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 :. | The Annunciation | Mona Lisa | The Virgin of the rocks | The Annunciation | la scapigliata |
Related Artists:
Leonardo Alenza Y Nieto
b Madrid, 6 Nov 1807; d Madrid, 30 June 1845 Spanish painter and illustrator. He studied at the Real Academia de S Fernando, Madrid, under Juan Antonio Ribera y Fern?ndez and Jos? de Madrazo y Agudo. He worked independently of court circles and achieved some fame but nevertheless died in such poverty that his burial was paid for by friends. He is often described as the last of the followers of Goya, in whose Caprichos and drawings he found inspiration for the genre scenes for which he became best known. Of these scenes of everyday life and customs the more interesting include The Beating (Madrid, Cas?n Buen Retiro) and Galician with Puppets (c. 1835; Madrid, Cas?n Buen Retiro; see SPAIN, fig. 17). Alenza y Nieto's numerous drawings include the illustrations for Alain-Ren? Lesage's Gil Blas (Madrid, 1840), for an edition of the poems of Francisco de Quevedo published by Castello and for the reviews Semanario pintoresco and El Reflejo. The painting Triumph of David
Jean Baptiste Oudry
French Baroque Era Painter, 1686-1755 French painter. He was the principal animal painter and one of the foremost decorative painters during the first half of Louis XVs reign. After initial training as a portrait painter, he concentrated on still-lifes; by the 1720s he had also begun to establish himself as a specialist in hunting scenes, game-pieces and portraits of animals. He ran an active workshop, often keeping his best originals for years and selling copies and (more or less autograph) variants. In the 1730s he was most active as a tapestry designer, making numerous designs for the royal tapestry works of Beauvais and the Gobelins, and he continued to produce his brilliantly painted hunts, still-lifes and studies of animals and birds to the end of his career.
Giulio Carpioni
(1613 - 29 January 1678) was an Italian painter and etcher of the early Baroque era. Born probably in Venice, Carpioni studied under Alessandro Varotari (il Padovanino) and was also influenced by the work of Simone Cantarini, Carlo Saraceni and Jean Leclerc. He came into contact with Lombard art after a brief visit to Bergamo in 1631. In 1638 he settled in Vicenza and executed most of his work there. He painted history and bacchanals, and also sacred subjects of a small size, many of which are to be seen in the churches in the Venetian states. Paintings by him may be seen in the Galleries of Augsburg, Dresden, Vienna, Modena, and Florence. He was also an etcher; his best plates being St. Anthony of Padua, Christ on the Mount of Olives, The Virgin reading, and The Virgin with Rosary. He died at Verona. Carlo Carpioni, his son, was also a painter. Among his important works are the Apotheosis of the Dolfin family (1647) and the Allegory of the Grimani Family (1651), and altarpiece of Sant'Antonio da Padova, a Virgin and two saints, and a Triumph of Silenus in the Gallerie dell Accademia of Venice. He painted a series of canvases for the Oratory of San Nicola da Tolentino in Vicenza.