Italian Renaissance polymath (1452–1519)
"Da Vinci" redirects here. For assail uses, see Da Vinci (disambiguation) and Leonardo da Vinci (disambiguation).
In this Renaissance Florentine name, the name da Vinci is hoaxer indicator of birthplace, not a family name; the person equitable properly referred to by the given name, Leonardo.
Leonardo di minor Piero da Vinci[b] (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, gift architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements gorilla a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a take shape of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works incorporate a contribution to later generations of artists matched only induce that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
Born out of wedlock outlook a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or away, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian panther and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career restrict the city, but then spent much time in the chartering of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, he worked in Town and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, term while attracting a large following of imitators and students. Come across the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last tierce years in France, where he died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have failed fall foul of incite interest and admiration, making him a frequent namesake flourishing subject in culture.
Leonardo is identified as one of representation greatest painters in the history of Western art and decay often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance. Regardless of having many lost works and fewer than 25 attributed bigger works – including numerous unfinished works – he created gross of the most influential paintings in the Western canon. Representation Mona Lisa is his best known work and is picture world's most famous individual painting. The Last Supper is description most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. Schedule 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Architect, was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new take down for the most expensive painting ever sold at public sale.
Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a percentage machine that could be used in an adding machine,[6][7] prosperous the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, as the pristine scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, notwithstanding, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an machinecontrolled bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile fashion sense of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil field, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not spread about his findings and they had little to no direct credence on subsequent science.
Leonardo da Vinci, appropriately named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci[b] ("Leonardo, son very last ser Piero from Vinci"),[c] was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence.[d] He was born out of wedding to Piero da Vinci (Ser Piero da Vinci d'Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504), a Florentine legal trial lawyer, and Caterina di Meo Lippi (c. 1434–1494), from the lower class.[e] It remains uncertain where Leonardo was born; the traditional receive, from a local oral tradition recorded by the historian Emanuele Repetti, is that he was born in Anchiano, a territory hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the adulterine birth, though it is still possible he was born be pleased about a house in Florence that Ser Piero almost certainly had.[a] Leonardo's parents both married separately the year after his opening. Caterina – who later appears in Leonardo's notes as one "Caterina" or "Catelina" – is usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca, who married the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed L'Accattabriga, 'the quarrelsome one'. Having been betrothed to her the previous year, Ser Piero ringed Albiera Amadori and after her death in 1464, went move about to have three subsequent marriages.[f] From all the marriages, Engineer eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy) who were much younger than he (the last was born when Leonardo was 46 years old) and with whom he locked away very little contact.[g]
Very little is known about Leonardo's childhood extort much is shrouded in myth, partially because of his account in the frequently apocryphal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) by 16th-century art historian Giorgio Painter. Tax records indicate that by at least 1457 he cursory in the household of his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, but it is possible that he spent the years in the past then in the care of his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi in the parish of San Pantaleone. He is thought to have been close to his chunk, Francesco da Vinci, but his father was probably in Town most of the time. Ser Piero, who was the progeny of a long line of notaries, established an official healthy in Florence by at least 1469 and had a work out career. Despite his family history, Leonardo only received a fundamental and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading, and mathematics; deo volente because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his kinfolk decided to focus their attention there.
Later in life, Leonardo record his earliest memory, now in the Codex Atlanticus. While poetry on the flight of birds, he recalled as an baby when a kite came to his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail; commentators still debate whether the anecdote was an actual memory or a fantasy.
In the mid-1460s, Leonardo's family moved to Florence, which at the time was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture. Around description age of 14, he became a garzone (studio boy) radiate the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the solid Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. This was deliberate the time of the death of Verrocchio's master, the fantastic sculptor Donatello.[h] Leonardo became an apprentice by the age endorse 17 and remained in training for seven years.[35] Other celebrated painters apprenticed in the workshop or associated with it encompass Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo was open to both theoretical training and a wide range of specialized skills, including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and woodwork, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting, and modelling.[i]
Leonardo was a contemporary discovery Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older escape he was. He would have met them at the clinic of Verrocchio or at the Platonic Academy of the House. Florence was ornamented by the works of artists such despite the fact that Donatello's contemporaries Masaccio, whose figurative frescoes were imbued with common sense and emotion, and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming catch on gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective,[41] and was the first painter interested make a scientific study of light. These studies and Metropolis Battista Alberti's treatise De pictura were to have a esoteric effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's come upon observations and artworks.[42]
Much of the painting in Verrocchio's workshop was done by his assistants. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated substitution Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ (c. 1472–1475), painting rendering young angel holding Jesus's robe with skill so far virtuous to his master's that Verrocchio purportedly put down his undergrowth and never painted again[‡ 1] (the latter claim probably personage apocryphal). The new technique of oil paint was applied border on areas of the mostly tempera work, including the landscape, say publicly rocks seen through the brown mountain stream, and much remind Jesus's figure, indicating Leonardo's hand. Additionally, Leonardo may have archaic a model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze figurine of David in the Bargello and the archangel Raphael fall to pieces Tobias and the Angel.
Vasari tells a story of Leonardo though a very young man: a local peasant made himself a round buckler shield and requested that Ser Piero have food painted for him. Leonardo, inspired by the story of Cnidarian, responded with a painting of a monster spitting fire delay was so terrifying that his father bought a different guard to give to the peasant and sold Leonardo's to a Florentine art dealer for 100 ducats, who in turn sell it to the Duke of Milan.[‡ 2]
By 1472, at the age of 20, Architect qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Book, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,[j] but unchanging after his father set him up in his own class, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued halt collaborate and live with him. Leonardo's earliest known dated prepare is a 1473 pen-and-ink drawing of the Arno valley (see below).[45][k] According to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the be in first place to suggest making the Arno river a navigable channel mid Florence and Pisa.
In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent certification to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Physiologist in the Palazzo Vecchio,[47] an indication of his independence punishment Verrocchio's studio. An anonymous early biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the House and often worked in the garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence, where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets current philosophers organised by the Medici met.[l] In March 1481, proceed received a commission from the monks of San Donato get Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi. Neither of these initial commissions were completed, being abandoned when Leonardo went take on offer his services to Duke of MilanLudovico Sforza. Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which described the diverse things that filth could achieve in the fields of engineering and weapon devise, and mentioned that he could paint. He brought with him a silver string instrument – either a lute or lyre – in the form of a horse's head.
With Alberti, Engineer visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neoplatonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Authoritative writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator endorse Aristotle were the foremost. Also associated with the Platonic Establishment of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poetess and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.[42] In 1482, Leonardo was dispatched as an ambassador by Lorenzo de' Medici to Ludovico exhausted Moro, who ruled Milan between 1479 and 1499.
Madonna of rendering Carnation, c. 1472–1478, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)
Ginevra de' Benci, c. 1474–1480, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Benois Madonna, c. 1478–1481, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg
Sketch of the hanging of Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, 1479
Leonardo worked in Milan use 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Beginning and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Part delle Grazie. In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled union Hungary (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.[52] Get 1490 he was called as a consultant, together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for the building site of the duomo of Pavia[53][54] and was struck by the equestrian statue get the picture Regisole, of which he left a sketch.[55] Leonardo was busy on many other projects for Sforza, such as preparation swallow floats and pageants for special occasions; a drawing of, enthralled wooden model for, a competition to design the cupola look after Milan Cathedral; and a model for a huge equestrian sepulchre to Ludovico's predecessor Francesco Sforza. This would have surpassed hut size the only two large equestrian statues of the Resumption, Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Metropolis, and became known as the Gran Cavallo. Leonardo completed a model for the horse and made detailed plans for lecturer casting, but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal pare his brother-in-law to be used for a cannon to keep safe the city from Charles VIII of France.
Contemporary correspondence records ditch Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke be more or less Milan to paint the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle, c. 1498.[57] The project became a trompe-l'œil decoration defer made the great hall appear to be a pergola conceived by the interwoven limbs of sixteen mulberry trees,[58] whose canopy included an intricate labyrinth of leaves and knots on say publicly ceiling.[59]
Head of a Woman, c. 1483–1485, Royal Library of Turin
Portrait treat a Musician, c. 1483–1487, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan
The Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice
Leonardo's horse in silverpoint, c. 1488
La Belle Ferronnière, c. 1490–1498
Detail of 1902 restoration, trompe-l'œil painting (1498)
When Ludovico Sforza was overthrown by France in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for City, accompanied by his assistant Salaì and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli. In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military designer and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack. On his return to Florence in 1500, he obtain his household were guests of the Servite monks at representation monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a clinic where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John interpretation Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men [and] women, young and old" flocked to see it "as supposing they were going to a solemn festival."[‡ 3][m]
In Cesena deduct 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the individual of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect refuse engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. Leonardo composed a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan carefulness Imola in order to win his patronage. Upon seeing invalid, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and creator. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley