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 :. | anna sjalv tredje | Lorenzo de Medici between Antonio Pucci and Francesco Sassetti, with Giulio de Medici, fresco by Ghirlandaio | Profiles of a young and an old man | The embryo in the Uterus | Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci sg |
Related Artists:
Claesz Aert
Leiden 1498-1564
Caspar van Wittel
(born Caspar Adriaensz. van Wittel, later a.k.a. Gaspare Vanvitelli, Gasparo degli Occhiali) (1653 - September 13, 1736) was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter. Van Wittel was born in Amersfoort. He learned painting first from Thomas Jansz van Veenendaal for 4 or 5 years and then from Matthias Withoos for 7 years, until Withoos left Amersfoort. In Amersfoort, he likely was exposed to Dutch landscape artists such as Jan van der Heyden and Gerrit Berckheyde. His first extant works were made in Hoorn in 1672, but he relocated to Rome with his family ca. 1675 and made his career there. Like his former teacher, he joined the Bentvueghels with the nickname "Piktoors" or "Toorts van Amersfoort"(torch of Amersfort). He married in Rome in 1697, and stayed most of his life in that city, though, between 1694 and 1710, he toured Italy and painted in places like Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, Milan, Piacenza and Naples. He is one of the principal painters of topographical views known as vedute. Gaspar van Wittel died in Rome. His son Luigi would become a famous architect and also carries the italianized family name of Vanvitelli. In Luigi's biography is written that his father was born in July 1656, but Van Wittel's grave in Rome states that he died at the age of 83 in 1736.
Manuel da Costa Ataide
(1762 to 1830), was a Brazilian painter, sculptor, gilder and teacher. He was an important artist of the baroque school in Minas Gerais and had a major influence on painting in the region, with many students and followers. His method of composition, particularly in perspective works on church ceilings, continued to be used until the middle of the nineteenth century. Contemporary documents often refer to him as a teacher of painting. In 1818 Ataede tried without success to obtain official permission to found an art school in Mariana, his home town. He owned technical manuals and theoretical tracts such as Andrea Pozzo's "Perspectivae Pictorum Architectorum" from which he must have studied technique. His art is characterised by the use of bright colours, especially blue. He was a contemporary and colleague of Antonio Francisco Lisboa (Aleijadinho). In the period 1781 to 1818 he completed and gilded Aleijadinhoes images for the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas.