In the traditional view, Leonardo da Vinci is a man who alternates several professions: architect, painter, sculptor, anatomist, engineer, writer.
He was invited to Milan as an architect, to Rome as an engineer. He designed the dome Milan Cathedral and worked on hydraulics. Lodovico Moro ordered him a giant bronze statue, the Florentines ordered a huge painting “The Battle of Anghiari” (both were not completed, abandoned halfway). In the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, he painted a fresco " last supper", the soil of which began to flow (however, the fresco was spared from another misfortune - it survived the British bombs of World War II). He was the first artist in the world to master oil painting (the first is said to be the Sicilian Antonello, who brought the recipe from Burgundy; however, Leonardo came to oil painting with his own thoughts in parallel, his technique is different from that of Antonello da Messina). Leonardo was engaged (“for himself,” as they would say today) in oil painting on boards; conducted experiments with paints, invented the sfumato technique, the technical aspects of which are unknown. They say that he took the board with the “Mona Lisa” with him everywhere - he loved to add another stroke, another light touch to what he had done. He painted a few paintings - and all the paintings are mysterious, they all require decoding. He was also a chemist, his original oil paints testify to the success of his experiments: making oil paint from a mineral is chemistry, after all. However, it should be noted that these paints, used for Florentine wall painting, failed him - they spread. His engineering inventions are confirmed in modern mechanics, that is, five hundred years later. However, during his lifetime, not one of the inventions found incarnation; however, the double helix staircase of the Chateau de Francis in Chambord can be considered the first illustration of DNA and an unprecedented staircase design in principle. Leonardo planned - and no less - to write 120 books; He didn’t write a single book, he left manuscripts and fragments. He was a good anatomist - he took part in autopsies, described internal organs, but did not become a doctor. However, he made several medical discoveries: for example, he was the first to notice the phenomenon of blood vessels narrowing due to old age, which leads to a slowdown in blood flow in the heart; called the limestone layer deposited on the walls of vessels (salt, etc.) “aging powder.” He did not become a doctor, but his punctual knowledge of the human body was useful in his drawings and paintings. He was going to build an aircraft and studied birds. But the apparatus was built (similar to his drawings) only after five hundred years; Moreover, both Tatlin and the American engineers followed his path, repeating his schemes. His work was characterized by understatement, he left things unfinished, and abandoned a task (even a completed order) easily.
Egregious cases, such as the bronze equestrian statue in Milan or the large oil painting on the theme of the adoration of the Magi, commissioned by the monastery of San Donato in Florence, provoked bad publicity. Leonardo easily left in Florence an unfinished masterpiece, a huge board, two and a half meters square on the side. Preparing a board of this size for painting is a gigantic labor in itself; the work already done is perfect and beautiful; There was very little left to bring the picture to completion; unexpectedly Leonardo left for Milan, taking with him the model of the lyre he had constructed, which he alone knew how to play. The contract for the painting was formally drawn up for two and a half years (from 1481 to 1483), Leonardo could have returned to work, but he returned to Florence after 18 years. The monks were offended. The inability to complete the work was a common reproach of Leonardo. Moving from city to city (and in fact from state to state), Leonardo left behind great projects and little that was actually accomplished and brought to completion. They say that Michelangelo reproached his old rival with these very words (Leonardo was older in years). Others believe that the scattered nature of his studies, the inability to concentrate on one subject did not allow Leonardo to succeed fully in any of his studies. Others, on the contrary, are sure that a genius is a genius in everything; the phenomenon of Leonardo began to denote interest in all phenomena of the world, and the specific occupation of the genius no longer matters.
It is difficult to agree with this position (both in its negative and positive aspects. Leonardo was not at all an eclecticist and had a very specific profession - he was a painter. The products of professional labor are obvious, they are easy to list: “La Gioconda”, “Benois Madonna”, “Madonna Litta”, “John the Baptist”, “Bacchus”, “Lady with an Ermine”, “Annunciation”, “Saint Jerome”, “Adoration of the Magi”, “St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child”, “Last Supper”, “ Madonna in the Grotto." There are not very many paintings, but they are busy. Piet Mondrian or Maurice Vlaminck painted more paintings than Leonardo da Vinci, but, you see, the work expended by the masters is unequal. Jan Vermeer, Pieter Bruegel, and Matthias Grunewald also have few paintings.
Leonardo da Vinci did not mix professions at all, and this must be clearly stated. There was only one profession - painting; and he insisted on the advantages of painting over other pursuits. He was engaged in painting, and all side activities are preparatory work for painting work. He simply viewed painting in its ideal form - as the queen of all arts and crafts. To do quality painting, you need to be an engineer and a musician - what is not clear here?
It is no longer a revelation for us that Cezanne united two disciplines into one: painting and drawing became a single process for Cezanne (for the eighteenth century, such a combination of two principles into one was an impossible blasphemy); We understand Cezanne’s phrase “as you write, you draw” - a phrase that a representative of the Bolognese school would not be able to understand. Cézanne meant that the very process of applying color to a depicted object can become not the painting of a form, but the formation of a form, that is, drawing. Now imagine that, just as Cezanne combined the process of painting and drawing into one whole, Leonardo combined painting, sculpture, anatomy, engineering and architecture into one discipline. It is difficult to name a discipline formed from the combination of these dissimilar activities, but Leonardo da Vinci believed that the final product was painting, an oil painting.
It would not be out of place to ask: why did Leonardo gain the fame of a world genius, superior to everyone else, why are his paintings considered unsurpassed masterpieces, although at the same time masters are working with him who are hardly inferior to him in plastic or coloristic talent? Hugo van der Goes, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck - these are all painters, undoubtedly brilliant, and their pictorial heritage, by the way, is much more extensive than that of Leonardo. And yet, the name Leonardo stands immeasurably higher than any of the listed masters. There is a secret, probably a simple and easily guessed secret; but you need to understand it.
A painting, according to Leonardo, is not a decoration of a home; he was not trying to see the picture on the wall. Things went well in Santa Maria delle Grazie, he painted a fresco; and left Florence without finishing the work. The picture is also not evidence of faith (and cannot be so, since the purpose of the picture is analysis, and scientific analysis contradicts faith). A picture is painted for oneself - in the process of painting one gets to know the world. The picture is a kind of project of a community life, even a project of an ideal state (like Plato’s), a conglomeration of human efforts.
To paraphrase Cézanne, in relation to Leonardo’s method it should be said: while you are doing engineering work, you are drawing, while you are building a building, you are drawing, while you are studying anatomy, you are drawing, while you are pouring bronze, while you are drawing drawings,
while you are writing treatises, while you are reading sermons, you are painting; you comprehend the world from different sides, and all this is summed up in drawing with paints, all together is painting.
He considered painting to be the pinnacle of all arts, the acme of human activity. Painting with oil paints (he wrote about this very clearly, there can be no double interpretation) accumulates a lot of knowledge and allows you to comprehend the world with a single glance - this is the advantage of painting over music, and over poetry, and even over philosophy. Painting in Leonardo’s view is by no means a handmaiden of philosophical discourse, not an illustration of other people’s concepts; on the contrary, painting is the ultimate expression of the sum of human knowledge. Actually, painting represents the very eidos that Neoplatonists (slightly correcting Plato’s idea) considered Logos. Painting, according to Leonardo, is the Logos visibly revealed to us.
This reasoning is all the more valuable today because in our era, when we abolish painting, replacing it with installation or video art, we do not take into account the fact that initially painting is not a narrow specialization at all, but, on the contrary, a conglomerate of skills, it is a discipline that includes several different, including installation, of course. Engineering knowledge, music, prose and architecture, philosophy and medicine are the essence of the emanation of a single Logos, an integral eidos, which is revealed to us in the form of a perfect picture. The painting “La Gioconda” does not contradict the fortifications and diving suits, but the Gioconda seems to exude the knowledge that the fortifications and diving suits produce.
The above explains the cold calm with which Leonardo approached the work of a painter. His paintings are unemotional; they radiate a kind of tension, but this is not religious delight, not romantic passion.
This is a kind of calm greatness, even, perhaps, indifferently calm. Expecting a passionate, ecstatic, sloppy brushstroke from Leonardo’s painting is as absurd as expecting Dante to stumble in triple rhyme or Plato to sacrifice the construction of the state for the sake of the poet’s glory. It is common to blame Leonardo for the fact that, while creating gentle images of Madonnas, he simultaneously created the design of fortification machines or devices for chariots (sickles for the outside of the chariot at the level of the wheels), which cut the legs of the enemy’s horses. The widespread assertion of Leonardo’s “indifferent cruelty” also calls into question the spirituality of his paintings.
Leonardo’s “cruelty” is of the same nature as Machiavelli’s “cynicism”; ideas about such are based on the insufficient information of the observer. Both Leonardo and Machiavelli are extremely rational people, cold, unemotional - that’s true.
The characters of Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli have a lot in common, which is not surprising: both Florentines lived at the same time, the world was changing rapidly before their eyes - they were looking for a foothold to avoid catastrophe. The idea of a struggle for absolute power at any cost (this is how “The Prince” is often interpreted) and accusations of Machiavelli’s treachery almost always come from those people who have never looked into Machiavelli’s works and have no idea why they were written. “Discourses on the First Decade of Titus” provides a different view of government than “The Prince,” and friendship with the staunch confederate Guicciardini (an opponent of absolute power in Italy) calls into question the predilection for absolutism. Machiavelli did not glorify Cesare Borgia at all (it is customary to say that “The Prince” is the justification of the insidious Borgia), he only described the pattern of the rise of this type of power in the conditions of contemporary Italy. The fire of Savonarola (and Machiavelli observed the entire evolution: oligarchy-signoria-republic of Jesus Christ-occupation of Charles VIII) forced him to look for a design that is practical. Machiavelli's piles should be perceived in all their contradictions; that is, the way Leonardo's paintings should be perceived.
In those years, the main pain of humanists was the thought of the state - how to organize society so that democracy does not turn into tyranny? The humanists who studied antiquity had two examples: Sparta, which maintained a barracks democracy with elected kings for 800 years, and Athens, where periods of freedom and democratic laws alternated with tyranny, transferring power by inheritance, and with the rule of oligarchs. How to build a state without infringing on rights and providing the opportunity for development? The diversity of oligarchies and signories in Italy led to some variety of tyrannies (compare the 20th century with variants of totalitarian dictatorships), but a general recipe was required on how to avoid the infection corroding society. Machiavelli composed texts of praise to the cruel Romulus (he gave credit to Romulus, not Borgia) on the basis that Romulus avoided arbitrary interpretations of statehood. Florence (the birthplace of Leonardo and Machiavelli) constantly changed its structure: Botticelli compared it with the ever-transforming Venus - in his time it is necessary to say more about this picture - Leonardo painted “The Lady with an Ermine”, a picture in which the Madonna, instead of the Savior, is nursing a predator.
What is shown in the picture: a mysterious project? Construction of society? A parody of motherhood? As usual with Leonardo, everything is depicted at once: both, and the third, and even left an unpleasant prophecy. Conveying statehood through the image of an ermine is as natural as suggesting an underwater bathyscaphe - this is just the most accessible explanation. Leonardo da Vinci persistently instills in us the idea: the design of the universe is rational; its elements are interconnected. With a drawing you can express a state thought as simply as with a drawing you can declare your love. Leonardo's engineering drawings and sketches of figures are woven into a single drawing. Look at the drawings of machines made by Leonardo, and his drawings of human organs, the heart, for example, and compare these drawings with his own portraits, you will see that all the lines are made with the same movement: Leonardo does not see the difference between an engineering design, human internal and external device - this is all a single world of phenomena.
As if on purpose, in order to make it easier for posterity to analyze his method, Leonardo left the huge panel “Adoration of the Magi” (now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence) unfinished. In the picture we literally see how a complex architectural drawing grows into a swirling drawing of human figures, and the drawing, in turn, is overgrown with the flesh of the painting. This is all a single substance: drawing-drawing-painting; there is no contradiction in these elements of the universe; they flow freely into one another.
By the way, our confidence that this work is not finished is based on the opinion of the monks of San Donato, but it is by no means impossible that Leonardo, revolutionary in many aspects of painting, had a different opinion. A combination of drawing, drawing and painting, that is, a project visibly revealed to us - what could be the best embodiment of the idea of the Savior who appeared in the world, whom Caspar, Balthasar and Melchior came to worship? A moving project is depicted, a growing tree (“God is a growing baobab” - as Tsvetaeva randomly determined in “New Year’s Eve”, dedicated to Rilke). And what, if not the intended project, does the famous half-smile of Mona Lisa, the pregnant Mother of God carrying Jesus, mean - she already knows what she is smiling at. A project growing out of itself is the main theme of Leonardo. Man is a microcosm, similar in its joints and organic matter to the universe; mechanics is an organic discipline, rooted in nature and not contrary to it; By constructing, a person complicates nature and himself - a person constantly improves his own project. All this, if it does not make Leonardo an agnostic, then greatly reduces his faith. Leonardo's credo can be compared with the concept of Pico della Mirandola, but Leonardo goes much further - he does not simply place man at the center of the universe; but he even places the product of human consciousness and labor on a par with the creation of God. In fact, he thinks about the symbiosis of man and machine, in which the machine is an organic project, invented by man in exactly the same way as man himself was once created by God. The creation of creators is capable of creativity; the ability to design is endowed with the project; painting turns out to be the quintessence of design - in Leonardo’s painting technique there is no chiaroscuro because there is no isolated object that can be walked around from all sides; a person is a project unfolding into the future.
The infinity of design is best conveyed by the picture in which St. Anne holds the Virgin Mary on her lap, and she, in turn, holds the baby Jesus. This composition reproduces the principle of the “matryoshka doll” - one thing appears from the other; in essence, Leonardo depicted the literal movement of generations. But this is a project open to the future, an endless creation, an always renewed creation of a design project.
To convey the endless transition of project to project, to create a continuous design, Leonardo invented the sfumato technique.
The sfumato technique is a soft, non-contrasting style of writing, with hidden contradictions and contrasts, as if enveloping the form, as if weaving a web of color, rather than building color plans. Leonardo did not leave the technical secret of sfumato to his descendants; most likely, the method was to rub paint into the surface; This was probably possible due to the low oil content of the pigment. Leonardo himself prepared the paints and (indirectly evidenced by unsuccessful experiments with wall painting) changed the proportion of binding oils and pigment in relation to the Burgundian recipe. The paints did not stick to the wall (as happened with the “Battle of Anghiari” in Florence), but on a rough board even a low binder content should have been sufficient. Oil darkens over the years - this happened with most Burgundian paintings, this happened with absolutely all Dutch paintings of subsequent centuries; this also happened with the paintings of the Italians, who copied the Burgundian technique. Leonardo's paintings did not change their tones - this can only mean one thing: he added oil very sparingly when composing the paint, and the binder during writing was not linseed oil at all. They say that in the “Battle of Anghiari” the master used mastic (that is, mastic varnish), and mastic led to even more devastating consequences than linseed oil: the picture began to flow. It is quite possible that in his easel oil paintings he used not linseed oil, nor mastic varnish, nor cedar resin (as the Burgundians recommended - in particular, Karel van Mander writes about this), but some kind of drier, which used in other experiments. A drier (that is, a hardener for oil paint) can be a salt of cobalt, lead or manganese; These salts were used by alchemists at that time as indicators of substances. Leonardo could well have used lead salt, for example, adding it to oil paint.
Van Mander replaced the effect of the drier by recommending pouring glycerin and honey into cedar resin as plasticizers; but the result was inconclusive. So, other doctors, prescribing a medicine that treats one organ but harms another organ, stop the harmful effect with another medicine, which, in turn, also causes harm, and so on until the patient dies. But what if, by mixing medications, we record the patient’s condition and confirm the stage of his health? Leonardo mixed paints to infinity (see the treatise “On the mixing of colors with each other, which extends to infinity”) - completely in the spirit of the idea of infinite design, and this can be achieved, so as not to produce dirt in the mixture, only if each the next mixture is fixed as an unprecedented autonomous color. That is, it is necessary to record the intermediate result in any mixture. A kind of periodic table of colors emerges. In other words, Leonardo’s palette is significantly richer than the spectrum known to us. (By the way, it should be said that Leonardo came up with a unique form of palette, which - this is an assumption, but based on knowledge of the practical use of the palette - allows paints to be placed in two levels. Most likely, the primary paints lay in the first semicircle, and the inner semicircle formed mixtures).
Leonardo did not always achieve positive results in his experiments (in the technology of wall living -
he made a mistake in writing), but he succeeded with easel painting. Generally speaking, the belief that Leonardo adopted the technique of oil painting from Burgundy (that is, through Antonello from the van Eycks?) has a shaky foundation. His oil painting is not similar to the painting of the Burgundians. Most likely, Leonardo invented the oil painting technique on his own, in parallel with Hubert and Jan van Eyck; It should be added that oil painting on canvas reigned supreme only after 1530, and before that tempera painting on boards was widely used, and in tempera (there is several evidence of this) they carefully and arbitrarily began to add oil to make the technique more flexible and plastic; the adhesive base and the oily substance did not mix well, but mixed; this was called “oil painting.” Why oil painting at all? Why did artists adopt this innovation? All professionals were seduced by the flexible line of color, which can be drawn using a stroke, like a pencil. The covering effect of the paint was replaced with transparent layers; Bellini's blue sky, across which light transparent clouds rush, cannot be painted in tempera. Mantegna, who rubbed tempera in such transparent, gossamer layers (see the portrait of the Madonna in Berlin), could not help but welcome the oil, which facilitated the work in the complex Triumphs. Leonardo obviously took a different path.
Today's restorers are against oils and varnishes in principle, assuring that the drier will perform their functions, but will not darken over time. It can be assumed that by using a drier, Leonardo achieved a high concentration of pigment in the paint and was able to work with an almost dry brush (that is, not draw a wet line, do not fill the surface with flowing paint), but maintain variability, literally rub pigment into pigment. Look closely at a chip of marble or granite - you will see myriads of crystals, each of the grains retains its color, although together they form a surface that is uniform in tone and shade. Leonardo achieved the same effect in the colorful surface. Sfumato gave his colors a stony hardness, but eliminated the inevitable clashes of tones within the same color with the wet oil method. The problem of “contact” of shades, “merging” of the shadow side of the depicted object and its bright side extremely important for the painter. How to meet dark color and the color is light inside the same item? What will the border look like? Let's say a character's cheek is in the shadow, and his forehead is in the light - does the complexion change its nature in the shadow or not? The Sienese solved this issue simply - they painted the light with warm paint, and the shadow with cold, sometimes even green, contrasting the green with the pink shade of the skin (see, for example, the characteristic technique of the Siena master Lippo Memmi). The Venetians, first of all Paolo Veronese (and after him his follower Delacroix and, in turn, the followers of Delacroix), believed that the shadow contrasts with the subject. Thus, Delacroix writes in his diary that the yellow carriage casts a purple shadow. Rembrandt, the small Dutch and especially the Caravaggists make a shadow from the same color as the illuminated part of the object, but take the color lower, that is, darker, in Brown color add dark brown. It sometimes seems primitive simple solution, nevertheless, in lapidarity there is the logic of Caravaggism.
The sfumato technique generally avoids shadows; there are no shadows in Leonardo's paintings. Sfumato is absolute light. This is the direct opposite of hard light and shadow. Caravaggio or La Tour, adherents of chiaroscuro (let's leave aside Rembrandt as the author of a more complex statement), theatrically bring to light the most significant in the picture and plunge the insignificant into darkness; They denote by shadow what is evil and by light what is virtuous. For the sfumato technique, such a naive division of the world into positive and negative is impossible: sfumato accepts the whole world; Only God accepts the world this way. We know very well what La Tour considers interesting and significant; but we don’t know what exactly makes Leonardo stand out. He appreciates everything in the world. One can imagine a philosophical judgment in the style of sfumato, which does not contain “yes” or “no”, but expresses what in German is conveyed by the word jain - both yes and no at the same time. This “yes-no” does not occur at all from relativism, as one might imagine, but only because the superficial opposition of subjective predicates is unimportant for wisdom. Whether it is raining or not, whether the shoe is tight or free, the answers to these questions are insignificant in relation to the problem of the finitude of being; and Leonardo neglects the contrast of light and shadow.
This “sfumato” of judgment extends so widely for Leonardo that it blurs the line between the main definitions: Is John the Baptist a man or a woman? Is the government republican or monarchical? He deliberately complicates the judgment and avoids one-dimensionality. Even in the portrait of the lovely Mona Lisa, some today find a self-portrait of the elderly artist.
For him, painting is not an emotion; painting is an exploration of the world. But the way this research is presented to us (the final product, the solved theorem) leaves the impression of an easy, magical work. He rubbed color onto color to achieve an unprecedented shade. Five hundred years later, Cézanne would do almost the same thing, sequentially placing tiny strokes on top of each other with a flat brush. Slightly different in color saturation (blue, blue-green, green-blue, etc.), these strokes fused into each other create in Cezanne an unprecedented shade and appearance of a stone surface. Leonardo achieved the same effect at the level of pigments. In all likelihood, Leonardo believed that he helped discover a hitherto unknown color by grinding stones in a mortar; he associated different properties of human nature with those stones that were ground into pigment. The color (obtained as a result of the experiment) was hidden in nature, and Leonardo found the color. Thus, sfumato is the result of alchemical science, the overall product is a kind of philosopher's stone.
When we use the word “alchemy” in relation to Leonardo, we must make a reservation so as not to fall into mysticism, Leonardo rejected mysticism, he despised everything artificial: artificial talent, artificial art, artificial gold, “And if senseless stinginess led you to such an error, why won’t you go to the mountain mines where nature produces gold?” Leonardo believed that reason manifests itself in union with nature, experience is meaningful only when it helps to reveal the organic forces of nature and man. Alchemy for Leonardo is not a desire for the supernatural, on the contrary, for the most natural, but hitherto unidentified. The impact of stones and minerals on the human psyche is organic, there is no mysticism here; identifying patterns is the painter’s task. It is natural to take into account the power of the elements, it is natural for the mind to direct the elements.
Sfumato hides all the preparatory studies and even hides the artist’s emotions. In the 19th century, the expression “sweat in a painting must be hidden” took root among painters - this means that the viewer does not have to see the artist’s efforts; the viewer is shown the glossy surface of the work, but the study and efforts are not shown. The 20th century, on the contrary, flaunted the effort: Van Gbg did not do it on purpose, but hundreds of Van Gogh’s epigones demonstrated effort (often artificially produced, not necessary for work) very consciously: look how painfully I make a stroke, how I pile up paint, this comes from tension of thought and the intensity of passions. Very often this demonstration is deceitful: no mental and moral effort is required to pile up paint and sharp gestures. Moreover, such a work does not communicate anything other than a demonstration of effort. However, in the minds of the 20th century viewer, this demonstration of effort is already associated with the titanic work of the thinker-artist; the viewer naively believes that the efforts made correspond to the scale of the statement; Of course, this is nonsense.
Leonardo's paintings look as if they were made easily, not at all with ecstatic tension, but with pleasure; and it is not clear how this was done. Leonardo (I believe, deliberately flaunting and misleading the viewer) wrote that the work of a painter is pleasant because one can indulge in it in festive clothes, to the sound of a lute, etc. This, of course, does not correspond to reality: the work of a painter is hard manual labor, and the work is dirty. But Leonardo teased, wanted to show a miracle: like a magician, he takes a flower out of the top hat - and the audience is perplexed: how did he put the flower there? Made masterfully, magically, how? In the case of artists of the 20th century - expressionists, dadaists, fauvists - we clearly know how exactly the painting was made - this is how they poured paint, this is how they laid out the paint layer, here the paint flowed... In most cases, Leonardo's contemporaries did not know how to hide their efforts - painful compositions van der Goes, Dürer's difficult foreshortenings practically reveal to us the method: Dürer, for example, does not hide the technical aspects of drawing foreshortening, and the stages of priming, sanding, the sequence of layers on the board - imprimatura, etc. - are widely described. The craftsmen applied the initial drawing to the board, then painted the white primer in transparent layers.
Leonardo does not give such a gift to the viewer. We do not know how the painter made his product. And this is paradoxical, but so, despite what Leonardo da Vinci left us detailed plan works - what exactly an artist needs to know, what he needs to be able to do in order to paint an oil painting. We can say that Leonardo left a detailed outline of the painter’s activities, but the concept was not read as a guide to action, they were only surprised by the abundance of interdisciplinary points. Drawing a variety of facial expressions is understandable; examining tendons and arteries is also understandable, although less necessary; but why know the laws of hydraulics and the principle of bird flight? Five centuries later, the artist Tatlin (originally a painter) decided to create an aircraft (the so-called “Letatlin”) and, following the path of Leonardo, began to study the structure of birds and the properties of various materials, this took him away from the painting workshop (although, in fact, he directed work exactly to the main thing).
The so-called “New Time,” that is, the time of capitalism, became a time of narrow specializations, and painting became a narrow professional skill - the structure of guilds and private orders of the rich, the structure of the art market only exacerbated this situation. The artists belonged (and tried to achieve this social status) to the guild just as in our time people creative professions want to join creative unions: writers, artists, directors. Guilds provided benefits, but established dependence on the environment. Just like today creative people are members of PEN and other clubs and associations, taking advantage of the mutual guarantee of guild solidarity, but paying tribute to conventions, so the artists of the Middle Ages entered the Guild of St. Luke: this helped to receive orders, but the artist became (wittingly or unwittingly, but inevitably) dependent on the views of the shop, the beliefs of a circle of colleagues, the tastes of customers, the manner of the local school. A few went the other way: to refuse a place in the guild and seek an individual destiny meant literally risking one’s life: one could be left without a means of subsistence.
Michelangelo could tell Pope Julius II that he would throw the pope off the scaffolding if he interfered with his work, but a 17th-century Dutch painter could not tell a burgher who commissioned a still life that he would not paint a curled lemon peel because it was vulgar.
Some great masters, who were men of character, refused to work in the guild's market assembly line; Thus, in the Quattrocento era, the type of wandering artist appeared (cf. knight errant, not belonging to the army). Masters like Michelangelo or Leonardo did not categorically fit into the circles; This determined Leonardo’s wanderings through cities - the artist was looking for conditions consistent with his genius. The conditions were created by the court of Lorenzo Medici, the court of Ludovico Gonzaga, the court of d'Este or Francis I, or Ludovico Moro. Leonardo managed to change several courts: apparently, he did not want his name to be identified with the position of court artist. He accepted worship, lived several he lay down at the court - and left. Absolute freedom was for Leonardo the first condition of the contract with the court; the slightest non-compliance with this contract, which could make his personal will dependent on the will of the customer, led to a break in their wanderings. defined by an over-individualistic character. Leonardo easily abandoned the work unfinished if he felt that his rights were being infringed. So, I believe, he left the Florentine panel “The Adoration of the Magi” as soon as he felt a semblance of dictate from the customer (the monastery of San Donato).
During Leonardo's time, the Mediterranean commercial world comes to life, and, according to Fernand Braudel, this world forms a kind of “common market”; Aragonese maritime trade expansion makes the Southern Mediterranean a kind of (let us say carefully after the French historian) “world of economics.” Simultaneously with the Aragonese (later Castilian) economic world, a powerful Hanseatic League emerged in northern Europe, uniting 50 cities. This, without exaggeration, is a new concept of Europe, a commercial, capitalist, merchant Europe, alternative to the imperial one. It is tempting to say that art falls under the laws of the common market; but to say so would not be entirely accurate. The power of the Strozzi or Fugger banking houses is great; but neither Leonardo, nor Mantegna, nor any of the significant humanists seeks the patronage of Strozzi or Fugger. Moreover, the Medici banking family - and it is to this family that Italy owes a short period of social balance and a fragile agreement that contributed to the flourishing of humanism - is actually reducing its financial and business hypostasis in order to join the circle of humanists on equal terms. Members of the Medici family (Lorenzo, first of all) are made primarily humanists - interlocutors of humanists. Lorenzo the Magnificent is not a nobleman who condescends to converse with a patronized artist, but an equal interlocutor, a humanitarian and poet who understands the superiority of spirit over matter.
In this sense, there is no market power over art in the Renaissance, or rather, the power is mutual. However, having said this, we have to carefully amend the statement: we would not know the Portinari Altarpiece, commissioned from Hugo van der Goes by the banker Tommaso Portinari (by the way, a representative of the same Medici bank in Brussels), we would not know a dozen paintings by Durer, if not for Jakob Fugger. The market is enveloping, merchants are buying paintings from Botticelli along with Lorenzo; a merchant can act as a donor of a painting in a temple, and the artist Jos van Cleve literally goes crazy (remained in history as “mad Cleve”) when he does not get the place of court painter of the Spanish crown. The artist is freed, but the free artist begins to seek the friendship of the nobleman.
Leonardo da Vinci exists outside the market, in addition to the market, parallel to the market. “A man is worth as much as he values himself,” wrote Francois Rabelais, and Leonardo is a living example of this rule: he cannot be assessed. He allows himself to be read, but does not allow himself to be bought. He did not complete work on “The Adoration of the Magi,” but no one would have thought of demanding the money back: Leonardo’s time and talent are priceless; The pay is symbolic, he doesn’t work for money. Whatever the terms of Leonardo's agreement with the customer, he did not work for the customer. We know very well how much “The Night Watch” costs, we even know the history of Rembrandt’s order, but if we learn about the price paid for “La Gioconda” by Francis the First, this will not make Leonardo’s work a phenomenon of market labor. Like Van Gogh or Cezanne (they did this five hundred years later), Leonardo emerged from the power of the market and imposed his idea of \u200b\u200bwhat should be on it. How illegitimate son the notary achieved such respect for himself from the kings, it is unknown; We do not know what property, besides his unyielding disposition, distinguished him among his contemporaries. How did he conquer the rulers of the earth? The universality of Leonardo’s knowledge is not exceptional: for example, the great artist Matthias Grunewald was also a hydraulic engineer (having lost his position due to sympathy for Protestants in the peasant war, the artist went to the Saxon town of Halle, where he worked as an engineer until the end of his short life). However, from the very appearance of the illegitimate son of a notary, greatness emanated; his mission, everyone felt it, was grandiose.
Most artists during Leonardo's life stuck to a certain court, not looking for change - they preferred a guaranteed salary. After the death of Lorenzo Medici, the dialogue between humanitarians and the authorities fell into disrepair - the participants in the dialogue were divided into customers and executors; The logic of the market has conquered the world of Europe. The time for chivalric ethics is over. Emperor Charles V was elevated to the throne by the money of Jakob Fugger, no one hid the bribery intrigue; Louis XI paid the English Edward compensation and an annual annuity for neutrality in the conflict with Burgundy (Louis appropriated the Burgundian lands as a result); The era of commercialization of politics and the era of market relations in art has arrived.
The wandering artist, perhaps the only type of human activity that now resembled knight errantry, became a unique figure for society. Today, looking at the life of the knight errant Leonardo, we can say that with his unyielding pride he created a precedent that allowed Van Gogh or Gauguin to follow the same path. Wandering from city to city, Van Gogh actually repeated the strategy of Leonardo da Vinci, not wanting (in the case of Van Gogh and not being able) to join the market process of making and selling art objects.
They (Leonardo and Van Gogh) had a predecessor who can safely be placed third on this list - we are talking about Dante Alighieri.
“And if there is no path of honor leading to Florence, then I will never return to Florence,” said Dante in exile, and these words were probably repeated to himself dozens of times by Leonardo da Vinci, leaving the once hospitable court to go to new journey. The powerful, unquestioning individualism that permeated Dante’s Comedy, which made Dante a witness and analyst of the construction of the entire universe, this same individualism fueled the creativity and painting of Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo did not and could not have like-minded people. The greatest Florentine, Dite Alighieri, Leonardo's predecessor in solitude, formulated his social status in this way;
“You will become your own party,” says Dante in his “Comedy,” putting this credo into the mouth of his ancestor Cacciaguida, whom he meets in Paradise.
In the 17th canto of “Paradise”, Dante conducts a conversation with the crusader Cacciaguida, who predicts the future of the poet and characterizes his deeds. “You will become your own party,” Cacciaguida says exactly what Dante himself managed to decide about himself, in connection with the party struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. He was a white Guelph formally, but, in the end, this partisanship did not suit him: “The Guelphs also go along the disastrous road”; Dante was left to himself, and as centuries passed, Italy learned from him alone. This is exactly what Leonardo did, retaining his unique (even at that time) autonomy.
We cannot name his students; to be a student of Leonardo - just like to be a student of Dante - means to become an infinitely free person; do not depend on the place, do not depend on the circle and school; do not depend on the market and customers; to lead his own life according to his convictions, but who could afford this luxury?
Leonardo da Vinci did not leave a portrait of his beloved, most likely he did not have one; He didn't have a family either. The master's loneliness gave rise to gossip and suspicions of homosexual predilections. However, no matter what Leonardo’s passions were, Leonardo had no time for carnal pleasures or a taste for carnal pleasures. His nomadic lifestyle made family life impossible; so Daite had to leave Gemma and the children, going into exile; so Van Gogh did not have a family, and Michelangelo did not have a family.
The lifestyle of a knight errant, unfortunately, is not conducive to family life.
The role of the family was played by paintings, which the master did not part with - he carried them with him in his luggage, constantly improving them. More precisely, to put it this way: since painting is an endless project open to the future, since the painter’s occupation is endless design, it is logical to continue to improve the image endlessly. Design cannot be stopped.
In this sense, Leonard’s image of John the Baptist, an effeminate handsome man who seems to lure the viewer into the project of Christianity, is extremely important. The evil face, almost the face of the tempter, does not promise anything good in the future, and yet it will not be possible to evade Christianity. Leonardo depicts the inevitability of temptation by Christianity; we have already gone down this path.
The important thing is that in the world created by Leonardo da Vinci, in a world that knows no shadows and is permeated with eternal light, every project is valuable. In the dispute between Oxford and the Sorbonne, in the dispute between nominalists and realists (that is, in the opposition of fact and general design), Leonardo occupied a very special position - he decisively affirmed every fact of existence as a project of the whole: be it an aircraft, a bathyscaphe, a drawing of a human heart, a portrait of a Madonna, the adoption of Christian doctrine, or the design of a palace staircase - any of these noumena is a phenomenal project of an integral being. There are no service disciplines, but everything is combined into painting; there are no shadows, but everything merges into an evenly shining light; there is no death - there is a transition to another, no less significant state of natural life.
Leonardo da Vinci is one of the great geniuses of all time, significantly ahead of his era. This Italian scientist of the Renaissance (Renaissance) was not only an outstanding artist and sculptor, but also a scientist, researcher of the secrets of many sciences. He was born in the small village of Vinci in 1452. Already in his youth, da Vinci painted beautiful paintings “The Annunciation” and “The Adoration of the Magi.” Later, from under his brush came the following magnificent works, like the wall painting “The Last Supper” in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the portrait of Mona Lisa, “St. John the Baptist", "Bacchus". Throughout his life, da Vinci made notes on the theory of art (after the master’s death, these notes were collected and published under the title “Treatise on the Picturesque”).
Leonardo da Vinci is a brilliant artist.
Leonardo da Vinci is the author of many superb works that will always delight art lovers. One of the outstanding images he created, a portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo, painted between 1503 and 1506, can be seen in the Louvre. In the St. Petersburg Hermitage there is another of his most beautiful creations - “Madonna Litta”. Many of the works of the brilliant creator remained unfinished, since he was more interested in the depth of the creation process than in the effect of completion. The uniqueness of Leonardo da Vinci was also manifested in the fact that he was mainly interested in facial features, positioning of the figure, movement, correct, natural depiction of objects, chiaroscuro and perspective. Before starting a painting or sculpting a sculpture, the master made many sketches, which he then used during the work. Today they are valued no less than the finished canvases of a great artist.
Leonardo da Vinci is an inventor.
Even in his youth, Leonardo da Vinci began conducting scientific research. His range of interests is extremely wide: anatomy, botany, mathematics, physics, astronomy, optics, hydraulics, engineering, architecture, music and poetry. Da Vinci developed designs for many inventions, in particular, inventing prototypes of a helicopter, a parachute, an armored train, a submarine, a textile machine, a hydraulic press, a rolling mill (a machine that gives the required shape and size to metal products), a lathe, a grinding machine, a valve, pumps. Unfortunately, the scientist’s brilliant achievements did not change the course of technology development, since he refused to publish his unusual projects.
Chronology.
1452 - born in the village of Vinci;
1467 - becomes a student of A. del Verrocchio in Florence;
1482/83-1499 - work in Milan, at the court of L. Sforza;
1500-1506 - life and work in Florence;
1503-1506 - work on the portrait of Mona Lisa;
1513-1516 - life and work in Rome, under the patronage of D. Medici, brother of Pope Leo X;
1517 - move to France, construction of purification systems on the Loire;
1519 - death in Ambual.
Do you know that:
- Leonardo da Vinci became famous not only brilliant paintings, but also scientific discoveries who were ahead of his era.
- While working at the Milanese court, Leonardo da Vinci painted a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, known as “The Lady with an Ermine.”
- The portrait of the Florentine Mona Lisa del Giocondo is remarkable primarily for the woman’s mysterious half-smile.
- Many of the great master’s drawings testify to his passion, for example, for anatomy and mechanics.
Description of the presentation by individual slides:
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The works of Leonardo Da Vinci Performed by 9th grade student Alexandra Zemtseva St. Novotroitskaya 2017
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Leonardo da Vinci Italian scientist, inventor, artist, writer. One of the brightest representatives of the Renaissance. Many researchers consider him the most brilliant person of all times.
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Biography Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the small village of Anchiano, not far from Florence. His father Pierrot was a notary, his mother Katerina was a simple peasant woman. Soon after Leonardo was born, his father left the family and married a rich woman. Leonardo spent his first years with his mother. Then the father, who was unable to have children with his new wife, took the boy to be raised with him. When he was 13 years old, his stepmother died. The father remarried and became a widower again. His attempts to interest his son in notarial business were unsuccessful.
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At a young age, Leonardo began to demonstrate extraordinary talent as an artist. His father sends him to Florence, to the workshop of Andrea Verrocchio. Here he mastered the humanities, chemistry, drawing, and metallurgy. The apprentice was actively involved in sculpture, drawing, and modeling.
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When Leonardo turned 20 years old (in 1473), the Guild of St. Luke awarded Leonardo da Vinci the qualification of a master. At the same time, Leonardo had a hand in creating the painting “The Baptism of Christ,” which was painted by his teacher Andrea del Verrocchio. Da Vinci's brush belongs to part of the landscape and the angel. Leonardo’s nature as an innovator is already evident here - he uses oil paints, which were a novelty in Italy at that time. Verrocchio entrusts a talented student with commissions for paintings, while he himself focuses on sculpture. Leonardo’s first self-painted painting was “Enlightenment.”
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After this, a period of life begins, which is characterized by the artist’s fascination with the image of the Madonna. He creates the paintings “Madonna Benois”, “Madonna with a Carnation”, “Madonna Litta”. A number of unfinished sketches on the same subject have been preserved.
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In 1481, the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned Leonardo to paint “The Adoration of the Magi.” Work on it was interrupted and abandoned. Already at that time, da Vinci was “famous” for his tendency to suddenly abandon work unfinished. The Medici family ruling in Florence did not favor the artist, so he decided to leave the city.
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In 1482, Leonardo went to Milan to the court of Ludovico Sforza, where he played the lute. The artist hoped to receive a reliable patron in Sforza, offering his services as a weapons inventor. However, Sforza was not a fan of open conflicts, but of intrigue and poisoning.
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In 1483, da Vinci received his first order in Milan - to paint an altar from the Franciscan brotherhood Immaculate Conception. Three years later, the work was completed, and then the trial over payment for the work lasted another 25 years.
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Soon orders from Sforza begin to arrive. Leonardo becomes court artist, paints portraits and works on a statue of Francesco Sforza. The statue itself was never completed - the ruler decided to use bronze to make cannons.
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In Milan, Leonardo begins to create his Treatise on Painting. This work lasted until the death of the genius. Da Vinci invents a rolling mill, a machine for producing files, and a machine for making cloth. All these valuable inventions did not interest Sforza. Also during this period, Leonardo created sketches of temples and took part in the construction of the Milan Cathedral. He developed the city sewer system and carried out land reclamation work.
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In 1495, work begins on The Last Supper, which ends 3 years later. In 1498, the painting of the Sala delle Asse in the Castello Sforzesco was completed.
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In 1499, Sforza lost power and Milan was captured by French troops. Leonardo had to leave the city, and the following year he returned to Florence. Here he painted the paintings “Madonna with a Spindle” and “St. Anne with Mary and Child.”
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In 1502, Leonardo became an architect and longwall engineer in the service of Cesare Borgia. During this period, da Vinci designed canals to drain swamps and created military maps.
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In 1503, work began on the portrait of Mona Lisa. For the next decade, Leonardo wrote little, trying to devote more time to anatomy, mathematics and mechanics.
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In 1513, Leonardo came under the patronage of Giuliano Medici and came with him to Rome. Here, for three years, he studied mirror making, mathematics, researched the human voice and created new paint formulations. In 1517, after the death of the Medici, Leonardo became court artist in Paris. Here he works on land reclamation, hydrography and very often communicates with King Francis I.
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On May 2, 1519, at the age of 67, Leonardo da Vinci died. His body was buried in the church of Saint-Florent-ten, but the grave was lost during many years of war.
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Baptism of Christ. A painting by Verrocchio, painted by him and his students. The right one of the two angels is the work of Leonardo da Vinci. 1472-1475 However, an analysis carried out by the Uffizi staff showed that the work was done collectively by three or even four artists in accordance with the traditions of medieval workshops. Obviously, Botticelli played the main role among them. The origin of the figure of the left angel by Leonardo is beyond doubt. He also painted part of the landscape - behind the angel at the edge of the composition.
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Annunciation, 1478-1482. The lack of documentary evidence, signatures and dates on the paintings makes their attribution very difficult. Two “Annunciations” date back to the early 1470s, which, judging by their horizontal format, are altar predella. Those of them that are kept in the Uffizi collection are included in a number of the few early works of Leonardo da Vinci. His dry execution and the types of faces of Mary and the angel are reminiscent of the works of Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo's comrade in Verrocchio's workshop.
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Portrait of Ginevra de Benci, 1474-1478 In this image of a young woman, whose face is marked by an expression of thoughtful concentration, one can detect a similar combination traditional features with the promise of something new. The painterly style of the artist Leonardo da Vinci is still distinguished here by its somewhat fractional detailing, but the image of the model Lady Ginevra de Benci is already surrounded by a peculiar poetic atmosphere, which is facilitated by the landscape background, which is unusual in its interpretation.
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Vitruvian Man.1492 The drawing and text are sometimes called canonical proportions. When examining the drawing, you will notice that the combination of arms and legs actually makes up four different poses. A pose with arms spread to the sides and legs not spread fits into a square (“Square of the Ancients”). On the other hand, a pose with arms and legs spread out to the sides fits into a circle. And, although, when changing poses, it seems that the center of the figure is moving, in fact, the navel of the figure, which is its real center, remains motionless. Subsequently, using the same method, Corbusier compiled his proportionation scale, which influenced the aesthetics of 20th-century architecture.
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Madonna of the Rocks, 1480-1490s Leonardo da Vinci received a large painting commission in Milan on April 25, 1483. Together with his brothers, he was supposed to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of the Immaculate. The text of the agreement has been preserved in full. As usual, Leonardo did not complete the work on time, but the painting could already be shown to customers, and the master demanded payment, but received nothing, since the monks considered the terms of the contract to be violated. Leonardo took the painting and became embroiled in legal proceedings for more than twenty years. This first large composition by the master, “Madonna of the Rocks,” is exceptional in its artistic perfection and semantic significance. Written on a plot from the apocrypha, it gives the impression of a mystery, based on “the desire... to penetrate the secret of birth, life and death, the secret of nature”
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Lady with an Ermine, 1483-1490 There are several more portraits executed with the elegance characteristic of Leonardo, but compositionally they are solved more simply and do not have the spiritual mobility that makes the image of Cecilia fascinating. This " Female portrait" in profile. The undisputed works of Leonardo da Vinci of the Milanese period also include “Lady with an Ermine” (Krakow, Czartoryski Museum) - a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, Moro’s lover.
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Portrait of a Musician, 1485-1490 The painting “Portrait of a Musician” was begun by the artist Leonardo da Vinci at the turn of the 90s of the 15th century. The authorship of Leonardo da Vinci is disputed; it is assumed that great painter began work, but later his student Ambrogio de Predis worked on the portrait; however, the painting “Portrait of a Musician” remained unfinished.
“How a well-spent day gives restful sleep“So a usefully lived life gives a peaceful death.”
Leonardo da Vinci(Italian Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, April 15, 1452, the village of Anchiano, near the town of Vinci, near Florence) - Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist - all this is Leonardo da Vinci. Wherever such a person turns, his every action is so divine that, leaving behind all other people, he reveals himself to be something given to us by God, and not acquired by human art. Leonardo da Vinci. Great, mysterious, attractive. So distant and so modern. Like a rainbow, the master’s fate is bright, mosaic, and colorful. His life is full of wanderings, meetings with amazing people and events. How much has been written about him, how much has been published, but it will never be enough.
The mystery of Leonardo begins with his birth, in 1452 on April 15 in a town west of Florence. He was illegal born son a woman about whom almost nothing is known. We don’t know her last name, age, appearance, we don’t know whether she was smart or stupid, whether she studied anything or not. Biographers call her a young peasant woman. Let it be so. Much more is known about Leonardo's father, Piero da Vinci, but not enough. He was a notary and came from a family that had settled in Vinci at least in the 13th century. Leonardo was brought up in his father's house. His education was obviously the same as that of any boy from a good family living in a small town: reading, writing, beginnings of mathematics, Latin. His handwriting is amazing, He writes from right to left, the letters are reversed so that the text is easier to read with the help of a mirror. In later years, he was interested in botany, geology, observing the flight of birds, the play of sunlight and shadow, and the movement of water. All this testifies to his curiosity and also to the fact that in his youth he spent a lot of time on fresh air, walking around the outskirts of the town. These surroundings, which have changed little over the past five hundred years, are now almost the most picturesque in Italy. The father noticed and, taking into account the high flight of his son’s talent in art, one fine day selected several of his drawings, took them to Andrea Verrocchio, who was his great friend, and urgently asked him to say whether Leonardo, having taken up drawing, would achieve any success . Struck by the enormous potential that he saw in the drawings of the novice Leonardo, Andrea supported Ser Piero in his decision to devote him to this work and immediately agreed with him that Leonardo would enter his workshop, which Leonardo did more than willingly and began to practice not in just one area, but in all those areas where the drawing is included.
The early period of creativity. Leonardo's first dated work (1473, Uffizi) is a small sketch of a river valley visible from a gorge; on one side there is a castle, on the other there is a wooded hillside. This sketch, made with quick strokes of the pen, testifies to the artist’s constant interest in atmospheric phenomena, about which he later wrote extensively in his notes. Landscape depicted from high point view overlooking the floodplain, was a common device in Florentine art in the 1460s (although it always served only as a background for paintings). The silver pencil drawing of an ancient warrior in profile demonstrates Leonardo's full maturity as a draftsman; it skillfully combines weak, flaccid and tense, elastic lines and attention to surfaces gradually modeled by light and shadow, creating a living, vibrant image.
Leonardo da Vinci was not only a great painter, sculptor and architect, but also a brilliant scientist who studied mathematics, mechanics, physics, astronomy, geology, botany, anatomy and physiology of humans and animals, consistently pursuing the principle of experimental research. His manuscripts contain drawings of flying machines, a parachute and a helicopter, new designs and screw-cutting machines, printing, woodworking and other machines, accurate anatomical drawings, thoughts related to mathematics, optics, cosmology (the idea of the physical homogeneity of the universe) and other sciences.
By 1480 Leonardo was already receiving large orders, but in 1482 he moved to Milan. In a letter to the ruler of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he introduced himself as an engineer and military expert, as well as an artist. The years spent in Milan were filled with a variety of activities. Leonardo painted several paintings and a famous fresco last supper, which reached us in a dilapidated state. He painted this composition on the wall of the refectory of the Milan monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Striving for the greatest colorful expressiveness in mural painting, he made unsuccessful experiments with paints and primers, which caused its rapid damage. And then crude restorations and Bonaparte’s soldiers completed the job. After the occupation of Milan by the French in 1796. The refectory was turned into a stable, the fumes of horse manure covered the painting with thick mold, and the soldiers entering the stable amused themselves by throwing bricks at the heads of Leonard’s figures. Fate turned out to be cruel to many of the great master’s creations. And yet, how much time, how much inspired art and how much fiery love Leonardo invested in the creation of this masterpiece. But, despite this, even in its dilapidated state, “The Last Supper” makes an indelible impression. On the wall, as if overcoming it and taking the viewer into the world of harmony and majestic visions, the ancient gospel drama of betrayed trust unfolds. And this drama finds its resolution in a general impulse directed towards the main character - a husband with a sorrowful face who accepts what is happening as inevitable. Christ just told his disciples, “One of you will betray me.” The traitor sits with others; the old masters depicted Judas sitting separately, but Leonardo brought out his gloomy isolation much more convincingly, shrouding his features in shadow. Christ is submissive to his fate, filled with the consciousness of the sacrifice of his feat. His bowed head with downcast eyes and the gesture of his hands are infinitely beautiful and majestic. A lovely landscape opens through the window behind his figure. Christ is the center of the entire composition, of all the whirlpool of passions that rage around. His sadness and calmness seem to be eternal, natural - and this is the deep meaning of the drama shown.
The undated painting of the Annunciation (mid-1470s, Uffizi) was attributed to Leonardo only in the 19th century; perhaps it would be more correct to consider it as the result of a collaboration between Leonardo and Verrocchio. There are several weak points in it, for example, the perspective reduction of the building on the left is too sharp or the scale relationship between the figure of the Mother of God and the music stand is poorly developed in perspective. However, in other respects, especially in the subtle and soft modeling, as well as in the interpretation of the foggy landscape with a mountain vaguely looming in the background, the painting belongs to the hand of Leonardo; this can be inferred from a study of his later works. The question of whether the compositional idea belongs to him remains open.
In Milan, Leonardo began to take notes; Around 1490 he focused on two disciplines: architecture and anatomy. He made sketches of several design options for a central-domed temple (an equal-ended cross, the central part of which is covered by a dome) - type architectural structure, who previously recommended Alberti for the reason that it reflects one of the ancient types of temples and is based on the most perfect shape - a circle. Leonardo drew a plan and perspective views of the entire structure, which outlined the distribution of masses and the configuration of the internal space. Around this time, he obtained the skull and made a cross section, opening the sinuses of the skull for the first time. The notes around the drawings indicate that he was primarily interested in the nature and structure of the brain. Of course, these drawings were intended for purely research purposes, but they are striking in their beauty and similarity to sketches of architectural projects in that both of them depict partitions separating parts of the internal space. In addition to all this, he did not spare his time, even to the extent that he drew ligatures from ropes in such a way that it was possible to trace from one end to the other their entire interweaving, which finally filled a whole circle. One of these drawings, very complex and very beautiful, can be seen in the engraving, and in the middle of it - the following words: Leonardus Vinci Academia.
He was not only a genius in art, but also very pleasant in communication, which attracted the souls of people to him. Having, one might say, nothing and working little, he always kept servants and horses, which he loved very much in preference to all other animals, proving this by the fact that often, passing through those places where birds were traded, he took them out with his own hands. cages and, having paid the seller the price he demanded, released them into the wild, returning them their lost freedom. For which nature decided to favor him in that, wherever he turned his thoughts, his mind and his daring, he showed so much divinity in his creations that no one could ever equal him in the ability to bring to perfection the spontaneity characteristic of him, liveliness, kindness, attractiveness and charm.
Mature period of creativity. He brought his first order in 1483, it was the production of part of the altar image for the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception - Madonna in the Grotto (Louvre; the attribution of Leonardo's brush to a later version from the London National Gallery is disputed). A kneeling Mary looks at the Christ Child and baby John the Baptist, while an angel pointing at John looks at the viewer. The figures are arranged in a triangle in the foreground. It seems that the figures are separated from the viewer by a slight haze, the so-called sfumato (blurred and indistinct contours, soft shadow), which from now on becomes a characteristic feature of Leonardo’s painting. Behind them, in the semi-darkness of the cave, stalactites and stalagmites and slowly flowing waters shrouded in fog are visible. The landscape seems fantastic, but we should remember Leonardo's statement that painting is a science. As can be seen from the drawings contemporaneous with the painting, it was based on careful observations of geological phenomena. This also applies to the depiction of plants: you can not only identify them with a certain type, but also to see that Leonardo knew about the property of plants to turn towards the sun.
Leonardo's activities in the first decade of the 16th century. was as varied as in other periods of his life. At this time the painting was created Madonna and Child and St. Anna, and around 1504 Leonardo began work on his famous painting Mona Lisa, a portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant. This portrait is a further development of the type that appeared earlier in Leonardo: the model is depicted from the waist up, in a slight turn, the face is turned towards the viewer, folded hands limit the composition from below and are as beautiful as the slight smile on her face and the primeval rocky landscape in the foggy distance. Gioconda is known as the image of a mysterious, even femme fatale, but this interpretation belongs to the 19th century. It is more likely that for Leonardo this painting was the most complex and successful exercise in the use of sfumato, and the background of the painting is the result of his research in the field of geology. The Mona Lisa was created at a time when Leonardo was so absorbed in studying the structure of the female body, anatomy and problems associated with childbirth that it was almost impossible to separate his artistic and scientific interests. During these years, he sketched a human embryo in the uterus and created the last of several versions of Leda's painting on the plot of the ancient myth about the birth of Castor and Pollux from the union of the mortal girl Leda and Zeus, who took the form of a swan. Leonardo was studying comparative anatomy and was interested in the analogies between all organic forms. Leonardo invented the principle of scattering (or sfumato). The objects on his canvases have no clear boundaries: everything, like in life, is blurry, penetrates one into another, which means it breathes, lives, awakens imagination. The Italian advised practicing such distraction by looking at stains on the walls, ashes, clouds or dirt caused by dampness. He specially fumigate the room where he worked with smoke in order to look for images in clubs. Thanks to the sfumato effect, the flickering smile of Gioconda appeared, when, depending on the focus of the view, it seems to the viewer that the heroine of the picture is either smiling tenderly or grinning predatorily. The second miracle of the Mona Lisa is that it is “alive.” Over the centuries, her smile changes, the corners of her lips rise higher. In the same way, the Master mixed the knowledge of different sciences, so his inventions find more and more applications over time. From the treatise on light and shadow come the beginnings of the sciences of penetrating force, oscillatory motion, and wave propagation. All of his 120 books have been scattered (sfumato) throughout the world and are gradually being revealed to humanity.
Leonardo was never in a hurry to finish a work, because incompleteness is an essential quality of life. Finishing means killing! The slowness of the creator was the talk of the town. He could make two or three strokes and leave the city for many days, for example, to improve the valleys of Lombardy or create an apparatus for walking on water. Almost every one of his significant works is unfinished. Many were damaged by water, fire, barbaric treatment, but the artist did not correct them. The Master had a special composition, with the help of which he seemed to be specially creating “windows of incompleteness” in the finished painting. Apparently, this way he left a place where life itself could intervene and correct something.
Finally reached old age; Having been ill for many months and, feeling the approach of death, he began to diligently study everything that related to religion, the true and holy Christian faith. When the king arrived, who was in the habit of often and graciously visiting him, Leonardo, out of respect for the king, sat up straight on his bed and told him about his illness and its progress. At the same time, he proved how sinful he was before God and before people by the fact that he did not work in art as it should be. Then he had a fit, a harbinger of death, during which the king, rising from his seat, held his head in order to ease his suffering and show his favor. His most divine soul, realizing that it could not receive a greater honor, flew away in the arms of this king - in the seventy-fifth year of his life.
Leonardo died in Amboise on May 2, 1519; His paintings by this time were scattered mainly in private collections, and his notes lay in various collections almost in complete oblivion for several more centuries.
The loss of Leonardo beyond measure saddened everyone who knew him, for never was there a man who brought so much honor to the art of painting. This is a master who truly lived his entire life with great benefit for humanity.
Yes, all his work is full of questions that can be answered throughout your life, and will remain for future generations.
List of inventions, both real and attributed Leonardo da Vinci:
Parachute - 1483
Wheel lock
Bike
Tank
Lightweight portable bridges for the army
Spotlight
Catapult
Robot
Double lens telescope
Irina Nikiforova Librarian.Ru
Illustrations: "Leonardo da Vinci Architect" State Publishing House of Literature on Construction and Architecture. Moscow 1952
The birthplace of the great master is the village of Anchiano, which is located near the city of Vinci and is close to Florence. He was born in 1452 on April 15th. His parents did not have any title, his mother was a peasant, and his father was a notary. Very little time passed after Leonardo was born and his father left the family, marrying another woman who was rich. For some time the boy lived with his mother, but then his father took him in, since he and his new wife had no children. To the young genius there was a lack of maternal care and warmth, and this was subsequently reflected in many of his masterpieces.
The father dreamed that his son would continue his business and become a notary, but Leonardo remained indifferent to this profession. It is noteworthy that Leonardo did not have a surname in the sense in which we are accustomed to understand it.
The phrase “da Vinci” is translated as “originally from the city of Vinci.”
Since childhood, Leonardo already had a talent for drawing, which is why there is such a legend. One day, a peasant he knew asked Pierrot (the boy’s father) to find a master who could paint a wooden shield in some unusual way. Piero didn’t think twice and gave the shield to Leonardo. The little genius set to work with enthusiasm, and the result was a painting with the head of the gorgon Medusa. The image came out so natural and terrifying that even my father was scared when he saw it. Leonardo said that this is exactly the effect his creation should produce, since there is a semantic connection between the thing (the shield) and the image. The father did not give the completed work to his friend, but decided to sell it, for which he received 100 ducats.
The genius had many acquaintances and friends, as well as students. One can only guess about the personal life of Leonardo da Vinci, since practically nothing is known about it. The only thing that can be said is that he was never married. Some researchers of his life and work believe that da Vinci could have had relationships with men, perhaps with his students too. There are also scientists who talk about the master’s love affair with Lodovico Moro’s favorite, Cecilia Gallerani. The development of this version is largely facilitated by the fact that this woman posed for him to write his famous work “The Lady with an Ermine.”
Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life in France. He lived in the castle of Clos Lucé of his friend, King Francis?. At that time, the master almost did not create new paintings and most of all paid attention to planning ceremonial events and constructing the palace in Romorantan.
One day, da Vinci's right hand became numb, this happened 2 years before he died. Even then it was difficult for him to walk without outside support. Already in the third year after his illness, Leonardo could no longer move independently and spent all his time lying down. A week before his death, the master made a will and died in the castle of Clos-Lucé in the arms of King Francis? in 1519. He was only 67 years old, but during his short life he left behind a huge and valuable legacy.
Brief information about inventions
It is well deserved to attribute a global meaning to da Vinci’s inventions, since they are truly unique. During the master’s lifetime, almost none of his ideas could be translated into reality. Either the master did not have enough funds or desire for this. Thus, sketches of future inventions were preserved only in paper form. It so happened that the world learned about them after Leonardo’s death, since he never shared his thoughts with anyone.
It is quite possible that if all the ideas had been translated into reality, technological progress could have begun much earlier. But, if you think about it, it becomes obvious that in the 15th century there were not yet the necessary tools and devices to “give life” to the scientist’s sketches. And only now, when with the help modern technologies engineers were able to construct these inventions, it became clear that they all work and have practical significance. So, let's begin.
A cart that rolls by itself
This design can be considered as a prototype of a modern machine. The sketches made by the master do not fully explain what allows the cart to move independently, but scientists have the following assumption.
Perhaps the cart was supposed to be moved by a spring mechanism, such as is used in clocks. In order to hide the springs, there were drum-shaped housings that were wound manually. Thus, everything happened like a wind-up toy: the spring unwinds, and this makes it possible for the cart to move forward.
However, such a design could only rotate in right side, which would be a significant drawback and would make it a not very practical device. It is assumed that da Vinci considered his own invention something like a children's toy.
Robotic device
This is another one of da Vinci's most amazing inventions. By the way, this is one of the few devices that was implemented during the author’s lifetime. To create it, the master meticulously studied the anatomical structure of the human body, studying from reference books and even dismembering real corpses. When he learned that the movement of bones is carried out with the help of muscles, he thought that the same mechanism could form the basis of the technique.
In this case, the master did not put any practical significance into his creation, so the robot was used to entertain guests at celebrations hosted by the inventor’s friend, Lodovico Sforza. Very little information has been preserved about what this machine could do, but, of course, the robot of that time was very different from modern capabilities and technologies. Based on the master’s sketches, it can be argued that the robot could work with its jaws, sit and even walk. The invention was based on the use of a system of gears and pulleys.
Making a parachute
During the time of Leonardo da Vinci, many people became interested in the idea of a flying man, and were looking for a way to construct a device for this purpose. But such attempts were not very successful. And only “our” genius managed to draw a sketch of a real aircraft. In order to be able to drift freely through the air, da Vinci invented a parachute. It was shaped like a pyramid, and the entire invention was supposed to be draped in fabric.
The author himself left a note to this invention stating that it allows a person to jump from any height, and at the same time not only stay alive, but also not hurt himself. The quality of the invention was proven by modern scientists who, using da Vinici’s drawings, compiled a model of the flying machine.
Weapon
Leonardo da Vinci's inventions even include such things as a machine gun, which was called the “33-barreled organ.” Of course, such weapons differed in many ways from modern ones, but they could cause significant harm to the enemy’s strength if they were created. Such an invention could fire volleys at small intervals. But its disadvantage was that it would not be possible to quickly fire bullets from one barrel.
The operating principle of this machine gun is simple. Ten muskets had to be assembled on a board in the shape of a rectangle, after which three such boards had to be folded into a triangle. If you place a shaft in the center, you can manually rotate this structure, with one set of 11 guns firing while the other two reload and cool down. After this, the entire structure should be deployed and the next salvo launched.
This invention contradicts the life principles of Leonardo da Vinci, since he repeatedly emphasized his dislike of military action, and especially of those machines that are aimed at killing. However, the master at that time really needed cash, so he had to create what was needed by society at different stages of its development. And it was not difficult to convince rich people that his inventions could significantly improve the outcome of the war and defeat the enemy.
Ornithopter
One of da Vinci’s amazing inventions, which serves as an analogue to most of the master’s flying designs. Unlike a parachute, which should be designed to save a person in the event of a jump from a great height, an ornithopter would give the opportunity to hover in the air, enjoying the flight. In the scientist’s sketches, this device is very similar in structure not to an airplane, but to a bird, since it has the same wings, adapted to support the mass of a person.
It was assumed that such a machine would operate through a pilot. As soon as they turn the handle, the wings will begin to move. Modern engineers have designed this aircraft and are convinced that this device could work as intended if it were in the airspace. Da Vinci also owns several other similar designs of flying machines.
Armored tank
Another unusual idea is an armored tank. Despite the fact that Leonardo hated war, he had to draw a diagram of the tank, since he worked for influential people- Ludovico Sforza, and also the Duke of Milan. By shape and appearance the design was supposed to resemble a turtle, equipped with gears that made up a certain system. There were supposed to be 36 guns on the structure from different sides. Eight soldiers were supposed to be placed inside the tank, protected by external armor. Thanks to this armor, they could easily get into the thick of hostilities without being harmed at all. Firing 36 guns could cause significant damage to the enemy.
It is noteworthy that the diagram constructed by the author has a significant flaw. The wheels intended for moving forward did not spin in the same direction as the rear ones, but in the opposite direction. Obviously, if the tank were built, it would not be able to carry out its movement. But da Vinci could not just make this kind of mistake. Perhaps he had special reasons for this.
For example, some researchers argue that in this way the master wanted to protect his people. If the scheme fell into the hands of enemies, they would not be able to bring it into reality without the author. According to another version, the scientist was simply against the construction of this machine. The last guess seems more reliable, since the genius was an opponent of all kinds of military conflicts.
Air propeller
This is Da Vinci's invention, which could work like the helicopter that exists today. Such a machine, which can fly, looked like a huge pinwheel. The blades of this invention consisted of flax.
If you make it rotate very quickly, it is likely that this will lead to the creation of aerodynamic pressure and the necessary thrust, which is necessary just so that a helicopter or plane can stay in the air. Under each of the blades, the air space would create pressure, which could lift the given machine into the air. It is quite possible that such an unusual propeller, designed back in the 15-16th century, could fly and create a real revolutionary boom in technological process.
Building cities
At the time when the scientist lived in Milan, the whole of Europe was swept by the black plague. Most often, cities, not villages, were susceptible to this disease. Da Vinci thought about this problem and decided to propose his own plan for building a clean city in a sanitary sense. Such a city would be based on a system of instant waste disposal, thereby preventing the development of harmful microorganisms. It is a pity that this idea was not brought to life, since the master did not find a philanthropist willing to invest his fortune in the construction of such a city. Inventions like Leonardo da Vinci's could actually improve the lives of most people.
Something about the unsolved secrets from the life of da Vinci
- The smile of Gioconda has been repeatedly covered in many research works. The fact is that everyone who looks at the picture sees it differently. Some people think that Mona Lisa’s face is thoughtful, some think it’s a little sly, and some say that she doesn’t smile at all. It also still remains a mystery who is depicted in the portrait. Some scientists even put forward the version that this is the author himself, only in a female guise.
- "Unusual Predictions" It turns out that not only Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions are full of mysteries, but also his prophecies written on paper. Thus, many of the genius’s predictions have been preserved, encrypted in semantic riddles, some of which scientists have already managed to solve, and which contain information about what will happen several centuries in the future.
- Da Vinci wrote with his left hand from right to left. Such a familiar style of writing for him is quite difficult for the common man to immediately read.
- This genius artist When painting his masterpieces, he was never in a hurry to finish. He could even just start a painting, then leave the city for a long time, and only then continue working. It is also noteworthy that he never corrected his works if they turned out to be spoiled by fire, water or barbarians.
Thus, we got acquainted with the life of the great master and learned how Leonardo da Vinci created his inventions.