Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Florentine Renaissance man, genius, artist in all media, architect, military engineer. Possibly the most brilliantly creative man in European history, he advertised himself, first of all, as a military engineer. In a famous letter dated about 1481 to Ludovico Sforza, of which a copy survives in the Codice Atlantico in Milan, Leonardo asks for employment in that capacity. He had plans for bridges, very light and strong, and plans for destroying those of the enemy. He knew how to cut off water to besieged fortifications, and how to construct bridges, mantlets, scaling ladders, and other instruments. He designed cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, designed to fire small stones, almost in the manner of hail??grape- or case-shot (see ammunition, artillery). He offered cannon of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use and, where it is not possible to employ cannon ?? catapults, mangonels and trabocchi and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. And he said he made armoured cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with their artillery ?? and behind them the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed, and without any opposition. He also offered to design ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke. The large number of surviving drawings and notes on military art show that Leonardo claims were not without foundation, although most date from after the Sforza letter. Most of the drawings, including giant crossbows (see bows), appear to be improvements on existing machines rather than new inventions. One exception is the drawing of a tank dating from 1485-8 now in the British Museum??a flattened cone, propelled from inside by crankshafts, firing guns. Another design in the British Museum, for a machine with scythes revolving in the horizontal plane, dismembering bodies as it goes, is gruesomely fanciful. Most of the other drawings are in the Codice Atlantico in Milan but some are in the Royal Libraries at Windsor and Turin, in Venice, or the Louvre and the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Two ingenious machines for continuously firing arrows, machine-gun style, powered by a treadmill are shown in the Codice Atlantico. A number of other sketches of bridges, water pumps, and canals could be for military or civil purposes: dual use technology. Leonardo lived at a time when the first artillery fortifications were appearing and the Codice Atlantico contains sketches of ingenious fortifications combining bastions, round towers, and truncated cones. Models constructed from the drawings and photographed in Calvi works reveal forts which would have looked strikingly modern in the 19th century, and might even feature in science fiction films today. On 18 August 1502 Cesare Borgia appointed Leonardo as his Military Engineer General, although no known building by Leonardo exists. Leonardo was also fascinated by flight. Thirteen pages with drawings for man-powered aeroplanes survive and there is one design for a helicoidal helicopter. Leonardo later realized the inadequacy of the power a man could generate and turned his attention to aerofoils. Had his enormous abilities been concentrated on one thing, he might have invented the modern glider.   Related Paintings of LEONARDO da Vinci :. | Madonna with the Yarnwinder after 1510 | Waiter flat anatomy of the shoulder | The adoration of the Konige | La Vierge,l'Enfant Jesus et sainte Anne | Mona Lisa |
Related Artists:
Julius Ludwig Friedrich Runge
painted Morgenstimmung an der Adria mit Fischerbooten und Langustenfischern. Im Vordergrund felsige Kuste in
Tadeusz Makowski
(21 January 1882 - 1 November 1932) was a prominent Polish painter active in France for most of his life. He was born in Oświęcim. Makowski attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakew. He studied under Jan Stanisławski and Jezef Mehoffer. In 1909, he departed for Paris. Makowski started off as a landscape painter but then shifted towards Post-Impressionism and Cubism. However, he is arguably most famous for his rural landscape paintings. He met Pablo Picasso,who was his good friend.
Alonso Berruguete
(Alonso Berruguete) (c. 1488 - 1561) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and architect. He is considered to be the most important sculptor of the Spanish Renaissance, and is known for his emotive sculptures depicting religious ecstasy or torment. Born in the town of Paredes de Nava, Berrugete studied art under the tutelage of his father, the painter Pedro Berruguete. Following his father's death in 1504, Berruguete travelled to Italy to continue with his study of art, spending most of his time in Florence and Rome. It is here that he studied sculpture under the Italian Master, Michelangelo. His paintings produced in Italy showed a mannerist influence, with his art being compared with contemporaries such as Jacopo Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Berruguete returned to Spain in 1517, and in 1518, was appointed to the position of court painter and sculptor by Charles V of Spain. From this point in his career forward, Berruguete concentrated on sculpture. Works of his include an altar piece at the Irish college in Salamanca (1529-1533), choir stalls at the Cathedral of Toledo (1539-1543) and a tomb for the Archbishop of Toledo Juan de Tavera at the hospital that Tavera founded, the hospital of St. John the Baptist in Toledo (1552-1561).