1452 - 1519
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinc was an Italian scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant girl, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home given to him by King François I.
Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" or universal genius, a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.
It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. Perhaps fifteen paintings survive the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivaled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualizing a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.
The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a woman whose expression is often described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the sitter's expression, the monumentality of the half-figure composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the painting's continuing fascination.
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503) and, according to Vasari, "after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...." He is thought to have continued to work on it for three years after he moved to France and to have finished it shortly before he died in 1519. Leonardo took the painting from Italy to France in 1516 when King François I invited the painter to work at the Clos Lucé near the king's castle in Amboise. The King bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV. Louis XIV moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre. Napoleon I had it moved to his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace; later it was returned to the Louvre. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) it was moved from the Louvre to a hiding place elsewhere in France.
Mona Lisa was not well-known until the mid-19th century when artists of the emerging Symbolist movement began to appreciate it, and associated it with their ideas about feminine mystique. Critic Walter Pater, in his 1867 essay on Leonardo, expressed this view by describing the figure in the painting as a kind of mythic embodiment of eternal femininity, who is "older than the rocks among which she sits" and who "has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave."
Mona Lisa is named for Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant. Lisa was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany who married Francesco del Giocondo, a successful silk merchant. The painting was commissioned for their new home and to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea.
The sitter's identity was ascertained at the University of Heidelberg in 2005 by a library expert who discovered a 1503 margin note written by Agostino Vespucci. Scholars had been of many minds, identifying at least four different paintings as the Mona Lisa and several people as its subject. Isabella of Naples or Aragon, Cecilia Gallerani, Costanza d'Avalos-who was also called the "merry one" or La Gioconda, Isabella d'Este, Pacifica Brandano or Brandino, Isabela Gualanda, Caterina Sforza, Leonardo's mother Caterina, and Leonardo himself had all been named the sitter. Today the subject's identity is held with certainty to be Lisa, which was always the traditional view.
A margin note by Agostino Vespucci from October 1503 in a book in the library of the University of Heidelberg identifies Lisa del Giocondo as the subject of Mona Lisa. The painting's title stems from a description by Giorgio Vasari in his biography of Leonardo da Vinci published in 1550, 31 years after the artist's death. "Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife...." (one version in Italian: Prese Lionardo a fare per Francesco del Giocondo il ritratto di mona Lisa sua moglie). In Italian, ma donna from donna meaning my lady which became madonna, and its contraction mona. Mona is thus a polite form of address, similar to Madam or my lady in English. In modern Italian, the short form of madonna is usually spelled Monna, so the title is sometimes Monna Lisa, rarely in English and more commonly in Romance languages such as French and Italian.
At his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant Salai owned the portrait named in his personal papers la Gioconda which had been bequeathed to him by the artist. Italian for jocund, happy or jovial, Gioconda was a nickname for the sitter, a pun on the feminine form of her married name Giocondo and her disposition. In French, the title La Joconde has the same double meaning.
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Leonardo da Vinci was already a well known artist when he created his masterpiece The Last Supper. He painted it on the back wall of the dining hall at the Dominican convent of Sta Maria delle Grazie in Italy. The reason the painting is laid out the way it is that Leonardo was trying to "extend the room", to make it look like Jesus and his apostles were sitting at the end of the dining hall. This painting became an instant famous work, for many reasons.
The painting depicts the very moment that Jesus has said to his disciples:
Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.
And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.
And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?
And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.
Matthew 26
The disciples are all reacting in horror to the thought that someone at that table would betray their master.
While living in Milan, Leonardo was commissioned to paint a scene for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, in the church of San Francesco Grande. The painting produced was one of the most intricate and intriguing religious scenes to date, and it evidently caused great commotion between the artist and its commissioners. Placing the Virgin Mary and the Christ child in a rocky cave was quite unconventional and controversial, and despite the painting's striking beauty, it seems that Leonardo may have been ordered to paint a new scene. The first version currently rests in the Louvre in Paris, while the later painting is housed in the National Gallery of Art in London. Most art historians agree that the first painting is a Leonardo original, but the second work was likely completed by Leonardo and several other artists.
Regardless of the intense debates that are associated with the images, the paintings themselves remain stunning in a myriad of ways. The composition of the Madonnas is exquisite - the Virgin Mary, the Angel Uriel, Christ, and John the Baptist all form a triangle, each person somehow connected to the next. The Virgin Mary has her left hand extended carefully over the head of Christ, while Uriel is gently propping him up. At the same time, she is delicately pointing to John. It is strange that Leonardo decided to paint the scene in such a seemingly dark and sinister rocky outcropping, though he had spent time in Florence, where the rocky setting of the altarpiece of the Adoration of the Child by Filippo Lippi was located.
The plant life within the paintings is also notable. It has been thought by many that the plants within the dark cavern symbolize the fertility and life that Mary represents. The white flowers in the later painting have also been ascribed to Mary's purity. Leonardo's delicate use of color and sfumato are beautiful examples of his advanced understanding of distance and depth. The use of sfumato and the understated colors in the first Madonna painting create a misty and enchanted background.
St. John the Baptist, son of St. Elisabeth and the priest Zacharias, announces and precedes the coming of the Messiah and is therefore known as the Precursor. His story is told in the Gospels:
When time came, John the Baptist appeared in Judaea. He was wearing a 'rough coat of camel's hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and his food was locust and wild honey. (Matthew 3:4). John proclaimed: "Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is upon you!' And people from Jerusalem, Judaea, and the Jordan valley hurried to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. (Mathew 3:5-6). John baptized Jesus and recognized him as the Messiah.
King Herod was much disturbed by the activities of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. John was imprisoned for censuring the incestuous marriage between Herod Antipas and Herodias, the wife of his brother. Herod would have liked to put John the Baptist to death, but he was afraid of the people, in whose eyes John was a prophet.
At Herod's birthday party the daughter of Herodias, Salome, danced before the guests, and Herod was so delighted that gave an oath to fulfill any of her wishes. Prompted by her mother, Salome asked for the head of St. John the Baptist be presented to her on a dish. At this the king was distressed, but because of his oath he ordered the request be granted, and had John beheaded in prison. The head was brought on a dish and given to the girl; and she carried it to her mother.
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The Battle of Anghiari (1505) is a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci at times referred to as, "The Lost Leonardo", which some commentators believe to be still hidden beneath later frescoes in the Hall of Five Hundred (Salone dei Cinquecento) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Its central scene depicted a fierce battle between two men riding raging war-horses.
A painting by Peter Paul Rubens in the Louvre, Paris, known as The Battle of the Standard, is believed to be a copy of a copy of the actual painting by Leonardo himself. Rubens made the painting in 1603, based on an engraving by Lorenzo Zacchia from 1558. There are several differences from the original, but Rubens succeeded in portraying the fury, the intense emotions and the sense of power that were present in the original painting.
The Madonna Litta is one of the great paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. There are numerous replicas of the work by other Renaissance painters, and Leonardo's own preliminary sketch of Madonna's head in the Louvre. The Child's awkward posture, however, led some scholars to attribute parts of the painting to Leonardo's pupil Boltraffio. Other clues that contribute to the fact that Leonardo had this painting completed by one of his pupils include the harsh outlines of the Madonna and Child, as well as the plain landscape. Also notice the small bird in the child's left hand and in its right hand it has a bird like model.
This work was painted sometime in the 1480s for the Visconti rulers of Milan and soon passed to the Litta family, in whose possession it would remain for centuries. In 1865, Alexander II of Russia acquired it from Count Litta, quondam minister to St Petersburg, and deposited the painting in the Hermitage Museum, where it has been exhibited to this day.
The man in the painting was at one time thought to be Franchino Gaffurio, who was the maestro di cappella of the Milanese Cathedral. Although some believe it to be a portrait of Gaffurio, others think the man is anonymous. The piece of paper he holds is at least one part of a musical score; it has notes written on it. The painting was greatly restored and repainted, and Leonardo probably left the portrait unfinished but close to completion.
The man is positioned in a three-quarter position and he is holding a partition sheet. The musician stares at something outside the spectator's field of vision. Compared to the detailed face of the musician, the red hat, his tunic and his hair seem to be painted by a completely other painter. Art historians have recognized the fine art of da Vinci in the young man's face, though the partition sheet and his hand may have been added on to the original work. The principal difference between this work and his last portrait, of Ginevra De' Benci, is the fact that in this one, the hands and the lower part of the chest are drawn.
Lady with an Ermine is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, around 1489-1490. Its subject is identified with reasonable security as Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Lodovico Sforza, "Ludovico il Moro", Duke of Milan. The painting is one of only four female portraits Leonardo painted (the other three being the Mona Lisa, the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci and La Belle Ferronière). Despite sustaining much damage - the surface is much rubbed, the background was lightly over painted with un-modulated black, the upper left corner has been broken and repaired, a transparent veil on the model's head was turned into an extravagant hairdo and several fingers were grossly retouched it is nonetheless in better condition than many of Leonardo's other paintings.
Leonardo met Cecilia Gallerani in Milan in 1484 while both were living in Castello Sforzesco, the fortress-palace of Duke Lodovico Sforza. She was the Duke's mistress; young and beautiful (she was only 17 years old), Cecilia played music and wrote poetry. Several interpretations of the significance of the ermine in her portrait are possible. Pet ermines were associated with the aristocracy and ermines were emblems of purity that would face death rather than soil their pristine coats and a personal device of Ludovico il Moro, who had been invested with the Order of the Ermine in 1488, so its association with Cecilia could have been multiply intended. Alternatively, it could be a pun on her name (the Greek for ermine is galay). Strictly speaking, the animal in the painting appears to be not an ermine but a white ferret, a type favored in the Middle Ages because of the ease of seeing the white animal in thick undergrowth.
Madonna and Child with Flowers, otherwise known as the Benois Madonna, could be one of two Madonnas started by Leonardo da Vinci, as he remarked himself, in October 1478. The other one could be Madonna with the Carnation from Munich.
It is likely that the Benois Madonna was the first work painted by Leonardo independently from his master Verrocchio. There are two Leonardo's preliminary sketches for this piece in the British Museum. As for Madonna's toothless smile, it is tempting to suggest that the work, like so many other Leonardo's paintings, was left unfinished.
The composition of Madonna and Child with Flowers proved to become one of Leonardo's most popular. It was extensively copied by young painters, including Raphael, whose own version of Leonardo's design (Madonna of the Pinks) was acquired in 2004 by the National Gallery, London.
For centuries, Madonna and Child with Flowers was considered lost. Only in 1909, the architect Leon Benois sensationally exhibited it in St Petersburg as part of his father-in-law's collection. The painting had been apparently brought from Italy to Russia by the notable connoisseur Alexander Korsakov in the 1790s. Upon Korsakov's death, it was sold by his son to the Astrakhan merchant Sapozhnikov for 1400 rubles, and so passed by inheritance to the Benois family in 1880. After many a squabble concerning its authenticity, Leon Benois sold the painting to the Imperial Hermitage Museum in 1914. Ever since then, it has been exhibited in St Petersburg.
Ginevra de' Benci (Born 1457) was a lady of the aristocratic class in 15th century Florence, admired for her intelligence by Florentine contemporaries. She is the subject of one of only 17 extant paintings attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. The oil-on-wood portrait was permanently acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., USA, in 1967 for 5 million dollars paid to the Princely House of Liechtenstein, a record price at the time.
It is known from three written sources that Leonardo painted a portrait of Ginevra de' Benci in 1474 in commemoration of her marriage to Luigi Niccolini, and the painting's imagery and reverse text support this theme. Directly behind the young lady in the portrait is a juniper tree. The reverse of the portrait is decorated with a juniper sprig encircled by a wreath of laurel and palm and is memorialized by the phrase VIRTUTEM FORMA DECORAT ("Beauty adorns Virtue").
Reverse of the portrait. The Italian word for juniper is "ginepro", which leads many to believe that the juniper motif is a symbolic pun on Ginevra's name. Fittingly, juniper was also a Renaissance symbol for chastity.
The portrait is one of the highlights of the National Gallery of Art, and is admired by many for its portrayal of Ginevra's temperament. Ginevra is beautiful but austere; she has no hint of a smile and her gaze, though forward, seems indifferent to the viewer. A strip from the bottom of the painting was removed in the past, presumably due to damage, and Ginevra's arms and hands were lost.
According to Giorgio Vasari, Ginevra de' Benci was also included in the fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio of the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.
The Annunciation (1472-1475) is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It depicts the annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she will conceive Jesus Christ and is set in the enclosed courtyard garden of a Florentine villa.
The angel holds a Madonna lily, a symbol of Mary's virginity and of the city of Florence. It is supposed that Leonardo originally copied the wings from those of a bird in flight, but they have since been lengthened by a later artist.
When Annunciation came to the Uffizi in 1867 from the monastery of San Bartolomeo of Monteoliveto, near Florence, it was ascribed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was, like Leonardo, an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. In 1869, some critics recognized it as a youthful work by Leonardo.
The Adoration of the Magi is an early painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was given the commission by the Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopeto in Florence, but departed for Milan the following year, leaving the painting unfinished. It has been in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence since 1670.
The Virgin Mary and Child are depicted in the foreground and form a triangular shape with the Magi kneeling in adoration. Behind them is a semicircle of accompanying figures, including what may be a self-portrait of the young Leonardo (on the far right). In the background on the left is the ruin of a pagan building, on which workmen can be seen, apparently repairing it. On the right are men on horseback fighting, and a sketch of a rocky landscape.
Leda and the Swan is a motif from Greek mythology, in which Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. As the story goes, Zeus took the form of a swan and raped or seduced Leda on the same night she slept with her husband, King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris.
The motif was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although Timotheos is known to have represented Leda in sculpture (compare illustration, below left); small-scale examples survive showing both reclining and standing poses in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder (c. 1501) is the subject of several oil paintings after a lost original by Leonardo da Vinci. They depict the Virgin Mary with the Christ child, who looks longingly at a yarnwinder which the Virgin could use to measure off yarn. The yarnwinder serves as a symbol both of Mary's domesticity and the Cross on which Christ was crucified, and may also suggest the Fates, understood in classical mythology as spinners. At least three versions are in private collections, two of them in the United States, including the one previously known as "The Landsdowne Madonna".
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Saint John the Baptist is an oil painting on walnut wood by the artist Leonardo da Vinci. Completed from 1513 to 1516, when the High Renaissance was metamorphosing into Mannerism, it is believed to be his last painting. The original size of the work was 69x57 cm. It is now housed at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France.
The piece depicts St. John the Baptist in isolation. St. John is dressed in pelts, has long curly hair, and is smiling in an enigmatic manner which is reminiscent of Leonardo's famous Mona Lisa. He holds a reed cross in his left hand while his right hand points up toward heaven. It is believed that the cross and wool skins were added at a later date by another painter.
The pointing gesture of St. John toward the heavens suggests the importance of salvation through baptism that John the Baptist represents. The work is often quoted by later painters, especially those in the late Renaissance and Mannerist schools.
Leonardo started to discover the anatomy of the human body at the time he was apprenticed to Andrea del Verrocchio, as his teacher insisted that all his pupils learn anatomy. As he became successful as an artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the hospital Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. Later he dissected also in Milano in the hospital Maggiore and in Rome in the hospital Santo Spirito (the first mainland Italian hospital). From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre (1481 to 1511). In 30 years, Leonardo dissected 30 male and female corpses of different ages. Together with Marcantonio, he prepared to publish a theoretical work on anatomy and made more than 200 drawings. However, his book was published only in 1580 (long after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting.
Leonardo drew many images of the human skeleton, and was the first to describe the double S form of the backbone. He also studied the inclination of pelvis and sacrum and stressed that sacrum was not uniform, but composed of five vertebrae. He was also able to represent exceptionally well the human skull and cross-sections of the brain (transversal, sagittal, and frontal). He drew many images of the lungs, mesentery, urinary tract, sex organs, and even coitus. He was one of the first who drew the fetus in the intrauterine position (he wished to learn about "the miracle of pregnancy"). He often drew muscles and tendons of the cervical muscles and of the shoulder. He was a master of topographic anatomy. He not only studied the anatomy of human, but also of other beings. It is important to note that he was not only interested in structure but also in function, so he was anatomist and physiologist at the same time. Because he actively searched for bodily deformed people to paint them, he is also considered to be the beginner of caricature.
His study of human anatomy led also to the design of the first known robot in recorded history. The design, which has come to be called Leonardo's robot, was probably made around the year 1495 but was rediscovered only in the 1950s. It is not known if an attempt was made to build the device. A diagram drawing Leonardo did of a heart inspired a British heart surgeon to pioneer a new way to repair damaged hearts in 2005.
Source: Art Renewal Center
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