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 a Flower | Madonna in the rock grotto | Virgin of the Rocks | Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist (mk08) | The Anunciacion |
Related Artists:
James hardy jnr.
1801-1879
Paul von Franken
(1818- 1884 ) - Painter painted Paul von Franken. View of Tiflis in 1866
Gerhard von Kugelgen
Franz Gerhard von Kegelgen (February 26, 1772 - March 27, 1820) was a German painter, noted for his portraits and history paintings. He was a professor at the Academy of Arts in Dresden and a member of both the Prussian and Russian Academies of Arts. His twin brother, Karl von Kegelgen, was also a painter of note. Gerhard von Kegelgen was born at Bacharach am Rhein. After leaving school in 1789, he studied painting in Koblenz. Beginning in 1791, he worked in Bonn, where he painted portraits of Elector Archduke Maximilian Franz of Austria, minister Ferdinand August von Spiegel zum Desenberg, and the Earl of Waldstein. Afterwards, Gerhard von Kegelgen and his brother undertook an educational journey to Rome, Munich and Riga, which was financed by Maximilian Franz of Habsburg. In 1800, Kegelgen married Helene Marie Zoege von Manteuffel. They had three children together. His first son, Wilhelm was born in Saint Petersburg in 1802, and also grew up to become a painter. The other children were Gerhard (born 1806), and Adelheid (born 1808).