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 :. | Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci | Lady with Emine | John the Baptist | The Virgin of the Rocks | Christ's Head |
Related Artists:
Franz Thomas Low
Lived in 18th centry.
Guy Rose
1867-1925 Guy Rose Galleries Guy Rose (3 March 1867?C17 November 1925) was an American Impressionist painter who is recognized as one of California's top impressionist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Guy Orlando Rose was born March 3, 1867 in San Gabriel, California. He was the seventh child of Leonard John Rose and Amanda Jones Rose. His father was a prominent California senator. He and his wife raised their large family on an expansive Southern California ranch and vineyard?? the San Gabriel Valley town of Rosemead bears the family name. In 1876 young Guy Rose was accidentally shot in the face during a hunting trip with his brothers. While recuperating he began to sketch and use watercolors and oil paints. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1884 and moved to San Francisco where he did his art training at the California School of Design. In September 12, 1888, Rose enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris and studied with Benjamin-Constant, Jules Lefebvre, Lucien Doucet and Jean-Paul Laurens while in Paris. In 1888-89, he won a scholarship at the Academie Delacluse. He met fellow students Frank Vincent and Frederick Melville at the Academie Julian -- Frank Vincent and Guy Rose were to remain lifelong friends. Rose lived New York, New York in the 1890s and illustrated for "Harper's," "Scribners," and "Century". Choosing to return to France in 1899, he and his wife Ethel Rose bought a cottage at Giverny. In 1900 he resided in Paris and spent the winter in Briska, Algeria where he painted three known paintings. From 1904 to 1912 husband and wife lived in Giverny and his works from this period show the influence of "the master" Claude Monet, who became his friend and mentor. In 1913-1914 the Roses summered in and held an outdoor sketching school at Narragansett, Rhode Island. Suffering on and off again from the effects of lead poisoning, Rose and his wife moved permanently to Los Angeles, California in 1914. In Los Angeles, Guy Rose taught and served as Director of the Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena. In 1921 he suffered a debilitating stroke that left him paralyzed. Guy Rose died in Pasadena, California on November 17, 1925. In 1926 the Stendahl Gallery held a memorial exhibition of his works.
Henry Fuseli
Swiss-born British Romantic Painter, 1741-1825 Henry Fuseli was the first artist to command the epic literature and heroic history of northern Europe as well as the Mediterranean countries, and by his wide reading and close study of the Old Masters he equipped himself to extend the scope of history painting far beyond the traditional limits of the Bible and classical antiquity. In his speculative boldness he was a child of the Enlightenment, but he was also a fierce critic of sterile rationalism and preached the gospel of the imagination with religious fervor. Henry Fuseli was born Johann Heinrich F??ssli (in 1764 he Anglicized his name) in Zurich on Feb. 6, 1741, the son of a painter with strong religious convictions who destined him for the Zwinglian ministry. After a period of intensive theological study Fuseli was ordained in 1761 and preached his first sermon. He was a friend of Johann Kaspar Lavater, whose Aphorisms on Man he later translated into English from manuscript. Fuseli became the favorite disciple of Johann Jakob Bodmer, who in 1740 had published an essay on the wonderful in poetry that led to a literary war with Johann Christoph Gottsched in Germany and the formation of a revolutionary Swiss school which used English literature, especially Milton and Shakespeare, as a spearhead in promoting romanticism.