Leonardo da Vinci
(1452 - 1519) |
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Portraits, Genre Subjects, Secular Narratives Art Work
| Name: |
Leonardo da Vinci |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
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| Nationality: |
Italian |
| Birth: |
1452 |
| Death: |
1519 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Portraits, Genre Subjects, Secular Narratives |
| Medium: |
Oil on panel, Frescos |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
Draughtsman
Designer |
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Biography
| Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the renaissance man. da Vinci was the linchpin of the High Renaissance, with a dizzying array of talents embracing art and science. His name comes from Vinci, a town in Tuscany close to the place where he was born. He was the illegitimate son of a wellrespected local notary and a peasant girt. His mother married someone else when Leonardo was still very young, but the boy's father raised the child on the family estate. Recognizing his son's artistic talent, he apprenticed him to the Florentine sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. This was the perfect start for someone with such a multifaceted creativity because del Verrocchio's workshop trained apprentices in a wide range of artistic and technical skills. The late 1470s saw Leonardo working as an independent artist in Florence and receiving promising commissions. He also showed signs of the innovations that would come to define much of High Renaissance art and influence so many painters and sculptors. This was especially true of his unique ability to organize space creatively and to plan totally harmonious, deceptively simple compositions, as seen in his unfinished Adoration of the Magi (started c.1481). The artist headed next for Milan, living and working there between 1482 and 1499. Why Leonardo left Florence remains a mystery. He may have felt Duke Ludovico Sforza's Milanese court offered better opportunities to flex his increasing range of artistic muscles. Prestigious work consistently came his way, including the commission that produced his two Virgin oftheRocks {1483- 1486 and c.1491-1508) altarpieces. Elegant and well mannered, Leonardo became well liked and carved himself out a varied career, producing paintings and sculptures, designing fortifications, and advising on architectural and engineering projects. Leonardo also produced numerous fascinating drawings. ' Much has been made of his sketched ideas that seem to be well ahead of their time, ' such as his famous sketch of what appears to be a helicopter. Although research suggests that his designs are actually more rooted in their era than had been previously imagined, they still show a remarkably inventive mind. This period also produced one of the world's best-loved and most admired works: The Last Supper (c.1495-1498). He painted this fresco for the refectory of Milan's Santa Maria delle Grazie convent. Here Leonardo showed the traits that would influence so many other artists, including Raphael and Sir Peter Paul Rubens. These included the human psychology he was able to inject into paintings, his talent for portraiture and gesture (seen in each individual disciple), his mastery of clear compositional organization and arrangement of groups, and his understanding of perspective–the painting is conceived to appear like a three-dimensional upper gallery off the refectory wall. Leonardo also indulged his love of technical innovation and experimentation. He used a fresco method of his own devising that unfortunately meant that the painting deteriorated prematurely. An incredible range of talents At the start of the 1500s, Leonardo was based in Florence, where he garnered great acclaim, although he seemed more absorbed by mathematical studies than by painting. He began the Mono Lisa (c 1503-1506), with her serene, famously enigmatic smile, conjuring her form out of his expert sfumato blending technique. The pyramidal composition of the Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c.1510) shows him developing a mastery of tight but expressive, dynamic figure grouping. In other fields, he was also unstoppable. His many roles included chief surveyor, engineer, and mapmaker to the Borgia familystudying birds' flight patterns; devising hydraulic schemes; analyzing the science of painting; and dissecting human bodies to glean in-depth knowledge of human anatomy. In 1508 the artist began a happy period in Milan. He acted as architectural consultant for the city's French governor and for King Louis XII. In 1513 political developments forced Leonardo to move to Rome at a time of exciting artistic change However, he found little challenging work and left Italy for France in 1516. Still working on his scientific studies and writings until the end, he died in Clos Luce manor house and was buried in French soil in Amboise. |
Samples of Work
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