(Leonardo da Vinci) (1452–1519) - the greatest figure, multifaceted genius of the Renaissance, founder of the High Renaissance. Known as an artist, scientist, engineer, inventor.
Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the town of Anchiano near the city of Vinci, located near Florence. His father was Piero da Vinci, a notary who came from a prominent family in the city of Vinci. According to one version, the mother was a peasant woman, according to another, a tavern owner known as Katerina. At about the age of 4.5 years, Leonardo was taken into his father's house, and in documents of that time he is named as the illegitimate son of Piero. In 1469 he entered the workshop of the famous artist, sculptor and jeweler Andrea del Verrocchio ( 1435/36–1488). Here Leonardo went through his entire apprenticeship: from rubbing paints to working as an apprentice. According to the stories of contemporaries, he painted the left figure of the angel in Verrocchio's painting Baptism(c. 1476, Uffizi Gallery, Florence), which immediately attracted attention. The naturalness of movement, the smoothness of lines, the softness of chiaroscuro - distinguishes the figure of an angel from Verrocchio’s more rigid writing. Leonardo lived in the master's house even after he was accepted into the Guild of St. Luke, a guild of painters, in 1472.
One of the few dated drawings by Leonardo was created in August 1473. View of the Arno Valley from above, it was made with a pen with quick strokes, conveying vibrations of light and air, which indicates that the drawing was made from life (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).
First painting, attributed to Leonardo, although its authorship is disputed by many experts, - Annunciation(c. 1472, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). Unfortunately, the unknown author made later corrections, which significantly deteriorated the quality of the work.
Portrait of Ginevra de Benci(1473–1474, National Gallery, Washington) is permeated with a melancholy mood. Part of the picture at the bottom is cropped: probably, the hands of the model were depicted there. The contours of the figure are softened using the sfumato effect, created even before Leonardo, but it was he who became the genius of this technique. Sfumato (Italian sfumato - foggy, smoky) is a technique developed in the Renaissance in painting and graphics, which allows you to convey the softness of modeling, the elusiveness of object outlines, and the feeling of an airy environment.
Madonna with a flower (Madonna Benoit) (Madonna and child) 1478 - 1480 Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia |
Between 1476 and 1478 Leonardo opens his workshop. This period dates back to Madonna with a flower, so-called Madonna Benoit(c. 1478, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). The smiling Madonna addresses the baby Jesus sitting on her lap; the movements of the figures are natural and flexible. This painting exhibits Leonardo's characteristic interest in showing the inner world.
An unfinished painting is also an early work. Adoration of the Magi(1481–1482, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). The central place is occupied by the group of Madonna and Child and the Magi placed in the foreground.
In 1482, Leonardo left for Milan, the richest city of that time, under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508), who maintained an army and spent huge amounts of money on magnificent festivities and the purchase of works of art. Introducing himself to his future patron, Leonardo talks about himself as a musician, military expert, inventor of weapons, war chariots, cars, and only then talks about himself as an artist. Leonardo lived in Milan until 1498, and this period of his life was the most fruitful.
The first commission Leonardo received was to create an equestrian statue in honor of Francesco Sforza (1401–1466), father of Lodovico Sforza. Working on it for 16 years, Leonardo created many drawings, as well as an eight-meter clay model. In an effort to surpass all existing equestrian statues, Leonardo wanted to make a grandiose sculpture, showing a horse rearing up. But when faced with technical difficulties, Leonardo changed his plan and decided to depict a walking horse. In November 1493 model Horse without a rider was put on public display, and it was this event that made Leonardo da Vinci famous. About 90 tons of bronze were required to cast the sculpture. The collection of metal that had begun was interrupted, and the equestrian statue was never cast. In 1499 Milan was captured by the French, who used the sculpture as a target. After some time it collapsed. Horse- a grandiose, but never completed project - one of the significant works of monumental sculpture of the 16th century. and, according to Vasari, “those who have seen the huge clay model ... claim that they have never seen a more beautiful and majestic work,” called the monument “a great colossus.”
At the Sforza court, Leonardo also worked as a decorative artist for many festivities, creating previously unseen decorations and mechanisms, and making costumes for allegorical figures.
Unfinished canvas Saint Jerome(1481, Vatican Museum, Rome) shows the saint in a moment of penance in an elaborate turn with a lion at his feet. The picture was painted in black and white colors. But after covering it with varnish in the 19th century. the colors turned olive and golden.
Madonna of the Rocks(1483–1484, Louvre, Paris) is a famous painting by Leonardo, painted in Milan. The image of the Madonna, baby Jesus, little John the Baptist and an angel in a landscape is a new motif in Italian painting that time. In the opening of the rock one can see the landscape, which is given a sublime ideal features, and which shows the achievements of linear and aerial perspective. Although the cave is dimly lit, the picture is not dark, faces and figures softly emerge from the shadows. The finest chiaroscuro (sfumato) creates the impression of dim diffused light and models faces and hands. Leonardo connects the figures not only by a common mood, but also by the unity of space.
 LADY WITH ERMINE. 1485–1490. Czartoryski Museum |
Lady with an ermine(1484, Czartoryski Museum, Krakow) is one of Leonardo’s first works as a court portrait painter. The painting depicts Lodovic's favorite Cecilia Gallerani with the emblem of the Sforza family, an ermine. The complex turn of the head and the exquisite bend of the lady’s hand, the curved pose of the animal - everything speaks of the authorship of Leonardo. The background was rewritten by another artist.
Portrait of a musician(1484, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan). Only the face is finished young man, the remaining parts of the picture are not described. The type of face is close to the faces of Leonardo's angels, only executed more courageously.
Another unique work was created by Leonardo in one of the halls of the Sforza Palace, which is called Donkey. On the vaults and walls of this hall he painted crowns of willows, whose branches are intricately intertwined and tied with decorative ropes. Subsequently, part of the paint layer fell off, but a significant part was preserved and restored.
In 1495 Leonardo began work on Last Supper(area 4.5 × 8.6 m). The fresco is located on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, at a height of 3 m from the floor and occupies the entire end wall of the room. Leonardo oriented the perspective of the fresco towards the viewer, thereby it organically entered into the interior of the refectory: the perspective reduction of the side walls depicted in the fresco continues the real space of the refectory. Thirteen people are sitting at a table parallel to the wall. In the center is Jesus Christ, to the left and right of him are his disciples. The dramatic moment of exposure and condemnation of betrayal is shown, the moment when Christ has just uttered the words: “One of you will betray Me,” and the different emotional reactions of the apostles to these words. The composition is built on a strictly verified mathematical calculation: in the center is Christ, depicted against the background of the middle, largest opening of the rear wall, the vanishing point of perspective coincides with his head. The twelve apostles are divided into four groups of three figures each. Each is given a vivid characterization through expressive gestures and movements. The main task was to show Judas, to separate him from the rest of the apostles. By placing him on the same line of the table as all the apostles, Leonardo psychologically separated him by loneliness. Creation last supper became a significant event in artistic life Italy at that time. As a true innovator and experimenter, Leonardo abandoned the fresco technique. He covered the wall with a special composition of resin and mastic, and painted with tempera. These experiments led to the greatest tragedy: the refectory, which was hastily repaired by order of Sforza, the picturesque innovations of Leonardo, the lowland in which the refectory was located - all this served a sad service to the preservation last supper. The paints began to peel off, as Vasari already mentioned in 1556. Secret supper It was restored several times in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the restorations were unskilled (paint layers were simply reapplied). By the mid-20th century, when last supper fell into a deplorable state, they began scientific restoration: first the entire paint layer was fixed, then later layers were removed, and Leonardo’s tempera painting was revealed. And although the work was severely damaged, these restoration works made it possible to say that this Renaissance masterpiece was saved. Working on the fresco for three years, Leonardo created the greatest creation of the Renaissance.
After the fall of Sforza's power in 1499, Leonardo travels to Florence, stopping at Mantua and Venice along the way. In Mantua he creates cardboard with Portrait of Isabella d'Este(1500, Louvre, Paris), made with black chalk, charcoal and pastel.
In the spring of 1500, Leonardo arrived in Florence, where he soon received an order to paint an altar painting in the Monastery of the Annunciation. The order was never completed, but one of the options is considered to be the so-called. Burlington House Cardboard(1499, National Gallery, London).
One of the significant commissions received by Leonardo in 1502 to decorate the wall of the meeting room of the Signoria in Florence was Battle of Anghiari(not preserved). Another wall for decoration was given to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), who painted a painting there Battle of Kashin. Leonardo's sketches, now lost, showed a panorama of the battle, in the center of which a fight for the banner took place. Cartons by Leonardo and Michelangelo, exhibited in 1505, were a huge success. As is the case with Last Supper, Leonardo experimented with paints, as a result of which the paint layer gradually crumbled. But they survived preparatory drawings, copies that give some idea of the scale of this work. In particular, a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) has survived, which shows the central scene of the composition (c. 1615, Louvre, Paris).
For the first time in the history of battle painting, Leonardo showed the drama and fury of battle.
Mona Lisa- the most famous work of Leonardo da Vinci (1503–1506, Louvre, Paris). Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the third wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo dele Giocondo. Now the picture has been slightly changed: originally columns were drawn on the left and right, now cut off. The small-sized painting makes a monumental impression: the Mona Lisa is shown against the backdrop of a landscape where the depth of space and airy haze are conveyed with the greatest perfection. Leonardo’s famous sfumato technique is here brought to unprecedented heights: the thinnest, as if melting, haze of chiaroscuro, enveloping the figure, softens the contours and shadows. There is something elusive, bewitching and attractive in a light smile, in the liveliness of facial expression, in the majestic calm of the pose, in the stillness of the smooth lines of the hands. |
In 1506 Leonardo received an invitation to Milan from Louis XII of France (1462-1515). Having given Leonardo complete freedom of action and regularly paying him, the new patrons did not require specific work from him. Leonardo is interested in scientific research, sometimes turning to painting. Then the second version was written Madonnas of the Rocks(1506–1508, British National Gallery, London).
 MADONNA AND CHILD AND ST. ANNA. OK. 1510. Louvre, Paris |
St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child(1500–1510, Louvre, Paris) is one of the themes of Leonardo’s work, to which he repeatedly addressed. The last development of this topic remained unfinished.
In 1513 Leonardo travels to Rome, to the Vatican, to the court of Pope Leo X (1513–1521), but soon loses the pope's favor. He studies plants in botanical garden, draws up plans for draining the Pontine swamps, writes notes for a treatise on the structure of the human voice. At this time he created the only Self-portrait(1514, Bibliotheca Reale, Turin), executed in sanguine, showing a gray-haired old man with a long beard and a gaze.
Leonardo's last painting was also painted in Rome - Saint John the Baptist(1515, Louvre, Paris). St. John is shown as pampered with a seductive smile and feminine gestures.
Leonardo again receives an offer from the French king, this time from Francis I (1494–1547), successor of Louis XII: to move to France, to an estate near the royal castle of Amboise. In 1516 or 1517 Leonardo arrives in France, where he is given apartments at the Cloux estate. Surrounded by the king's respectful admiration, he receives the title "First Artist, Engineer and Architect of the King." Leonardo, despite his age and illness, is engaged in drawing canals in the Loire River valley and takes part in the preparation of court festivities.
Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519, leaving his drawings and papers in his will to Francesco Melzi, a student who kept them throughout his life. But after his death, all the countless papers were distributed all over the world, some were lost, some are stored in different cities, in museums around the world.
A scientist by vocation, Leonardo even now amazes with the breadth and variety of his scientific interests. His research in the field of aircraft design is unique. He studied the flight, gliding of birds, the structure of their wings, and created the so-called. ornithopter, aircraft with flapping wings, never realized. He created a pyramidal parachute, a model of a helical propeller (a variant of a modern propeller). Observing nature, he became an expert in the field of botany: he was the first to describe the laws of phyllotaxy (laws governing the arrangement of leaves on the stem), heliotropism and geotropism (laws of the influence of the sun and gravity on plants), and discovered a way to determine the age of trees by annual rings. He was an expert in the field of anatomy: he was the first to describe the valve of the right ventricle of the heart, demonstrated anatomy, etc. He created a system of drawings that now help students understand the structure of the human body: he showed the object in four views to examine it from all sides, created an image system organs and bodies in cross section. His research in the field of geology is interesting: he gave descriptions of sedimentary rocks and explanations of marine deposits in the mountains of Italy. As an optical scientist, he knew that visual images are projected upside down on the cornea of the eye. He was probably the first to use a camera obscura (from Latin camera - room, obscurus - dark) - a closed box with a small hole in one of the walls - for sketching landscapes; rays of light are reflected on the frosted glass on the other side of the box, creating an inverted color image, used by 18th century landscape painters. for accurate reproduction of views). In Leonardo's drawings there is a design for an instrument for measuring the intensity of light, a photometer, which was brought to life only three centuries later. He designed canals, locks, and dams. Among his ideas you can see: lightweight shoes for walking on water, a lifebuoy, webbed gloves for swimming, a device for underwater movement, similar to a modern spacesuit, machines for making rope, grinding machines and much more. Talking to mathematician Luca Pacioli, who wrote the textbook About Divine Proportion, Leonardo became interested in this science and created illustrations for this textbook.
Leonardo also acted as an architect, but none of his projects were ever brought to life. He participated in the competition to design the central dome Milan Cathedral, created a project for a mausoleum for members of the royal family in the Egyptian style, a project he proposed to the Turkish Sultan for the construction of a huge bridge across the Bosphorus Strait, under which ships could pass.
There are a large number of Leonardo's drawings left, made with sanguine, colored crayons, pastels (it is Leonardo who is credited with the invention of pastels), silver pencil, and chalk.
In Milan Leonardo begins to paint Treatise on Painting, work on which continued throughout his life, but was never completed. In this multi-volume reference book, Leonardo wrote about how to recreate the world around him on canvas, about linear and aerial perspective, proportions, anatomy, geometry, mechanics, optics, the interaction of colors, and reflexes.
 John the Baptist. 1513-16 |
 Madonna Litta 1478-1482 Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia |
 Leda with a swan 1508 - 1515 Ufizi Gallery, Florence, Italy |
The life and work of Leonardo da Vinci left a colossal mark not only in art, but also in science and technology. Painter, sculptor, architect - he was a natural scientist, mechanic, engineer, mathematician, and made many discoveries for subsequent generations. This was the greatest personality of the Renaissance.
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"Vitruvian Man"- the generally accepted name for a graphic drawing by da Vinci made in 1492. as an illustration for entries in one of the diaries. The drawing depicts a naked male figure. Strictly speaking, these are even two images of the same figure superimposed on each other, but in different poses. A circle and a square are described around the figure. The manuscript containing this drawing is sometimes also called the “Canon of Proportions” or simply “Proportions of Man.” Now this work is kept in one of the museums of Venice, but is exhibited extremely rarely, since this exhibit is truly unique and valuable both as a work of art and as a subject of research.
Leonardo created his “Vitruvian Man” as an illustration of the geometric studies he carried out based on the treatise of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius (hence the name of da Vinci’s work). In the treatise of the philosopher and researcher, the proportions of the human body were taken as the basis for all architectural proportions. Da Vinci applied the research of the ancient Roman architect to painting, which once again clearly illustrates the principle of the unity of art and science put forward by Leonardo. In addition, this work also reflects the master’s attempt to relate man to nature. It is known that da Vinci considered the human body as a reflection of the universe, i.e. was convinced that it functions according to the same laws. The author himself considered the Vitruvian Man as a “cosmography of the microcosm.” In this drawing there is hidden an equally deep symbolic meaning. The square and circle in which the body is inscribed do not simply reflect physical, proportional characteristics. The square can be interpreted as the material existence of a person, and the circle represents its spiritual basis, and the points of contact geometric shapes between themselves and with the body, inserted into them can be considered as a connection between these two foundations human existence. For many centuries, this drawing was considered as a symbol of the ideal symmetry of the human body and the universe as a whole.
Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci is a man of Renaissance art, sculptor, inventor, painter, philosopher, writer, scientist, polymath (universal person).
The future genius was born as a result of a love affair between the noble Piero da Vinci and the girl Katerina (Katarina). According to the social norms of that time, the marriage of these people was impossible due to the low origin of Leonardo’s mother. After the birth of her first child, she was married to a potter, with whom Katerina lived the rest of her life. It is known that she gave birth to four daughters and a son from her husband.
Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci
The first-born Piero da Vinci lived with his mother for three years. Leonardo's father, immediately after his birth, married a rich representative of a noble family, but his legal wife was never able to give him an heir. Three years after the marriage, Pierrot took his son to him and began raising him. Leonardo's stepmother died 10 years later while trying to give birth to an heir. Pierrot remarried, but quickly became a widower again. In total, Leonardo had four stepmothers, as well as 12 paternal half-siblings.
Creativity and inventions of da Vinci
The parent apprenticed Leonardo to the Tuscan master Andrea Verrocchio. During his studies with his mentor, son Pierrot learned not only the art of painting and sculpture. Young Leonardo studied the humanities and engineering, leather craftsmanship, and the basics of working with metal and chemicals. All this knowledge was useful to Da Vinci in life.
Leonardo received confirmation of his qualifications as a master at the age of twenty, after which he continued to work under the supervision of Verrocchio. The young artist was involved in minor work on his teacher’s paintings, for example, he painted background landscapes and clothes of minor characters. Leonardo only got his own workshop in 1476.
Drawing "Vitruvian Man" by Leonardo da Vinci In 1482, da Vinci was sent by his patron Lorenzo de' Medici to Milan. During this period, the artist worked on two paintings, which were never completed. In Milan, Duke Lodovico Sforza enrolled Leonardo in the court staff as an engineer. The high-ranking person was interested in defensive devices and devices for entertaining the courtyard. Da Vinci had the opportunity to develop his talent as an architect and his abilities as a mechanic. His inventions turned out to be an order of magnitude better than those proposed by his contemporaries.
The engineer stayed in Milan under Duke Sforza for about seventeen years. During this time, Leonardo painted the paintings “Madonna in the Grotto” and “Lady with an Ermine”, created his most famous drawing “The Vitruvian Man”, made a clay model of the equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza, painted the wall of the refectory of the Dominican monastery with the composition “The Last Supper”, made a number of anatomical sketches and drawings of devices.
Leonardo's engineering talent also came in handy after his return to Florence in 1499. He entered the service of Duke Cesare Borgia, who relied on Da Vinci's ability to create military mechanisms. The engineer worked in Florence for about seven years, after which he returned to Milan. By that time, he had already completed work on his most famous painting, which is now kept in the Louvre Museum.
The master's second Milanese period lasted six years, after which he left for Rome. In 1516, Leonardo went to France, where he spent his last years. On the journey, the master took with him Francesco Melzi, a student and main heir of da Vinci’s artistic style.
Portrait of Francesco Melzi Despite the fact that Leonardo spent only four years in Rome, it is in this city that there is a museum named after him. In three halls of the institution you can get acquainted with devices built according to Leonardo’s drawings, examine copies of paintings, photos of diaries and manuscripts.
The Italian devoted most of his life to engineering and architectural projects. His inventions were both military and peaceful in nature. Leonardo is known as the developer of prototypes of a tank, an aircraft, a self-propelled carriage, a searchlight, a catapult, a bicycle, a parachute, a mobile bridge, and a machine gun. Some of the inventor's drawings still remain a mystery to researchers.
Drawings and sketches of some of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions In 2009, the Discovery TV channel aired the series of films “Da Vinci Apparatus.” Each of the ten episodes of the documentary series was devoted to the construction and testing of mechanisms based on Leonardo's original drawings. Film technicians tried to recreate the inventions Italian genius using materials from his era.
Personal life
The master's personal life was kept in the strictest confidence. Leonardo used a code for entries in his diaries, but even after deciphering, researchers received little reliable information. There is a version that the reason for secrecy was da Vinci’s unconventional orientation.
The theory that the artist loved men was based on researchers’ guesses based on indirect facts. At a young age, the artist was involved in a case of sodomy, but it is not known for certain in what capacity. After this incident, the master became very secretive and stingy with comments about his personal life.
Leonardo's possible lovers include some of his students, the most famous of whom is Salai. The young man was endowed with an effeminate appearance and became a model for several paintings by da Vinci. John the Baptist is one of Leonardo's surviving works for which Szalai sat.
There is a version that the “Mona Lisa” was also painted from this sitter, dressed in a woman’s dress. It should be noted that there is some physical similarity between the people depicted in the paintings “Mona Lisa” and “John the Baptist”. The fact remains that da Vinci bequeathed his artistic masterpiece namely Salai.
Historians also include Francesco Melzi among Leonardo's possible lovers.
There is another version of the secret of the Italian’s personal life. It is believed that Leonardo had a romantic relationship with Cecilia Gallerani, who is supposedly depicted in the portrait “Lady with an Ermine”. This woman was the favorite of the Duke of Milan, the owner of a literary salon, and a patron of the arts. She entered young artist into the circle of Milanese bohemia.
Fragment of the painting “Lady with an Ermine” Among Da Vinci's notes was found a draft of a letter addressed to Cecilia, which began with the words: “My beloved goddess...”. Researchers suggest that the portrait “Lady with an Ermine” was painted with clear signs of unspent feelings for the woman depicted in it.
Some researchers believe that the great Italian did not know carnal love at all. He was not attracted to men or women in a physical sense. In the context of this theory, it is assumed that Leonardo led the life of a monk who did not give birth to descendants, but left a great legacy.
Death and grave
Modern researchers have concluded that probable cause death of the artist - stroke. Da Vinci died at the age of 67 in 1519. Thanks to the memoirs of his contemporaries, it is known that by that time the artist was already suffering from partial paralysis. Leonardo couldn't move right hand, as researchers believe, due to a stroke suffered in 1517.
Despite the paralysis, the master continued his active creative life, resorting to the help of his student Francesco Melzi. Da Vinci's health deteriorated, and by the end of 1519 it was already difficult for him to walk without assistance. This evidence is consistent with the theoretical diagnosis. Scientists believe that a repeated attack of cerebrovascular accident in 1519 ended the life of the famous Italian.
Monument to Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, Italy At the time of his death, the master was in the castle of Clos-Lucé near the city of Amboise, where he lived the last three years of his life. In accordance with Leonardo's will, his body was buried in the gallery of the Church of Saint-Florentin.
Unfortunately, the master's grave was destroyed during the Huguenot wars. The church in which the Italian was buried was looted, after which it fell into severe neglect and was demolished by the new owner of the Amboise castle, Roger Ducos, in 1807.
After the destruction of the Saint-Florentin chapel, the remains from many burials over the years were mixed and buried in the garden. Since the mid-nineteenth century, researchers have made several attempts to identify the bones of Leonardo da Vinci. Innovators in this matter were guided by the lifetime description of the master and selected the most suitable fragments from the found remains. They were studied for some time. The work was led by archaeologist Arsen Housse. He also found fragments of a tombstone, presumably from da Vinci's grave, and a skeleton in which some fragments were missing. These bones were reburied in the reconstructed artist's tomb in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert on the grounds of the Castle of Amboise.
In 2010, a team of researchers led by Silvano Vinceti was going to exhume the remains of the Renaissance master. It was planned to identify the skeleton using genetic material taken from the burials of Leonardo's paternal relatives. Italian researchers were unable to obtain permission from the castle owners to carry out the necessary work.
On the site where the Church of Saint-Florentin used to be located, at the beginning of the last century a granite monument was erected, marking the four hundredth anniversary of the death of the famous Italian. The engineer's reconstructed grave and stone monument with his bust are among the most popular attractions in Amboise.
The secrets of da Vinci's paintings
Leonardo's work has occupied the minds of art critics, religious researchers, historians and ordinary people for more than four hundred years. The works of the Italian artist have become an inspiration for people of science and creativity. There are many theories that reveal the secrets of da Vinci's paintings. The most famous of them says that when writing his masterpieces, Leonardo used a special graphic code.
Using a device of several mirrors, researchers were able to find out that the secret of the looks of the heroes from the paintings “Mona Lisa” and “John the Baptist” lies in the fact that they are looking at a creature in a mask, reminiscent of an alien. The secret code in Leonardo's notes was also deciphered using an ordinary mirror.
Hoaxes surrounding the work of the Italian genius have led to the emergence of a number of works of art, authored by the writer. His novels became bestsellers. In 2006, the film “The Da Vinci Code” was released, based on Brown’s work of the same name. The film was met with a wave of criticism from religious organizations, but set box office records in its first month of release.
Lost and unfinished works
Not all of the master’s works have survived to this day. The works that have not survived include: a shield with a painting in the form of the head of Medusa, a sculpture of a horse for the Duke of Milan, a portrait of the Madonna with a spindle, the painting “Leda and the Swan” and the fresco “The Battle of Anghiari”.
Modern researchers know about some of the master’s paintings thanks to surviving copies and memoirs of da Vinci’s contemporaries. For example, the fate of the original work “Leda and the Swan” is still unknown. Historians believe that the painting may have been destroyed in the mid-seventeenth century on the orders of the Marquise de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV. Sketches made by Leonardo's hand and several copies of the canvas made by different artists have survived to this day.
The painting showed a young naked woman in the arms of a swan, with babies hatched from huge eggs playing at her feet. When creating this masterpiece, the artist was inspired by a famous mythical plot. It is interesting that the painting based on the story of Leda’s copulation with Zeus, who took the form of a swan, was painted not only by da Vinci.
Leonardo's lifetime rival also painted a painting dedicated to this ancient myth. Buonarotti's painting suffered the same fate as da Vinci's work. Paintings by Leonardo and Michelangelo simultaneously disappeared from the collection of the French royal house.
Among the unfinished works of the brilliant Italian, the painting “Adoration of the Magi” stands out. The canvas was commissioned by the Augustinian monks in 1841, but remained unfinished due to the master’s departure to Milan. The customers found another artist, and Leonardo saw no point in continuing to work on the painting.
Fragment of the painting “Adoration of the Magi” Researchers believe that the composition of the canvas has no analogues in Italian painting. The painting depicts Mary with the newborn Jesus and the Magi, and behind the pilgrims are riders on horses and the ruins of a pagan temple. There is an assumption that Leonardo depicted himself at the age of 29 among the men who came to the son of God.
- In 2009, researcher of religious mysteries Lynn Picknett published the book “Leonardo da Vinci and the Brotherhood of Zion,” naming the famous Italian one of the masters of a secret religious order.
- It is believed that da Vinci was a vegetarian. He wore clothes made of linen, neglecting outfits made of leather and natural silk.
- A group of researchers plans to isolate Leonardo's DNA from the master's surviving personal belongings. Historians also claim to be close to finding da Vinci's maternal relatives.
- The Renaissance was the time when noble women in Italy were addressed with the words “my lady”, in Italian - “ma donna”. In colloquial speech the expression was shortened to "monna". This means that the title of the painting “Mona Lisa” can be literally translated as “Lady Lisa”.
- Rafael Santi called da Vinci his teacher. He visited Leonardo's studio in Florence and tried to adopt some features of his artistic style. Rafael Santi also called Michelangelo Buonarroti his teacher. The three artists mentioned are considered the main geniuses of the Renaissance.
- Australian enthusiasts have created the largest traveling exhibition of the great architect's inventions. The exhibition was developed with the participation of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Italy. The exhibition has already visited six continents. During its operation, five million visitors were able to see and touch the works of the most famous engineer of the Renaissance.
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 of the 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 the fresco “The Last Supper,” the soil of which began to flow (however, the fresco was spared 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 embodiment; 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 behind manuscripts and fragments. He was a good anatomist - he took part in autopsies, described internal organs, but he 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 an unfinished masterpiece in Florence, 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 a 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 conglomerate 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 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 of them, 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" gives an excellent look at government structure, rather 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 can be best incarnation ideas 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 unlike 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; blue sky Bellini, with light transparent clouds rushing through it, 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, adding dark brown to the brown color. 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 convey 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 he 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 dirty work. 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 true, despite the fact that Leonardo da Vinci left us a detailed work plan - what exactly an artist needs to know, what he needs to be able to do in order to paint oil painting. We can say that Leonardo left a detailed outline of the painter’s activities, but they did not read the concept 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 the illegitimate son of a notary achieved such respect for himself from the kings 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 - like to be a student of Dante - means to become infinitely a free man; 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, whatever Leonardo’s predilections, time for carnal pleasures and taste for carnal pleasures Leonardo didn't have it. 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 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.
Municipal budgetary educational institution
“Secondary school No. 1 with in-depth study of individual
items"
Research Project:
"Leonardo da Vinci.
Man era. Mystery Man"
Executor:
Danilova Katya
3rd grade student "A"
Leaders:
class teacher
Dolgopolova Raisa Grigorievna,
KamenskUralsky
2017
Introduction.
Content.
I.
II.
Life path of Leonardo da Vinci. Paintings of the artist
Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci
III.Leonardo's literary work: riddles, parables
Conclusion.
Bibliography.
Introduction.
In the lessons of fine arts and the surrounding world, we often
get acquainted with the paintings of Russians and foreign artists. I wanted
learn more about the life and work of the man who wrote the famous
all over the world the painting "La Gioconda"
The topic of my research: "Leonardo da Vinci. Man of the era. Man
mystery"
Relevance: It’s no secret that nowadays few people are interested in
painting and the work of old artists. Therefore, with my work I wanted
I would like to learn as much as possible about them and, of course, interest others using an example
the great artist Leonardo da Vinci.
Goal: acquaintance with the multifaceted talent of Leonardo da Vinci.
Objectives: get acquainted with the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, his
paintings, inventions, literary creativity.
Object of study: art culture Renaissance (this is
Subject of research: the artist’s creativity.
Hypothesis: what is the genius of Leonardo da Vinci?
Research plan: Read about the artist’s life, his creative growth,
look at the pictures;
read riddles, parables written by Leonardo da Vinci;
inventions of Leonardo da Vinci.
Research methods: reading books, articles; searching for information on the Internet,
I.
Main part
1.1 Life path of Leonardo da Vinci. Artist's paintings.
Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist - all this is Leonardo
Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci is great, mysterious, attractive. Such
distant and so modern. Like a rainbow, bright, mosaic, colorful
the fate of the master. His life is full of wanderings, meetings with amazing people,
events. How much has been written about him, how much has been published, but it will never be
enough.
illegitimate son of a notary and local peasant woman Katerina.
His parents were 25-year-old notary Pierrot and his beloved, a peasant woman
Katerina. Leonardo spent the first years of his life with his mother. His father
soon married a rich and noble girl, but this marriage turned out to be childless,
and Piero took his three-year-old son to be raised. Separated from mother
Leonardo spent his whole life trying to recreate her image in his masterpieces. In Italy
At that time, illegitimate children were treated almost as if they were legitimate
heirs. Many influential people towns of Vinci took part in
the further fate of Leonardo. When Leonardo was 13 years old, his stepmother died
during childbirth. The father remarried - and again soon became a widower. He
lived 78 years, was married four times and had 12 children. Father tried to introduce
Leonardo to the family profession, but to no avail: the son was not interested in laws
society.
In 1467, at the age of 15, Leonardo became an apprentice to the famous
Florentine painter and sculptor Andreadel Verrocchio. Here he is
mastered the humanities, chemistry, drawing, and metallurgy. Actively
the apprentice was engaged in sculpture, drawing, modeling. After 5 years
he receives the title of master of painting and paints his first picture
"Annunciation".
Leonardo had remarkable strength and could effortlessly tie a horseshoe into a knot. He
skillfully played the harp, sang and was very courteous. He had
irresistible appearance. Contemporaries, looking at his flowing golden
chestnut curls, exclaimed: “his incomparable splendor
extraordinary beauty, gives serenity to every sad soul."
At the same time, he had an amazing sense of humor and even in mature
at age he could laugh and joke selflessly. Having settled in the Vatican, in
Belvedere Palace, he began to tell everyone that a real
the Dragon. It was a lizard, to which he skillfully attached horns, a beard and wings.
In 1481, Leonardo received his first large order for an altarpiece.
"Adoration of the Magi" for the monastery located in the surrounding area
Florence.
Leonardo had many friends and students.
He was not married.
He had his own workshop in Florence in 1476-1481.
In 1481, da Vinci completed the first large order in his life -
altar image "Adoration of the Magi" for the monastery located
near Florence.
In 1482 Leonardo, being, according to Vasari, a very talented musician,
created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head.
1482 - Leonardo da Vinci moves from Florence to Milan.
Duke Lodovico of Sforza, ruler of Milan, commissions a fresco by Leonardo
"Last Supper" for the monastery of Santa Maria delleGrazie.
1499 The French invade Milan and overthrow Sforza, and Leonardo
returns to Florence.
1503 Leonardo begins work on a portrait ("Mona Lisa"), which
will become one of the most famous paintings in the history of painting.
Madonna became the embodiment of the Renaissance ideal of perfection, beauty,
spirituality. The word "Madonna" means "My Lady".
Here are the paintings: “Madonna Benois”, “Madonna Lita”, “Madonna with Pomegranate”,
"Madonna", "Madonna of the Rocks", "Madonna of the Carnation", "Annunciation".
The quality of the picture is impressive; it brings together everything at the highest level.
achievements of the Renaissance. Here the landscape is subtly combined with the portrait,
the gaze is directed at the viewer, the famous “counterposto” pose, pyramidal
composition... The technique itself is worthy of admiration: each of the thinnest layers
applied to another only after the previous one had dried. Reception
“sfumato” Leonardo achieved a melting image of objects, with a brush he conveyed
the outlines of the air, resurrected the play of light and shadow. This is it main value
Da Vinci's creation "Mona Lisa".
Mona Lisa or Gioconda canvas by the great artist Leonardo da
Vinci is the most mysterious work of painting to date
day. There are so many mysteries and secrets associated with it that even the most experienced
art critics sometimes do not know what is actually drawn on this
picture. Who is Gioconda, what goals did da Vinci pursue when he created
is this a canvas? If you believe the same biographers, Leonardo, at the time when
painted this picture and kept various musicians and jesters around him,
which entertained the model and created a special atmosphere, so the canvas
turned out so exquisite and unlike all other creations of this
author.
One of the mysteries is that under ultraviolet and infrared
With radiation, this picture looks completely different. The original Mona Lisa
which was dug up under a layer of paint using a special camera,
was different from what visitors now see in the museum. She was more
wide-faced, more emphasized smile and different eyes. The greatness of the picture
which is transmitted to the viewer is also the result of the fact that first
the artist painted the landscape and then the model itself on top of it. As a result (it was
was it intended or happened by chance, it is unknown) the figure of Gioconda was
is very close to the viewer, which emphasizes its significance. On
perception also operates and the existing contrast between gentle
curves and colors of a woman and a bizarre landscape behind, as if
fabulous, spiritual, with the sfumato inherent to the master. So, he
combined reality and fairy tale, reality and dream into one whole, which creates
An incredible feeling for everyone who looks at the canvas. By the time of writing
masterpiece. The painting acts as hypnosis, the secrets of painting elusive to the eye,
mysterious transitions from light to shadow, attracting demonic
The beauty of a smile has the same effect on a person as the gaze of a boa constrictor on a rabbit.
The secret of Gioconda is linked in the most precise mathematical calculation Leonardo,
who by that time had developed the secret of the painting formula. With help
this formula and precise mathematical calculations, from under the master’s brush came
terrifyingly powerful work. The power of her charm is comparable to the living and
animated, and not drawn on the board. There is a feeling that
the artist painted Gioconda in an instant, as if clicking
camera, but haven’t drawn it for 4 years. In an instant he caught her crafty
a glance, a fleeting smile, one single movement that embodied
in the picture. No one can figure out how the great master of painting managed to do this.
destined to remain a secret forever.
Leonardo da Vinci is an unsurpassed master of painting and graphics.
In 1508 Leonardo was asked to paint a large fresco for the Palazzo
Vecchio in Florence on the plot of the Battle of Anghiari that took place in 1440,
during which Florence defeated Milan. There was work
unfinished, only copies remained - “Battle of Anghiari”
"The Last Supper."
Leonardo da Vinci chose to depict the moment after his fateful words
Jesus: "One of you will betray me." Instead of a religious sacrament, the artist
conveyed the drama of human feelings, the psychological state of each
the apostle, struck to the very heart by the Teacher’s words.
Leonardo da Vinci tries himself in various directions and almost everywhere
achieves unprecedented positive results, but cannot find it
the favorable environment he needed in Italy at that time. Therefore, with
with great pleasure in 1517 he accepted the invitation of the French
King Francis I to the post of court painter and arrives in
France. The artist’s weakened strength was at its limit and after two
years, May 2, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci died in the castle of Clos Lucet, near
from Amboise, in France. But despite the short life path of Leonardo, yes
Vinci became a recognized symbol of the Renaissance.
Monument to Leonardo da Vinci erected in the middle of La Scala in 1872
year. The work of the sculptor Pietro Magna. The monument represents
pedestal on which Leonardo da Vinci stands. Below Leonardo da Vinci
There are four of his students.
I.2 Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most multifaceted personalities in the history of the era
Italian Renaissance. A lot has been written about him, but he is still
is the most mysterious figure of that time. He was able to glorify himself as
a great artist and predictor, but what amazes me most is his amazing
inventions.
Leonardo's ingenuity knew no bounds, and therefore his drawings were often
depicted mechanisms that were completely unthinkable for that time, for example,
something like an excavator. The artist dreamed of building an aircraft, but
his dream was impossible due to the lack of sufficiently powerful engines.
Some of Leonardo's designs are quite funny. So, he came up with an alarm clock with
very original operating principle. Its essence is that water gradually
collects in a vessel, and when it is overfilled, it begins to pour out
on the feet of the sleeping person. And the sleeper, in the words of Leonardo himself, “immediately
wakes up to get down to business." Only a few inventions were invented for him
managed to be implemented in practice. These mainly include projects
devices for various holidays, but these devices were so
so short-lived that, of course, not a trace remained of them.
In those days, people dreamed of flying like birds. But Leonardo da Vinci is not just
wanted this, he began work on developing devices that could
lift a person into the sky. First he created what is today considered
helicopter prototype. His sketches showed a propeller that could be
powered by the power of four men. Soon Leonardo da Vinci decided
turn to a proven method of flight. For this he began to carefully
study the anatomical structure of the dragonfly and its wings, and over time
designed a large "dragonfly wing". He found that the length of the wings
for human flight it must be at least 12 meters. But this attempt
failed.
After that. Leonardo da Vinci began developing another aircraft
a machine that was somewhat similar to a modern parachute. He
attached to a person's back in such a way that he could maneuver in
flight time. But this device did not take off either. Only after a few hundred years
this drawing was converted into a parachute.
In addition, Leonardo was interested in the development of military technology
equipment. One of the truly brilliant ideas was the development
iron chariots in the form of inverted plates armed with cannons. He
was the first to propose installing batteries on armored ships
firearms, invented the helicopter, bicycle, glider, parachute, tank,
machine gun, poison gases, smoke screen for troops, magnifying glass
(100 years before Galileo!). Da Vinci invented textile machines, powerful
cranes, swamp drainage systems using pipes, arched bridges.
Leonardo da Vinci is a genius whose inventions belong undividedly to both
past, present and future of humanity. He lived ahead of his time
and if even a small part of what he invented was brought to life, then
the history of Europe, and perhaps the world, would have been different: already in the 15th century we
they would drive around in cars and cross the seas in submarines.
Leonardo da Vinci enriched with insightful observations and guesses
almost all areas of knowledge. But how surprised a genius would be if he knew that
numerous of his inventions are used even centuries after his
birth.
During his life, Leonardo da Vinci made thousands of notes and drawings,
dedicated to anatomy, but did not publish his works. Doing an autopsy
bodies of people and animals, he accurately conveyed the structure of the skeleton and internal
organs, including small parts. According to the professor of clinical anatomy
Peter Abrams, da Vinci's scientific work was 300 years ahead of its time and
was in many ways superior to the famous "Grey's Anatomy".
Some of the first schematic drawings date back to this period of Leonardo's life.
anatomical sketches of cross sections of the leg. Subsequently Leonardo
created a whole system of cross-sectional images of organs and body parts.
This technique has become widely used in the study of human anatomy.
Leonardo da Vinci worked most actively in 1510-1511.
He performed autopsies with the help of the anatomist Torre in the hospitals of Northern
Italy. There are more than 200 sheets of anatomical drawings by Leonardo da Vinci,
which amount to 13 volumes.
Fascinated by mechanics and trying to accurately convey human movements, Leonardo
da Vinci great attention devoted to the study of the muscular system and structure
skeleton: "Nature cannot make animals move without mechanical
instruments..." Perhaps this can explain why Leonardo with such
The images of the muscles of the arms, legs, and neck are meticulously conveyed.
For the same reason, probably, images of internal organs and, in particular,
brain are given schematically. In the comments to his posts he
indicates the functions of peripheral nerves, highlighting motor and
sensitive portions.
Discoveries in medicine:
Cross section of the skull
Fetus in mother's womb
Description of the right ventricular valve
Glass organ models
Atherosclerosis
Glasses
In addition, the discoveries of Leonardo da Vinci include discoveries in botany:
Laws of phyllotaxy (arrangement of leaves on the stem)
Laws of heliotropism and geotropism (the influence of the sun and gravity on
plants)
Determining the age of plants (by stem structure); tree age
(by annual rings)
and geology:
Map of Northern Italy
Explanation of marine sediments found in the mountains of Italy
Discoveries in physics:
Light Intensity Measuring Tool
Law of Inertia (later Newton's 1st Law)
And:
Mechanical saw; mechanical chariot; punching machine
holes in blanks and coinage; design of channels, gateways,
dams; dredger; jack; crane; pump with centrifuge;
Grinder; oil lamp; chain transmission; spinning machine;
flying machine; parachute; Lifebuoy; alarm; waterways.
I.3 Leonardo’s literary work: riddles, parables
The creator of “The Last Supper” and “La Gioconda” also showed himself as a thinker early
realizing the need for theoretical justification of artistic practice.
The enormous literary heritage of Leonardo da Vinci has survived to this day in
chaotic form, in manuscripts written with the left hand. Although Leonardo yes
Vinci did not print a single line of them, but in his notes he constantly
addressed an imaginary reader and throughout the last years of his life did not leave
thoughts about publishing my works.
Parables have been preserved among his manuscripts.
The fairy tale and parable "Hazel Tree and Elm" tells about the smug Hazel Tree,
who was proud of his harvest and therefore treated with disdain
to his neighbor and was ready to drive him away from the world. But trouble happened: by
Soldiers passed by and picked ripe nuts, breaking branches in the process. A Elm,
Instead of rejoicing, he sympathized with the subdued Hazel.
After which he lamented for a long time and healed his wounds, and good Elm
continued to grow.
"The Razor" by Leonardo da Vinci talks about a razor that had no equal
neither in beauty nor in skill, but here she indulges in narcissism, with
proudly speaking about his beauty and abilities, and leaves the caring
the barber who groomed and cherished her, cared for her and kept her in order.
Considering that she has no place in “some barber shop,” she leaves to see the world,
Yes, show yourself. But time passed, and the fugitive discovered that she had once been
a delicate blade polished to a shine due to rain and lack of care, but
the main thing is that she no longer worked, became covered with rust and did not
reflected more sunlight, as it once did, no one needed it.
Realizing her mistake, Razor began to cry bitterly and regret that
succumbed to temptation. But it was already too late!
At the end of the text, the author openly teaches: “The same fate awaits anyone who
endowed with talent, but does not develop or improve his abilities, but
is overly exalted and indulges in narcissism."
And indeed, this is so: the arrogant Razor wanted the impossible and did not
She understood that she would not be better than the barber anywhere. And she neglected
with its purpose to serve people, to bring joy to them and to oneself, and
surrendered into the hands of destructive narcissism, from which there is no benefit.
On the contrary, she only harmed herself.
The same thing happens in life with talented people who are overly
ascend, believing that they have reached the pinnacle of perfection, stop at
their development, and as a result of this they die.
"Stone and Road" It tells about a stone that, remaining in
loneliness after the death of his cheerful neighbor Brook, left his native,
a calm, familiar place on the top of a hill, deciding that from the herbs and flowers
"there's no use, it's wiser to live side by side with your brothers on the road where life beats
key." Having rolled down, he found himself in the traffic jam, where he was rudely
pushed aside, trampled, and stained with cow dung. And stone
All that remained was to dream of returning back. Where did his former one go?
beauty? Now he dreamed of the former peace, and even loneliness was to him
desirable, but it was no longer possible! The author brings us to wisdom,
famous proverb: “We don’t keep what we have; we cry when we lose it.”
Mysteries of Leonardo da Vinci.
In the literature of the Renaissance, the genre of riddles of prophecies appears, which
used by Leonardo da Vinci to entertain the court of Ludovico Moro.
For example:
1. A thing that will grow more the more you take away from it
(pit)
2. You will be able to see the shapes and figures of people and animals that will
follow these animals and people wherever they run (shadows)
3. People will walk and not move; they will speak to someone who is not there;
will hear the one who does not speak (dream)
4. Human race it will get to the point where one will not understand the other’s speech
(i.e. German Turkish)
5. There will be a great multitude of those who, forgetting about their existence and name, will
lying on the remains of other dead people (sleeping on bird feathers).
Aphorisms:
Don’t feed the slacker bread, but let him reason, and even be able to denigrate
You can’t refuse him others. He is always ready to find an excuse for his own
worthlessness.
In nature, everything is wisely thought out and arranged, everyone should do their own
deed, and in this wisdom there is the highest justice of life.
Painter, be careful that the greed for money does not overcome your honor.
art, for the earning of honor is much more significant than the honor of wealth.
Painting argues and competes with nature.
And for Leo there are unlucky days when everything goes topsy-turvy and
Misadventures lurk at every turn.
Science is the commander, and practice is the soldier.
Conclusion.
67-year-old Leonardo spent the third year of his life in Amboise in bed.23
April 1519 he left a will, and on May 2 he died surrounded
students and their masterpieces in CloLuce. According to Vasari, da Vinci died on
the hands of King Francis I, his close friend. This one is unreliable, but
a legend widespread in France is reflected in
canvases by Ingres, Angelika Kaufman and many other painters. Leonardo yes
Vinci was buried at the Castle of Amboise. Engraved on the gravestone
inscription: “Within the walls of this monastery lie the ashes of Leonardo da Vinci,
the greatest artist, engineer and architect of the French kingdom."
The loss of Leonardo beyond measure saddened everyone who knew him, for there had never been
a man who would bring so much honor to the art of painting. This is the master
who truly lived his entire life with great benefit for humanity.
Yes, all his work is continuous questions, the answers to which can be
life, and will remain for subsequent generations.
Leonardo started a lot, but never finished anything, because he
it seemed that in those things that were conceived by him, the hand was not capable
achieve artistic perfection, since he is in his intention
created various difficulties for himself, so subtle and amazing that even
with the most skillful hands it would under no circumstances be possible
express.
At the end of the Middle Ages in Italy, a star rose that illuminated everything that followed.
development of European civilization. Painter, engineer, mechanic, carpenter,
musician, mathematician, pathologist, inventor is far from complete
a list of facets of the universal genius. Archaeologist, meteorologist, astronomer,
architect... All this is Leonardo da Vinci. They called him a sorcerer
servant of the devil, Italian Faust and the divine spirit. He
ahead of his time by several centuries. Surrounded by legends yet
in life, the great Leonardo symbol of limitless aspirations
human mind.
For Leonardo da Vinci, art and research were
complementary aspects of the constant desire to observe and
record the appearance and internal structure of the world. Definitely possible
claim that he was the first among scientists whose research was complemented by
art classes.
Leonardo da VinciItalian artist (painter, sculptor, architect)
and scientist (anatomist, naturalist), inventor, writer, one of
the greatest representatives of the art of the High Renaissance, shining example
"universal man"
He literally changed people's perceptions in all aspects of life.
He truly deserves to be called a GENIUS.
The greatest figure of his era!
Protective word.
Hello. My name is Danilova Ekaterina, I am student 3
class "A".
I bring to your attention a project on the theme "Leonardo da
Vinci. Man-era. Mystery man".
The relevance of my project is to show how everything...
it is still important and interesting to remember and be interested
works of Russian and foreign artists.
The goal of my work is to learn and reveal as much as possible
Leonardo da Vinci from all sides, since he was not only
an artist, but had many other professions.
Leonardo da Vinci was not only a great painter, he was
sculptor, architect, engineer and scientist. This is me
I was most interested in it. How could one person
to have so many talents at once?!
The goal of my project was precisely to assemble how
as much information as possible about this great man. Find and
see all his works and creations.
The mystery of Leonardo begins with his birth. 1452, 15
April in Tuscany (west of Florence) was born
illegitimate son of a notary and local peasant woman Katerina. Talent for
Leonardo showed a passion for drawing from childhood.
The most mysterious work of painting to date
is a painting by the great artist Mona Lisa or Gioconda. With him
are connected by so many mysteries and secrets that even the most experienced art historians
sometimes they don’t know what is actually drawn in this picture. Who is she
Gioconda What goals did da Vinci pursue when he created this painting? On
perception operates and the existing contrast between gentle curves and
flowers of a woman and a whimsical, fairy-tale-like landscape behind. So
In this way he combined reality and fairy tale into one whole. By the time of writing
of this painting, Leonardo da Vinci achieved such mastery that he created
masterpiece. The picture acts like hypnosis.
Leonardo da Vinci was able to glorify himself as a great artist and
a predictor, but what is most striking is his amazing inventions.
He made discoveries in medicine, botany, geology, and physics.
The enormous literary heritage of Leonardo da Vinci has survived to this day.
manuscripts: these are parables, riddles, aphorisms. He truly deserves it
to be called a GENIUS.
Leonardo da Vinci died when he was 67 years old. This is the master who
truly lived his entire life with great benefit for humanity. All of his
creativity is full of questions that you can answer all your life, and
will remain for future generations.
Thank you for your attention!
Teacher's review of project work
1.The name of the project is “Leonardo da Vinci.” Man is an era. Mystery man."
2. Prepared by: Katya Danilova, student of 3rd grade “A” MBOU “Secondary School No. 1”
3. Project manager: Dolgopolova Raisa Grigorievna, primary teacher
classes of MBOU "Secondary School 1" of Kamensk - Uralsky
mother Danilova Anastasia Ivanovna
4. The academic subject within which work is carried out on
project: fine arts
5. Academic disciplines close to the project topic: computer science, environmental
world, extracurricular activities
6. Age of students for which the project is designed: primary school children
age
7. Project goal: acquaintance with the multifaceted talent of Leonardo da Vinci.
8. Didactic objectives. After completing the project, students will be able to:
expand your knowledge of great artists;
expand your vocabulary;
gain skills and ability to work with different sources information;
development of skills to use information technology for registration
the result of your activities (presentation, drawing).
9. Project objectives.
get acquainted with the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, his paintings,
inventions, literary creativity.
10. Research methods: reading books, articles; searching for information on the Internet,
visiting an art gallery (via the Internet).
11. Project product: presented the collected and processed information in
in the form of a message;
12. Object of study: artistic culture of the Renaissance (this is
period of cultural development of European countries).
13. Subject of research: the artist’s creativity.
14. Research results: acquaintance with the work of the great artist,
his paintings, his inventions, his contributions to the field of literature.
15. Conclusion. This project allowed me to learn more deeply about life and creativity
Leonardo da Vinci, look at his paintings differently; note the connection with
the life of his parables and riddles.
(Leonardo da Vinci) (1452–1519) - the greatest figure, multifaceted genius of the Renaissance, founder of the High Renaissance. Known as an artist, scientist, engineer, inventor.
Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the town of Anchiano near the city of Vinci, located near Florence. His father was Piero da Vinci, a notary who came from a prominent family in the city of Vinci. According to one version, the mother was a peasant woman, according to another, a tavern owner known as Katerina. At about the age of 4.5 years, Leonardo was taken into his father's house, and in documents of that time he is named as the illegitimate son of Piero. In 1469 he entered the workshop of the famous artist, sculptor and jeweler Andrea del Verrocchio ( 1435/36–1488). Here Leonardo went through his entire apprenticeship: from rubbing paints to working as an apprentice. According to the stories of contemporaries, he painted the left figure of the angel in Verrocchio's painting Baptism(c. 1476, Uffizi Gallery, Florence), which immediately attracted attention. The naturalness of movement, the smoothness of lines, the softness of chiaroscuro - distinguishes the figure of an angel from Verrocchio’s more rigid writing. Leonardo lived in the master's house even after he was accepted into the Guild of St. Luke, a guild of painters, in 1472.
One of the few dated drawings by Leonardo was created in August 1473. View of the Arno Valley from above, it was made with a pen with quick strokes, conveying vibrations of light and air, which indicates that the drawing was made from life (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).
The first painting attributed to Leonardo, although its authorship is disputed by many experts, is Annunciation(c. 1472, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). Unfortunately, the unknown author made later corrections, which significantly deteriorated the quality of the work.
Portrait of Ginevra de Benci(1473–1474, National Gallery, Washington) is permeated with a melancholy mood. Part of the picture at the bottom is cropped: probably, the hands of the model were depicted there. The contours of the figure are softened using the sfumato effect, created even before Leonardo, but it was he who became the genius of this technique. Sfumato (Italian sfumato - foggy, smoky) is a technique developed in the Renaissance in painting and graphics, which allows you to convey the softness of modeling, the elusiveness of object outlines, and the feeling of an airy environment.
Madonna with a flower (Madonna Benoit) (Madonna and child) 1478 - 1480 Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia |
Between 1476 and 1478 Leonardo opens his workshop. This period dates back to Madonna with a flower, so-called Madonna Benoit(c. 1478, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). The smiling Madonna addresses the baby Jesus sitting on her lap; the movements of the figures are natural and flexible. This painting exhibits Leonardo's characteristic interest in showing the inner world.
An unfinished painting is also an early work. Adoration of the Magi(1481–1482, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). The central place is occupied by the group of Madonna and Child and the Magi placed in the foreground.
In 1482, Leonardo left for Milan, the richest city of that time, under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508), who maintained an army and spent huge amounts of money on magnificent festivities and the purchase of works of art. Introducing himself to his future patron, Leonardo talks about himself as a musician, military expert, inventor of weapons, war chariots, cars, and only then talks about himself as an artist. Leonardo lived in Milan until 1498, and this period of his life was the most fruitful.
The first commission Leonardo received was to create an equestrian statue in honor of Francesco Sforza (1401–1466), father of Lodovico Sforza. Working on it for 16 years, Leonardo created many drawings, as well as an eight-meter clay model. In an effort to surpass all existing equestrian statues, Leonardo wanted to make a grandiose sculpture, showing a horse rearing up. But when faced with technical difficulties, Leonardo changed his plan and decided to depict a walking horse. In November 1493 model Horse without a rider was put on public display, and it was this event that made Leonardo da Vinci famous. About 90 tons of bronze were required to cast the sculpture. The collection of metal that had begun was interrupted, and the equestrian statue was never cast. In 1499 Milan was captured by the French, who used the sculpture as a target. After some time it collapsed. Horse- a grandiose, but never completed project - one of the significant works of monumental sculpture of the 16th century. and, according to Vasari, “those who have seen the huge clay model ... claim that they have never seen a more beautiful and majestic work,” called the monument “a great colossus.”
At the Sforza court, Leonardo also worked as a decorative artist for many festivities, creating previously unseen decorations and mechanisms, and making costumes for allegorical figures.
Unfinished canvas Saint Jerome(1481, Vatican Museum, Rome) shows the saint in a moment of penance in an elaborate turn with a lion at his feet. The picture was painted in black and white colors. But after covering it with varnish in the 19th century. the colors turned olive and golden.
Madonna of the Rocks(1483–1484, Louvre, Paris) is a famous painting by Leonardo, painted in Milan. The image of the Madonna, baby Jesus, little John the Baptist and an angel in a landscape is a new motif in Italian painting of that time. Through the opening of the rock one can see a landscape to which sublimely ideal features are given, and in which the achievements of linear and aerial perspective are shown. Although the cave is dimly lit, the picture is not dark, faces and figures softly emerge from the shadows. The finest chiaroscuro (sfumato) creates the impression of dim diffused light and models faces and hands. Leonardo connects the figures not only by a common mood, but also by the unity of space.
LADY WITH ERMINE. 1485–1490. Czartoryski Museum |
Lady with an ermine(1484, Czartoryski Museum, Krakow) is one of Leonardo’s first works as a court portrait painter. The painting depicts Lodovic's favorite Cecilia Gallerani with the emblem of the Sforza family, an ermine. The complex turn of the head and the exquisite bend of the lady’s hand, the curved pose of the animal - everything speaks of the authorship of Leonardo. The background was rewritten by another artist.
Portrait of a musician(1484, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan). Only the young man's face is completed, the rest of the picture is not painted. The type of face is close to the faces of Leonardo's angels, only executed more courageously.
Another unique work was created by Leonardo in one of the halls of the Sforza Palace, which is called Donkey. On the vaults and walls of this hall he painted crowns of willows, whose branches are intricately intertwined and tied with decorative ropes. Subsequently, part of the paint layer fell off, but a significant part was preserved and restored.
In 1495 Leonardo began work on Last Supper(area 4.5 × 8.6 m). The fresco is located on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, at a height of 3 m from the floor and occupies the entire end wall of the room. Leonardo oriented the perspective of the fresco towards the viewer, thereby it organically entered into the interior of the refectory: the perspective reduction of the side walls depicted in the fresco continues the real space of the refectory. Thirteen people are sitting at a table parallel to the wall. In the center is Jesus Christ, to the left and right of him are his disciples. The dramatic moment of exposure and condemnation of betrayal is shown, the moment when Christ has just uttered the words: “One of you will betray Me,” and the different emotional reactions of the apostles to these words. The composition is built on a strictly verified mathematical calculation: in the center is Christ, depicted against the background of the middle, largest opening of the rear wall, the vanishing point of perspective coincides with his head. The twelve apostles are divided into four groups of three figures each. Each is given a vivid characterization through expressive gestures and movements. The main task was to show Judas, to separate him from the rest of the apostles. By placing him on the same line of the table as all the apostles, Leonardo psychologically separated him by loneliness. Creation last supper became a notable event in the artistic life of Italy at that time. As a true innovator and experimenter, Leonardo abandoned the fresco technique. He covered the wall with a special composition of resin and mastic, and painted with tempera. These experiments led to the greatest tragedy: the refectory, which was hastily repaired by order of Sforza, the picturesque innovations of Leonardo, the lowland in which the refectory was located - all this served a sad service to the preservation last supper. The paints began to peel off, as Vasari already mentioned in 1556. Secret supper It was restored several times in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the restorations were unskilled (paint layers were simply reapplied). By the mid-20th century, when last supper fell into a deplorable state, they began scientific restoration: first the entire paint layer was fixed, then later layers were removed, and Leonardo’s tempera painting was revealed. And although the work was severely damaged, these restoration works made it possible to say that this Renaissance masterpiece was saved. Working on the fresco for three years, Leonardo created the greatest creation of the Renaissance.
After the fall of Sforza's power in 1499, Leonardo travels to Florence, stopping at Mantua and Venice along the way. In Mantua he creates cardboard with Portrait of Isabella d'Este(1500, Louvre, Paris), made with black chalk, charcoal and pastel.
In the spring of 1500, Leonardo arrived in Florence, where he soon received an order to paint an altar painting in the Monastery of the Annunciation. The order was never completed, but one of the options is considered to be the so-called. Burlington House Cardboard(1499, National Gallery, London).
One of the significant commissions received by Leonardo in 1502 to decorate the wall of the meeting room of the Signoria in Florence was Battle of Anghiari(not preserved). Another wall for decoration was given to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), who painted a painting there Battle of Kashin. Leonardo's sketches, now lost, showed a panorama of the battle, in the center of which a fight for the banner took place. Cartons by Leonardo and Michelangelo, exhibited in 1505, were a huge success. As is the case with Last Supper, Leonardo experimented with paints, as a result of which the paint layer gradually crumbled. But preparatory drawings and copies have survived, which partly give an idea of the scale of this work. In particular, a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) has survived, which shows the central scene of the composition (c. 1615, Louvre, Paris).
For the first time in the history of battle painting, Leonardo showed the drama and fury of battle.
Mona Lisa- the most famous work of Leonardo da Vinci (1503–1506, Louvre, Paris). Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the third wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo dele Giocondo. Now the picture has been slightly changed: originally columns were drawn on the left and right, now cut off. The small-sized painting makes a monumental impression: the Mona Lisa is shown against the backdrop of a landscape where the depth of space and airy haze are conveyed with the greatest perfection. Leonardo’s famous sfumato technique is here brought to unprecedented heights: the thinnest, as if melting, haze of chiaroscuro, enveloping the figure, softens the contours and shadows. There is something elusive, bewitching and attractive in a light smile, in the liveliness of facial expression, in the majestic calm of the pose, in the stillness of the smooth lines of the hands. |
In 1506 Leonardo received an invitation to Milan from Louis XII of France (1462-1515). Having given Leonardo complete freedom of action and regularly paying him, the new patrons did not require specific work from him. Leonardo is interested in scientific research, sometimes turning to painting. Then the second version was written Madonnas of the Rocks(1506–1508, British National Gallery, London).
MADONNA AND CHILD AND ST. ANNA. OK. 1510. Louvre, Paris |
St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child(1500–1510, Louvre, Paris) is one of the themes of Leonardo’s work, to which he repeatedly addressed. The last development of this topic remained unfinished.
In 1513 Leonardo travels to Rome, to the Vatican, to the court of Pope Leo X (1513–1521), but soon loses the pope's favor. He studies plants in the botanical garden, draws up plans for draining the Pontine swamps, and writes notes for a treatise on the structure of the human voice. At this time he created the only Self-portrait(1514, Bibliotheca Reale, Turin), executed in sanguine, showing a gray-haired old man with a long beard and a gaze.
Leonardo's last painting was also painted in Rome - Saint John the Baptist(1515, Louvre, Paris). St. John is shown as pampered with a seductive smile and feminine gestures.
Leonardo again receives an offer from the French king, this time from Francis I (1494–1547), successor of Louis XII: to move to France, to an estate near the royal castle of Amboise. In 1516 or 1517 Leonardo arrives in France, where he is given apartments at the Cloux estate. Surrounded by the king's respectful admiration, he receives the title "First Artist, Engineer and Architect of the King." Leonardo, despite his age and illness, is engaged in drawing canals in the Loire River valley and takes part in the preparation of court festivities.
Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519, leaving his drawings and papers in his will to Francesco Melzi, a student who kept them throughout his life. But after his death, all the countless papers were distributed all over the world, some were lost, some are stored in different cities, in museums around the world.
A scientist by vocation, Leonardo even now amazes with the breadth and variety of his scientific interests. His research in the field of aircraft design is unique. He studied the flight, gliding of birds, the structure of their wings, and created the so-called. ornithopter, a flying machine with flapping wings, never realized. He created a pyramidal parachute, a model of a helical propeller (a variant of a modern propeller). Observing nature, he became an expert in the field of botany: he was the first to describe the laws of phyllotaxy (laws governing the arrangement of leaves on the stem), heliotropism and geotropism (laws of the influence of the sun and gravity on plants), and discovered a way to determine the age of trees by annual rings. He was an expert in the field of anatomy: he was the first to describe the valve of the right ventricle of the heart, demonstrated anatomy, etc. He created a system of drawings that now help students understand the structure of the human body: he showed the object in four views to examine it from all sides, created an image system organs and bodies in cross section. His research in the field of geology is interesting: he gave descriptions of sedimentary rocks and explanations of marine deposits in the mountains of Italy. As an optical scientist, he knew that visual images are projected upside down on the cornea of the eye. He was probably the first to use a camera obscura (from Latin camera - room, obscurus - dark) - a closed box with a small hole in one of the walls - for sketching landscapes; rays of light are reflected on the frosted glass on the other side of the box, creating an inverted color image, used by 18th century landscape painters. for accurate reproduction of views). In Leonardo's drawings there is a design for an instrument for measuring the intensity of light, a photometer, which was brought to life only three centuries later. He designed canals, locks, and dams. Among his ideas you can see: lightweight shoes for walking on water, a lifebuoy, webbed gloves for swimming, a device for underwater movement, similar to a modern spacesuit, machines for making rope, grinding machines and much more. Talking to mathematician Luca Pacioli, who wrote the textbook About Divine Proportion, Leonardo became interested in this science and created illustrations for this textbook.
Leonardo also acted as an architect, but none of his projects were ever brought to life. He participated in a competition to design the central dome of the Milan Cathedral, created a design for a mausoleum for members of the royal family in the Egyptian style, and a project he proposed to the Turkish Sultan to build a huge bridge across the Bosphorus Strait under which ships could pass.
There are a large number of Leonardo's drawings left, made with sanguine, colored crayons, pastels (it is Leonardo who is credited with the invention of pastels), silver pencil, and chalk.
In Milan Leonardo begins to paint Treatise on Painting, work on which continued throughout his life, but was never completed. In this multi-volume reference book, Leonardo wrote about how to recreate the world around him on canvas, about linear and aerial perspective, proportions, anatomy, geometry, mechanics, optics, the interaction of colors, and reflexes.
John the Baptist. 1513-16 |
Madonna Litta 1478-1482 Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia |
Leda with a swan 1508 - 1515 Ufizi Gallery, Florence, Italy |
The life and work of Leonardo da Vinci left a colossal mark not only in art, but also in science and technology. Painter, sculptor, architect - he was a natural scientist, mechanic, engineer, mathematician, and made many discoveries for subsequent generations. This was the greatest personality of the Renaissance.
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"Vitruvian Man"- the generally accepted name for a graphic drawing by da Vinci made in 1492. as an illustration for entries in one of the diaries. The drawing depicts a naked male figure. Strictly speaking, these are even two images of the same figure superimposed on each other, but in different poses. A circle and a square are described around the figure. The manuscript containing this drawing is sometimes also called the “Canon of Proportions” or simply “Proportions of Man.” Now this work is kept in one of the museums of Venice, but is exhibited extremely rarely, since this exhibit is truly unique and valuable both as a work of art and as a subject of research.
Leonardo created his “Vitruvian Man” as an illustration of the geometric studies he carried out based on the treatise of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius (hence the name of da Vinci’s work). In the treatise of the philosopher and researcher, the proportions of the human body were taken as the basis for all architectural proportions. Da Vinci applied the research of the ancient Roman architect to painting, which once again clearly illustrates the principle of the unity of art and science put forward by Leonardo. In addition, this work also reflects the master’s attempt to relate man to nature. It is known that da Vinci considered the human body as a reflection of the universe, i.e. was convinced that it functions according to the same laws. The author himself considered the Vitruvian Man as a “cosmography of the microcosm.” There is also a deep symbolic meaning hidden in this drawing. The square and circle in which the body is inscribed do not simply reflect physical, proportional characteristics. A square can be interpreted as the material existence of a person, and a circle represents its spiritual basis, and the points of contact of geometric figures with each other and with the body inserted into them can be considered as the connection of these two foundations of human existence. For many centuries, this drawing was considered as a symbol of the ideal symmetry of the human body and the universe as a whole.