Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (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,
and architect.]While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became
known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects,
including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is
widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal,[4] and
his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that
of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.[3][4]
Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, he was
educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his
career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, he
worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, all while attracting a large
following of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last three
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 to incite
interest and admiration,[3][4] making him a frequent namesake and subject in culture.
Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited
as the founder of the High Renaissance.[3] Despite having many lost works and less than 25
attributed major works—Including numerous unfinished works—he created some of the most
influential paintings in Western art.[3] His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work
and often regarded as the world's most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most
reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as
a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo,[5] was sold at
auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at
public auction.
Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored
fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding
machine,[6][7] and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even
feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering
were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however,
entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a
machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries
in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not
publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science. [8]
BIOGRAPHY
Leonardo da Vinci,[b] properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Leonardo, son of ser Piero
from Vinci),[9][10][c] was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20
miles from Florence. In the mid-1460s, Leonardo's family moved to Florence, which at the time
was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture.[34] Around the age of 14,[26] he
became a garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the leading
Florentine painter and sculptor of his time.[34] This was about the time of the death of
Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor Donatello.[i] Leonardo became an apprentice by the age
of 17 and remained in training for seven years.[36] Other famous painters apprenticed in the
workshop or associated with it include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.[37]
[38]
Leonardo was exposed to both theoretical training and a wide range of technical skills,
[39]
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.[40][j]
Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly
older than he was.[41] He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio or at the Platonic
Academy of the Medici.[37] Florence was ornamented by the works of artists such as Donatello's
contemporaries Masaccio, whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion,
and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining
complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had
made a detailed study of perspective, and was the first painter to make a scientific study of
light. These studies and Leon Battista Alberti's treatise De pictura were to have a profound
effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.
By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild
of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop,
his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate and live with
him. Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a 1473 pen-and-ink drawing of
the Arno valley. According to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the first to suggest making the
Arno river a navigable channel between Florence and Pisa. In January 1478, Leonardo
received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in
the Palazzo Vecchio, an indication of his independence from Verrocchio's studio. An
anonymous early biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was
living with the Medici and often worked in the garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence,
where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers organized by the Medici
met. In March 1481, he received a commission from the monks of San Donato in
Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi. Neither of these initial commissions were completed,
being abandoned when Leonardo went to offer his services to Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza.
Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which described the diverse things that he could achieve in the
fields of engineering and weapon design, 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.
Mona Lisa
he Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an
archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known,
the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in
the world"the Mona Lisa is a very realistic portrait. The subject's softly sculptural face shows
Leonardo's skillful handling of sfumato, an artistic technique that uses subtle gradations of light
and shadow to model form, and shows his understanding of the skull beneath the skin. The
painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression,[7] the monumentality of the
composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism. [8]
The painting has been definitively identified to depict Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini,[9] the
wife of Francesco del Giocondo. It is painted in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. Leonardo
never gave the painting to the Giocondo family, and later it is believed he left it in his will to his
favored apprentice Salaì.[10] It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506;
however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King
Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic. It has been on permanent
display at the Louvre in Paris since 1797.[11]
The painting's global fame and popularity stem from its 1911 theft by Vincenzo Peruggia, who
attributed his actions to Italian patriotism – a belief that the painting should belong to Italy. The
theft and subsequent recovery in 1914 generated unprecedented publicity for an art theft, and
led to the publication of numerous cultural depictions such as the 1915 opera Mona Lisa, two
early 1930s films about the theft (The Theft of the Mona Lisa and Arsène Lupin) and the popular
song Mona Lisa recorded by Nat King Cole – one of the most successful songs of the 1950s.[12]
The Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World
Record for the highest-known painting insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in
1962[13] (equivalent to $870 million in 2021). The title of the painting, which is known in English
as Mona Lisa, is based on the presumption that it depicts Lisa del Giocondo, although her
likeness is uncertain. Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote that "Leonardo undertook
to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife." [16][17][18][19] Monna in
Italian is a polite form of address originating as ma donna—similar to Ma'am, Madam, or my
lady in English. This became madonna, and its contraction monna. The title of the painting,
though traditionally spelled Mona in English, is spelled in Italian as Monna Lisa (mona being a
vulgarity in Italian), but this is rare in English.[20][21]
Lisa del Giocondo was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany, and the wife
of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. [22] The painting is thought to have
been commissioned for their new home, and to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea.
[23]
The Italian name for the painting, La Gioconda, means 'jocund' ('happy' or 'jovial') or,
literally, 'the jocund one', a pun on the feminine form of Lisa's married name, Giocondo. [22][24] In
French, the title La Joconde has the same meaning.
Vasari's account of the Mona Lisa comes from his biography of Leonardo published in 1550, 31
years after the artist's death. It has long been the best-known source of information on
the provenance of the work and identity of the sitter. Leonardo's assistant Salaì, at his death in
1524, owned a portrait which in his personal papers was named la Gioconda, a painting
bequeathed to him by Leonardo.[citation needed]
That Leonardo painted such a work, and its date, were confirmed in 2005 when a scholar
at Heidelberg University discovered a marginal note in a 1477 printing of a volume by ancient
Roman philosopher Cicero. Dated October 1503, the note was written by Leonardo's
contemporary Agostino Vespucci. This note likens Leonardo to renowned Greek painter Apelles,
who is mentioned in the text, and states that Leonardo was at that time working on a painting
of Lisa del Giocondo.[25] In response to the announcement of the discovery of this document,
Vincent Delieuvin, the Louvre representative, stated "Leonardo da Vinci was painting, in 1503,
the portrait of a Florentine lady by the name of Lisa del Giocondo. About this we are now
certain. Unfortunately, we cannot be absolutely certain that this portrait of Lisa del Giocondo is
the painting of the Louvre."[26]The catalogue raisonné Leonardo da Vinci (2019) confirms that
the painting probably depicts Lisa del Giocondo, with Isabella d'Este being the only plausible
alternative.[27] Scholars have developed several alternative views, arguing that Lisa del Giocondo
was the subject of a different portrait, and identifying at least four other paintings referred to
by Vasari as the Mona Lisa.[28] Several other people have been proposed as the subject of the
painting,[29] including Isabella of Aragon,[30] Cecilia Gallerani,[31] Costanza d'Avalos, Duchess of
Francavilla,[29] Pacifica Brandano/Brandino, Isabela Gualanda, Caterina Sforza, Bianca Giovanna
Sforza, Salaì, and even Leonardo himself.[32][33][34] Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud theorized that
Leonardo imparted an approving smile from his mother, Caterina, onto the Mona Lisa and
other works. The Mona Lisa bears a strong resemblance to many Renaissance depictions of
the Virgin Mary, who was at that time seen as an ideal for womanhood. [37] The woman sits
markedly upright in a "pozzetto" armchair with her arms folded, a sign of her reserved posture.
Her gaze is fixed on the observer. The woman appears alive to an unusual extent, which
Leonardo achieved by his method of not drawing outlines (sfumato). The soft blending creates
an ambiguous mood "mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the
eyes".[38]
The depiction of the sitter in three-quarter profile is similar to late 15th-century works
by Lorenzo di Credi and Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere.[37] Zöllner notes that the sitter's
general position can be traced back to Flemish models and that "in particular the vertical slices
of columns at both sides of the panel had precedents in Flemish portraiture." [39] Woods-
Marsden cites Hans Memling's portrait of Benedetto Portinari (1487) or Italian imitations such
as Sebastiano Mainardi's pendant portraits for the use of a loggia, which has the effect of
mediating between the sitter and the distant landscape, a feature missing from Leonardo's
earlier portrait of Ginevra de' Benci.[40] Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes,
although Vasari describes the eyebrows in detail.[43][a] In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte
announced that his ultra-high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona
Lisa was originally painted with eyelashes and eyebrows, but that these had gradually
disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning. [46] Cotte discovered the painting had
been reworked several times, with changes made to the size of the Mona Lisa's face and the
direction of her gaze. He also found that in one layer the subject was depicted wearing
numerous hairpins and a headdress adorned with pearls which was later scrubbed out and
overpainted.[47]
There has been much speculation regarding the painting's model and landscape. For example,
Leonardo probably painted his model faithfully since her beauty is not seen as being among the
best, "even when measured by late quattrocento (15th century) or even twenty-first century
standards."[48] Some art historians in Eastern art, such as Yukio Yashiro, argue that the
landscape in the background of the picture was influenced by Chinese paintings,] but this thesis
has been contested for lack of clear evidence. On 6 April 2005—following a period of curatorial
maintenance, recording, and analysis—the painting was moved to a new location within the
museum's Salle des États. It is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind
bulletproof glass.[117] Since 2005 the painting has been illuminated by an LED lamp, and in 2013
a new 20 watt LED lamp was installed, specially designed for this painting. The lamp has
a Colour Rendering Index up to 98, and minimizes infrared and ultraviolet radiation which could
otherwise degrade the painting.[118] The renovation of the gallery where the painting now
resides was financed by the Japanese broadcaster Nippon Television.[119] As of 2019, about
10.2 million people view the painting at the Louvre each year.[120]
On the 500th anniversary of the master's death, the Louvre held the largest ever single exhibit
of Leonardo works, from 24 October 2019 to 24 February 2020. The Mona Lisa was not
included because it is in such great demand among visitors to the museum; the painting
remained on display in its gallery. Because the Mona Lisa's poplar support expands and
contracts with changes in humidity, the picture has experienced some warping. In response to
warping and swelling experienced during its storage during World War II, and to prepare the
picture for an exhibit to honour the anniversary of Leonardo's 500th birthday, the Mona
Lisa was fitted in 1951 with a flexible oak frame with beech crosspieces. This flexible frame,
which is used in addition to the decorative frame described below, exerts pressure on the panel
to keep it from warping further. In 1970, the beech crosspieces were switched to maple after it
was found that the beechwood had been infested with insects. In 2004–05, a conservation and
study team replaced the maple crosspieces with sycamore ones, and an additional metal
crosspiece was added for scientific measurement of the panel's warp. [citation needed]
The Mona Lisa has had many different decorative frames in its history, owing to changes in
taste over the centuries. In 1909, the art collector Comtesse de Béhague gave the portrait its
current frame,[116] a Renaissance-era work consistent with the historical period of the Mona
Lisa. The edges of the painting have been trimmed at least once in its history to fit the picture
into various frames, but no part of the original paint layer has been trimmed. The Mona
Lisa has survived for more than 500 years, and an international commission convened in 1952
noted that "the picture is in a remarkable state of preservation." [73] It has never been fully
restored,[112] so the current condition is partly due to a variety of conservation treatments the
painting has undergone. A detailed analysis in 1933 by Madame de Gironde revealed that
earlier restorers had "acted with a great deal of restraint." Nevertheless, applications
of varnish made to the painting had darkened even by the end of the 16th century, and an
aggressive 1809 cleaning and revarnishing removed some of the uppermost portion of the paint
layer, resulting in a washed-out appearance to the face of the figure. Despite the treatments,
the Mona Lisa has been well cared for throughout its history, and although the panel's warping
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