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 :. | Female head (La Scapigliata) wt | Madonna in the rock grottos | Madonna and Child with St Anne and the Young St John | Anatomy of the Schadels | The Annunciation |
Related Artists:
Abraham Janssens
van Nuyssen (ca. 1567/1576 - 1632) was a Flemish Baroque painter. He was born at Antwerp, in a year variously reported between 1567 and 1576. He studied under Jan Snellinck, was a master in 1602, and in 1607 was dean of the master-painters. He died in the city of his birth. Till the appearance of Rubens he was considered perhaps the best historical painter of his time. The styles of the two artists are not unalike. In correctness of drawing Janssens excelled his great contemporary; in bold composition and in treatment of the nude he equalled him; but in faculty of color and in general freedom of disposition and touch he fell far short. A master of chiaroscuro, he gratified his taste for strong contrasts of light and shade in his torchlights and similar effects. Good examples of this master are to be seen in the Antwerp museum and the Vienna gallery. The stories of his jealousy of Rubens and of his dissolute life are quite unfounded. His students include Gerard Seghers and Theodoor Rombouts.
Francisco de Zurbaran
1598-1664 Spanish Francisco de Zurbaran Galleries Spanish baroque painter, active mainly at Llerena, Madrid, and Seville. He worked mostly for ecclesiastical patrons. His early paintings, including Crucifixion (1627; Art Inst., Chicago), St. Michael (Metropolitan Mus.), and St. Francis (City Art Museum, St. Louis), often suggest the austere simplicity of wooden sculpture. The figures, placed close to the picture surface, are strongly modeled in dramatic light against dark backgrounds, indicating the influence of Caravaggio. They were clearly painted as altarpieces or devotional objects. In the 1630s the realistic style seen in his famous Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas (1631; Seville) yields to a more mystical expression in works such as the Adoration of the Shepherds (1638; Grenoble); in this decade he was influenced by Ribera figural types and rapid brushwork. While in Seville, Zurbur??n was clearly influenced by Velazquez. After c.1640 the simple power of Zurbaran work lessened as Murillo influence on his painting increased (e.g., Virgin and Child with St. John, Fine Arts Gall., San Diego, Calif.). There are works by Zurbar??n in the Hispanic Society of America, New York City; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art..
bror hjorth
Bror Hjorth, född 22 april 1894 i Marma, död 21 maj 1968 i Uppsala, var en svensk konstnär. Bror Hjorth var son till skogsvaktaren Emil Johanzon och Charlotta Johansdotter. Han är en av Sveriges mest kända skulptörer och målare. Han var lärare i teckning vid Konsthögskolan 1949 -- 1959, där han hade bland annat Kerstin Kjellberg-Jacobsson som elev. Han bosatte sig efter studietiden i Uppsala. Han uppförde där sitt ateljehus i Kåbo, Bror Hjorths Hus, som numera är museum. Bror Hjorth erhöll Sergelpriset 1955. Under några år i början av 1930-talet drev Bror Hjorth tillsammans med Nils Möllerberg en skulpturskola i Stockholm. Bror Hjorth ligger begravd på kyrkogården i Björklinge.