to be a pergola created by the interwoven limbs of sixteen mulberry trees,[58] whose canopy included an intricate labyrinth of leaves and knots on the ceiling.[59]

  • Head of a Woman, c. 1483–1485, Royal Library of Turin

  • Portrait of a Musician, c. 1483–1487, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

  • Leonardo's horse in silverpoint, c. 1488[60]

  • La Belle Ferronnière, c. 1490–1498

Second Florentine period (1500–1508)

When Ludovico Sforza was overthrown by France in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for Venice, accompanied by his assistant Salaì and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli.[61] In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.[37] On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that «men [and] women, young and old» flocked to see it «as if they were going to a solemn festival.»[‡ 3][n]

In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.[61] Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia’s stronghold, a town plan of Imola in order to win his patronage. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley, Tuscany, so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. He created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a dam from the sea to Florence, in order to allow a supply of water to sustain the canal during all seasons.

Leonardo had left Borgia’s service and returned to Florence by early 1503,[63] where he rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke on 18 October of that year. By this same month, Leonardo had begun working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the model for the Mona Lisa,[64][65] which he would continue working on until his twilight years. In January 1504, he was part of a committee formed to recommend where Michelangelo’s statue of David should be placed.[66] He then spent two years in Florence designing and painting a mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria,[61] with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina.[o]

In 1506, Leonardo was summoned to Milan by Charles II d’Amboise, the acting French governor of the city.[69] There, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count Francesco Melzi, the son of a Lombard aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student.[37] The Council of Florence wished Leonardo to return promptly to finish The Battle of Anghiari, but he was given leave at the behest of Louis XII, who considered commissioning the artist to make some portraits.[69] Leonardo may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of d’Amboise;[70] a wax model survives and, if genuine, is the only extant example of Leonardo’s sculpture. Leonardo was otherwise free to pursue his scientific interests.[69] Many of Leonardo’s most prominent pupils either knew or worked with him in Milan,[37] including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, and Marco d’Oggiono. In 1507, Leonardo was in Florence sorting out a dispute with his brothers over the estate of his father, who had died in 1504.

  • The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1501–1519, Louvre, Paris

  • La Scapigliata, c. 1506–1508 (unfinished), Galleria Nazionale di Parma, Parma

Second Milanese period (1508–1513)

By 1508, Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.[71]

In 1512, Leonardo was working on plans for an equestrian monument for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, but this was prevented by an invasion of a confederation of Swiss, Spanish and Venetian forces, which drove the French from Milan. Leonardo stayed in the city, spending several months in 1513 at the Medici’s Vaprio d’Adda villa.[72]

Rome and France (1513–1519)

An apocalyptic deluge drawn in black chalk by Leonardo near the end of his life (part of a series of 10, paired with written description in his notebooks)[73]

In March of 1513, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son Giovanni assumed the papacy (as Leo X); Leonardo went to Rome that September, where he was received by the pope’s brother Giuliano.[72] From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere Courtyard in the Apostolic Palace, where Michelangelo and Raphael were both active.[71] Leonardo was given an allowance of 33 ducats a month, and according to Vasari, decorated a lizard with scales dipped in quicksilver.[74] The pope gave him a painting commission of unknown subject matter, but cancelled it when the artist set about developing a new kind of varnish.[74][p] Leonardo became ill, in what may have been the first of multiple strokes leading to his death.[74] He practiced botany in the Gardens of Vatican City, and was commissioned to make plans for the pope’s proposed draining of the Pontine Marshes.[75] He also dissected cadavers, making notes for a treatise on vocal cords;[76] these he gave to an official in hopes of regaining the pope’s favor, but was unsuccessful.[74]

In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan.[49] Leonardo was present at the 19 December meeting of Francis I and Leo X, which took place in Bologna.[37][77][78] In 1516, Leonardo entered Francis’ service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé, near the king’s residence at the royal Château d’Amboise. Being frequently visited by Francis, he drew plans for an immense castle town the king intended to erect at Romorantin, and made a mechanical lion, which during a pageant walked toward the king and—upon being struck by a wand—opened its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.[79][‡ 3][q] Leonardo was accompanied during this time by his friend and apprentice Francesco Melzi, and supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi.[71] At some point, Melzi drew a portrait of Leonardo; the only others known from his lifetime were a sketch by an unknown assistant on the back of one of Leonardo’s studies (c. 1517)[81] and a drawing by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino depicting an elderly Leonardo with his right arm wrapped in clothing.[82][r] The latter, in addition to the record of an October 1517 visit by Louis d’Aragon,[s] confirms an account of Leonardo’s right hand being paralytic when he was 65,[85] which may indicate why he left works such as the Mona Lisa unfinished.[83][86][87] He continued to work at some capacity until eventually becoming ill and bedridden for several months.[85]

Death

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67, possibly of a stroke.[88][87][89] Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari describes Leonardo as lamenting on his deathbed, full of repentance, that «he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should have done.»[90] Vasari states that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament.[‡ 4] Vasari also records that the king held Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died, although this story may be legend rather than fact.[t][u] In accordance with his will, sixty beggars carrying tapers followed Leonardo’s casket.[51][v] Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving, as well as money, Leonardo’s paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo’s other long-time pupil and companion, Salaì, and his servant Baptista de Vilanis, each received half of Leonardo’s vineyards.[92] His brothers received land, and his serving woman received a fur-lined cloak. On 12 August 1519, Leonardo’s remains were interred in the Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin at the Château d’Amboise.[93]

Salaì, or Il Salaino («The Little Unclean One», i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo’s household in 1490 as an assistant. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him «a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton,» after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions and spent a fortune on clothes.[94] Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence, and he remained in Leonardo’s household for the next thirty years.[95] Salaì executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo «taught him many things about painting,»[‡ 3] his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo’s pupils, such as Marco d’Oggiono and Boltraffio.

Salaì owned the Mona Lisa at the time of Leonardo’s death in 1524, and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.[96] Some 20 years after Leonardo’s death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini as saying: «There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher.»[97]

Personal life

Despite the thousands of pages Leonardo left in notebooks and manuscripts, he scarcely made reference to his personal life.[2]

Within Leonardo’s lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his «great physical beauty» and «infinite grace,» as described by Vasari,[‡ 5] as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect was his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and according to Vasari, a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.[99][‡ 6]

Leonardo had many friends who are now notable either in their fields or for their historical significance, including mathematician Luca Pacioli,[100] with whom he collaborated on the book Divina proportione in the 1490s. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters, Beatrice and Isabella.[101] While on a journey that took him through Mantua, he drew a portrait of Isabella that appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.[37]

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud in his Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood.[102] Leonardo’s most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salaì and Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo’s brothers of his death, described Leonardo’s feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy in an incident involving a well-known male prostitute. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the dismissal.[103] Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality[104] and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in Saint John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.[105][98]

Paintings

Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his fame rested on his achievements as a painter. A handful of works that are either authenticated or attributed to him have been regarded as among the great masterpieces. These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities that have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. By the 1490s Leonardo had already been described as a «Divine» painter.[106]

Among the qualities that make Leonardo’s work unique are his innovative techniques for laying on the paint; his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology; his interest in physiognomy and the way humans register emotion in expression and gesture; his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition; and his use of subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks.[w]

Early works

Annunciation c. 1472–1476,[d 4] Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo’s earliest extant and complete major work

Leonardo first gained attention for his work on the Baptism of Christ, painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at Verrocchio’s workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 centimetres (23 in) long and 14 cm (5.5 in) high. It is a «predella» to go at the base of a larger composition, a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm (85 in) long.[107] In both Annunciations, Leonardo used a formal arrangement, like two well-known pictures by Fra Angelico of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with a rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now generally attributed to Leonardo.[108]

In the smaller painting, Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God’s will. Mary is not submissive, however, in the larger piece. The girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise.[35] This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the Mother of God, not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting, the young Leonardo presents the humanist face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity’s role in God’s incarnation.

Paintings of the 1480s

In the 1480s, Leonardo received two very important commissions and commenced another work that was of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Two of the three were never finished, and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment.

One of these paintings was Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, which Bortolon associates with a difficult period of Leonardo’s life, as evidenced in his diary: «I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.»[37] Although the painting is barely begun, the composition can be seen and is very unusual.[x] Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo’s anatomical studies.[109] Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.

The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a complex composition, of about 250 x 250 centimetres. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined classical architecture that forms part of the background. In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro, and the painting was abandoned.[14]

The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks, commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece.[110] Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.[111] While the painting is quite large, about 200×120 centimetres, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of San Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished: one remained at the chapel of the Confraternity, while Leonardo took the other to France. The Brothers did not get their painting, however, nor the de Predis their payment, until the next century.[38][61]

Leonardo’s most remarkable portrait of this period is the Lady with an Ermine, presumed to be Cecilia Gallerani (c. 1483–1490), lover of Ludovico Sforza.[112][113] The painting is characterised by the pose of the figure with the head turned at a very different angle to the torso, unusual at a date when many portraits were still rigidly in profile. The ermine plainly carries symbolic meaning, relating either to the sitter, or to Ludovico who belonged to the prestigious Order of the Ermine.[112]

Paintings of the 1490s

Leonardo’s most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, commissioned for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. It represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death, and shows the moment when Jesus has just said «one of you will betray me», and the consternation that this statement caused.[38]

The writer Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat and then not paint for three or four days at a time.[114] This was beyond the comprehension of the prior of the convent, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.[‡ 7]

The painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterization,[‡ 8] but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as «completely ruined.»[115] Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface subject to mould and to flaking.[116] Despite this, the painting remains one of the most reproduced works of art; countless copies have been made in various mediums.

Toward the end of this period, in 1498 da Vinci’s trompe-l’œil decoration of the Sala delle Asse was painted for the Duke of Milan in the Castello Sforzesco.

Paintings of the 1500s

In 1505, Leonardo was commissioned to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Leonardo devised a dynamic composition depicting four men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. Michelangelo was assigned the opposite wall to depict the Battle of Cascina. Leonardo’s painting deteriorated rapidly and is now known from a copy by Rubens.[117]

Among the works created by Leonardo in the 16th century is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or La Gioconda, the laughing one. In the present era, it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality perhaps due to the subtly shadowed corners of the mouth and eyes such that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called «sfumato», or Leonardo’s smoke. Vasari wrote that the smile was «so pleasing that it seems more divine than human, and it was considered a wondrous thing that it was as lively as the smile of the living original.»[‡ 9]

Other characteristics of the painting are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details; the dramatic landscape background, in which the world seems to be in a state of flux; the subdued colouring; and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils laid on much like tempera, and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.[118] Vasari expressed that the painting’s quality would make even «the most confident master … despair and lose heart.»[‡ 10] The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is rare in a panel painting of this date.[119]

In the painting Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape, which Wasserman describes as «breathtakingly beautiful»[120] and harkens back to the Saint Jerome with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, Saint Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice.[38] This painting, which was copied many times, influenced Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto,[121] and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese.

Drawings

Leonardo was a prolific draughtsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper.[122] His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.[37][122][y]

Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body; the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre; a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem; and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London.[122] This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre.[123]

Antique warrior in profile, c. 1472. British Museum, London

Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as «caricatures» because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that Leonardo would look for interesting faces in public to use as models for some of his work.[‡ 7] There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salaì, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called «Grecian profile».[z] These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior.[122] Salaì is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo’s ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de’ Medici, in the Pazzi conspiracy.[122] In his notes, Leonardo recorded the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.

Like the two contemporary architects Donato Bramante (who designed the Belvedere Courtyard) and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.[41][124]

Journals and notes

Renaissance humanism recognised no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo’s studies in science and engineering are sometimes considered as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.[38] These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science). They were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo’s life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.[38] Leonardo’s notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.[38]

These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes—were largely entrusted to Leonardo’s pupil and heir Francesco Melzi after the master’s death.[125] These were to be published, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo’s idiosyncratic writing.[126] Some of Leonardo’s drawings were copied by an anonymous Milanese artist for a planned treatise on art c. 1570.[127] After Melzi’s death in 1570, the collection passed to his son, the lawyer Orazio, who initially took little interest in the journals.[125] In 1587, a Melzi household tutor named Lelio Gavardi took 13 of the manuscripts to Pisa; there, the architect Giovanni Magenta reproached Gavardi for having taken the manuscripts illicitly and returned them to Orazio. Having many more such works in his possession, Orazio gifted the volumes to Magenta. News spread of these lost works of Leonardo’s, and Orazio retrieved seven of the 13 manuscripts, which he then gave to Pompeo Leoni for publication in two volumes; one of these was the Codex Atlanticus. The other six works had been distributed to a few others.[128] After Orazio’s death, his heirs sold the rest of Leonardo’s possessions, and thus began their dispersal.[129]

Some works have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which holds the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, and the British Library in London, which has put a selection from the Codex Arundel (BL Arundel MS 263) online.[130] Works have also been at Holkham Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the private hands of John Nicholas Brown I and Robert Lehman.[125] The Codex Leicester is the only privately owned major scientific work of Leonardo; it is owned by Bill Gates and displayed once a year in different cities around the world.

Most of Leonardo’s writings are in mirror-image cursive.[46][131] Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it was probably easier for him to write from right to left.[132][aa] Leonardo used a variety of shorthand and symbols, and states in his notes that he intended to prepare them for publication.[131] In many cases a single topic is covered in detail in both words and pictures on a single sheet, together conveying information that would not be lost if the pages were published out of order.[135] Why they were not published during Leonardo’s lifetime is unknown.[38]

Science and inventions

Leonardo’s approach to science was observational: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasise experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. His keen observations in many areas were noted, such as when he wrote «Il sole non si move.» («The Sun does not move.»)[136]

In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli’s book Divina proportione, published in 1509.[38] While living in Milan, he studied light from the summit of Monte Rosa.[69] Scientific writings in his notebook on fossils have been considered as influential on early palaeontology.[137]

The content of his journals suggest that he was planning a series of treatises on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on anatomy is said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis d’Aragon’s secretary in 1517.[138] Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by Melzi and eventually published as A Treatise on Painting in France and Italy in 1651 and Germany in 1724,[139] with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicolas Poussin.[4] According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into 62 editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as «the precursor of French academic thought on art.»[38]

While Leonardo’s experimentation followed scientific methods, a recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as a scientist by Fritjof Capra argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him in that, as a «Renaissance Man», his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting.[140]

Anatomy and physiology

Anatomical study of the arm (c. 1510)

Leonardo started his study in the anatomy of the human body under the apprenticeship of Verrocchio, who demanded that his students develop a deep knowledge of the subject.[141] As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.

As a successful artist, Leonardo was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre, professor of Anatomy at the University of Pavia.[142] Leonardo made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words toward a treatise on anatomy.[143] Only a small amount of the material on anatomy was published in Leonardo’s Treatise on painting.[126] During the time that Melzi was ordering the material into chapters for publication, they were examined by a number of anatomists and artists, including Vasari, Cellini and Albrecht Dürer, who made a number of drawings from them.[126]

Leonardo’s anatomical drawings include many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, and of muscles and sinews. He studied the mechanical functions of the skeleton and the muscular forces that are applied to it in a manner that prefigured the modern science of biomechanics.[144] He drew the heart and vascular system, the sex organs and other internal organs, making one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero.[122] The drawings and notation are far ahead of their time, and if published would undoubtedly have made a major contribution to medical science.[143]

Leonardo’s physiological sketch of the human brain and skull (c. 1510)

Leonardo also closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.[38][122] Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.[122]

Leonardo’s dissections and documentation of muscles, nerves, and vessels helped to describe the physiology and mechanics of movement. He attempted to identify the source of ’emotions’ and their expression. He found it difficult to incorporate the prevailing system and theories of bodily humours, but eventually he abandoned these physiological explanations of bodily functions. He made the observations that humours were not located in cerebral spaces or ventricles. He documented that the humours were not contained in the heart or the liver, and that it was the heart that defined the circulatory system. He was the first to define atherosclerosis and liver cirrhosis. He created models of the cerebral ventricles with the use of melted wax and constructed a glass aorta to observe the circulation of blood through the aortic valve by using water and grass seed to watch flow patterns.[145]

Engineering and inventions

An aerial screw (c. 1489), suggestive of a helicopter, from the Codex Atlanticus

During his lifetime, Leonardo was also valued as an engineer. With the same rational and analytical approach that moved him to represent the human body and to investigate anatomy, Leonardo studied and designed many machines and devices. He drew their “anatomy” with unparalleled mastery, producing the first form of the modern technical drawing, including a perfected «exploded view» technique, to represent internal components. Those studies and projects collected in his codices fill more than 5,000 pages.[146] In a letter of 1482 to the lord of Milan Ludovico il Moro, he wrote that he could create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled from Milan to Venice in 1499, he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. In 1502, he created a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno river, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked.[147][148] He continued to contemplate the canalization of Lombardy’s plains while in Louis XII’s company[69] and of the Loire and its tributaries in the company of Francis I.[149] Leonardo’s journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, a mechanical knight, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.[37][38]

Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight for much of his life, producing many studies, including Codex on the Flight of Birds (c. 1505), as well as plans for several flying machines, such as a flapping ornithopter and a machine with a helical rotor.[38] A 2003 documentary by British television station Channel Four, titled Leonardo’s Dream Machines, various designs by Leonardo, such as a parachute and a giant crossbow, were interpreted and constructed.[150][151] Some of those designs proved successful, whilst others fared less well when tested.

Research performed by Marc van den Broek revealed older prototypes for more than 100 inventions that are ascribed to Leonardo. Similarities between Leonardo’s illustrations and drawings from the Middle Ages and from Ancient Greece and Rome, the Chinese and Persian Empires, and Egypt suggest that a large portion of Leonardo’s inventions had been conceived before his lifetime. Leonardo’s innovation was to combine different functions from existing drafts and set them into scenes that illustrated their utility. By reconstituting technical inventions he created something new.[152]

In his notebooks, Leonardo first stated the ‘laws’ of sliding friction in 1493.[153] His inspiration for investigating friction came about in part from his study of perpetual motion, which he correctly concluded was not possible.[154] His results were never published and the friction laws were not rediscovered until 1699 by Guillaume Amontons, with whose name they are now usually associated.[153] For this contribution, Leonardo was named as the first of the 23 «Men of Tribology» by Duncan Dowson.[155]

Legacy

Although he had no formal academic training,[156] many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the «Universal Genius» or «Renaissance Man», an individual of «unquenchable curiosity» and «feverishly inventive imagination.»[157] He is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived.[158] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and «his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote.»[157] Scholars interpret his view of the world as being based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his time.[159]

Leonardo’s fame within his own lifetime was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Interest in Leonardo and his work has never diminished. Crowds still queue to see his best-known artworks, T-shirts still bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to hail him as a genius while speculating about his private life, as well as about what one so intelligent actually believed in.[38]

The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano (The Courtier), wrote in 1528: «…Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled…»[160] while the biographer known as «Anonimo Gaddiano» wrote, c. 1540: «His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf…»[161] Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists (1568), opens his chapter on Leonardo:[‡ 11]

In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.

The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo’s genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: «Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius…»[162] This is echoed by A.E. Rio who wrote in 1861: «He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents.»[163]

By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo’s notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: «There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries.»[164] Art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896: «Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values.»[165]

The interest in Leonardo’s genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.[166] Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: «Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge…Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe.»[37] The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana is a special collection at the University of California, Los Angeles.[167]

Twenty-first-century author Walter Isaacson based much of his biography of Leonardo[103] on thousands of notebook entries, studying the personal notes, sketches, budget notations, and musings of the man whom he considers the greatest of innovators. Isaacson was surprised to discover a «fun, joyous» side of Leonardo in addition to his limitless curiosity and creative genius.[168]

On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, the Louvre in Paris arranged for the largest ever single exhibit of his work, called Leonardo, between November 2019 and February 2020. The exhibit includes over 100 paintings, drawings and notebooks. Eleven of the paintings that Leonardo completed in his lifetime were included. Five of these are owned by the Louvre, but the Mona Lisa was not included because it is in such great demand among general visitors to the Louvre; it remains on display in its gallery. Vitruvian Man, however, is on display following a legal battle with its owner, the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Salvator Mundi [ab] was also not included because its Saudi owner did not agree to lease the work.[171][172]

The Mona Lisa, considered Leonardo’s magnum opus, is often regarded as the most famous portrait ever made.[3][173] The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time,[157] and Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man drawing is also considered a cultural icon.[174]

More than a decade of analysis of Leonardo’s genetic genealogy, conducted by Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato, came to a conclusion in mid-2021. It was determined that the artist has 14 living male relatives. The work could also help determine the authenticity of remains thought to belong to Leonardo.[175]

Location of remains

Tomb in the chapel of Saint Hubert at the Château d’Amboise where a plaque describes it as the presumed site of Leonardo’s remains.

While Leonardo was certainly buried in the collegiate church of Saint Florentin at the Château d’Amboise in 12 August 1519, the current location of his remains is unclear.[176][177] Much of Château d’Amboise was damaged during the French Revolution, leading to the church’s demolition in 1802.[176] Some of the graves were destroyed in the process, scattering the bones interred there and thereby leaving the whereabouts of Leonardo’s remains subject to dispute; a gardener may have even buried some in the corner of the courtyard.[176]

In 1863, fine-arts inspector general Arsène Houssaye received an imperial commission to excavate the site and discovered a partially complete skeleton with a bronze ring on one finger, white hair, and stone fragments bearing the inscriptions «EO», «AR», «DUS», and «VINC»—interpreted as forming «Leonardus Vinci».[93][176][178] The skull’s eight teeth corresponds to someone of approximately the appropriate age and a silver shield found near the bones depicts a beardless Francis I, corresponding to the king’s appearance during Leonardo’s time in France.[178]

Houssaye postulated that the unusually large skull was an indicator of Leonardo’s intelligence; author Charles Nicholl describes this as a «dubious phrenological deduction».[176] At the same time, Houssaye noted some issues with his observations, including that the feet were turned toward the high altar, a practice generally reserved for laymen, and that the skeleton of 1.73 metres (5.7 ft) seemed too short.[178] Art historian Mary Margaret Heaton wrote in 1874 that the height would be appropriate for Leonardo.[179] The skull was allegedly presented to Napoleon III before being returned to the Château d’Amboise, where they were re-interred in the chapel of Saint Hubert in 1874.[178][180] A plaque above the tomb states that its contents are only presumed to be those of Leonardo.[177]

It has since been theorized that the folding of the skeleton’s right arm over the head may correspond to the paralysis of Leonardo’s right hand.[82][88][178] In 2016, it was announced that DNA tests would be conducted to determine whether the attribution is correct.[180] The DNA of the remains will be compared to that of samples collected from Leonardo’s work and his half-brother Domenico’s descendants;[180] it may also be sequenced.[181]

In 2019, documents were published revealing that Houssaye had kept the ring and a lock of hair. In 1925, his great-grandson sold these to an American collector. Sixty years later, another American acquired them, leading to them being displayed at the Leonardo Museum in Vinci beginning on 2 May 2019, the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death.[93][182]

Notes

General
  1. ^ a b See Nicholl (2005, pp. 17–20) and Bambach (2019, p. 24) for further information on the dispute and uncertainty surrounding Leonardo’s exact birthplace.
  2. ^ a b ; LEE-ə-NAR-doh də VIN-chee, LEE-oh-, LAY-oh-
  3. ^ Italian: [leoˈnardo di ˈsɛr ˈpjɛːro da (v)ˈvintʃi] (listen) The inclusion of the title ‘ser’ (shortening of Italian Messer or Messere, title of courtesy prefixed to the first name) indicates that Leonardo’s father was a gentleman.
  4. ^ The diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio relays a precise account: «There was born to me a grandson, son of Ser Piero [fr], on 15 April, a Saturday, at the third hour of the night.»[13][14] Ser Antonio records Leonardo being baptized the following day by Piero di Bartolomeo at the parish of Santa Croce [it].[15]
  5. ^ It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East «or at least, from the Mediterranean» or even of Chinese descent. According to art critic Alessandro Vezzosi, head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, there is evidence that Piero owned a slave called Caterina.[19] The reconstruction of one of Leonardo’s fingerprints shows a pattern that matches 60% of people of Middle Eastern origin, suggesting the possibility that Leonardo may have had Middle Eastern blood. The claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine: «You can’t predict one person’s race from these kinds of incidences, especially if looking at only one finger». More recently, historian Martin Kemp, after digging through overlooked archives and records in Italy, found evidence that Leonardo’s mother was a young local woman identified as Caterina di Meo Lippi.[20]
  6. ^ See Nicholl (2005, pp. 26–30) for further information of Leonardo’s mother and Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca.
  7. ^ See Kemp & Pallanti (2017, pp. 65–66) for detailed table on Ser Piero’s marriages.
  8. ^ He also never wrote about his father, except a passing note of his death in which he overstates his age by three years.[26] Leonardo’s siblings caused him difficulty after his father’s death in a dispute over their inheritance.[27]
  9. ^ The humanist influence of Donatello’s David can be seen in Leonardo’s late paintings, particularly John the Baptist.[35][34]
  10. ^ The «diverse arts» and technical skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th-century text On Divers Arts by Theophilus Presbyter and in the early 15th-century text Il Libro Dell’arte O Trattato Della Pittui by Cennino Cennini.
  11. ^ That Leonardo joined the guild by this time is deduced from the record of payment made to the Compagnia di San Luca in the company’s register, Libro Rosso A, 1472–1520, Accademia di Belle Arti.[14]
  12. ^ On the back he wrote: «I, staying with Anthony, am happy,» possibly in reference to his father.
  13. ^ Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal, «The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me.»[37]
  14. ^ In 2005, the studio was rediscovered during the restoration of part of a building occupied for 100 years by the Department of Military Geography.[62]
  15. ^ Both works are lost. The entire composition of Michelangelo’s painting is known from a copy by Aristotole da Sangallo, 1542.[67] Leonardo’s painting is known only from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate, is by Peter Paul Rubens.[68]
  16. ^ Pope Leo X is quoted as saying, «This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning!» [74]
  17. ^ It is unknown for what occasion the mechanical lion was made, but it is believed to have greeted the king at his entry into Lyon and perhaps was used for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. A conjectural recreation of the lion has been made and is on display in the Museum of Bologna.[80]
  18. ^ Identified via its similarity to Leonardo’s presumed self-portrait[83]
  19. ^ «… Messer Lunardo Vinci [sic] … an old graybeard of more than 70 years … showed His Excellency three pictures … from whom, since he was then subject to a certain paralysis of the right hand, one could not expect any more good work.» [84]
  20. ^ This scene is portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, as well as Angelica Kauffman.
  21. ^ a b On the day of Leonardo’s death, a royal edict was issued by the king at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a two-day journey from Clos Lucé. This has been taken as evidence that King Francis cannot have been present at Leonardo’s deathbed, but the edict was not signed by the king.[91]
  22. ^ Each of the sixty paupers were to have been awarded in accord with Leonardo’s will.[51]
  23. ^ These qualities of Leonardo’s works are discussed in Hartt (1970, pp. 387–411)
  24. ^ The painting, which in the 18th century belonged to Angelica Kauffman, was later cut up. The two main sections were found in a junk shop and cobbler’s shop and were reunited.[109] It is probable that outer parts of the composition are missing.
  25. ^ This work is now in the collection of the Uffizi, Drawing No. 8P.
  26. ^ The «Grecian profile» has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many Classical Greek statues.
  27. ^ He also drew with his left hand, his hatch strokes «slanting down from left to right—the natural stroke of a left-handed artist».[133] He also sometimes wrote conventionally with his right hand.[134]
  28. ^ Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo depicting Jesus holding an orb, sold for a world record US$450.3 million at a Christie’s auction in New York, 15 November 2017.[169] The highest known sale price for any artwork was previously US$300 million, for Willem de Kooning’s Interchange, which was sold privately in September 2015.[170] The highest price previously paid for a work of art at auction was for Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger, which sold for US$179.4 million in May 2015 at Christie’s New York.[170]
Dates of works
  1. ^ The Adoration of the Magi
    • Kemp (2019, p. 27): c. 1481–1482
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): 1481
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 56): c. 1480–1482
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 222): 1481/1482

  2. ^ Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre version)
    • Kemp (2019, p. 41): c. 1483–1493
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): between 1483 and 1486
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 164): 1483–c. 1485
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 223): 1483–1484/1485

  3. ^ Saint John the Baptist
    • Kemp (2019, p. 189): c. 1507–1514
    • Marani (2003, p. 340): c. 1508
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 63): c. 1500 onwards
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 248): c. 1508–1516

  4. ^ The Annunciation
    • Kemp (2019, p. 6): c. 1473–1474
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): c. 1472–1475
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 15): c. 1472–1476
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 216): c. 1473–1475

  5. ^ Saint Jerome in the Wilderness
    • Kemp (2019, p. 31): c. 1481–1482
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): probably c. 1480
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 139): c. 1488–1490
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 221): c. 1480–1482

  6. ^ Lady with an Ermine
    • Kemp (2019, p. 49): c. 1491
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): 1489–1490
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 111): c. 1489–1490
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 226): 1489/1490

  7. ^ The Last Supper
    • Kemp (2019, p. 67): c. 1495–1497
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): between 1494 and 1498
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 252): 1492–1497/1498
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 230): c. 1495–1498

  8. ^ Mona Lisa
    • Kemp (2019, p. 127): c. 1503–1515
    • Marani (2003, p. 340): c. 1503–1504; 1513–1514
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 48): c. 1502 onward
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 240): c. 1503–1506; 1510

References

Citations

Early
  1. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 287
  2. ^ Vasari 1991, pp. 287–289
  3. ^ a b c Vasari 1991, p. 293
  4. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 297
  5. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 284
  6. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 286
  7. ^ a b Vasari 1991, p. 290
  8. ^ Vasari 1991, pp. 289–291
  9. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 294
  10. ^ Vasari 1965, p. 266
  11. ^ Vasari 1965, p. 255
Modern
  1. ^ «A portrait of Leonardo c.1515–18». Royal Collection Trust. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  2. ^ a b Zöllner 2019, p. 20.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Kemp 2003.
  4. ^ a b c d Heydenreich 2020.
  5. ^ Zöllner 2019, p. 250.
  6. ^ Kaplan, Erez (1996). «Roberto Guatelli’s Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s Adding Machine». Archived from the original on 29 May 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  7. ^ Kaplan, E. (April 1997). «Anecdotes». IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 19 (2): 62–69. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1997.586074. ISSN 1058-6180.
  8. ^ Capra 2007, pp. 5–6.
  9. ^ Brown 1998, p. 7.
  10. ^ Kemp 2006, p. 1.
  11. ^ a b c d e f Brown 1998, p. 5.
  12. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 17.
  13. ^ Vezzosi 1997, p. 13.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 83.
  15. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 20.
  16. ^ Bambach 2019, pp. 16, 24.
  17. ^ a b Marani 2003, p. 13.
  18. ^ Bambach 2019, p. 16.
  19. ^ Hooper, John (12 April 2008). «Da Vinci’s mother was a slave, Italian study claims». The Guardian. Retrieved 16 August 2015.
  20. ^ Alberge, Dalya (21 May 2017). «Tuscan archives yield up secrets of Leonardo’s mystery mother». The Guardian. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  21. ^ a b c Bambach 2019, p. 24.
  22. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 18.
  23. ^ Kemp & Pallanti 2017, p. 6.
  24. ^ Kemp & Pallanti 2017, p. 65.
  25. ^ a b Kemp & Pallanti 2017, pp. 65–66.
  26. ^ a b Wallace 1972, p. 11.
  27. ^ Magnano 2007, p. 138.
  28. ^ Brown 1998, pp. 1, 5.
  29. ^ Marani 2003, p. 12.
  30. ^ Brown 1998, p. 175.
  31. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 28.
  32. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 30, 506.
  33. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 30. See p. 506 for the original Italian.
  34. ^ a b c Rosci 1977, p. 13.
  35. ^ a b c Hartt 1970, pp. 127–133.
  36. ^ Bacci, Mina (1978) [1963]. The Great Artists: Da Vinci. Translated by Tanguy, J. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  37. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bortolon 1967.
  38. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Arasse 1998.
  39. ^ Rosci 1977, p. 27.
  40. ^ Martindale 1972.
  41. ^ a b c d Rosci 1977, pp. 9–20.
  42. ^ Piero della Francesca, On Perspective for Painting (De Prospectiva Pingendi)
  43. ^ a b Rachum, Ilan (1979). The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia.
  44. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 88.
  45. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 13.
  46. ^ a b Polidoro, Massimo (2019). «The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 1». Skeptical Inquirer. Center for Inquiry. 43 (2): 30–31.
  47. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 15.
  48. ^ Clark, Kenneth; Kemp, Martin (26 November 2015). Leonardo da Vinci (Newition ed.). United Kingdom: Penguin. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-14-198237-3.
  49. ^ a b Wasserman 1975, pp. 77–78.
  50. ^ a b Wallace 1972, pp. 53–54.
  51. ^ a b c Williamson 1974.
  52. ^ Kemp 2011.
  53. ^ Franz-Joachim Verspohl [de], Michelangelo Buonarroti und Leonardo Da Vinci: Republikanischer Alltag und Künstlerkonkurrenz in Florenz zwischen 1501 und 1505 (Wallstein Verlag, 2007), p. 151.
  54. ^ Schofield, Richard. «Amadeo, Bramante and Leonardo and the Cupola of Milan Cathedral». Achademia Leonardi Vinci. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  55. ^ Barbieri, Ezio; Catanese, Filippo (January 2020). «Leonardo a (e i rapporti con) Pavia: una verifica sui documenti». Annuario dell’Archivio di Stato di Milano. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  56. ^ Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci: drawings of horses and other animals (Windsor Castle. Royal Library) 1984.
  57. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 79.
  58. ^ Rocky, Ruggiero (6 October 2021). «Episode 142 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Sala delle Asse». rockyruggiero.com. Making Art and History Come to Life, Rebuilding the Renaissance.
  59. ^ «Segui il restauro» [Follow the restoration]. Castello Sforzesco – Sala delle Asse (in Italian). Archived from the original on 16 October 2018. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  60. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 65.
  61. ^ a b c d Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 85.
  62. ^ Owen, Richard (12 January 2005). «Found: the studio where Leonardo met Mona Lisa». The Times. London. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  63. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 124.
  64. ^ «Mona Lisa – Heidelberg discovery confirms identity». University of Heidelberg. Archived from the original on 5 November 2013. Retrieved 4 July 2010.
  65. ^ Delieuvin, Vincent (15 January 2008). «Télématin». Journal Télévisé. France 2 Télévision.
  66. ^ Coughlan, Robert (1966). The World of Michelangelo: 1475–1564. et al. Time-Life Books. p. 90.
  67. ^ Goldscheider, Ludwig (1967). Michelangelo: paintings, sculptures, architecture. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0-7148-1314-1.
  68. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, pp. 106–07.
  69. ^ a b c d e Wallace 1972, p. 145.
  70. ^ «Achademia Leonardi Vinci». Journal of Leonardo Studies & Bibliography of Vinciana. VIII: 243–44. 1990.
  71. ^ a b c Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 86.
  72. ^ a b Wallace 1972, pp. 149–150.
  73. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 151.
  74. ^ a b c d e Wallace 1972, p. 150.
  75. ^ Ohlig, Christoph P. J., ed. (2005). Integrated Land and Water Resources Management in History. Books on Demand. p. 33. ISBN 978-3-8334-2463-2.
  76. ^ Gillette, Henry Sampson (2017). Leonardo da Vinci: Pathfinder of Science. Prabhat Prakashan. p. 84.
  77. ^ Georges Goyau, François I, Transcribed by Gerald Rossi. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved on 4 October 2007
  78. ^ Miranda, Salvador (1998–2007). «The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Antoine du Prat». Retrieved 4 October 2007.
  79. ^ Wallace 1972, pp. 163, 164.
  80. ^ «Reconstruction of Leonardo’s walking lion» (in Italian). Archived from the original on 25 August 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  81. ^ Brown, Mark (1 May 2019). «Newly identified sketch of Leonardo da Vinci to go on display in London». The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  82. ^ a b Strickland, Ashley (4 May 2019). «What caused Leonardo da Vinci’s hand impairment?». CNN. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  83. ^ a b McMahon, Barbara (1 May 2005). «Da Vinci ‘paralysis left Mona Lisa unfinished’«. The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  84. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 163.
  85. ^ a b Lorenzi, Rossella (10 May 2016). «Did a Stroke Kill Leonardo da Vinci?». Seeker. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  86. ^ Saplakoglu, Yasemin (4 May 2019). «A Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci May Reveal Why He Never Finished the Mona Lisa». Live Science. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  87. ^ a b Bodkin, Henry (4 May 2019). «Leonardo da Vinci never finished the Mona Lisa because he injured his arm while fainting, experts say». The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
  88. ^ a b Charlier, Philippe; Deo, Saudamini. «A physical sign of stroke sequel on the skeleton of Leonardo da Vinci?». Neurology. 4 April 2017; 88(14): 1381–82
  89. ^ Ian Chilvers (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 354. ISBN 978-0-19-953294-0.
  90. ^ Antonina Vallentin, Leonardo da Vinci: The Tragic Pursuit of Perfection, (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), 533
  91. ^ White, Leonardo: The First Scientist
  92. ^ Kemp 2011, p. 26.
  93. ^ a b c Florentine editorial staff (2 May 2019). «Hair believed to have belonged to Leonardo on display in Vinci». The Florentine. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  94. ^ Leonardo, Codex C. 15v, Institut of France. Trans. Richter
  95. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 84.
  96. ^ Rossiter, Nick (4 July 2003). «Could this be the secret of her smile?». Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 25 September 2003. Retrieved 3 October 2007.
  97. ^ Gasca, Nicolò & Lucertini 2004, p. 13.
  98. ^ a b Pedretti, Carlo (2009). Leonardo da Vinci : l’Angelo incarnato & Salai = the Angel in the flesh & Salai. Margherita Melani, Daniel Arasse, da Vinci Leonardo. Foligno (Perugia): Cartei & Bianchi. p. 201. ISBN 978-88-95686-11-0. OCLC 500794484.
  99. ^ MacCurdy, Edward, The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci (1928) in Leonardo da Vinci’s Ethical Vegetarianism
  100. ^ Bambach 2003.
  101. ^ Cartwright Ady, Julia. Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497. Publisher: J.M. Dent, 1899; Cartwright Ady, Julia. Isabella D’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539. Publisher; J.M. Dent, 1903.
  102. ^ Sigmund Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, (1910)
  103. ^ a b Isaacson 2017.
  104. ^ «Leonardo, ladies’ man: why can’t we accept that Da Vinci was gay?». The Guardian. 26 March 2021. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
  105. ^ Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships epigraph, p. 148 & N120 p. 298
  106. ^ Arasse 1998, pp. 11–15.
  107. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, pp. 88, 90.
  108. ^ Marani 2003, p. 338.
  109. ^ a b Wasserman 1975, pp. 104–106.
  110. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 108.
  111. ^ «The Mysterious Virgin». National Gallery, London. Archived from the original on 15 October 2007. Retrieved 27 September 2007.
  112. ^ a b «Da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine among Poland’s «Treasures» – Event – Culture.pl». Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  113. ^ Kemp, M. The Lady with an Ermine in the exhibition Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration. Washington-New Haven-London. p. 271.
  114. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 124.
  115. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 97.
  116. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 98.
  117. ^ Seracini, Maurizio (2012). «The Secret Lives of Paintings» (lecture).
  118. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 144.
  119. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 103.
  120. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 150.
  121. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 109.
  122. ^ a b c d e f g h Popham, A. E. (1946). The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.
  123. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 102.
  124. ^ Hartt 1970, pp. 391–392.
  125. ^ a b c Wallace 1972, p. 169.
  126. ^ a b c Keele Kenneth D (1964). «Leonardo da Vinci’s Influence on Renaissance Anatomy». Med Hist. 8 (4): 360–70. doi:10.1017/s0025727300029835. PMC 1033412. PMID 14230140.
  127. ^ Bean, Jacob; Stampfle, Felice (1965). Drawings from New York Collections I: The Italian Renaissance. Greenwich, CT: Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 81–82.
  128. ^ Major, Richard Henry (1866). Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 40, Part 1. London: The Society. pp. 15–16.
  129. ^ Calder, Ritchie (1970). Leonardo & the Age of the Eye. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-671-20713-7.
  130. ^ «Sketches by Leonardo». Turning the Pages. British Library. Retrieved 27 September 2007.
  131. ^ a b Da Vinci, Leonardo (1960). Taylor, Pamela; Taylor, Francis Henry (eds.). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. New York: New American Library. p. x. ISBN 978-0-486-22572-2.
  132. ^ Livio, Mario (2003) [2002]. The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (First trade paperback ed.). New York City: Broadway Books. p. 136. ISBN 0-7679-0816-3.
  133. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 31.
  134. ^ Ciaccia, Chris (15 April 2019). «Da Vinci was ambidextrous, new handwriting analysis shows». Fox News. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
  135. ^ Windsor Castle, Royal Library, sheets RL 19073v–74v and RL 19102.
  136. ^ Cook, Theodore Andrea (1914). The Curves of Life. London: Constable and Company Ltd. p. 390.
  137. ^ Baucon, A. 2010. Da Vinci’s Paleodictyon: the fractal beauty of traces. Acta Geologica Polonica, 60(1). Accessible from the author’s homepage
  138. ^ O’Malley; Saunders (1982). Leonardo on the Human Body. New York: Dover Publications.
  139. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 117.
  140. ^ Capra 2007, pp. XVII–XX.
  141. ^ Davinci, Leonardo (2011). The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Lulu. p. 736. ISBN 978-1-105-31016-4.
  142. ^ «Leonardo da Vinci». Britannica. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  143. ^ a b Alastair Sooke, Daily Telegraph, 28 July 2013, «Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy of an artist», accessed 29 July 2013.
  144. ^ Mason, Stephen F. (1962). A History of the Sciences. New York: Collier Books. p. 550.
  145. ^ Jones, Roger (2012). «Leonardo da Vinci: anatomist». British Journal of General Practice. 62 (599): 319. doi:10.3399/bjgp12X649241. ISSN 0960-1643. PMC 3361109. PMID 22687222.
  146. ^ Guarnieri, M. (2019). «Reconsidering Leonardo». IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. 13 (3): 35–38. doi:10.1109/MIE.2019.2929366. hdl:11577/3310853. S2CID 202729396.
  147. ^ Masters, Roger (1996). Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power.
  148. ^ Masters, Roger (1998). Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-452-28090-8.
  149. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 164.
  150. ^ «Leonardo’s Dream Machines (TV Movie 2003)». IMDb.
  151. ^ British Library online gallery (retrieved 10 October 2013)
  152. ^ Marc van den Broek (2019), Leonardo da Vinci Spirits of Invention. A Search for Traces, Hamburg: A.TE.M., ISBN 978-3-00-063700-1
  153. ^ a b Hutchings, Ian M. (15 August 2016). «Leonardo da Vinci׳s studies of friction». Wear. 360–361: 51–66. doi:10.1016/j.wear.2016.04.019. ISSN 0043-1648.
  154. ^ Isaacson 2017, pp. 194–197.
  155. ^ Dowson, Duncan (1 October 1977). «Men of Tribology: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)». Journal of Lubrication Technology. 99 (4): 382–386. doi:10.1115/1.3453230. ISSN 0022-2305.
  156. ^ Polidoro, Massimo (2019). «The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 2». Skeptical Inquirer. 43 (3): 23–24.
  157. ^ a b c Gardner, Helen (1970). Art through the Ages. pp. 450–56.
  158. ^ See the quotations from the following authors, in section «Fame and reputation»: Vasari, Boltraffio, Castiglione, «Anonimo» Gaddiano, Berensen, Taine, Fuseli, Rio, Bortolon.
  159. ^ Rosci 1977, p. 8.
  160. ^ Castiglione, Baldassare (1528). «Il Cortegiano» (in Italian).
  161. ^ «Anonimo Gaddiani», elaborating on Libro di Antonio Billi, 1537–1542
  162. ^ Fuseli, Henry (1801). «Lectures». II.
  163. ^ Rio, A.E. (1861). «L’art chrétien» (in French). Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  164. ^ Taine, Hippolyte (1866). «Voyage en Italie» (in Italian). Paris, Hachette et cie. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  165. ^ Berenson, Bernard (1896). The Italian Painters of the Renaissance.
  166. ^ Henneberger, Melinda. «ArtNews article about current studies into Leonardo’s life and works». Art News Online. Archived from the original on 5 May 2006. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
  167. ^ Marmor, Max. «The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana.» The Book Collector 38, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 1–23.
  168. ^ Italie, Hillel (7 January 2018). «NonFiction: Biography honors ‘fun, joyous’ sides of genius da Vinci». Richmond Times-Dispatch. Associated Press. p. G6.
  169. ^ Crow, Kelly (16 November 2017). «Leonardo da Vinci Painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ Sells for $450.3 Million». The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  170. ^ a b Leonardo da Vinci painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold for record $450.3 million, Fox News, 16 November 2017
  171. ^ «Leonardo da Vinci’s Unexamined Life as a Painter». The Atlantic. 1 December 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  172. ^ «Louvre exhibit has most da Vinci paintings ever assembled». Aleteia. 1 December 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  173. ^ Turner 1993, p. 3.
  174. ^ Vitruvian Man is referred to as «iconic» at the following websites and many others: Vitruvian Man, Fine Art Classics Archived 9 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Key Images in the History of Science; Curiosity and difference at the Wayback Machine (archived 30 January 2009); «The Guardian: The Real da Vinci Code»
  175. ^ Turner, Ben (6 July 2021). «Scientists may have cracked the mystery of da Vinci’s DNA». Live Science. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
  176. ^ a b c d e Nicholl 2005, p. 502.
  177. ^ a b Isaacson 2017, p. 515.
  178. ^ a b c d e Montard, Nicolas (30 April 2019). «Léonard de Vinci est-il vraiment enterré au château d’Amboise?» [Is Leonardo da Vinci really buried at the Château d’Amboise?]. Ouest-France (in French). Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  179. ^ Heaton 1874, p. 204, «The skeleton, which measured five feet eight inches, accords with the height of Leonardo da Vinci. The skull might have served for the model of the portrait Leonardo drew of himself in red chalk a few years before his death.».
  180. ^ a b c Knapton, Sarah (5 May 2016). «Leonardo da Vinci paintings analysed for DNA to solve grave mystery». The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  181. ^ Newman, Lily Hay (6 May 2016). «Researchers Are Planning to Sequence Leonardo da Vinci’s 500-Year-Old Genome». Slate Magazine. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  182. ^ Messia, Hada; Robinson, Matthew (30 April 2019). «Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘hair’ to undergo DNA testing». CNN. Retrieved 3 May 2019.

Works cited

Early

  • Anonimo Gaddiano (c. 1530). «Leonardo da Vinci». Codice Magliabechiano. in Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists). Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 2019. pp. 103–114. ISBN 978-1-60606-621-8.
  • Giovio, Paolo (c. 1527). «The Life of Leonardo da Vinci». Elogia virorum illustrium. in Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists). Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 2019. pp. 103–114. ISBN 978-1-60606-621-8.
  • Vasari, Giorgio (1965) [1568]. «The Life of Leonardo da Vinci». Lives of the Artists. Translated by George Bull. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-044164-2.
  • —— (1991) [1568]. The Lives of the Artists. Oxford World’s Classics. Translated by Bondanella, Peter; Bondanella, Julia Conway. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283410-X.

Modern

Books
  • Arasse, Daniel [fr] (1998). Leonardo da Vinci. Old Saybrook: Konecky & Konecky. ISBN 978-1-56852-198-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Bambach, Carmen C., ed. (2003). Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-300-09878-5.
  • Bambach, Carmen C. (2019). Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered. Vol. 1, The Making of an Artist: 1452–1500. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-19195-0.
  • Bortolon, Liana (1967). The Life and Times of Leonardo. London: Paul Hamlyn.
  • Brown, David Alan (1998). Leonardo Da Vinci: Origins of a Genius. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07246-4.
  • Capra, Fritjof (2007). The Science of Leonardo. US: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51390-6.
  • Ottino della Chiesa, Angela (1985) [1967]. The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. Penguin Classics of World Art. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-008649-2.
  • Clark, Kenneth (1961). Leonardo da Vinci. City of Westminster: Penguin Books. OCLC 187223.
  • Gasca, Ana Millàn; Nicolò, Fernando; Lucertini, Mario (2004). Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems. Birkhauser. ISBN 978-3-7643-6940-8.
  • Hartt, Frederich (1970). A History of Italian Renaissance Art. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-23136-4.
  • Heaton, Mary Margaret (1874). Leonardo Da Vinci and His Works: Consisting of a Life of Leonardo Da Vinci. New York: Macmillan Publishers. OCLC 1706262.
  • Isaacson, Walter (2017). Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-3915-4.
  • Kemp, Martin (2006) [1981]. Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-920778-7.
  • Kemp, Martin (2011) [2004]. Leonardo (Revised ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280644-4.
  • Kemp, Martin; Pallanti, Giuseppe (2017). Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-874990-5.
  • Kemp, Martin (2019). Leonardo da Vinci: The 100 Milestones. New York: Sterling. ISBN 978-1-4549-3042-6.
  • Magnano, Milena (2007). Leonardo, collana I Geni dell’arte. Mondadori Arte. ISBN 978-88-370-6432-7.
  • Marani, Pietro C. (2003) [2000]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-3581-5.
  • Martindale, Andrew (1972). The Rise of the Artist. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-56006-8.
  • Nicholl, Charles (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-029681-5.
  • O’Malley, Charles D.; Sounders, J.B. de C.M. (1952). Leonardo on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. With Translations, Emendations and a Biographical Introduction. New York: Henry Schuman.
  • Pedretti, Carlo (1982). Leonardo, a study in chronology and style. Cambridge: Johnson Reprint Corp. ISBN 978-0-384-45281-7.
  • Pedretti, Carlo (2006). Leonardo da Vinci. Surrey: Taj Books International. ISBN 978-1-84406-036-8.
  • Popham, A.E. (1946). The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-60462-8.
  • Richter, Jean Paul (1970). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-22572-2. volume 2: ISBN 0-486-22573-9. A reprint of the original 1883 edition
  • Rosci, Marco (1977). Leonardo. Bay Books Pty Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85835-176-9.
  • Syson, Luke; Keith, Larry; Galansino, Arturo; Mazzotta, Antoni; Nethersole, Scott; Rumberg, Per (2011). Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. London: National Gallery. ISBN 978-1-85709-491-6.
  • Turner, A. Richard (1993). Inventing Leonardo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-520-08938-9.
  • Wallace, Robert (1972) [1966]. The World of Leonardo: 1452–1519. New York: Time-Life Books.
  • Wasserman, Jack (1975). Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-0262-6.
  • Williamson, Hugh Ross (1974). Lorenzo the Magnificent. Michael Joseph. ISBN 978-0-7181-1204-2.
  • Vezzosi, Alessandro (1997). Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man. ‘New Horizons’ series. Translated by Bonfante-Warren, Alexandra (English translation ed.). London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-30081-7.
  • Zöllner, Frank (2015). Leonardo (2nd ed.). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-0215-3.
  • Zöllner, Frank (2019) [2003]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (Anniversary ed.). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-7625-3.
Journals and encyclopedia articles
  • Brown, David Alan (1983). «Leonardo and the Idealized Portrait in Milan». Arte Lombarda. 64 (4): 102–116. JSTOR 43105426. (subscription required)
  • Cremante, Simona (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Scientist, Inventor. Giunti. ISBN 978-88-09-03891-2.
  • Giacomelli, Raffaele (1936). Gli scritti di Leonardo da Vinci sul volo. Roma: G. Bardi.
  • Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich (28 April 2020). «Leonardo da Vinci | Biography, Art & Facts | Britannica». Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
  • Kemp, Martin (2003). «Leonardo da Vinci». Grove Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T050401. ISBN 978-1-884446-05-4. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  • Lupia, John N. (Summer 1994). «The Secret Revealed: How to Look at Italian Renaissance Painting». Medieval and Renaissance Times. 1 (2): 6–17. ISSN 1075-2110.

Further reading

See Kemp (2003) and Bambach (2019, pp. 442–579) for extensive bibliographies

  • Vanna, Arrighi; Bellinazzi, Anna; Villata, Edoardo, eds. (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: la vera immagine: documenti e testimonianze sulla vita e sull’opera [Leonardo da Vinci: the true image: documents and testimonies on life and work] (in Italian). Florence: Giunti Editore. ISBN 978-88-09-04519-4.
  • Vecce, Carlo (2006). Leonardo (in Italian). Foreword by Carlo Pedretti. Rome: Salerno. ISBN 978-88-8402-548-7.
  • Winternitz, Emanuel (1982). Leonardo da Vinci As a Musician. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02631-3.
  • Leonardo da Vinci: anatomical drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1983. ISBN 978-0-87099-362-6.

External links

General
  • Universal Leonardo, a database of Leonardo’s life and works maintained by Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace
  • Leonardo da Vinci on the National Gallery website
Works
  • Biblioteca Leonardiana, online bibliography (in Italian)
  • e-Leo: Archivio digitale di storia della tecnica e della scienza, archive of drawings, notes and manuscripts
  • Works by Leonardo da Vinci at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by Leonardo da Vinci at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
  • Complete text and images of Richter’s translation of the Notebooks
  • The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Francesco Melzi - Portrait of Leonardo.png

This portrait attributed to Francesco Melzi, c. 1515–1518, is the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo.[1][2]

Born

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

15 April 1452

(Anchiano?)[a] Vinci, Republic of Florence

Died 2 May 1519 (aged 67)

Clos Lucé, Amboise, Kingdom of France

Education Studio of Andrea del Verrocchio
Known for
  • Painting
  • drawing
  • engineering
  • science
  • sculpture
  • architecture
Notable work
  • Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483–1493)
  • Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–1491)
  • The Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)
  • The Last Supper (c. 1495–1498)
  • Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1516)
Movement High Renaissance
Signature
Signature written in ink in a flowing script

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci[b] (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.[3] While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal,[4] and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.[3][4]

Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, he worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, all while attracting a large following of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have failed to incite interest and admiration,[3][4] making him a frequent namesake and subject in culture.

Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance.[3] Despite having many lost works and less than 25 attributed major works—including numerous unfinished works—he created some of the most influential paintings in Western art.[3] His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work and often regarded as the world’s most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo,[5] was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.

Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine,[6][7] and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.[8]

Biography

Early life (1452–1472)

Birth and background

Photo of a building of rough stone with small windows, surrounded by olive trees

The possible birthplace and childhood home of Leonardo in Anchiano, Vinci, Italy

Leonardo da Vinci,[b] properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci),[9][10][c] was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence.[11][12][d] He was born out of wedlock to Piero da Vinci [it] (Ser Piero da Vinci d’Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504),[16] a Florentine legal notary,[11] and Caterina [it] (c. 1434 – 1494), from the lower-class.[17][18][e] It remains uncertain where Leonardo was born; the traditional account, from a local oral tradition recorded by the historian Emanuele Repetti,[21] is that he was born in Anchiano, a country hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the illegitimate birth, though it is still possible he was born in a house in Florence that Ser Piero almost certainly had.[22][a] Leonardo’s parents both married separately the year after his birth. Caterina—who later appears in Leonardo’s notes as only «Caterina» or «Catelina»—is usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca who married the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed «L’Accattabriga» («the quarrelsome one»).[17][21] Other theories have been proposed, particularly that of art historian Martin Kemp, who suggested Caterina di Meo Lippi, an orphan who married purportedly with aid from Ser Piero and his family.[23][f] Ser Piero married Albiera Amadori—having been betrothed to her the previous year—and after her death in 1464, went on to have three subsequent marriages.[21][24][g] From all the marriages, Leonardo eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy)[25] who were much younger than he (the last was born when Leonardo was 46 years old)[25] and with whom he had very little contact.[h]

Very little is known about Leonardo’s childhood and much is shrouded in myth, partially because of his biography in the frequently apocryphal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) by the 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari.[28][29] Tax records indicate that by at least 1457 he lived in the household of his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci,[11] but it is possible that he spent the years before then in the care of his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi in the parish of San Pantaleone.[30][31] He is thought to have been close to his uncle, Francesco da Vinci,[3] but his father was probably in Florence most of the time.[11] Ser Piero, who was the descendant of a long line of notaries, established an official residence in Florence by at least 1469 and had a successful career.[11] Despite his family history, Leonardo only received a basic and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading and mathematics, possibly because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his family decided to focus their attention there.[11]

Later in life, Leonardo recorded his earliest memory, now in the Codex Atlanticus.[32] While writing on the flight of birds, he recalled as an infant when a kite came to his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail; commentators still debate whether the anecdote was an actual memory or a fantasy.[33]

Verrocchio’s workshop

Painting showing Jesus, naked except for a loin-cloth, standing in a shallow stream in a rocky landscape, while to the right, John the Baptist, identifiable by the cross that he carries, tips water over Jesus' head. Two angels kneel at the left. Above Jesus are the hands of God, and a dove descending

In the mid-1460s, Leonardo’s family moved to Florence, which at the time was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture.[34] Around the age of 14,[26] he became a garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time.[34] This was about the time of the death of Verrocchio’s master, the great sculptor Donatello.[i] Leonardo became an apprentice by the age of 17 and remained in training for seven years.[36] Other famous painters apprenticed in the workshop or associated with it include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.[37][38] Leonardo was exposed to both theoretical training and a wide range of technical skills,[39] including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and woodwork, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting, and modelling.[40][j]

Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was.[41] He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio or at the Platonic Academy of the Medici.[37] Florence was ornamented by the works of artists such as Donatello’s contemporaries Masaccio, whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion, and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective,[42] and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise De pictura were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo’s own observations and artworks.[35][43]

Much of the painting in Verrocchio’s workshop was done by his assistants. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus’ robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master’s that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again,[‡ 1] although this is believed to be an apocryphal story.[14] Close examination reveals areas of the work that have been painted or touched-up over the tempera, using the new technique of oil paint, including the landscape, the rocks seen through the brown mountain stream, and much of the figure of Jesus, bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.[44] Leonardo may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze statue of David in the Bargello, and the Archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel.[14]

Vasari tells a story of Leonardo as a very young man: a local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo, inspired by the story of Medusa, responded with a painting of a monster spitting fire that was so terrifying that his father bought a different shield to give to the peasant and sold Leonardo’s to a Florentine art dealer for 100 ducats, who in turn sold it to the Duke of Milan.[‡ 2]

First Florentine period (1472–c. 1482)

Adoration of the Magi c. 1478–1482,[d 1] Uffizi, Florence

By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,[k] but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate and live with him.[37][45] Leonardo’s earliest known dated work is a 1473 pen-and-ink drawing of the Arno valley.[38][46][l] According to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the first to suggest making the Arno river a navigable channel between Florence and Pisa.[47]

In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio,[48] an indication of his independence from Verrocchio’s studio. An anonymous early biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and often worked in the garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence, where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers organized by the Medici met.[14][m] In March 1481, he received a commission from the monks of San Donato in Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi.[49] Neither of these initial commissions were completed, being abandoned when Leonardo went to offer his services to Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which described the diverse things that he could achieve in the fields of engineering and weapon design, and mentioned that he could paint.[38][50] He brought with him a silver string instrument—either a lute or lyre—in the form of a horse’s head.[50]

With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neoplatonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator of Aristotle were the foremost. Also associated with the Platonic Academy of the Medici was Leonardo’s contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.[41][43][51] In 1482, Leonardo was sent as an ambassador by Lorenzo de’ Medici to Ludovico il Moro, who ruled Milan between 1479 and 1499.[41][14]

  • Madonna of the Carnation, c. 1472–1478, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

  • Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)

    Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)

  • Ginevra de' Benci, c. 1474–1480, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

First Milanese period (c. 1482–1499)

Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.[52] In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to Hungary (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.[53] In 1490 he was called as a consultant, together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for the building site of the cathedral of Pavia[54][55] and was struck by the equestrian statue of Regisole, of which he left a sketch.[56] Leonardo was employed on many other projects for Sforza, such as preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions; a drawing of, and wooden model for, a competition to design the cupola for Milan Cathedral;[57] and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Ludovico’s predecessor Francesco Sforza. This would have surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello’s Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the Gran Cavallo.[38] Leonardo completed a model for the horse and made detailed plans for its casting,[38] but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal to his brother-in-law to be used for a cannon to defend the city from Charles VIII of France.[38]

Contemporary correspondence records that Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke of Milan to paint the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle. The decoration was completed in 1498. The project became a trompe-l’œil decoration that made the great hall appear to be a pergola created by the interwoven limbs of sixteen mulberry trees,[58] whose canopy included an intricate labyrinth of leaves and knots on the ceiling.[59]

  • Head of a Woman, c. 1483–1485, Royal Library of Turin

  • Portrait of a Musician, c. 1483–1487, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

  • Leonardo's horse in silverpoint, c. 1488[60]

  • La Belle Ferronnière, c. 1490–1498

Second Florentine period (1500–1508)

When Ludovico Sforza was overthrown by France in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for Venice, accompanied by his assistant Salaì and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli.[61] In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.[37] On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that «men [and] women, young and old» flocked to see it «as if they were going to a solemn festival.»[‡ 3][n]

In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.[61] Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia’s stronghold, a town plan of Imola in order to win his patronage. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley, Tuscany, so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. He created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a dam from the sea to Florence, in order to allow a supply of water to sustain the canal during all seasons.

Leonardo had left Borgia’s service and returned to Florence by early 1503,[63] where he rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke on 18 October of that year. By this same month, Leonardo had begun working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the model for the Mona Lisa,[64][65] which he would continue working on until his twilight years. In January 1504, he was part of a committee formed to recommend where Michelangelo’s statue of David should be placed.[66] He then spent two years in Florence designing and painting a mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria,[61] with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina.[o]

In 1506, Leonardo was summoned to Milan by Charles II d’Amboise, the acting French governor of the city.[69] There, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count Francesco Melzi, the son of a Lombard aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student.[37] The Council of Florence wished Leonardo to return promptly to finish The Battle of Anghiari, but he was given leave at the behest of Louis XII, who considered commissioning the artist to make some portraits.[69] Leonardo may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of d’Amboise;[70] a wax model survives and, if genuine, is the only extant example of Leonardo’s sculpture. Leonardo was otherwise free to pursue his scientific interests.[69] Many of Leonardo’s most prominent pupils either knew or worked with him in Milan,[37] including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, and Marco d’Oggiono. In 1507, Leonardo was in Florence sorting out a dispute with his brothers over the estate of his father, who had died in 1504.

  • The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1501–1519, Louvre, Paris

  • La Scapigliata, c. 1506–1508 (unfinished), Galleria Nazionale di Parma, Parma

Second Milanese period (1508–1513)

By 1508, Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.[71]

In 1512, Leonardo was working on plans for an equestrian monument for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, but this was prevented by an invasion of a confederation of Swiss, Spanish and Venetian forces, which drove the French from Milan. Leonardo stayed in the city, spending several months in 1513 at the Medici’s Vaprio d’Adda villa.[72]

Rome and France (1513–1519)

An apocalyptic deluge drawn in black chalk by Leonardo near the end of his life (part of a series of 10, paired with written description in his notebooks)[73]

In March of 1513, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son Giovanni assumed the papacy (as Leo X); Leonardo went to Rome that September, where he was received by the pope’s brother Giuliano.[72] From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere Courtyard in the Apostolic Palace, where Michelangelo and Raphael were both active.[71] Leonardo was given an allowance of 33 ducats a month, and according to Vasari, decorated a lizard with scales dipped in quicksilver.[74] The pope gave him a painting commission of unknown subject matter, but cancelled it when the artist set about developing a new kind of varnish.[74][p] Leonardo became ill, in what may have been the first of multiple strokes leading to his death.[74] He practiced botany in the Gardens of Vatican City, and was commissioned to make plans for the pope’s proposed draining of the Pontine Marshes.[75] He also dissected cadavers, making notes for a treatise on vocal cords;[76] these he gave to an official in hopes of regaining the pope’s favor, but was unsuccessful.[74]

In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan.[49] Leonardo was present at the 19 December meeting of Francis I and Leo X, which took place in Bologna.[37][77][78] In 1516, Leonardo entered Francis’ service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé, near the king’s residence at the royal Château d’Amboise. Being frequently visited by Francis, he drew plans for an immense castle town the king intended to erect at Romorantin, and made a mechanical lion, which during a pageant walked toward the king and—upon being struck by a wand—opened its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.[79][‡ 3][q] Leonardo was accompanied during this time by his friend and apprentice Francesco Melzi, and supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi.[71] At some point, Melzi drew a portrait of Leonardo; the only others known from his lifetime were a sketch by an unknown assistant on the back of one of Leonardo’s studies (c. 1517)[81] and a drawing by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino depicting an elderly Leonardo with his right arm wrapped in clothing.[82][r] The latter, in addition to the record of an October 1517 visit by Louis d’Aragon,[s] confirms an account of Leonardo’s right hand being paralytic when he was 65,[85] which may indicate why he left works such as the Mona Lisa unfinished.[83][86][87] He continued to work at some capacity until eventually becoming ill and bedridden for several months.[85]

Death

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67, possibly of a stroke.[88][87][89] Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari describes Leonardo as lamenting on his deathbed, full of repentance, that «he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should have done.»[90] Vasari states that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament.[‡ 4] Vasari also records that the king held Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died, although this story may be legend rather than fact.[t][u] In accordance with his will, sixty beggars carrying tapers followed Leonardo’s casket.[51][v] Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving, as well as money, Leonardo’s paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo’s other long-time pupil and companion, Salaì, and his servant Baptista de Vilanis, each received half of Leonardo’s vineyards.[92] His brothers received land, and his serving woman received a fur-lined cloak. On 12 August 1519, Leonardo’s remains were interred in the Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin at the Château d’Amboise.[93]

Salaì, or Il Salaino («The Little Unclean One», i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo’s household in 1490 as an assistant. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him «a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton,» after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions and spent a fortune on clothes.[94] Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence, and he remained in Leonardo’s household for the next thirty years.[95] Salaì executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo «taught him many things about painting,»[‡ 3] his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo’s pupils, such as Marco d’Oggiono and Boltraffio.

Salaì owned the Mona Lisa at the time of Leonardo’s death in 1524, and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.[96] Some 20 years after Leonardo’s death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini as saying: «There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher.»[97]

Personal life

Despite the thousands of pages Leonardo left in notebooks and manuscripts, he scarcely made reference to his personal life.[2]

Within Leonardo’s lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his «great physical beauty» and «infinite grace,» as described by Vasari,[‡ 5] as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect was his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and according to Vasari, a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.[99][‡ 6]

Leonardo had many friends who are now notable either in their fields or for their historical significance, including mathematician Luca Pacioli,[100] with whom he collaborated on the book Divina proportione in the 1490s. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters, Beatrice and Isabella.[101] While on a journey that took him through Mantua, he drew a portrait of Isabella that appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.[37]

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud in his Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood.[102] Leonardo’s most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salaì and Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo’s brothers of his death, described Leonardo’s feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy in an incident involving a well-known male prostitute. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the dismissal.[103] Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality[104] and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in Saint John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.[105][98]

Paintings

Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his fame rested on his achievements as a painter. A handful of works that are either authenticated or attributed to him have been regarded as among the great masterpieces. These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities that have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. By the 1490s Leonardo had already been described as a «Divine» painter.[106]

Among the qualities that make Leonardo’s work unique are his innovative techniques for laying on the paint; his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology; his interest in physiognomy and the way humans register emotion in expression and gesture; his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition; and his use of subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks.[w]

Early works

Annunciation c. 1472–1476,[d 4] Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo’s earliest extant and complete major work

Leonardo first gained attention for his work on the Baptism of Christ, painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at Verrocchio’s workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 centimetres (23 in) long and 14 cm (5.5 in) high. It is a «predella» to go at the base of a larger composition, a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm (85 in) long.[107] In both Annunciations, Leonardo used a formal arrangement, like two well-known pictures by Fra Angelico of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with a rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now generally attributed to Leonardo.[108]

In the smaller painting, Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God’s will. Mary is not submissive, however, in the larger piece. The girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise.[35] This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the Mother of God, not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting, the young Leonardo presents the humanist face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity’s role in God’s incarnation.

Paintings of the 1480s

In the 1480s, Leonardo received two very important commissions and commenced another work that was of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Two of the three were never finished, and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment.

One of these paintings was Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, which Bortolon associates with a difficult period of Leonardo’s life, as evidenced in his diary: «I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.»[37] Although the painting is barely begun, the composition can be seen and is very unusual.[x] Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo’s anatomical studies.[109] Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.

The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a complex composition, of about 250 x 250 centimetres. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined classical architecture that forms part of the background. In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro, and the painting was abandoned.[14]

The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks, commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece.[110] Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.[111] While the painting is quite large, about 200×120 centimetres, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of San Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished: one remained at the chapel of the Confraternity, while Leonardo took the other to France. The Brothers did not get their painting, however, nor the de Predis their payment, until the next century.[38][61]

Leonardo’s most remarkable portrait of this period is the Lady with an Ermine, presumed to be Cecilia Gallerani (c. 1483–1490), lover of Ludovico Sforza.[112][113] The painting is characterised by the pose of the figure with the head turned at a very different angle to the torso, unusual at a date when many portraits were still rigidly in profile. The ermine plainly carries symbolic meaning, relating either to the sitter, or to Ludovico who belonged to the prestigious Order of the Ermine.[112]

Paintings of the 1490s

Leonardo’s most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, commissioned for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. It represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death, and shows the moment when Jesus has just said «one of you will betray me», and the consternation that this statement caused.[38]

The writer Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat and then not paint for three or four days at a time.[114] This was beyond the comprehension of the prior of the convent, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.[‡ 7]

The painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterization,[‡ 8] but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as «completely ruined.»[115] Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface subject to mould and to flaking.[116] Despite this, the painting remains one of the most reproduced works of art; countless copies have been made in various mediums.

Toward the end of this period, in 1498 da Vinci’s trompe-l’œil decoration of the Sala delle Asse was painted for the Duke of Milan in the Castello Sforzesco.

Paintings of the 1500s

In 1505, Leonardo was commissioned to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Leonardo devised a dynamic composition depicting four men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. Michelangelo was assigned the opposite wall to depict the Battle of Cascina. Leonardo’s painting deteriorated rapidly and is now known from a copy by Rubens.[117]

Among the works created by Leonardo in the 16th century is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or La Gioconda, the laughing one. In the present era, it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality perhaps due to the subtly shadowed corners of the mouth and eyes such that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called «sfumato», or Leonardo’s smoke. Vasari wrote that the smile was «so pleasing that it seems more divine than human, and it was considered a wondrous thing that it was as lively as the smile of the living original.»[‡ 9]

Other characteristics of the painting are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details; the dramatic landscape background, in which the world seems to be in a state of flux; the subdued colouring; and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils laid on much like tempera, and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.[118] Vasari expressed that the painting’s quality would make even «the most confident master … despair and lose heart.»[‡ 10] The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is rare in a panel painting of this date.[119]

In the painting Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape, which Wasserman describes as «breathtakingly beautiful»[120] and harkens back to the Saint Jerome with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, Saint Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice.[38] This painting, which was copied many times, influenced Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto,[121] and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese.

Drawings

Leonardo was a prolific draughtsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper.[122] His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.[37][122][y]

Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body; the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre; a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem; and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London.[122] This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre.[123]

Antique warrior in profile, c. 1472. British Museum, London

Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as «caricatures» because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that Leonardo would look for interesting faces in public to use as models for some of his work.[‡ 7] There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salaì, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called «Grecian profile».[z] These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior.[122] Salaì is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo’s ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de’ Medici, in the Pazzi conspiracy.[122] In his notes, Leonardo recorded the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.

Like the two contemporary architects Donato Bramante (who designed the Belvedere Courtyard) and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.[41][124]

Journals and notes

Renaissance humanism recognised no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo’s studies in science and engineering are sometimes considered as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.[38] These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science). They were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo’s life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.[38] Leonardo’s notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.[38]

These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes—were largely entrusted to Leonardo’s pupil and heir Francesco Melzi after the master’s death.[125] These were to be published, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo’s idiosyncratic writing.[126] Some of Leonardo’s drawings were copied by an anonymous Milanese artist for a planned treatise on art c. 1570.[127] After Melzi’s death in 1570, the collection passed to his son, the lawyer Orazio, who initially took little interest in the journals.[125] In 1587, a Melzi household tutor named Lelio Gavardi took 13 of the manuscripts to Pisa; there, the architect Giovanni Magenta reproached Gavardi for having taken the manuscripts illicitly and returned them to Orazio. Having many more such works in his possession, Orazio gifted the volumes to Magenta. News spread of these lost works of Leonardo’s, and Orazio retrieved seven of the 13 manuscripts, which he then gave to Pompeo Leoni for publication in two volumes; one of these was the Codex Atlanticus. The other six works had been distributed to a few others.[128] After Orazio’s death, his heirs sold the rest of Leonardo’s possessions, and thus began their dispersal.[129]

Some works have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which holds the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, and the British Library in London, which has put a selection from the Codex Arundel (BL Arundel MS 263) online.[130] Works have also been at Holkham Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the private hands of John Nicholas Brown I and Robert Lehman.[125] The Codex Leicester is the only privately owned major scientific work of Leonardo; it is owned by Bill Gates and displayed once a year in different cities around the world.

Most of Leonardo’s writings are in mirror-image cursive.[46][131] Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it was probably easier for him to write from right to left.[132][aa] Leonardo used a variety of shorthand and symbols, and states in his notes that he intended to prepare them for publication.[131] In many cases a single topic is covered in detail in both words and pictures on a single sheet, together conveying information that would not be lost if the pages were published out of order.[135] Why they were not published during Leonardo’s lifetime is unknown.[38]

Science and inventions

Leonardo’s approach to science was observational: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasise experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. His keen observations in many areas were noted, such as when he wrote «Il sole non si move.» («The Sun does not move.»)[136]

In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli’s book Divina proportione, published in 1509.[38] While living in Milan, he studied light from the summit of Monte Rosa.[69] Scientific writings in his notebook on fossils have been considered as influential on early palaeontology.[137]

The content of his journals suggest that he was planning a series of treatises on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on anatomy is said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis d’Aragon’s secretary in 1517.[138] Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by Melzi and eventually published as A Treatise on Painting in France and Italy in 1651 and Germany in 1724,[139] with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicolas Poussin.[4] According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into 62 editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as «the precursor of French academic thought on art.»[38]

While Leonardo’s experimentation followed scientific methods, a recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as a scientist by Fritjof Capra argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him in that, as a «Renaissance Man», his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting.[140]

Anatomy and physiology

Anatomical study of the arm (c. 1510)

Leonardo started his study in the anatomy of the human body under the apprenticeship of Verrocchio, who demanded that his students develop a deep knowledge of the subject.[141] As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.

As a successful artist, Leonardo was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre, professor of Anatomy at the University of Pavia.[142] Leonardo made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words toward a treatise on anatomy.[143] Only a small amount of the material on anatomy was published in Leonardo’s Treatise on painting.[126] During the time that Melzi was ordering the material into chapters for publication, they were examined by a number of anatomists and artists, including Vasari, Cellini and Albrecht Dürer, who made a number of drawings from them.[126]

Leonardo’s anatomical drawings include many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, and of muscles and sinews. He studied the mechanical functions of the skeleton and the muscular forces that are applied to it in a manner that prefigured the modern science of biomechanics.[144] He drew the heart and vascular system, the sex organs and other internal organs, making one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero.[122] The drawings and notation are far ahead of their time, and if published would undoubtedly have made a major contribution to medical science.[143]

Leonardo’s physiological sketch of the human brain and skull (c. 1510)

Leonardo also closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.[38][122] Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.[122]

Leonardo’s dissections and documentation of muscles, nerves, and vessels helped to describe the physiology and mechanics of movement. He attempted to identify the source of ’emotions’ and their expression. He found it difficult to incorporate the prevailing system and theories of bodily humours, but eventually he abandoned these physiological explanations of bodily functions. He made the observations that humours were not located in cerebral spaces or ventricles. He documented that the humours were not contained in the heart or the liver, and that it was the heart that defined the circulatory system. He was the first to define atherosclerosis and liver cirrhosis. He created models of the cerebral ventricles with the use of melted wax and constructed a glass aorta to observe the circulation of blood through the aortic valve by using water and grass seed to watch flow patterns.[145]

Engineering and inventions

An aerial screw (c. 1489), suggestive of a helicopter, from the Codex Atlanticus

During his lifetime, Leonardo was also valued as an engineer. With the same rational and analytical approach that moved him to represent the human body and to investigate anatomy, Leonardo studied and designed many machines and devices. He drew their “anatomy” with unparalleled mastery, producing the first form of the modern technical drawing, including a perfected «exploded view» technique, to represent internal components. Those studies and projects collected in his codices fill more than 5,000 pages.[146] In a letter of 1482 to the lord of Milan Ludovico il Moro, he wrote that he could create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled from Milan to Venice in 1499, he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. In 1502, he created a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno river, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked.[147][148] He continued to contemplate the canalization of Lombardy’s plains while in Louis XII’s company[69] and of the Loire and its tributaries in the company of Francis I.[149] Leonardo’s journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, a mechanical knight, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.[37][38]

Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight for much of his life, producing many studies, including Codex on the Flight of Birds (c. 1505), as well as plans for several flying machines, such as a flapping ornithopter and a machine with a helical rotor.[38] A 2003 documentary by British television station Channel Four, titled Leonardo’s Dream Machines, various designs by Leonardo, such as a parachute and a giant crossbow, were interpreted and constructed.[150][151] Some of those designs proved successful, whilst others fared less well when tested.

Research performed by Marc van den Broek revealed older prototypes for more than 100 inventions that are ascribed to Leonardo. Similarities between Leonardo’s illustrations and drawings from the Middle Ages and from Ancient Greece and Rome, the Chinese and Persian Empires, and Egypt suggest that a large portion of Leonardo’s inventions had been conceived before his lifetime. Leonardo’s innovation was to combine different functions from existing drafts and set them into scenes that illustrated their utility. By reconstituting technical inventions he created something new.[152]

In his notebooks, Leonardo first stated the ‘laws’ of sliding friction in 1493.[153] His inspiration for investigating friction came about in part from his study of perpetual motion, which he correctly concluded was not possible.[154] His results were never published and the friction laws were not rediscovered until 1699 by Guillaume Amontons, with whose name they are now usually associated.[153] For this contribution, Leonardo was named as the first of the 23 «Men of Tribology» by Duncan Dowson.[155]

Legacy

Although he had no formal academic training,[156] many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the «Universal Genius» or «Renaissance Man», an individual of «unquenchable curiosity» and «feverishly inventive imagination.»[157] He is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived.[158] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and «his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote.»[157] Scholars interpret his view of the world as being based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his time.[159]

Leonardo’s fame within his own lifetime was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Interest in Leonardo and his work has never diminished. Crowds still queue to see his best-known artworks, T-shirts still bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to hail him as a genius while speculating about his private life, as well as about what one so intelligent actually believed in.[38]

The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano (The Courtier), wrote in 1528: «…Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled…»[160] while the biographer known as «Anonimo Gaddiano» wrote, c. 1540: «His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf…»[161] Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists (1568), opens his chapter on Leonardo:[‡ 11]

In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.

The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo’s genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: «Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius…»[162] This is echoed by A.E. Rio who wrote in 1861: «He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents.»[163]

By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo’s notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: «There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries.»[164] Art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896: «Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values.»[165]

The interest in Leonardo’s genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.[166] Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: «Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge…Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe.»[37] The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana is a special collection at the University of California, Los Angeles.[167]

Twenty-first-century author Walter Isaacson based much of his biography of Leonardo[103] on thousands of notebook entries, studying the personal notes, sketches, budget notations, and musings of the man whom he considers the greatest of innovators. Isaacson was surprised to discover a «fun, joyous» side of Leonardo in addition to his limitless curiosity and creative genius.[168]

On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, the Louvre in Paris arranged for the largest ever single exhibit of his work, called Leonardo, between November 2019 and February 2020. The exhibit includes over 100 paintings, drawings and notebooks. Eleven of the paintings that Leonardo completed in his lifetime were included. Five of these are owned by the Louvre, but the Mona Lisa was not included because it is in such great demand among general visitors to the Louvre; it remains on display in its gallery. Vitruvian Man, however, is on display following a legal battle with its owner, the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Salvator Mundi [ab] was also not included because its Saudi owner did not agree to lease the work.[171][172]

The Mona Lisa, considered Leonardo’s magnum opus, is often regarded as the most famous portrait ever made.[3][173] The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time,[157] and Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man drawing is also considered a cultural icon.[174]

More than a decade of analysis of Leonardo’s genetic genealogy, conducted by Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato, came to a conclusion in mid-2021. It was determined that the artist has 14 living male relatives. The work could also help determine the authenticity of remains thought to belong to Leonardo.[175]

Location of remains

Tomb in the chapel of Saint Hubert at the Château d’Amboise where a plaque describes it as the presumed site of Leonardo’s remains.

While Leonardo was certainly buried in the collegiate church of Saint Florentin at the Château d’Amboise in 12 August 1519, the current location of his remains is unclear.[176][177] Much of Château d’Amboise was damaged during the French Revolution, leading to the church’s demolition in 1802.[176] Some of the graves were destroyed in the process, scattering the bones interred there and thereby leaving the whereabouts of Leonardo’s remains subject to dispute; a gardener may have even buried some in the corner of the courtyard.[176]

In 1863, fine-arts inspector general Arsène Houssaye received an imperial commission to excavate the site and discovered a partially complete skeleton with a bronze ring on one finger, white hair, and stone fragments bearing the inscriptions «EO», «AR», «DUS», and «VINC»—interpreted as forming «Leonardus Vinci».[93][176][178] The skull’s eight teeth corresponds to someone of approximately the appropriate age and a silver shield found near the bones depicts a beardless Francis I, corresponding to the king’s appearance during Leonardo’s time in France.[178]

Houssaye postulated that the unusually large skull was an indicator of Leonardo’s intelligence; author Charles Nicholl describes this as a «dubious phrenological deduction».[176] At the same time, Houssaye noted some issues with his observations, including that the feet were turned toward the high altar, a practice generally reserved for laymen, and that the skeleton of 1.73 metres (5.7 ft) seemed too short.[178] Art historian Mary Margaret Heaton wrote in 1874 that the height would be appropriate for Leonardo.[179] The skull was allegedly presented to Napoleon III before being returned to the Château d’Amboise, where they were re-interred in the chapel of Saint Hubert in 1874.[178][180] A plaque above the tomb states that its contents are only presumed to be those of Leonardo.[177]

It has since been theorized that the folding of the skeleton’s right arm over the head may correspond to the paralysis of Leonardo’s right hand.[82][88][178] In 2016, it was announced that DNA tests would be conducted to determine whether the attribution is correct.[180] The DNA of the remains will be compared to that of samples collected from Leonardo’s work and his half-brother Domenico’s descendants;[180] it may also be sequenced.[181]

In 2019, documents were published revealing that Houssaye had kept the ring and a lock of hair. In 1925, his great-grandson sold these to an American collector. Sixty years later, another American acquired them, leading to them being displayed at the Leonardo Museum in Vinci beginning on 2 May 2019, the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death.[93][182]

Notes

General
  1. ^ a b See Nicholl (2005, pp. 17–20) and Bambach (2019, p. 24) for further information on the dispute and uncertainty surrounding Leonardo’s exact birthplace.
  2. ^ a b ; LEE-ə-NAR-doh də VIN-chee, LEE-oh-, LAY-oh-
  3. ^ Italian: [leoˈnardo di ˈsɛr ˈpjɛːro da (v)ˈvintʃi] (listen) The inclusion of the title ‘ser’ (shortening of Italian Messer or Messere, title of courtesy prefixed to the first name) indicates that Leonardo’s father was a gentleman.
  4. ^ The diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio relays a precise account: «There was born to me a grandson, son of Ser Piero [fr], on 15 April, a Saturday, at the third hour of the night.»[13][14] Ser Antonio records Leonardo being baptized the following day by Piero di Bartolomeo at the parish of Santa Croce [it].[15]
  5. ^ It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East «or at least, from the Mediterranean» or even of Chinese descent. According to art critic Alessandro Vezzosi, head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, there is evidence that Piero owned a slave called Caterina.[19] The reconstruction of one of Leonardo’s fingerprints shows a pattern that matches 60% of people of Middle Eastern origin, suggesting the possibility that Leonardo may have had Middle Eastern blood. The claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine: «You can’t predict one person’s race from these kinds of incidences, especially if looking at only one finger». More recently, historian Martin Kemp, after digging through overlooked archives and records in Italy, found evidence that Leonardo’s mother was a young local woman identified as Caterina di Meo Lippi.[20]
  6. ^ See Nicholl (2005, pp. 26–30) for further information of Leonardo’s mother and Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca.
  7. ^ See Kemp & Pallanti (2017, pp. 65–66) for detailed table on Ser Piero’s marriages.
  8. ^ He also never wrote about his father, except a passing note of his death in which he overstates his age by three years.[26] Leonardo’s siblings caused him difficulty after his father’s death in a dispute over their inheritance.[27]
  9. ^ The humanist influence of Donatello’s David can be seen in Leonardo’s late paintings, particularly John the Baptist.[35][34]
  10. ^ The «diverse arts» and technical skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th-century text On Divers Arts by Theophilus Presbyter and in the early 15th-century text Il Libro Dell’arte O Trattato Della Pittui by Cennino Cennini.
  11. ^ That Leonardo joined the guild by this time is deduced from the record of payment made to the Compagnia di San Luca in the company’s register, Libro Rosso A, 1472–1520, Accademia di Belle Arti.[14]
  12. ^ On the back he wrote: «I, staying with Anthony, am happy,» possibly in reference to his father.
  13. ^ Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal, «The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me.»[37]
  14. ^ In 2005, the studio was rediscovered during the restoration of part of a building occupied for 100 years by the Department of Military Geography.[62]
  15. ^ Both works are lost. The entire composition of Michelangelo’s painting is known from a copy by Aristotole da Sangallo, 1542.[67] Leonardo’s painting is known only from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate, is by Peter Paul Rubens.[68]
  16. ^ Pope Leo X is quoted as saying, «This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning!» [74]
  17. ^ It is unknown for what occasion the mechanical lion was made, but it is believed to have greeted the king at his entry into Lyon and perhaps was used for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. A conjectural recreation of the lion has been made and is on display in the Museum of Bologna.[80]
  18. ^ Identified via its similarity to Leonardo’s presumed self-portrait[83]
  19. ^ «… Messer Lunardo Vinci [sic] … an old graybeard of more than 70 years … showed His Excellency three pictures … from whom, since he was then subject to a certain paralysis of the right hand, one could not expect any more good work.» [84]
  20. ^ This scene is portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, as well as Angelica Kauffman.
  21. ^ a b On the day of Leonardo’s death, a royal edict was issued by the king at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a two-day journey from Clos Lucé. This has been taken as evidence that King Francis cannot have been present at Leonardo’s deathbed, but the edict was not signed by the king.[91]
  22. ^ Each of the sixty paupers were to have been awarded in accord with Leonardo’s will.[51]
  23. ^ These qualities of Leonardo’s works are discussed in Hartt (1970, pp. 387–411)
  24. ^ The painting, which in the 18th century belonged to Angelica Kauffman, was later cut up. The two main sections were found in a junk shop and cobbler’s shop and were reunited.[109] It is probable that outer parts of the composition are missing.
  25. ^ This work is now in the collection of the Uffizi, Drawing No. 8P.
  26. ^ The «Grecian profile» has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many Classical Greek statues.
  27. ^ He also drew with his left hand, his hatch strokes «slanting down from left to right—the natural stroke of a left-handed artist».[133] He also sometimes wrote conventionally with his right hand.[134]
  28. ^ Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo depicting Jesus holding an orb, sold for a world record US$450.3 million at a Christie’s auction in New York, 15 November 2017.[169] The highest known sale price for any artwork was previously US$300 million, for Willem de Kooning’s Interchange, which was sold privately in September 2015.[170] The highest price previously paid for a work of art at auction was for Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger, which sold for US$179.4 million in May 2015 at Christie’s New York.[170]
Dates of works
  1. ^ The Adoration of the Magi
    • Kemp (2019, p. 27): c. 1481–1482
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): 1481
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 56): c. 1480–1482
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 222): 1481/1482

  2. ^ Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre version)
    • Kemp (2019, p. 41): c. 1483–1493
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): between 1483 and 1486
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 164): 1483–c. 1485
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 223): 1483–1484/1485

  3. ^ Saint John the Baptist
    • Kemp (2019, p. 189): c. 1507–1514
    • Marani (2003, p. 340): c. 1508
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 63): c. 1500 onwards
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 248): c. 1508–1516

  4. ^ The Annunciation
    • Kemp (2019, p. 6): c. 1473–1474
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): c. 1472–1475
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 15): c. 1472–1476
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 216): c. 1473–1475

  5. ^ Saint Jerome in the Wilderness
    • Kemp (2019, p. 31): c. 1481–1482
    • Marani (2003, p. 338): probably c. 1480
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 139): c. 1488–1490
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 221): c. 1480–1482

  6. ^ Lady with an Ermine
    • Kemp (2019, p. 49): c. 1491
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): 1489–1490
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 111): c. 1489–1490
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 226): 1489/1490

  7. ^ The Last Supper
    • Kemp (2019, p. 67): c. 1495–1497
    • Marani (2003, p. 339): between 1494 and 1498
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 252): 1492–1497/1498
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 230): c. 1495–1498

  8. ^ Mona Lisa
    • Kemp (2019, p. 127): c. 1503–1515
    • Marani (2003, p. 340): c. 1503–1504; 1513–1514
    • Syson et al. (2011, p. 48): c. 1502 onward
    • Zöllner (2019, p. 240): c. 1503–1506; 1510

References

Citations

Early
  1. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 287
  2. ^ Vasari 1991, pp. 287–289
  3. ^ a b c Vasari 1991, p. 293
  4. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 297
  5. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 284
  6. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 286
  7. ^ a b Vasari 1991, p. 290
  8. ^ Vasari 1991, pp. 289–291
  9. ^ Vasari 1991, p. 294
  10. ^ Vasari 1965, p. 266
  11. ^ Vasari 1965, p. 255
Modern
  1. ^ «A portrait of Leonardo c.1515–18». Royal Collection Trust. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  2. ^ a b Zöllner 2019, p. 20.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Kemp 2003.
  4. ^ a b c d Heydenreich 2020.
  5. ^ Zöllner 2019, p. 250.
  6. ^ Kaplan, Erez (1996). «Roberto Guatelli’s Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s Adding Machine». Archived from the original on 29 May 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  7. ^ Kaplan, E. (April 1997). «Anecdotes». IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 19 (2): 62–69. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1997.586074. ISSN 1058-6180.
  8. ^ Capra 2007, pp. 5–6.
  9. ^ Brown 1998, p. 7.
  10. ^ Kemp 2006, p. 1.
  11. ^ a b c d e f Brown 1998, p. 5.
  12. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 17.
  13. ^ Vezzosi 1997, p. 13.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 83.
  15. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 20.
  16. ^ Bambach 2019, pp. 16, 24.
  17. ^ a b Marani 2003, p. 13.
  18. ^ Bambach 2019, p. 16.
  19. ^ Hooper, John (12 April 2008). «Da Vinci’s mother was a slave, Italian study claims». The Guardian. Retrieved 16 August 2015.
  20. ^ Alberge, Dalya (21 May 2017). «Tuscan archives yield up secrets of Leonardo’s mystery mother». The Guardian. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  21. ^ a b c Bambach 2019, p. 24.
  22. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 18.
  23. ^ Kemp & Pallanti 2017, p. 6.
  24. ^ Kemp & Pallanti 2017, p. 65.
  25. ^ a b Kemp & Pallanti 2017, pp. 65–66.
  26. ^ a b Wallace 1972, p. 11.
  27. ^ Magnano 2007, p. 138.
  28. ^ Brown 1998, pp. 1, 5.
  29. ^ Marani 2003, p. 12.
  30. ^ Brown 1998, p. 175.
  31. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 28.
  32. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 30, 506.
  33. ^ Nicholl 2005, p. 30. See p. 506 for the original Italian.
  34. ^ a b c Rosci 1977, p. 13.
  35. ^ a b c Hartt 1970, pp. 127–133.
  36. ^ Bacci, Mina (1978) [1963]. The Great Artists: Da Vinci. Translated by Tanguy, J. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  37. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bortolon 1967.
  38. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Arasse 1998.
  39. ^ Rosci 1977, p. 27.
  40. ^ Martindale 1972.
  41. ^ a b c d Rosci 1977, pp. 9–20.
  42. ^ Piero della Francesca, On Perspective for Painting (De Prospectiva Pingendi)
  43. ^ a b Rachum, Ilan (1979). The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia.
  44. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 88.
  45. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 13.
  46. ^ a b Polidoro, Massimo (2019). «The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 1». Skeptical Inquirer. Center for Inquiry. 43 (2): 30–31.
  47. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 15.
  48. ^ Clark, Kenneth; Kemp, Martin (26 November 2015). Leonardo da Vinci (Newition ed.). United Kingdom: Penguin. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-14-198237-3.
  49. ^ a b Wasserman 1975, pp. 77–78.
  50. ^ a b Wallace 1972, pp. 53–54.
  51. ^ a b c Williamson 1974.
  52. ^ Kemp 2011.
  53. ^ Franz-Joachim Verspohl [de], Michelangelo Buonarroti und Leonardo Da Vinci: Republikanischer Alltag und Künstlerkonkurrenz in Florenz zwischen 1501 und 1505 (Wallstein Verlag, 2007), p. 151.
  54. ^ Schofield, Richard. «Amadeo, Bramante and Leonardo and the Cupola of Milan Cathedral». Achademia Leonardi Vinci. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  55. ^ Barbieri, Ezio; Catanese, Filippo (January 2020). «Leonardo a (e i rapporti con) Pavia: una verifica sui documenti». Annuario dell’Archivio di Stato di Milano. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  56. ^ Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci: drawings of horses and other animals (Windsor Castle. Royal Library) 1984.
  57. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 79.
  58. ^ Rocky, Ruggiero (6 October 2021). «Episode 142 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Sala delle Asse». rockyruggiero.com. Making Art and History Come to Life, Rebuilding the Renaissance.
  59. ^ «Segui il restauro» [Follow the restoration]. Castello Sforzesco – Sala delle Asse (in Italian). Archived from the original on 16 October 2018. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  60. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 65.
  61. ^ a b c d Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 85.
  62. ^ Owen, Richard (12 January 2005). «Found: the studio where Leonardo met Mona Lisa». The Times. London. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  63. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 124.
  64. ^ «Mona Lisa – Heidelberg discovery confirms identity». University of Heidelberg. Archived from the original on 5 November 2013. Retrieved 4 July 2010.
  65. ^ Delieuvin, Vincent (15 January 2008). «Télématin». Journal Télévisé. France 2 Télévision.
  66. ^ Coughlan, Robert (1966). The World of Michelangelo: 1475–1564. et al. Time-Life Books. p. 90.
  67. ^ Goldscheider, Ludwig (1967). Michelangelo: paintings, sculptures, architecture. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0-7148-1314-1.
  68. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, pp. 106–07.
  69. ^ a b c d e Wallace 1972, p. 145.
  70. ^ «Achademia Leonardi Vinci». Journal of Leonardo Studies & Bibliography of Vinciana. VIII: 243–44. 1990.
  71. ^ a b c Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 86.
  72. ^ a b Wallace 1972, pp. 149–150.
  73. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 151.
  74. ^ a b c d e Wallace 1972, p. 150.
  75. ^ Ohlig, Christoph P. J., ed. (2005). Integrated Land and Water Resources Management in History. Books on Demand. p. 33. ISBN 978-3-8334-2463-2.
  76. ^ Gillette, Henry Sampson (2017). Leonardo da Vinci: Pathfinder of Science. Prabhat Prakashan. p. 84.
  77. ^ Georges Goyau, François I, Transcribed by Gerald Rossi. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved on 4 October 2007
  78. ^ Miranda, Salvador (1998–2007). «The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Antoine du Prat». Retrieved 4 October 2007.
  79. ^ Wallace 1972, pp. 163, 164.
  80. ^ «Reconstruction of Leonardo’s walking lion» (in Italian). Archived from the original on 25 August 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  81. ^ Brown, Mark (1 May 2019). «Newly identified sketch of Leonardo da Vinci to go on display in London». The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  82. ^ a b Strickland, Ashley (4 May 2019). «What caused Leonardo da Vinci’s hand impairment?». CNN. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  83. ^ a b McMahon, Barbara (1 May 2005). «Da Vinci ‘paralysis left Mona Lisa unfinished’«. The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  84. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 163.
  85. ^ a b Lorenzi, Rossella (10 May 2016). «Did a Stroke Kill Leonardo da Vinci?». Seeker. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  86. ^ Saplakoglu, Yasemin (4 May 2019). «A Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci May Reveal Why He Never Finished the Mona Lisa». Live Science. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  87. ^ a b Bodkin, Henry (4 May 2019). «Leonardo da Vinci never finished the Mona Lisa because he injured his arm while fainting, experts say». The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
  88. ^ a b Charlier, Philippe; Deo, Saudamini. «A physical sign of stroke sequel on the skeleton of Leonardo da Vinci?». Neurology. 4 April 2017; 88(14): 1381–82
  89. ^ Ian Chilvers (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 354. ISBN 978-0-19-953294-0.
  90. ^ Antonina Vallentin, Leonardo da Vinci: The Tragic Pursuit of Perfection, (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), 533
  91. ^ White, Leonardo: The First Scientist
  92. ^ Kemp 2011, p. 26.
  93. ^ a b c Florentine editorial staff (2 May 2019). «Hair believed to have belonged to Leonardo on display in Vinci». The Florentine. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  94. ^ Leonardo, Codex C. 15v, Institut of France. Trans. Richter
  95. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 84.
  96. ^ Rossiter, Nick (4 July 2003). «Could this be the secret of her smile?». Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 25 September 2003. Retrieved 3 October 2007.
  97. ^ Gasca, Nicolò & Lucertini 2004, p. 13.
  98. ^ a b Pedretti, Carlo (2009). Leonardo da Vinci : l’Angelo incarnato & Salai = the Angel in the flesh & Salai. Margherita Melani, Daniel Arasse, da Vinci Leonardo. Foligno (Perugia): Cartei & Bianchi. p. 201. ISBN 978-88-95686-11-0. OCLC 500794484.
  99. ^ MacCurdy, Edward, The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci (1928) in Leonardo da Vinci’s Ethical Vegetarianism
  100. ^ Bambach 2003.
  101. ^ Cartwright Ady, Julia. Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497. Publisher: J.M. Dent, 1899; Cartwright Ady, Julia. Isabella D’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539. Publisher; J.M. Dent, 1903.
  102. ^ Sigmund Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, (1910)
  103. ^ a b Isaacson 2017.
  104. ^ «Leonardo, ladies’ man: why can’t we accept that Da Vinci was gay?». The Guardian. 26 March 2021. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
  105. ^ Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships epigraph, p. 148 & N120 p. 298
  106. ^ Arasse 1998, pp. 11–15.
  107. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, pp. 88, 90.
  108. ^ Marani 2003, p. 338.
  109. ^ a b Wasserman 1975, pp. 104–106.
  110. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 108.
  111. ^ «The Mysterious Virgin». National Gallery, London. Archived from the original on 15 October 2007. Retrieved 27 September 2007.
  112. ^ a b «Da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine among Poland’s «Treasures» – Event – Culture.pl». Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  113. ^ Kemp, M. The Lady with an Ermine in the exhibition Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration. Washington-New Haven-London. p. 271.
  114. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 124.
  115. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 97.
  116. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 98.
  117. ^ Seracini, Maurizio (2012). «The Secret Lives of Paintings» (lecture).
  118. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 144.
  119. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 103.
  120. ^ Wasserman 1975, p. 150.
  121. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 109.
  122. ^ a b c d e f g h Popham, A. E. (1946). The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.
  123. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 102.
  124. ^ Hartt 1970, pp. 391–392.
  125. ^ a b c Wallace 1972, p. 169.
  126. ^ a b c Keele Kenneth D (1964). «Leonardo da Vinci’s Influence on Renaissance Anatomy». Med Hist. 8 (4): 360–70. doi:10.1017/s0025727300029835. PMC 1033412. PMID 14230140.
  127. ^ Bean, Jacob; Stampfle, Felice (1965). Drawings from New York Collections I: The Italian Renaissance. Greenwich, CT: Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 81–82.
  128. ^ Major, Richard Henry (1866). Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 40, Part 1. London: The Society. pp. 15–16.
  129. ^ Calder, Ritchie (1970). Leonardo & the Age of the Eye. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-671-20713-7.
  130. ^ «Sketches by Leonardo». Turning the Pages. British Library. Retrieved 27 September 2007.
  131. ^ a b Da Vinci, Leonardo (1960). Taylor, Pamela; Taylor, Francis Henry (eds.). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. New York: New American Library. p. x. ISBN 978-0-486-22572-2.
  132. ^ Livio, Mario (2003) [2002]. The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (First trade paperback ed.). New York City: Broadway Books. p. 136. ISBN 0-7679-0816-3.
  133. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 31.
  134. ^ Ciaccia, Chris (15 April 2019). «Da Vinci was ambidextrous, new handwriting analysis shows». Fox News. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
  135. ^ Windsor Castle, Royal Library, sheets RL 19073v–74v and RL 19102.
  136. ^ Cook, Theodore Andrea (1914). The Curves of Life. London: Constable and Company Ltd. p. 390.
  137. ^ Baucon, A. 2010. Da Vinci’s Paleodictyon: the fractal beauty of traces. Acta Geologica Polonica, 60(1). Accessible from the author’s homepage
  138. ^ O’Malley; Saunders (1982). Leonardo on the Human Body. New York: Dover Publications.
  139. ^ Ottino della Chiesa 1985, p. 117.
  140. ^ Capra 2007, pp. XVII–XX.
  141. ^ Davinci, Leonardo (2011). The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Lulu. p. 736. ISBN 978-1-105-31016-4.
  142. ^ «Leonardo da Vinci». Britannica. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  143. ^ a b Alastair Sooke, Daily Telegraph, 28 July 2013, «Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy of an artist», accessed 29 July 2013.
  144. ^ Mason, Stephen F. (1962). A History of the Sciences. New York: Collier Books. p. 550.
  145. ^ Jones, Roger (2012). «Leonardo da Vinci: anatomist». British Journal of General Practice. 62 (599): 319. doi:10.3399/bjgp12X649241. ISSN 0960-1643. PMC 3361109. PMID 22687222.
  146. ^ Guarnieri, M. (2019). «Reconsidering Leonardo». IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. 13 (3): 35–38. doi:10.1109/MIE.2019.2929366. hdl:11577/3310853. S2CID 202729396.
  147. ^ Masters, Roger (1996). Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power.
  148. ^ Masters, Roger (1998). Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-452-28090-8.
  149. ^ Wallace 1972, p. 164.
  150. ^ «Leonardo’s Dream Machines (TV Movie 2003)». IMDb.
  151. ^ British Library online gallery (retrieved 10 October 2013)
  152. ^ Marc van den Broek (2019), Leonardo da Vinci Spirits of Invention. A Search for Traces, Hamburg: A.TE.M., ISBN 978-3-00-063700-1
  153. ^ a b Hutchings, Ian M. (15 August 2016). «Leonardo da Vinci׳s studies of friction». Wear. 360–361: 51–66. doi:10.1016/j.wear.2016.04.019. ISSN 0043-1648.
  154. ^ Isaacson 2017, pp. 194–197.
  155. ^ Dowson, Duncan (1 October 1977). «Men of Tribology: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)». Journal of Lubrication Technology. 99 (4): 382–386. doi:10.1115/1.3453230. ISSN 0022-2305.
  156. ^ Polidoro, Massimo (2019). «The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 2». Skeptical Inquirer. 43 (3): 23–24.
  157. ^ a b c Gardner, Helen (1970). Art through the Ages. pp. 450–56.
  158. ^ See the quotations from the following authors, in section «Fame and reputation»: Vasari, Boltraffio, Castiglione, «Anonimo» Gaddiano, Berensen, Taine, Fuseli, Rio, Bortolon.
  159. ^ Rosci 1977, p. 8.
  160. ^ Castiglione, Baldassare (1528). «Il Cortegiano» (in Italian).
  161. ^ «Anonimo Gaddiani», elaborating on Libro di Antonio Billi, 1537–1542
  162. ^ Fuseli, Henry (1801). «Lectures». II.
  163. ^ Rio, A.E. (1861). «L’art chrétien» (in French). Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  164. ^ Taine, Hippolyte (1866). «Voyage en Italie» (in Italian). Paris, Hachette et cie. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  165. ^ Berenson, Bernard (1896). The Italian Painters of the Renaissance.
  166. ^ Henneberger, Melinda. «ArtNews article about current studies into Leonardo’s life and works». Art News Online. Archived from the original on 5 May 2006. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
  167. ^ Marmor, Max. «The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana.» The Book Collector 38, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 1–23.
  168. ^ Italie, Hillel (7 January 2018). «NonFiction: Biography honors ‘fun, joyous’ sides of genius da Vinci». Richmond Times-Dispatch. Associated Press. p. G6.
  169. ^ Crow, Kelly (16 November 2017). «Leonardo da Vinci Painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ Sells for $450.3 Million». The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  170. ^ a b Leonardo da Vinci painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold for record $450.3 million, Fox News, 16 November 2017
  171. ^ «Leonardo da Vinci’s Unexamined Life as a Painter». The Atlantic. 1 December 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  172. ^ «Louvre exhibit has most da Vinci paintings ever assembled». Aleteia. 1 December 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  173. ^ Turner 1993, p. 3.
  174. ^ Vitruvian Man is referred to as «iconic» at the following websites and many others: Vitruvian Man, Fine Art Classics Archived 9 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Key Images in the History of Science; Curiosity and difference at the Wayback Machine (archived 30 January 2009); «The Guardian: The Real da Vinci Code»
  175. ^ Turner, Ben (6 July 2021). «Scientists may have cracked the mystery of da Vinci’s DNA». Live Science. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
  176. ^ a b c d e Nicholl 2005, p. 502.
  177. ^ a b Isaacson 2017, p. 515.
  178. ^ a b c d e Montard, Nicolas (30 April 2019). «Léonard de Vinci est-il vraiment enterré au château d’Amboise?» [Is Leonardo da Vinci really buried at the Château d’Amboise?]. Ouest-France (in French). Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  179. ^ Heaton 1874, p. 204, «The skeleton, which measured five feet eight inches, accords with the height of Leonardo da Vinci. The skull might have served for the model of the portrait Leonardo drew of himself in red chalk a few years before his death.».
  180. ^ a b c Knapton, Sarah (5 May 2016). «Leonardo da Vinci paintings analysed for DNA to solve grave mystery». The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  181. ^ Newman, Lily Hay (6 May 2016). «Researchers Are Planning to Sequence Leonardo da Vinci’s 500-Year-Old Genome». Slate Magazine. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  182. ^ Messia, Hada; Robinson, Matthew (30 April 2019). «Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘hair’ to undergo DNA testing». CNN. Retrieved 3 May 2019.

Works cited

Early

  • Anonimo Gaddiano (c. 1530). «Leonardo da Vinci». Codice Magliabechiano. in Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists). Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 2019. pp. 103–114. ISBN 978-1-60606-621-8.
  • Giovio, Paolo (c. 1527). «The Life of Leonardo da Vinci». Elogia virorum illustrium. in Lives of Leonardo da Vinci (Lives of the Artists). Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 2019. pp. 103–114. ISBN 978-1-60606-621-8.
  • Vasari, Giorgio (1965) [1568]. «The Life of Leonardo da Vinci». Lives of the Artists. Translated by George Bull. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-044164-2.
  • —— (1991) [1568]. The Lives of the Artists. Oxford World’s Classics. Translated by Bondanella, Peter; Bondanella, Julia Conway. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283410-X.

Modern

Books
  • Arasse, Daniel [fr] (1998). Leonardo da Vinci. Old Saybrook: Konecky & Konecky. ISBN 978-1-56852-198-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Bambach, Carmen C., ed. (2003). Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-300-09878-5.
  • Bambach, Carmen C. (2019). Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered. Vol. 1, The Making of an Artist: 1452–1500. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-19195-0.
  • Bortolon, Liana (1967). The Life and Times of Leonardo. London: Paul Hamlyn.
  • Brown, David Alan (1998). Leonardo Da Vinci: Origins of a Genius. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07246-4.
  • Capra, Fritjof (2007). The Science of Leonardo. US: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51390-6.
  • Ottino della Chiesa, Angela (1985) [1967]. The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. Penguin Classics of World Art. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-008649-2.
  • Clark, Kenneth (1961). Leonardo da Vinci. City of Westminster: Penguin Books. OCLC 187223.
  • Gasca, Ana Millàn; Nicolò, Fernando; Lucertini, Mario (2004). Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems. Birkhauser. ISBN 978-3-7643-6940-8.
  • Hartt, Frederich (1970). A History of Italian Renaissance Art. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-23136-4.
  • Heaton, Mary Margaret (1874). Leonardo Da Vinci and His Works: Consisting of a Life of Leonardo Da Vinci. New York: Macmillan Publishers. OCLC 1706262.
  • Isaacson, Walter (2017). Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-3915-4.
  • Kemp, Martin (2006) [1981]. Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-920778-7.
  • Kemp, Martin (2011) [2004]. Leonardo (Revised ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280644-4.
  • Kemp, Martin; Pallanti, Giuseppe (2017). Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-874990-5.
  • Kemp, Martin (2019). Leonardo da Vinci: The 100 Milestones. New York: Sterling. ISBN 978-1-4549-3042-6.
  • Magnano, Milena (2007). Leonardo, collana I Geni dell’arte. Mondadori Arte. ISBN 978-88-370-6432-7.
  • Marani, Pietro C. (2003) [2000]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-3581-5.
  • Martindale, Andrew (1972). The Rise of the Artist. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-56006-8.
  • Nicholl, Charles (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-029681-5.
  • O’Malley, Charles D.; Sounders, J.B. de C.M. (1952). Leonardo on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. With Translations, Emendations and a Biographical Introduction. New York: Henry Schuman.
  • Pedretti, Carlo (1982). Leonardo, a study in chronology and style. Cambridge: Johnson Reprint Corp. ISBN 978-0-384-45281-7.
  • Pedretti, Carlo (2006). Leonardo da Vinci. Surrey: Taj Books International. ISBN 978-1-84406-036-8.
  • Popham, A.E. (1946). The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-60462-8.
  • Richter, Jean Paul (1970). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-22572-2. volume 2: ISBN 0-486-22573-9. A reprint of the original 1883 edition
  • Rosci, Marco (1977). Leonardo. Bay Books Pty Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85835-176-9.
  • Syson, Luke; Keith, Larry; Galansino, Arturo; Mazzotta, Antoni; Nethersole, Scott; Rumberg, Per (2011). Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. London: National Gallery. ISBN 978-1-85709-491-6.
  • Turner, A. Richard (1993). Inventing Leonardo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-520-08938-9.
  • Wallace, Robert (1972) [1966]. The World of Leonardo: 1452–1519. New York: Time-Life Books.
  • Wasserman, Jack (1975). Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-0262-6.
  • Williamson, Hugh Ross (1974). Lorenzo the Magnificent. Michael Joseph. ISBN 978-0-7181-1204-2.
  • Vezzosi, Alessandro (1997). Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man. ‘New Horizons’ series. Translated by Bonfante-Warren, Alexandra (English translation ed.). London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-30081-7.
  • Zöllner, Frank (2015). Leonardo (2nd ed.). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-0215-3.
  • Zöllner, Frank (2019) [2003]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (Anniversary ed.). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-7625-3.
Journals and encyclopedia articles
  • Brown, David Alan (1983). «Leonardo and the Idealized Portrait in Milan». Arte Lombarda. 64 (4): 102–116. JSTOR 43105426. (subscription required)
  • Cremante, Simona (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Scientist, Inventor. Giunti. ISBN 978-88-09-03891-2.
  • Giacomelli, Raffaele (1936). Gli scritti di Leonardo da Vinci sul volo. Roma: G. Bardi.
  • Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich (28 April 2020). «Leonardo da Vinci | Biography, Art & Facts | Britannica». Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
  • Kemp, Martin (2003). «Leonardo da Vinci». Grove Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T050401. ISBN 978-1-884446-05-4. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  • Lupia, John N. (Summer 1994). «The Secret Revealed: How to Look at Italian Renaissance Painting». Medieval and Renaissance Times. 1 (2): 6–17. ISSN 1075-2110.

Further reading

See Kemp (2003) and Bambach (2019, pp. 442–579) for extensive bibliographies

  • Vanna, Arrighi; Bellinazzi, Anna; Villata, Edoardo, eds. (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: la vera immagine: documenti e testimonianze sulla vita e sull’opera [Leonardo da Vinci: the true image: documents and testimonies on life and work] (in Italian). Florence: Giunti Editore. ISBN 978-88-09-04519-4.
  • Vecce, Carlo (2006). Leonardo (in Italian). Foreword by Carlo Pedretti. Rome: Salerno. ISBN 978-88-8402-548-7.
  • Winternitz, Emanuel (1982). Leonardo da Vinci As a Musician. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02631-3.
  • Leonardo da Vinci: anatomical drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1983. ISBN 978-0-87099-362-6.

External links

General
  • Universal Leonardo, a database of Leonardo’s life and works maintained by Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace
  • Leonardo da Vinci on the National Gallery website
Works
  • Biblioteca Leonardiana, online bibliography (in Italian)
  • e-Leo: Archivio digitale di storia della tecnica e della scienza, archive of drawings, notes and manuscripts
  • Works by Leonardo da Vinci at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by Leonardo da Vinci at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
  • Complete text and images of Richter’s translation of the Notebooks
  • The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
  • 1
    леонардо

    Русско-английский большой базовый словарь > леонардо

  • 2
    оригинальность Леонардо да Винчи

    Универсальный русско-английский словарь > оригинальность Леонардо да Винчи

  • 3
    своеобразие Леонардо да Винчи

    Универсальный русско-английский словарь > своеобразие Леонардо да Винчи

  • 4
    да Винчи, Леонардо

    итал.

    Leonardo da Vinci (известный художник)

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > да Винчи, Леонардо

  • 5
    Леонардо да Винчи

    итал.

    Leonardo da Vinci (известный художник)

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Леонардо да Винчи

  • 6
    Код да Винчи

    (< Leonardo da Vinci) Da Vinci Code (название книги-бестселлера 2005 г.)

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Код да Винчи

  • 7
    Леонардо да Винчи

    Универсальный русско-английский словарь > Леонардо да Винчи

  • 8
    Леонардо да Винчи был гением-универсалом

    Универсальный русско-английский словарь > Леонардо да Винчи был гением-универсалом

  • 9
    своеобразность Леонардо да Винчи

    Универсальный русско-английский словарь > своеобразность Леонардо да Винчи

  • 10
    Альберт Эйнштейн

    физ. ист.

    Albert Einstein

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Альберт Эйнштейн

  • 11
    Бартон Клара

    Clara Barton

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Бартон Клара

  • 12
    Бернард Шоу

    лит.

    George Bernard Shaw

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Бернард Шоу

  • 13
    Ганди, Махатма

    инд.

    Mahatma Ghandi

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Ганди, Махатма

  • 14
    Джеф Джулиано

    Jeff Juliano

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Джеф Джулиано

  • 15
    Джордж Бернард Шоу

    лит.

    George Bernard Shaw

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Джордж Бернард Шоу

  • 16
    Джулиано Джеф

    Jeff Juliano

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Джулиано Джеф

  • 17
    Клара Бартон

    Clara Barton

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Клара Бартон

  • 18
    Лев Толстой

    рус.лит.

    Leo Tolstoy

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Лев Толстой

  • 19
    Макдоналд Рональд

    амер.

    Ronald McDonald

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Макдоналд Рональд

  • 20
    Махатма Ганди

    инд.

    Mahatma Ghandi

    These people were vegetarians: Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Clara Barton, Mahatma Ghandi, Mr. Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, Jeff Juliano, the original Ronald McDonald.

    Дополнительный универсальный русско-английский словарь > Махатма Ганди

См. также в других словарях:

  • Vinci, Leonardo di Ser Piero da — • Florentine painter, sculptor, architect, engineer and scholar (1452 1519) Catholic Encyclopedia. Kevin Knight. 2006 …   Catholic encyclopedia

  • Vinci, Leonardo da —    See Leonardo da Vinci …   Dictionary of Renaissance art

  • Vinci, Leonardo — ▪ Italian composer born 1690, Strongoli, Kingdom of Naples [Italy] died May 27, 1730, Naples       Italian composer who was one of the originators of the Neapolitan style of opera; along with Nicola Porpora, his followers included Giovanni… …   Universalium

  • Vinci, Leonardo da — ► (1452 1519) Pintor italiano. La fama y la calidad de la obras pictóricas de da Vinci (La Santa Cena, La Gioconda, La Virgen de las rocas, Santa Ana, etc.), no oscurecen su gloria y su inmenso mérito como arquitecto, escultor e investigador… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Da Vinci, Leonardo — The father of anatomic art. The architect, scientist, engineer, inventor, poet, sculptor and painter, Leonardo da Vinci first became interested in anatomic art when he was asked by a Veronese anatomist named Marc Antonia Della Torre to do the… …   Medical dictionary

  • da Vinci,Leonardo — da Vin·ci (də vĭnʹchē, dä), Leonardo. See Leonardo da Vinci. * * * …   Universalium

  • da Vinci, Leonardo —  for the Florentine artist (1452–1519). On second reference he is properly referred to as Leonardo, not as da Vinci …   Bryson’s dictionary for writers and editors

  • da Vinci, Leonardo —    for the Florentine artist (1452 1519). On second reference he is properly referred to as Leonardo, not as da Vinci, though it must also be said that you can find some good historians and writers (Daniel Boorstin, for instance) who do not… …   Dictionary of troublesome word

  • Vinci, Leonardo da — …   Useful english dictionary

  • Leonardo da Vinci — • Florentine painter, sculptor, architect, engineer and scholar (1452 1519) Catholic Encyclopedia. Kevin Knight. 2006. Leonardo da Vinci     Leonardo da Vinci      …   Catholic encyclopedia

  • Leonardo da Vinci — (15. april 1452 2. maj 1519) maler, billedhugger, arkitekt, ingeniør, opfinder, botaniker og anatom Leonardo da Vinci betragtes som et klassisk renæssancemenneske og geni. Leonardo blev født i Vinci i Italien som søn af Ser Piero da Vinci, en… …   Danske encyklopædi


На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать грубую лексику.


На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать разговорную лексику.


Check out these awesome inventions by leonardo da vinci!


In the papal palaces for centuries had accumulated the immortal works of leonardo da vinci, caravaggio, giotto.



В папских дворцах веками накапливались бессмертные творения Леонардо да Винчи, Караваджо, Джотто.


When a group of «Seal» left the designated area, there arrived from France the Italian submarine leonardo da vinci which is still on the move torpedoed troop transport empress of Canada, and then on the beat added to it five more ships.



Когда группа «Тюлень» покинула назначенный район, туда из Франции прибыла итальянская ПЛ Leonardo da Vinci, которая еще на переходе торпедировала войсковой транспорт Empress of Canada, а затем на патрулировании добавила к нему еще пять судов.


In addition, through the years Scuola Leonardo da Vinci has developed its own teaching method.



Кроме того, на протяжении многих лет Scuola Leonardo da Vinci разработала собственный метод обучения.


Leonardo da Vinci never built the inventions he designed.



Леонардо Да Винчи никогда не строил изобретения, которые он проектировал.


Not everyone is as talented as Leonardo da Vinci.


I hereby dismiss all charges against Leonardo da Vinci.


Artists like Leonardo da Vinci thought in pictures.


In 1490 Leonardo da Vinci designed a hand steering vehicle.



В 1490 г. Леонардо да Винчи сконструировал повозку с ручным управлением.


Leonardo da Vinci attributed many of his inventions to dreams.



Леонардо да Винчи связывал многие из величайших своих изобретений с образами, навеянными ему во сне.


Leonardo da Vinci was also passionate regarding astronomy.


Leonardo da Vinci used it in his works.


Leonardo Da Vinci sketched the first sophisticated parachute in 1485.



Леонардо да Винчи нарисовал то, что считалось первым работоспособным парашютом, в 1485 году.


Leonardo da Vinci drew an aircraft in the 15th century.



Известно, что Леонардо да Винчи еще в пятнадцатом веке снились вертолеты.


Students will learn who Leonardo Da Vinci was.


Leonardo da Vinci was one of his students.


Leonardo da Vinci would surely be impressed.


Leonardo da Vinci had the idea 425 years ago.


Who is better than Leonardo da Vinci


Cesenatico’s port and canal was designed by Leonardo da Vinci.



Городские легенды рассказывают, что канал и порт в Чезенатико были спроектированы Леонардо да Винчи.

Ничего не найдено для этого значения.

Результатов: 3161. Точных совпадений: 3161. Затраченное время: 63 мс

Documents

Корпоративные решения

Спряжение

Синонимы

Корректор

Справка и о нас

Индекс слова: 1-300, 301-600, 601-900

Индекс выражения: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200

Индекс фразы: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200

Кто?

Леонардо да Винчи.

— Да.

Who?

— Leonardo da Vinci.

— Yes.

Это не обычный вертолет.

Великий художник-изобретатель Леонардо да Винчи

Кто?

This is no ordinary helicopter.

The great artist-inventor Leonardo da Vinci.

Who?

«И я тоже.»

Потом Леонардо да Винчи, который нарисовал Мону Лизу с загадочной улыбкой.

Которая на самом деле — хмурая.

«Neither do I.»

Then Leonardo da Vinci, who did the Mona Lisa with the enigmatic smile.

Which is glum, in fact.

Да ладно, давай уже нарисую, баран!

Как ёбанный Леонардо Да Винчи!

Ты кем меня обозвал, коротышка?

Sketch it up, you moron.

Fucking Leonardo da Vinci.

What you call me, thigh high?

Две стены, два художника.

Справа Леонардо да Винчи, слева

Ученик — Рафаэль. Менеджер — Никколо Макиавелли.

Rafaello. A manager:

Niccolo Machiavelli.

Philadelphia, USA, 1776 — 1787.

«Одолжи пятерку, Джуди, до получки.»

«Все ребята, хватит, Леонардо да Винчи нас рисует,»

«занимайте свои места, начинаем.»

«Can you lend us a fiver, Judy? I’m a bit short.

«Right, lads, Leonardo da Vinci’s painting the picture,

«everyone get your positions, here we go.»

Слушай!

«Встретил Леонардо да Винчи и обсуждал с ним

-«механизированный полёт.»

Listen!

«Met Leonardo da Vinci and discussed with him

-«the principles of powered flight.»

-Бортовой журнал, вроде дневника.

-Слушай, «Встретил Леонардо да Винчи…»

-Кого?

-A logbook, a sort of diary.

-Listen, «Met Leonardo da Vinci…»

-Who?

Столько много людей приходят послушать его

Леонардо Да Винчи,

Это человек все знает.

So many people have been coming to hear him.

Leonardo da Vinci.

The man knows it all.

Давным-давно герцог Миланский заказал малоизвестному художнику создать громадную статую лошади.

Шел 1481 год, художника звали Леонардо да Винчи.

Человек на осле это просто человек на осле.

Long ago the Duke of Milan commissioned a little-known artist to erect a mammoth statue of a horse.

The time was 1481. The artist was Leonardo da Vinci.

The guy on the donkey is just a guy on a donkey.

Это мистер Батлер его.

Он сказал, это работа Леонардо да Винчи.

Думаю, она стала бы гвоздем программы на сегодняшнем аукционе.

The Butler did it. He took Mr. Ed and busted it over Gates’ head.

He said it was made by Leonardo da Vinci.

I consider it to be the prize of tonight’s equestrian auction.

Я со своими отважными барракудами получаю координаты из секретного центра и высаживаюсь в море, недалеко от Фьюмичино.

Воспользовавшись фактором внезапности, в течение 14 минут и 30 секунд вы берете под контроль аэропорт Леонардо

Полковник хочет заметить, что желтая ракета означает «эпидемия на борту».

Togetherwith a handful of my barracudas,.. ..coordinated with the clandestine centre at Grottacelata,.. ..I’ll parachute into the sea near the Tiber estuary.

Taking them by surprise, within 14 minutes and 30 seconds.. ..you will secure control of the international airport.. ..and send up ayellow flare to signal: «mission accomplished».

Colonel says yellow indicates «epidemic on board».

Столетия одиночества закончились.

Ваша коллекция произведений Леонардо Да Винчи, м-р Флинт, была создана недавно, на современных холстах

И ноты на вашем пианино с вальсом Иоганна Брамса. Неизвестное творение с современными чернилами.

Here centuries of loneliness were to end.

Your collection of da Vinci masterpieces appear to have been recently painted on contemporary canvas with contemporary materials.

And on your piano, the waltz by Johannes Brahms, an unknown work, in manuscript, written in modern ink.

Это роскошнейшая коллекция искусства из всех, что я встречал. И не имеющая себе равных:

много работ Леонардо Да Винчи, период Ренессанса, несколько работ Реджинальда Поллака, 20-й век, и даже

Я видела других людей.

This is the most splendid private and unique collection of art I’ve ever seen.

The majority of the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance period. Some of the works of Reginald Pollack, and a Sten from Marcus ll.

At last I’ve seen other humans.

Тогда у меня есть кое-что получше для тебя, вернисаж.

Леонардо да Винчи общественных туалетов.

Боже мой, сумасшедшая идея Зейлстры.

Then I’ve got something better for you, a preview.

The Leonardo Da Vinci of the public urinals.

My God, Zijlstra’s crazy idea.

Вы думаете, что профессор тоже инопланетянин?

Я не хочу ничего сказать, но Вы знаете… народ думает, что Леонардо да Винчи тоже был инопланетянином

И он не был уничтожен инопланетянами лишь потому, что в их школе он был самым тупым учеником.

Do you believe the Professor was… an extraterrestrial?

I didn’t say anything, but you know what people say, that even Leonardo Da Vinci was extraterrestrial.

But stayed here on Earth to teach us new things. He wasn’t punished by extraterrestrials because at their school, he was the most stupid student.

Леонардо кто?

Леонардо да Винчи.

О, этот Леонардо.

Leonardo who?

-Leonardo da Vinci.

Oh, that Leonardo.

Я подчинился… И сделал этого глупца племянника куда более героичным, чем предопределено природой. Мой поступок во много раз превосходит все подвиги

И что же я, прославленный Леонардо да Винчи, получил в качестве платы?

Вечную благодарность кардинала?

I complied… making that young fool of a nephew look far more heroic than nature ever intended— an act on my part far greater than anything accomplished by Hercules or Achilles.

And what have I, the divine Leonardo da Vinci, received in payment?

The cardinal’s eternal gratitude?

Мы, кажется, вне опасности, но вся команда находится на грани, как и я.

Даже уединение в мастерской Леонардо да Винчи не помогает расслабиться…

Помешаю?

We appear to be out of danger, but the entire crew is on edge and so am I.

Not even the calm of Master da Vinci’s workshop is enough to ease my mind.

Am I interrupting?

Синьора Да Винчи пригласили во дворец в качестве придворного художника.

Леонардо Да Винчи?

Микеланджело застрял под потолком в Риме.

Signor da Vinci has been invited to the palace… as the artist in residence.

Leonardo da Vinci?

Michelangelo was trapped under a ceiling in Rome.

Что-то не так, доктор?

Микеланджело, Леонардо да Винчи, Бенджамин Франклин,..

…президент Гарфилд, сэр Эдвин Лансир. И что?

George will be so disappointed. Is something wrong, Doctor?

Michelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci, Benjamin Franklin,

President Garfield, Sir Edwin Landseer.

— Она сказала…

Мона Лиза, Джоконда, картина Леонардо да Винчи, 1452-1519.

Гм.

-She said….

The Mona Lisa, La Joconde, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519.

Ahem.

Был Гирофил, физиолог, который определил, что вместилище разума — голова, а не сердце.

Был Архимед, величайший гений механики до Леонардо да Винчи.

И был астроном Птолемей, занимавшийся тем, что сейчас называется псевдонаукой астрологией.

There was Dionysius of Thrace, the man who defined the parts of speech:

nouns, verbs and so on who did for language, in a way, what Euclid did for geometry.

There was Herophilus, a physiologist who identified the brain rather than the heart as the seat of intelligence.

Я пропустил свою очередь.

Ладно, ладно, Леонардо Да Винчи.

Давай.

I missed my turn.

All right, all right, Leonardo da Vinci.

Come on.

Никогда раньше не замечал.

… картину Леонардо да Винчи, 1452-1519.

Гм.

I never noticed that before.

…painted by Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519.

Ahem.

Передо мной 95 миль по трассе, до того, как мне придется решать, куда ехать — на восток или на юг. Но эти 95 миль не будут скучными.

путеводитель указывает, что не так далеко отсюда находится место, где хранится точная копия «Тайной вечери» Леонардо

Последние два дня были запоминающимися, если не сказать большего.

I’ve got ninety five miles of Interstate before I have to decide whether I head east or south but those ninety five miles won’t be uneventful.

My guidebook tells me I’m not too far from Leonardo da Vinci’s last supper, recreated entirely in corn.

The last few days have been memorable, to say the least.

— Оо.

Кстати, официально в Италии нет гомосексуалистов, что делает Микелянджело и Леонардо да Винчи весьма

А?

— Oh.

By the way, um, officially there are no Italian homosexuals. Makes Michelangelo and Leonardo very inconvenient.

Eh?

Это эволюционное.

Я читал книгу Леонардо да Винчи.

Это означает «от Винчи». Ты об этом знал?

This is evolutionary.

I’ve been reading this book on Leonardo da Vinci.

See, that means «from Vinci.» Did you know that?

И я об этом.

Леонардо да Винчи придумал летающую машину, но не закончил.

Включив своё воображение, я доработал его план—

exactly.

In 1 540, Leonardo da Vinci designed a flying machine, but never finished it.

With some extrapolation and a bit of imagination, I’ve—

Где мой дорогой сыночек?

Где господин Леонардо да Винчи?

Дорогая, где Анри?

Where’s my darling bambino?

Where’s Mr. Leonardo da Vinci?

My darling, where’s Henri?

Показать еще

Quick Facts

Italian Celebrities Born In April

Also Known As: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Died At Age: 67

Family:

father: Ser Piero

mother: Caterina Buti del Vacca

siblings: Bartolomeo da Vinci

Born Country: Italy


Quotes By Leonardo Da Vinci


Renaissance Painters

Height: 5’9″ (175 cm), 5’9″ Males

Died on: May 2, 1519

place of death: Château du Clos Lucé, Amboise, France

Notable Alumni: Studio Of Andrea Del Verrocchio

Cause of Death: Stroke

discoveries/inventions: Viola Organista, Double Hull

More Facts

education: Studio Of Andrea Del Verrocchio

Early Years

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452, in a farmhouse near the village of Anchiano in Tuscany, Italy. Very little is known about his early life, which has been the subject of historic surmise for many years. It is found that he was born to a notary named Ser Piero and a peasant woman named Caterina. He had 12 half-siblings from his father’s four legal marriages.

It is believed that he spent the first five years of his life in Anchiano and from 1457 onwards, he lived with his uncle Francesco in the town of Vinci. He received formal education in Latin, mathematics, and geometry.

He was greatly inspired by the unique and bizarre incidents that took place in his life when he was a young boy. Incidents, such as discovering a cave in the mountains where he believed a great monster lived. This went on to inspire many of his paintings and works in the later years.

leonardo-da-vinci-32490.jpg

Continue Reading Below

The Workshop Of Verrocchio

At the age of 14, Leonardo da Vinci became an apprentice to one of the greatest painters of the time, Andrea del Verrocchio. He learned to paint and sculpt under him and was also taught the basics of metallurgy, drafting, chemistry, botany, cartography, and carpentry at his workshop.

Although he was a star student and a thorough all-rounder, Da Vinci chose art as his main profession but also pledged to use all that he learned from the workshop.

He collaborated with Verrocchio on a number of paintings, such as ‘The Baptism of Christ.’ It was while painting this piece that Verrocchio was stunned by Da Vinci’s sheer talent and vowed never to use the paint brush again because Da Vinci’s work, he believed, was far too superior.

By 1472, Da Vinci had qualified as a master in the ‘Guild of Saint Luke,’ an association of artists and doctors. He was so attached to Verrocchio that he abandoned the workshop set-up by his father and continued to collaborate with his master on a number of pieces.

One of his earliest drawings was ‘Arno Valley,’ a sketch of the valley of the same name, which was created on August 5, 1473, with the help of Verrocchio.

leonardo-da-vinci-32491.jpg

Paintings, Sculptures & Architecture

In the 1480s, he received two important painting commissions, namely ‘Saint Jerome in the Wilderness’ and ‘The Adoration of the Magi,’ both of which were never completed.

From 1478 to 1480, he painted ‘The Madonna of the Carnation,’ an oil painting with a central motif of Young Mary having Baby Jesus on her lap and a carnation in her left hand. Initially, the painting was believed to have been created by Verrocchio, but historians later agreed that it was one of Leonardo’s early works.

His next important works were ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ and ‘Madonna of the Rocks’ which were similar in style but dissimilar in composition. The former version, made from 1483 to 1486, is housed in the ‘Musée du Louvre’ and the latter, made from 1495 to 1508, is a darker version and was transferred to the ‘National Gallery of London.’

Continue Reading Below

He was commissioned to create a massive horse statue for a patron and over 70 tons of bronze was sent to him to create the horse. However, Da Vinci never used the bronze as he used clay to make the horse which was completed in 1492 and later became known as the ‘Gran Cavallo.’

One of his greatest paintings, ‘The Last Supper,’ was commissioned to him by the Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza and Leonardo worked on it from 1495 to 1498.

In the year 1499, Leonardo was appointed as the military architect and engineer and was asked to devise a plan to defend the city of Venice from naval attack.

In 1502, he entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, and created a map of Cesare’s city at a time when maps were not very common. Around the same time, he also created a town plan of Imola in order to win the dignitary’s patronage.

The same year, he produced another map, this time of Chiana Valley so as to give his benefactor a better strategic position during war. He created the map in combination with another project involving the construction of a dam for sustainable water supply in the same city.

In 1503, Leonardo went to Florence and began painting a mural of ‘The Battle of Anghiari,’ which took him two years to complete. He started painting his masterpiece ‘Mona Lisa,’ also called ‘La Gioconda,’ around the same time.

In 1506, he returned to Milan and many of his prominent pupils, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, and Marco d’Oggiono began to work with him.

Journals, Scientific Observations & Inventions

In the Renaissance period, both science and art were considered important and Leonardo was vastly ahead of his time. His works in science and engineering were as impressive as his art.

His approach to science was more observational than theoretical. He used his knowledge in Latin and mathematics to formulate and prepare a series of skeletal figures, which helped him in his scientific inventions.

Continue Reading Below

The contents of his journals made many historians believe that he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects, including a lucid treatise on human anatomy.

A man of many inventions, he was obsessed with flight and had plans for building something similar to a helicopter in 1502. He even made sketches of musical instruments and hydraulic water pumps, most of which were considered irrational at the time and were never made.

He wrote several books throughout his lifetime. One of his books ‘Codex on the Flight of Birds’ (1505) was a scientific palimpsest containing 18 folios.

Leonardo’s formal training on human anatomy began with his apprenticeship under Verrocchio. His precision as a sculptor helped him dissect human corpses with finesse. He made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words on anatomy.

He also sketched various diagrams of the human skeleton, muscles, sinews, the vascular system, and genitalia, along with a couple of postscripts. Apart from studying the human anatomy, he dissected and studied the structure of amphibians, birds, and a couple of mammals like horses and cows.

leonardo-da-vinci-32492.jpg

Major Works

‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ as well as its variation ‘Madonna of the Rocks’ were painted during 1483-1508 and are considered one of his greatest works for its significant detailing and style. Of the two versions, the latter is housed at the ‘National Gallery of London,’ while the former can be seen at the ‘Musée de Louvre.’

‘The Vitruvian Man,’ which was created by Leonardo Da Vinci around 1490, depicts two superimposed pictures of a male figure. The drawing is often referred to as the ‘Canon of Proportions’ and was drawn in honor of an architect named Vitruvius. Considered one of his important scientific-mathematical contributions, it describes the correlation of ideal human proportions with geometry, based on Vitruvius’ classical orders of architecture.

‘The Last Supper,’ painted in 1498, is one of his famous paintings and was made for the refectory of the convent of ‘Santa Maria delle Grazie’ in Milan. It is believed that Leonardo worked on this from dawn to dusk without stopping to eat. The painting is considered one of his masterpieces due to its characterization and design. Although the original painting is now almost ruined, it remains as one of his highly reproduced works of art.

Continue Reading Below

‘The Mona Lisa’ is considered Da Vinci’s magnum opus. Although he was never satisfied with the work, he was extremely attached to it and never delivered it to its commissioner. For him, ‘The Mona Lisa’ was his attempt at excellence and he carried it with him wherever he traveled, keeping it with him till the end of his life. Today, the painting is housed at the ‘Musée de Louvre’ and is regarded as a priceless national treasure.

Leonardo da Vinci maintained diaries which contained a whopping 13,000 pages of scientific notes and drawings on natural philosophy, life, and travels. These diaries, which contain everything about Da Vinci’s life and exploits, are still preserved in major collections at ‘Windsor Castle,’ ‘Louvre,’ ‘The British Library,’ and ‘Biblioteca Nacional de Espana.’

Personal Life

It is said that Leonardo learned to play a musical instrument called the lyre when he was a child and began to compose his own tunes. It is also believed that the Duke of Milan preferred Leonardo’s musical performances over his own court musicians as his technique, talent, and skill were matchless.

Leonardo Da Vinci had many friends and patrons, such as Luca Pacioli, Cesare Borgia, Isabella d’Este, and Niccolo Machiavelli, who were all renowned in their respective fields.

Leonardo was a nature enthusiast, mainly because he was surrounded by trees, mountains, and rivers as a child. This may have also inspired many of his landscape works.

He was not attracted to women but developed a close friendship with his patrons, Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters, Isabella and Beatrice.

His sexuality was often the subject of speculation for many. Though the curiosity died in the 16th century, it was revived once again by Sigmund Freud. It is believed that he developed passionate feelings for his male pupils and friends and these relationships were mostly erotic in nature. This eroticism has been exhibited in a couple of his paintings like ‘John the Baptist’ and ‘Bacchus.’

Court records belonging to the year 1476 show that Leonardo and three other men were charged with sodomy in an incident involving a notorious male prostitute. It is also believed that one of the men involved in the incident was related to the affluent Medici family.

He is described by early biographers as a man with great personal appeal, kindness, and generosity. It is also said that he was well-loved by his contemporaries.

Continue Reading Below

He passed away at Clos Luce in a manor house, where he spent the last three years of his life.

Legacy

Leonardo Da Vinci’s legacy lies in the diversity of his knowledge and his broad range of disciplines that set him apart from the rest of his contemporaries. More than his paintings, it is his notebooks, which have documented everything he experienced, that give us valuable insights into his life and time.

All of his drawings were exported to England by Charles II and have been kept in the ‘Royal Collection’ since the late 17th century. Of his paintings, only 15 have survived and are dispersed around the world.

Leonardo treated his pupils with great indulgence and after his death, many of them like Francesco Melzi, Gian Giacomo Caprotti, and Marco d’Oggiono inherited his artistic works and scientific manuscripts.

Many books, such as ‘The Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci,’ ‘Leonardo Da Vinci,’ ‘Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci,’ and ‘Masters in art. Leonardo Da Vinci,’ have been written in his honor.

Many movies and historical documentaries based on this great personality were also made. Some of them include ‘Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure,’ ‘The Life of Leonardo da Vinci,’ and ‘Great Artists with Tim Marlow- Leonardo.’

The ‘Leonardo da Vinci Award’ was established in 1975 by the ‘Rotary Club of Florence.’ It is presented to young people involved in the study of arts, technology, literature, and science.

The ‘Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts’ was established as a means to acknowledge those who offer a confident message to mankind through art.

Trivia

This famous Renaissance man was one of the first artists to use oil paints for his art works instead of the usual egg tempera.

Considering the era and the place he lived in, this renowned painter, sculptor, and polymath was quite an exception as he chose to be a vegetarian for humanitarian reasons.

This famous polymath of the Renaissance was ambidextrous while writing. However, he painted with his right hand.

He wrote everything in mirror image form so that his works could not be copied by others.

This famous personality used to dig graveyards and steal corpses at night to study human anatomy.

It took this painter 10 years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips.

‘The Mona Lisa’ is believed to be the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a merchant.

It is believed that Leonardo da Vinci was a prolific draftsman as he kept journals of all his paintings in the form of small yet detailed sketches and drawings.

Художник – painter [ˈpeɪntə]

искусство – art [ɑːt]

ученый – scientist [ˈsaɪəntɪst]

картина – picture [ˈpɪktʃə]

В начале творческого пути Леонардо практически все свое время посвящал работе над картинами. At the beginning of his career, Leonardo devoted almost all his time to working on paintings.

Леонардо был великим изобретателем. Леонардо был великим изобретателем.

За два года до смерти у художника онемела правая рука, ему было трудно самостоятельно передвигаться. Two years before his death, the artist had a numb right hand; it was difficult for him to move independently.

В его честь назвали одну из черепашек ниндзя. One of the ninja turtles was named after him.

Сочинение

Леонардо да Винчи родился 15 апреля 1452 года в селении Анкиато вблизи города Винчи (отсюда и произошла приставка к его фамилии). Отец и мать мальчика не были женаты, поэтому первые годы Леонардо провел с матерью. Вскоре отец, служивший нотариусом, забрал его к себе в семью.

Попытки впечатлить отца, добиться признательности – отразились на характере мастера.

В 1466 году да Винчи поступил подмастерьем в мастерскую художника Верроккьо во Флоренции. В это время Леонардо увлекся рисованием, скульптурой и моделированием, изучал металлургию, химию, черчение, осваивал работу с гипсом, кожей, металлом. В 1473 году да Винчи получил квалификацию мастера в Гильдии Святого Луки.

Леонардо – очень популярная фигура в культуре постмодерна.

Перевод:

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Ankiato near the city of Vinci (from which the prefix to his name originated). The boy’s father and mother were not married, so Leonardo spent his early years with his mother. Soon the father, who served as a notary, took him into his family.

Attempts to impress the father, to achieve gratitude – were reflected in the nature of the master.

In 1466, da Vinci entered as an apprentice in the studio of the artist Verrocchio in Florence. At this time, Leonardo became interested in drawing, sculpture and modeling, studied metallurgy, chemistry, drawing, mastered the work with gypsum, leather, metal. In 1473, da Vinci was qualified as a master in the Guild of St. Luke.

Leonardo is a very popular figure in the postmodern culture.

Диалог

– Знакомо ли вам творчество величайшего художника Леонардо да Винчи?

– Да.

– А знаете ли вы, что он был не только великим живописцем, но и великим математиком, механиком и инженером, которому обязаны важными открытиями самые разнообразные отрасли физики?

– Да, я слышал, что Леонардо да Винчи сделал огромный вклад в инженерию и гидравлику, ученый изобрел велосипед, колесцовый замок, прожектор, катапульту и др.

Перевод:

– Do you know the work of the greatest artist Leonardo da Vinci?

– Yes.

– Did you know that he was not only a great painter, but also a great mathematician, mechanic and engineer, to whom the most varied branches of physics owe important discoveries?

– Yes, I heard that Leonardo da Vinci made a huge contribution to engineering and hydraulics, the scientist invented a bicycle, wheel lock, searchlight, catapult, etc.

  • Как пишется лелеял долго
  • Как пишется крашеный подоконник
  • Как пишется лекарство или лекарства
  • Как пишется крашенный лаком пол
  • Как пишется краш на английском сленге