Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci
“The life of an artist”
By:
Tiffany Meade

Union City high school
World History
January 2010
Leonardo was a really creative man. Leonardo did lots of things during his lifetime. He painted things appealing to him. He also sketched inventions that weren’t made until later times. Leonardo wasn’t really known in the beginning of his life, but he was really known for his artwork after he died. Leonardo was inspired by many things. He also liked working with lots of things. Leonardo may have also been fascinated by triangles so much he wanted to put them in mostly all of his paintings. The only thing about his artwork and inventions is that he never finished anything.
Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1492. Leonardo died on May 2, 1519.
He was born in Vinci, Italy. Leonardo didn’t exactly finish school, but he did try to finish his schooling in later years. He was buried in San Fiorentino in Amboise. He was raised by a single father. He drew lots of plans for things that would end up helping in war. While Leonardo was a child he never learned about love. So as Leonardo grew older he didn’t really know how to love anyone. Things people may have realized was that he liked the weirdest things about humans. A kind of interesting thing about him is that he is left handed, but he could also use his right hand. Leonardo could use both of his arms equally. Sometimes he would write down what jokes and riddles he wanted to share with his friends. One thing Leonardo always did was trying to avoid all the drinking parties. Lots of things inspired him like Paolo Del Pozzo Toscanelli, a physician and philosopher, investigator of natural phenomena and a mathematician, which inspired him the most out of everything else. Very early he started to use machinery. Soon he became more aware of his knowledge of the principles of physics. He was devoted to studying nature. He also dreamed of the end of the world being very cataclysmic. He philosophized about death. The year of 1476 was very hard for him. The first money check on his account was in March 1478 for 25 florins. Sometimes he would get mad that time was going to fast for him. When he worked with the monks he got a cask of red wine. The arrogance of the intellectual elite who did not like Il Magnifico and his contemporaries made him very irritated. He also even tried showing he couldn’t be recognized in his own city for his efforts. Leonardo never forgot that they refused to recognize his labors. He also knew he could conduct his own research to learn about humanists. He also had and important interview about laws he wrote one day to be used took place at the end of 1482 or at the beginning of 1483. Also, he soon observed that of all the proposals, he laid before the ruler of Milan, was those concerned with innovations that brought up the most interest. To him all the fun and enjoyable times were all strange. At one point he kind of became homeless because he rent any apartments or buildings to live in anymore. While he was homeless he learned that Lombard artists met in groups for protection. There was a motto used by Leonardo that said in English “Love conquers all things,” and in another language that may be Latin it said “Amor onni cose Vince.” He also tried doing schooling again for years while he was waiting to leave Pavia. While he was doing this he wrote a long list of words from the dictionary of Luigi Pulci’s “Vocabolista.” He wrote definitions down in his own words. Leonardo also made lists of nouns and verbs and degrees. He also entered a competition for building a Cathedral building. People realized something about Leonardo because of his technical discoveries gave them the idea he was interested in mechanical inventions. Another thing he was very interested in was construction of houses and churches. Leonardo urged artists to rely entirely on nature. Also, after seeing a theatre he proposed to build a tomb for princes. He also may have held lots of scripts with velvet covers in his hands. He remembered one of them to him it was like a whole new world of research. At one time he had and apprentice that was a ten year old named Giacomo, son of Giovanni Pietro Caprotti of Oreno.
Leonardo was a painter and an inventor, but the only thing about his inventions were was that they were never made until later after he died. In his earliest paintings there was signs he was a very good artist. When Leonardo was about 21 he drew his first landscape. Leonardo did a self-portrait and in it he put every single detail that was on his face like wrinkles and all of that in the portrait. In the very first sketches he ever made the faces were all the same. Somewhere in his drawings he had isosceles triangles in them it didn’t really matter they maybe where the arms were bent. Leonardo’s success began to show when people started imitating his work. A sketch that was found that was made by him in 1478 has been said that it was a sketch for an angels head. The sketch was probably for the painting he helped Verrocchio with. In the painting he painted the second angel. He also worked on the theme of god for a while and he looked for the simple types of shepherds he had. On lots of sheets of paper he sketched attitudes and facial gestures of men when a supernatural thing was occurring. During the time Leonardo was making stuff for war he made a memorandum which he handed to Lodovico Sforza. In this memorandum he wrote about times of peace and that he had a project and that the project was to make a monument for Francesco Sforza. Soon he started realizing that in Milan it was hard life for the artists who live there during that period. He made a list of sketches for himself and at the top he put “Many flowers drawn from nature.” In spring of 1483 the inspiration for him was the natural beauty of everything. He had signed a contract with a fraternity called the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Ten years after he signed the contract, which was for pictures, there was a problem and he took it to Ambrogio de Predis and he sent a petition to Lodovico Sforza. Another thing about Ambrogio de Predis is that he finished some of Leonardo’s sketches and groundwork for things Leonardo was working on. Leonardo also had sketches of disasters and he put mountain landscapes and rivers rushing between the mountains. His first vehicle could probably only go a few yards. He invented a drum with a wheel trestle because drums were popular back in his period. He also drew tools for moving soil. When he was doing that he invented a machine for handling heavy rocks called a lifting grab. He waited for a reason to use it though.
Leonardo was into warfare, so he drew sketches of things he thought they will need. One of the things he sketched was a 3-wheeled gun. The 3-wheeled gun is a carriage with a huge screw terminating in gigantic forceps which gripped the gun barrel. Leonardo was devoted to the job for fixing the problems with machine parts. During this time he also sketched guns. Soon he started sketching even better plans for warfare. Leonardo owed his knowledge of military technique to his careful study witnessed by many extracts in the MS B. In these military times he made methods of construction of very light and strong bridges so that in war you can use them to get the enemies faster and he also knew that he knows how to destroy the bridges as good as he made them. Leonardo also sketched gangways that could be moved to use on towers. He also said he had methods of destroying forts that are not built on rock. But one thing he didn’t have was details on about how to move and stuff like that when rivals came. One thing he represented was an operation of a bomb made with hemp and fish glue and tubes that were going to be attached like spokes to a copper ball filled with a bottle. This was called a clotonbrot. During this time one of things he was concerned about at all times was to make his weapons of very inflammable material. He also made and knew the physical laws on the use and possibilities of explosives. Leonardo made a memorandum and it was filled with strange proposals he made. Another thing he had in mind for war was an armored car. One of his projects he had was made in 1515 in Nuremburg; the project was a breech-loading gun. While he was doing a study with these things of warfare he discovered something by accident. The thing he discovered was steam. Leonardo drew something that looked like a water vessel connected to a copper tube which was heated by a coal fire. What it did is the water flowed into the red-hot tube and turned into steam, which drove the ball out of the mouth of the tube. This is probably how he discovered steam. Leonardo wrote “The Architronite is a copper engine invented by Archimedes, which fires heavy iron balls with great force.” While doing all of these projects and sketches he sketched an apocalyptic vision. The atmosphere had a peace sense and it was like he wasn’t all there while drawing it and what it meant in reality. In years after he studied gun-making he was attracted by general mechanical problems outside of the gun field. For guns he decided to make a wagon. Leonardo also made the pistol, but he made it with the Wheel lock. It became known in the public in 1517. Then they changed the wheel lock to a matchlock until the end of the seventeenth century. The ideas he put in front of the lord of Milan made them not have any confidence about the wagon and guns he sketched and possibly made.
Leonardo had lots of paintings he did. All of his paintings aren’t finished. In his famous altar piece “The virgin of the rocks” He studied the nativity scenes and different poses and gestures of the mother and her infant probably in preparation for the main panel. In his drawing of the “Benois Madonna” he may have had his stepmother with her first born in her lap. The “Benois Madonna” made other artists want to draw it. So, that’s when his success began to show is because everyone started imitating this painting. Leonardo found other ways after to draw the “Madonna.” Leonardo was about 30 years old when he painted the “Adoration of the Magi.” He also had a painting called the “Saint Jerome.” The painting of “Madonna on the rocks” is suppose to be like a daydream someone has laying down on the ground and looking up at the sky. In it he also drew an equilateral triangle. In the painting of “Madonna Litta” Ambrogio de Predis colored the clothes that Leonardo helped draw. Leonardo painted a portrait of Cecilia, Lodovico Sforza’s daughter, when she was only about 17 years old. Cecilia is the sister of the “Mona Lisa.” The one reason you may realize that the “Mona Lisa” isn’t done is because she isn’t wearing any jewelry. Cecilia let Isabella d’Este compare the portrait done by Giovanni Bellinis and she had altered completely because she was a lot younger when Giovanni Bellinis did the first one. His painting of the “lady with the weasel” was taken over by the Lombard school. The painting of the “lady with the weasel” Ambrogio de Predis helped with this one too. One thing found was a pen drawing of the head of Christ. There are seven sketches of “Saint Jerome in the Desert.” There are about eight sketches for “Saint Sebastian” There is about four sketches for the later picture of “Angel of the Annunciation.” There is one completed picture of the “Madonna.” There is one head of the blessed virgin for the picture of the “Ascension.” There is one sculpture of “Crucifixion in relief.” Leonardo drew “Mount Cepsis” in Ptolemy’s map of Asia. For a sculpture, the perfect smoothness was all done by him. Also, in a notebook he had instructions for what he wanted everything to look like. The architecture filled his every thought. He was asked to help with the design of the “Saint Sophia at Constantinople.” He made lots of sketches of this design. He was aware that they preferred the form of the Latin cross.
Some people thought Leonardo was kind of weird for wanting to study the senses and stuff about the body. Leonardo began to think about stuff on the human mind understands things. He also thought that signs are the best of all the senses of the human body. But, he was very uncomfortable in the field of abstract thought. Leonardo wrote “The senses are earthly; the reason stands outside them during contemplation.” In the classical school of reason and will he put in those places memory and intellect. He devoted his leisure time to the study of philosophy. But, Leonardo still didn’t yet have his intellectual confidence. After reading a book that Fazio Cardano gave him called “The perspectiva communis of John Peckham.” He wrote something after called “An introduction to perspective, that to say to the function of the eye.” The lenses of the eye were his way into anatomy. He was first to record the phenomena of irradiation. He also made a lamp to help him at night with these studies.
Leonardo was very interested in making things, so he decided to make new cities and towns. When he entered a competition for a Cathedral building he thought about making cities out of the soil. Leonardo considered ways of using Lodovico Sforza’s life-preserving fear in his plans. He said “that to have humanity go from capital cities is to build ten towns and have five thousand houses to house more than 30,000 people. While he talked about this he never left out the economic side. He wanted his towns on riverbanks or seashores and he had the Ticino in mind. His cities in mind were for the rich and aristocrats. There was going to be two cities right on top of each other. When he wasn’t allowed to build the ten new cities he went and invented things to keep foul smells away.
Leonardo was many things in his life even if it was mostly art. He was an interesting man with all of things he did like when he went back to school so he could do more since artists weren’t known that much. Leonardo did have lots of art sketches that he didn’t really have names for, but he still worked on them no matter whatever until he probably got bored with them. He did lots of things for warfare too he invented things we can use today because we put more into what he already had. We also have some of his paintings still around they are in museums all around the world, but he did lots of paintings even though he may not have finished them. Leonardo did like what he did even if people thought it was weird because he still studied some more into the human body. He may have wanted new cities, but that probably was only to make him famous. That’s really only a few things there is probably more.

Bibliography

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