leonardo da vinci essay in english

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Leonardo da vinci (1452–1519).

A Bear Walking

• Leonardo da Vinci

The Head of a Woman in Profile Facing Left

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio

The Head of the Virgin in Three-Quarter View Facing Right

Allegory on the Fidelity of the Lizard (recto); Design for a Stage Setting (verso)

The Head of a Grotesque Man in Profile Facing Right

After Leonardo da Vinci

Head of a Man in Profile Facing to the Left

Compositional Sketches for the Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, with and without the Infant St. John the Baptist; Diagram of a Perspectival Projection (recto); Slight Doodles (verso)

Studies for Hercules Holding a Club Seen in Frontal View, Male Nude Unsheathing a Sword, and the Movements of Water (Recto); Study for Hercules Holding a Club Seen in Rear View (Verso)

Carmen Bambach Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2002

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. Trained in Florence as a painter and sculptor in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488), Leonardo is also celebrated for his scientific contributions. His curiosity and insatiable hunger for knowledge never left him. He was constantly observing, experimenting, and inventing, and drawing was, for him, a tool for recording his investigation of nature. Although completed works by Leonardo are few, he left a large body of drawings (almost 2,500) that record his ideas, most still gathered into notebooks. He was principally active in Florence (1472–ca. 1482, 1500–1508) and Milan (ca. 1482–99, 1508–13), but spent the last years of his life in Rome (1513–16) and France (1516/17–1519), where he died. His genius as an artist and inventor continues to inspire artists and scientists alike centuries after his death.

Drawings Outside of Italy, Leonardo’s work can be studied most readily in drawings. He recorded his constant flow of ideas for paintings on paper. In his Studies for the Nativity ( 17.142.1 ), he studied different poses and gestures of the mother and her infant , probably in preparation for the main panel in his famous altarpiece known as the Virgin of the Rocks (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Similarly, in a sheet of designs for a stage setting ( 17.142.2 ), prepared for a staging of a masque (or musical comedy) in Milan in 1496, he made notes on the actors’ positions on stage alongside his sketches, translating images and ideas from his imagination onto paper. Leonardo also drew what he observed from the world around him, including human anatomy , animal and plant life, the motion of water, and the flight of birds. He also investigated the mechanisms of machines used in his day, inventing many devices like a modern-day engineer. His drawing techniques range from rather rapid pen sketches, in The   Head of a Man in Profile Facing to The Left ( 10.45.1) , to carefully finished drawings in red and black chalks, as in The   Head of the Virgin ( 51.90 ). These works also demonstrate his fascination with physiognomy, and contrasts between youth and old age, beauty and ugliness.

The Last Supper (ca. 1492/94–1498) Leonardo’s Last Supper , on the end wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, is one of the most renowned paintings of the High Renaissance. Recently restored, The Last Supper had already begun to flake during the artist’s lifetime due to his failed attempt to paint on the walls in layers (not unlike the technique of tempera on panel), rather than in a true fresco technique . Even in its current state, it is a masterpiece of dramatic narrative and subtle pictorial illusionism.

Leonardo chose to capture the moment just after Christ tells his apostles that one of them will betray him, and at the institution of the Eucharist. The effect of his statement causes a visible response, in the form of a wave of emotion among the apostles. These reactions are quite specific to each apostle, expressing what Leonardo called the “motions of the mind.” Despite the dramatic reaction of the apostles, Leonardo imposes a sense of order on the scene. Christ’s head is at the center of the composition, framed by a halo-like architectural opening. His head is also the vanishing point toward which all lines of the perspectival projection of the architectural setting converge. The apostles are arranged around him in four groups of three united by their posture and gesture. Judas, who was traditionally placed on the opposite side of the table, is here set apart from the other apostles by his shadowed face.

Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–6 and later) Leonardo may also be credited with the most famous portrait of all time, that of Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and known as the Mona Lisa (Musée du Louvre, Paris). An aura of mystery surrounds this painting, which is veiled in a soft light, creating an atmosphere of enchantment. There are no hard lines or contours here (a technique of painting known as sfumato— fumo in Italian means “smoke”), only seamless transitions between light and dark. Perhaps the most striking feature of the painting is the sitter’s ambiguous half smile. She looks directly at the viewer, but her arms, torso, and head each twist subtly in a different direction, conveying an arrested sense of movement. Leonardo explores the possibilities of oil paint in the soft folds of the drapery, texture of skin, and contrasting light and dark (chiaroscuro). The deeply receding background, with its winding rivers and rock formations, is an example of Leonardo’s personal view of the natural world: one in which everything is liquid, in flux, and filled with movement and energy.

Bambach, Carmen. “Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/leon/hd_leon.htm (October 2002)

Further Reading

Bambach, Carmen C., ed. Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman . Exhibition catalogue.. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Additional Essays by Carmen Bambach

• Bambach, Carmen. “ Anatomy in the Renaissance .” (October 2002)
• Bambach, Carmen. “ Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function .” (October 2002)

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List of Rulers

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Artist or Maker

• Boltraffio, Giovanni Antonio
• Parmigianino

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian Renaissance artist, architect, engineer, and scientist. He is renowned for his ability to observe and capture nature, scientific phenomena, and human emotions in all media . Leonardo’s innovative masterpieces demonstrate a mastery of light, perspective, and overall effect. His most-loved works include the Mona Lisa portrait and The Last Supper mural.

Considered one of the greatest minds in history, Leonardo's approach to acquiring knowledge on everything from anatomy to mechanics involved understanding both the theory and practice of any given subject. In short, by combining the skills of the artisan with those of the scholar, Leonardo's vision demonstrated the benefits of a completely new approach to understanding the present world and just how to best create new and marvellous things for a future one.

Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 CE, the illegitimate son of a lawyer from the town of Vinci near Florence. A gifted child, especially in music and drawing, c. 1464 CE the young Leonardo was sent off to pursue a career as an artist and study as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (c. 1435-1488 CE). Other notable future artists then at the workshop included Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510 CE) and Pietro Perugino (c. 1450-1523 CE). Here Leonardo would have learnt to master sketching and painting techniques, as well as the latest trends like the use of classicising ornamental detail in paintings. One of the young Leonardo's first contributions to Renaissance art may have been the kneeling angel in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ painting (c. 1470 CE, Uffizi, Florence). Completing his apprenticeship in 1472 CE, Leonardo became a paid assistant to Verrocchio and was registered as a master in the painter's guild of Florence.

Other skills Leonardo perfected early on in his career included chiaroscuro (the contrasting use of light and shade) and sfumato (the transition of lighter into darker colours). The former technique is especially evident in his c. 1503 CE coloured charcoal illustration Virgin and Child with St. Anne (National Gallery, London) and its c. 1505 painted version (Louvre, Paris ). The technique of sfumato is well-illustrated in Leonardo's c. 1483 CE oil on panel painting Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre). Leonardo was also an innovator, though. His c. 1472 CE The Annunciation (Uffizi) illustrates the artist followed some Renaissance trends, for example, the classical details of Mary's book rest, but also ignored others such as his obvious rejection of symmetry in the background trees.

Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, art historian and contemporary of Leonardo's, gives in his mini-biography the following summary of the artist's personality:

He had a character which was very amiable, impressive and generous, and he had the most beautiful appearance. He was a splendid critic and inventor of all things elegant and delightful, especially in theatrical displays. He sang to his own accompaniment on the lyre , and he was on excellent footing with all the princes of his time. (Woods, 269)

Notes & Sketches

Leonardo was far from being restricted to art and his interests were wide indeed, encompassing just about all the physical world. He studied architecture , engineering, geometry, perspective, mechanics, and hydraulics to satisfy himself just how things worked and why they appeared as they do to the human eye. The natural world was not neglected with studies in anatomy, botany, zoology, and geology. Leonardo kept notebooks throughout his life in which he recorded the results of his investigations and his ideas for new inventions. Machines the artist conjured up include cranes, paddlewheel boats, tanks, cannons, apparatus to breathe underwater, and even flying contraptions. The only element many of these designs lacked was an internal combustion engine, not to be invented, of course, until centuries later. The notes in these books are often interspersed with sketches, many being miniature masterpieces in themselves. Perhaps the most famous of all these sketches is the Vitruvian Man drawing (see below).

In addition, Leonardo wrote down his thoughts on painting and his observation of effects seen in nature he considered useful to the artist. As the man himself said, "a painter is not admirable unless he is universal", although he was appreciative that mastery of any subject takes time and noted that impatience was the mother of stupidity (Hale, 183). These notes and treatises were no doubt useful in Leonardo's role as a tutor to young artists in his own workshop. A curiosity of them is that many are written as mirror script , that is in the reverse direction of normal handwriting.

Besides stacks of notebooks, Leonardo built up an impressive personal library which, by 1503 CE, contained 116 books covering such subjects as medieval and Renaissance medicine , religion , and mathematics. The collection included such seminal works as Natural History by Pliny, Geography by Ptolemy I and On Warfare by Roberto Valturio. Leonardo was interested in languages, too, particularly Latin, which he attempted to teach himself in order to read medieval manuscripts in their original form; long lists of Latin words can be found in his notebooks.

Leonardo's versatility is further illustrated in his employment by Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508 CE), the Duke of Milan. Leonardo had moved to the city in 1482 CE and he acted as the principal Sforza military and naval engineer, on the one hand, and master painter and sculptor, on the other. Leonardo also produced ingenious automata for Ludovico's festivals and these included moving planets with their namesake gods inside. The master turned his hand to a massive bronze equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza (1401-1466 CE), founder of that dynasty, but the project never got beyond the terracotta model stage - by no means the only work Leonardo never finished. Sketches survive showing the general form and Leonardo attempting to work out just how to make and transport the massive pieces of bronze for final assembly.

Leonardo painted Ludovico Sforza's mistress Cecilia Gallerani in his The Lady with an Ermine c. 1490 CE (National Museum Krakow, Poland). His greatest work in the 17 years he spent in Milan, though, was The Last Supper mural (see below). It was in this period, specifically the 1490s CE, that Leonardo pioneered the new medium of red chalk drawings on treated paper. The many surviving examples of these drawings include a famous self-portrait which shows the artist aged and long-bearded. The sketch is now in the Biblioteca Reale of Turin.

Further Travels & France

Leonardo visited Venice in 1500 CE. Around this time he painted his erotic version of the Leda and the Swan story from Greek mythology which is now lost, although sketches survive. In 1502 CE Leonardo worked in Rome where he was commissioned by the statesman Cesare Borgia (1475-1507 CE) to sort out the city's canals. He also mapped the city and surrounding regions, as well as planning improvements to harbours. One of his most celebrated maps is that of Imola which, made in 1502 CE, shows every structure from above on a precise scale, the first such map to be made. By 1503 CE Leonardo was back in Florence to work on proposals for a battle scene mural in the city's Council Hall. Leonardo's now lost 'cartoon' for the work showed the 1449 CE Battle of Anghiari between the armies of Florence and Milan. The early years of the 16th century CE also saw Leonardo complete a painting he had probably been working on sporadically, the Mona Lisa portrait (see below).

In 1517 CE Leonardo moved on to France, where his skills were appreciated by Francis I of France (r. 1515-1547 CE), a great patron of Renaissance artists and architects. Leonardo, specifically invited by the French king, may have been involved in the initial design stage for Francis' Chateau de Chambord on the Loire River, built from 1519 to 1547 CE. The chateau's ingenious double spiral staircase is frequently credited to Leonardo even if firm evidence is lacking.

Leonardo's final work of art was his c. 1515 CE painting St. John the Baptist (Louvre), although he seems to have focussed more on scientific enquiry in the latter stages of his life. Leonardo died at his French home, Chateau Cloux (aka Clos Lucé), on 2 May 1519 CE and he was entombed within the Chapel of Saint Hubert just next to the Chateau d'Amboise.

Reputation & Legacy

The sheer diversity of work left by Leonardo has astounded historians and critics ever since his death . As the Renaissance historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1887 CE) famously stated, "the colossal outlines of Leonardo's nature can never be more than dimly and distantly conceived" (104). Leonardo's artistic works were influential on fellow Renaissance artists because of their mastery of composition and light, the contrapposto posture of his figures (i.e. the asymmetry between the upper and lower body), and the sheer invention and variety of their compositions.

However, it is also true to say that some elements of Leonardo's works were so subtle and skilled that few artists had any hope of imitating them. Then, just as today, much of his art was greatly admired but not wholly understood by everyone. Nevertheless, those who could see did see. The master's work for the Battle of Anghiari, several copies of which were made, was influential on such gifted artists as Raphael (1483-1520 CE) who greatly admired the writhing mass of humanity seemingly captured at a moment frozen in time. This is but one example of the master's influence, just one product of what the mathematician and artists' frequent collaborator Luca Pacioli (c. 1447-1517 CE) already called "the divine left hand" (Campbell, 387). Leonardo's fame even reached as far as Constantinople where the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Bayezid II (r. 1481-1512 CE) invited him, without success, to his court.

Leonardo's notebooks, not published until after 1570 CE, were influential both for their theories on painting and his diagrams on perspective but also on the pursuit of knowledge in general. Simply the way that Leonardo illustrated certain subjects (from an embryo to a cathedral), with his use of cross-section, perspective, scaled precision, and repeating the subject but from different viewpoints, would all influence draughtsmanship in architecture and the creation of diagrams in science ever after. Above all, Leonardo had shown that practice and theory could not and should not be separated. The great master demonstrated in his own person that a full knowledge of any subject required a combination of the skills of the artisan, the flair and imagination of the artist, and the meticulous research and reasoning of a scholar. Consequently, the approaches to a great many subjects, but especially art, architecture, engineering, and science, were fundamentally changed forever.

Masterpieces

The Mona Lisa ( La Gioconda in Italian) is an oil on wood panel portrait of an unidentified woman made by Leonardo between c. 1503 and 1506 CE. It measures 98 x 53 centimetres (38 x 21 inches), a relatively small size that often surprises modern viewers used to seeing this iconic image in larger reprints. The painting, rather than merely capturing the physical features of the sitter, attempts to capture the very mood and thoughts of the subject at a specific moment in time, what Leonardo called "the motions of the mind" (Campbell, 257). Other effects include the use of aerial perspective such as the recession of colour into the furthest background of a watery-looking landscape and the difference in gradation of colour from the top to the bottom of the painting.

The casual posture of the lady and the position of her hands forms, with the head as the top point, the classic triangle shape that many Renaissance artists were experimenting with in their paintings. Light and dark colours are used expertly to emphasise the oval face and soft hands of the lady while the contours of these combine convex and concave lines which create an illusion of supple movement. Finally, the three-quarter view of the lady creates another suggestion of movement as she seems to have just that moment turned to regard the viewer. That Leonardo is exclusively interested in presenting a view of a living-breathing individual in intimate contact with the viewer is further evidenced by the lack of any identifying title and the total lack of jewellery or other symbols of wealth which were typical of portraits up to that point. The work was immediately influential, inspiring artists like the young Raphael in his own portrait painting such as Maddalena Strozzi and Baldassare Castiglione . Leonardo must have been pleased with the Mona Lisa as he never parted with it during his lifetime and the picture is today one of the star attractions in the Louvre museum in Paris.

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The Last Supper

The Last Supper ( Il Cenacolo in Italian) is a depiction of the final meal of Jesus Christ and his apostles which Leonardo painted on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a residence of the Dominican order in Milan. This was a traditional subject to decorate monastic refectories, and the work was very likely commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, whose arms appear at the top of the mural. The work was completed c. 1498 CE. The triumph of the mural is the variation in emotional reactions displayed by each of the apostles as they hear that one of them will soon betray Jesus .

Like any great work of art, The Last Supper has been subjected to all manner of interpretations. Some, for example, have seen Mary Magdalene in the figure who is intended to be the youthful St. John the Evangelist, sitting to the left of Jesus. Despite the intense interest in the peripheral figures and their meaning, the star of the scene is, of course, Jesus, who, presented as a central triangular form, is further brought to the viewer's attention by the precise perspective of the background which leads the eye irresistibly to the picture's very centre. The triangular motif is further repeated by the marked division in colour of Jesus's clothing and Leonardo organising the apostles into four distinct groups, each forming an approximate triangle with their collective bodies. Finally, amongst all the action and bustle of the gesticulating apostles, Jesus, with both hands on the table, is a vision of immobility, a calm and knowing centre in a storm of outrage and incomprehension.

The work was immediately and hugely influential thanks to an engraving of it made by Marcantonio Raimondi (1480-1534 CE) which was distributed far and wide to interested artists. Unfortunately, things went wrong within a decade after completion when the paintwork began to crumble away. This was because Leonardo had experimented with using oil paints and tempera on plaster in an undocumented technique instead of the familiar and much longer-lasting true fresco method. This dubious experimentation has challenged restorers of The Last Supper ever since. The mural also suffered in more recent times. First, a doorway was inexplicably made in the wall which intrudes into the bottom of the mural. Then, during the Second World War , the building was fire-bombed. Fortunately, the mural had been protected by a wall of sandbags and survived the bombing but it was exposed to the weather until adequate building repairs were made. A comprehensive restoration programme was conducted in the early 21st century CE, and it can be visited by the public, although numbers are limited and pre-booking is obligatory.

Vitruvian Man

Although not a finished work of art (or ever intended to be), Leonardo's pen and ink on paper sketch known as the Vitruvian Man has become so famous that it is one of the images most associated with his name. Measuring 34 x 25 centimetres (13.5 x 10 inches), it was drawn c. 1492 CE and is now in the Academia Gallery in Venice. The name of the work derives from Vitruvius (c. 90 - c. 20 BCE), the Roman architect who famously wrote De Architectura ( On Architecture ), an influential treatise which combines the history of ancient architecture and engineering with the author's personal experience and advice on the subject.

Vitruvius' work was popular during the Renaissance when artists were re-examining the classical world for ideas and inspiration. In one particular passage, Vitruvius recommends that correct architectural proportions should be derived from a study of the proportions of the human body. The passage describes a human body within a circle and a square. Several Renaissance artists and architects, attracted by the idea that there was some mysterious and perhaps even divine relationship between mathematics, the human body, and beauty, attempted to draw what Vitruvius had only described in words. Leonardo's Vitruvian Man is one such attempt. The man's naval is the centre of the circle and his fingertips and feet touch its circumference. A second male figure, superimposed on the other, is set within a square. The sketch is perhaps a metaphor for humanity's position at the centre of an ordered universe, and as such it has become a defining symbol of the Renaissance and the ongoing enquiry into the exact relation between religion, science, and art.

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Bibliography

• Anderson, Christy. Renaissance Architecture. Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Sagwan Press, 2015.
• Campbell, Gordon. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Hale, J.R. (ed). The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of the Italian Renaissance by J. R. Hale. Thames & Hudson, 2020.
• Paoletti, John T. & Radke, Gary M. Art in Renaissance Italy. Pearson, 2011.
• Rundle, David. The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Hodder Arnold, 2000.
• Welch, Evelyn. Art in Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Woods, Kim W. Making Renaissance Art. Yale University Press, 2007.
• Wyatt, Michael. The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

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Leonardo da Vinci

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 13, 2022 | Original: December 2, 2009

Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, engineer, architect, inventor, and student of all things scientific. His natural genius crossed so many disciplines that he epitomized the term “ Renaissance man.” Today he remains best known for two of his paintings, " Mona Lisa " and "The Last Supper." Largely self-educated, he filled dozens of secret notebooks with inventions, observations and theories about pursuits from aeronautics to human anatomy. His combination of intellect and imagination allowed him to create, at least on paper, such inventions as the bicycle, the helicopter and an airplane based on the physiology and flying ability of a bat.

When Was Leonardo da Vinci Born?

Da Vinci was born in Anchiano, Tuscany (now Italy), in 1452, close to the town of Vinci that provided the surname we associate with him today. In his own time he was known just as Leonardo or as “Il Florentine,” since he lived near Florence—and was famed as an artist, inventor and thinker.

Did you know? Leonardo da Vinci’s father, an attorney and notary, and his peasant mother were never married to one another, and Leonardo was the only child they had together. With other partners, they had a total of 17 other children, da Vinci’s half-siblings.

Da Vinci’s parents weren’t married, and his mother, Caterina, a peasant, wed another man while da Vinci was very young and began a new family. Beginning around age 5, he lived on the estate in Vinci that belonged to the family of his father, Ser Peiro, an attorney and notary. Da Vinci’s uncle, who had a particular appreciation for nature that da Vinci grew to share, also helped raise him.

Early Career

Da Vinci received no formal education beyond basic reading, writing and math, but his father appreciated his artistic talent and apprenticed him at around age 15 to the noted sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio of Florence. For about a decade, da Vinci refined his painting and sculpting techniques and trained in mechanical arts.

When he was 20, in 1472, the painters’ guild of Florence offered da Vinci membership, but he remained with Verrocchio until he became an independent master in 1478. Around 1482, he began to paint his first commissioned work, The Adoration of the Magi, for Florence’s San Donato, a Scopeto monastery.

However, da Vinci never completed that piece, because shortly thereafter he relocated to Milan to work for the ruling Sforza clan, serving as an engineer, painter, architect, designer of court festivals and, most notably, a sculptor.

The family asked da Vinci to create a magnificent 16-foot-tall equestrian statue, in bronze, to honor dynasty founder Francesco Sforza. Da Vinci worked on the project on and off for 12 years, and in 1493 a clay model was ready to display. Imminent war, however, meant repurposing the bronze earmarked for the sculpture into cannons, and the clay model was destroyed in the conflict after the ruling Sforza duke fell from power in 1499.

'The Last Supper' 

Although relatively few of da Vinci’s paintings and sculptures survive—in part because his total output was quite small—two of his extant works are among the world’s most well-known and admired paintings.

The first is da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” painted during his time in Milan, from about 1495 to 1498. A tempera and oil mural on plaster, “The Last Supper” was created for the refectory of the city’s Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Also known as “The Cenacle,” this work measures about 15 by 29 feet and is the artist’s only surviving fresco. It depicts the Passover dinner during which Jesus Christ addresses the Apostles and says, “One of you shall betray me.”

One of the painting’s stellar features is each Apostle’s distinct emotive expression and body language. Its composition, in which Jesus is centered among yet isolated from the Apostles, has influenced generations of painters.

'Mona Lisa'

When Milan was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family fled, da Vinci escaped as well, possibly first to Venice and then to Florence. There, he painted a series of portraits that included “La Gioconda,” a 21-by-31-inch work that’s best known today as “Mona Lisa.” Painted between approximately 1503 and 1506, the woman depicted—especially because of her mysterious slight smile—has been the subject of speculation for centuries.

In the past she was often thought to be Mona Lisa Gherardini, a courtesan, but current scholarship indicates that she was Lisa del Giocondo, wife of Florentine merchant Francisco del Giocondo. Today, the portrait—the only da Vinci portrait from this period that survives—is housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, where it attracts millions of visitors each year.

Around 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, along with a group of his students and disciples, including young aristocrat Francesco Melzi, who would be Leonardo’s closest companion until the artist’s death. Ironically, the victor over the Duke Ludovico Sforza, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commissioned da Vinci to sculpt his grand equestrian-statue tomb. It, too, was never completed (this time because Trivulzio scaled back his plan). Da Vinci spent seven years in Milan, followed by three more in Rome after Milan once again became inhospitable because of political strife.

Inventions and Philosophy 

Da Vinci’s interests ranged far beyond fine art. He studied nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics, architecture, weaponry and more, often creating accurate, workable designs for machines like the bicycle, helicopter, submarine and military tank that would not come to fruition for centuries. He was, wrote Sigmund Freud, “like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep.”

Several themes could be said to unite da Vinci’s eclectic interests. Most notably, he believed that sight was mankind’s most important sense and that “saper vedere” (“knowing how to see”) was crucial to living all aspects of life fully. He saw science and art as complementary rather than distinct disciplines, and thought that ideas formulated in one realm could—and should—inform the other.

Probably because of his abundance of diverse interests, da Vinci failed to complete a significant number of his paintings and projects. He spent a great deal of time immersing himself in nature, testing scientific laws, dissecting bodies (human and animal) and thinking and writing about his observations. 

Da Vinci’s Notebooks

At some point in the early 1490s, da Vinci began filling notebooks related to four broad themes—painting, architecture, mechanics and human anatomy—creating thousands of pages of neatly drawn illustrations and densely penned commentary, some of which (thanks to left-handed “mirror script”) was indecipherable to others.

The notebooks—often referred to as da Vinci’s manuscripts and “codices”—are housed today in museum collections after having been scattered after his death. The Codex Atlanticus, for instance, includes a plan for a 65-foot mechanical bat, essentially a flying machine based on the physiology of the bat and on the principles of aeronautics and physics.

Other notebooks contained da Vinci’s anatomical studies of the human skeleton, muscles, brain, and digestive and reproductive systems, which brought new understanding of the human body to a wider audience. However, because they weren’t published in the 1500s, da Vinci’s notebooks had little influence on scientific advancement in the Renaissance period.

How Did Leonardo da Vinci Die?

Da Vinci left Italy for good in 1516, when French ruler Francis I generously offered him the title of “Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King,” which afforded him the opportunity to paint and draw at his leisure while living in a country manor house, the Château of Cloux, near Amboise in France.

Although accompanied by Melzi, to whom he would leave his estate, the bitter tone in drafts of some of his correspondence from this period indicate that da Vinci’s final years may not have been very happy ones. (Melzi would go on to marry and have a son, whose heirs, upon his death, sold da Vinci’s estate.)

Da Vinci died at Cloux (now Clos-Lucé) in 1519 at age 67. He was buried nearby in the palace church of Saint-Florentin. The French Revolution nearly obliterated the church, and its remains were completely demolished in the early 1800s, making it impossible to identify da Vinci’s exact gravesite.

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Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance artist and engineer, known for paintings like "The Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa,” and for inventions like a flying machine.

(1452-1519)

Who Was Leonardo da Vinci?

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, military engineer and draftsman — the epitome of a true Renaissance man. Gifted with a curious mind and a brilliant intellect, da Vinci studied the laws of science and nature, which greatly informed his work. His drawings, paintings and other works have influenced countless artists and engineers over the centuries.

Da Vinci was born in a farmhouse outside the village of Anchiano in Tuscany, Italy (about 18 miles west of Florence) on April 15, 1452.

Born out of wedlock to respected Florentine notary Ser Piero and a young peasant woman named Caterina, da Vinci was raised by his father and his stepmother.

At the age of five, he moved to his father’s estate in nearby Vinci (the town from which his surname derives), where he lived with his uncle and grandparents.

Young da Vinci received little formal education beyond basic reading, writing and mathematics instruction, but his artistic talents were evident from an early age.

Around the age of 14, da Vinci began a lengthy apprenticeship with the noted artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. He learned a wide breadth of technical skills including metalworking, leather arts, carpentry, drawing, painting and sculpting.

His earliest known dated work — a pen-and-ink drawing of a landscape in the Arno valley — was sketched in 1473.

Early Works

At the age of 20, da Vinci qualified for membership as a master artist in Florence’s Guild of Saint Luke and established his own workshop. However, he continued to collaborate with del Verrocchio for an additional five years.

It is thought that del Verrocchio completed his “Baptism of Christ” around 1475 with the help of his student, who painted part of the background and the young angel holding the robe of Jesus.

According to Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects , written around 1550 by artist Giorgio Vasari, del Verrocchio was so humbled by the superior talent of his pupil that he never picked up a paintbrush again. (Most scholars, however, dismiss Vasari’s account as apocryphal.)

In 1478, after leaving del Verrocchio’s studio, da Vinci received his first independent commission for an altarpiece to reside in a chapel inside Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.

Three years later the Augustinian monks of Florence’s San Donato a Scopeto tasked him to paint “Adoration of the Magi.” The young artist, however, would leave the city and abandon both commissions without ever completing them.

Was Leonardo da Vinci Gay?

Many historians believe that da Vinci was a homosexual: Florentine court records from 1476 show that da Vinci and four other young men were charged with sodomy, a crime punishable by exile or death.

After no witnesses showed up to testify against 24-year-old da Vinci, the charges were dropped, but his whereabouts went entirely undocumented for the following two years.

Several other famous Florentine artists were also known to have been homosexual, including Michelangelo , Donatello and Sandro Botticelli . Indeed, homosexuality was such a fact of artistic life in Renaissance Florence that the word "florenzer" became German slang for “gay.”

Leonardo da Vinci: Paintings

Although da Vinci is known for his artistic abilities, fewer than two dozen paintings attributed to him exist. One reason is that his interests were so varied that he wasn’t a prolific painter. Da Vinci’s most famous works include the “Vitruvian Man,” “The Last Supper” and the “ Mona Lisa .”

Vitruvian Man

Art and science intersected perfectly in da Vinci’s sketch of “Vitruvian Man,” drawn in 1490, which depicted a nude male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart inside both a square and a circle.

The now-famous sketch represents da Vinci's study of proportion and symmetry, as well as his desire to relate man to the natural world.

The Last Supper

Around 1495, Ludovico Sforza, then the Duke of Milan, commissioned da Vinci to paint “The Last Supper” on the back wall of the dining hall inside the monastery of Milan’s Santa Maria delle Grazie.

The masterpiece, which took approximately three years to complete, captures the drama of the moment when Jesus informs the Twelve Apostles gathered for Passover dinner that one of them would soon betray him. The range of facial expressions and the body language of the figures around the table bring the masterful composition to life.

The decision by da Vinci to paint with tempera and oil on dried plaster instead of painting a fresco on fresh plaster led to the quick deterioration and flaking of “The Last Supper.” Although an improper restoration caused further damage to the mural, it has now been stabilized using modern conservation techniques.

In 1503, da Vinci started working on what would become his most well-known painting — and arguably the most famous painting in the world —the “Mona Lisa.” The privately commissioned work is characterized by the enigmatic smile of the woman in the half-portrait, which derives from da Vinci’s sfumato technique.

Adding to the allure of the “Mona Lisa” is the mystery surrounding the identity of the subject. Princess Isabella of Naples, an unnamed courtesan and da Vinci’s own mother have all been put forth as potential sitters for the masterpiece. It has even been speculated that the subject wasn’t a female at all but da Vinci’s longtime apprentice Salai dressed in women’s clothing.

Based on accounts from an early biographer, however, the "Mona Lisa" is a picture of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant. The painting’s original Italian name — “La Gioconda” — supports the theory, but it’s far from certain. Some art historians believe the merchant commissioned the portrait to celebrate the pending birth of the couple’s next child, which means the subject could have been pregnant at the time of the painting.

If the Giocondo family did indeed commission the painting, they never received it. For da Vinci, the "Mona Lisa" was forever a work in progress, as it was his attempt at perfection, and he never parted with the painting. Today, the "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, secured behind bulletproof glass and regarded as a priceless national treasure seen by millions of visitors each year.

Battle of Anghiari

In 1503, da Vinci also started work on the "Battle of Anghiari," a mural commissioned for the council hall in the Palazzo Vecchio that was to be twice as large as "The Last Supper."

He abandoned the "Battle of Anghiari" project after two years when the mural began to deteriorate before he had a chance to finish it.

In 1482, Florentine ruler Lorenzo de' Medici commissioned da Vinci to create a silver lyre and bring it as a peace gesture to Ludovico Sforza. After doing so, da Vinci lobbied Ludovico for a job and sent the future Duke of Milan a letter that barely mentioned his considerable talents as an artist and instead touted his more marketable skills as a military engineer.

Using his inventive mind, da Vinci sketched war machines such as a war chariot with scythe blades mounted on the sides, an armored tank propelled by two men cranking a shaft and even an enormous crossbow that required a small army of men to operate.

The letter worked, and Ludovico brought da Vinci to Milan for a tenure that would last 17 years. During his time in Milan, da Vinci was commissioned to work on numerous artistic projects as well, including “The Last Supper.”

Da Vinci’s ability to be employed by the Sforza clan as an architecture and military engineering advisor as well as a painter and sculptor spoke to da Vinci’s keen intellect and curiosity about a wide variety of subjects.

Flying Machine

Always a man ahead of his time, da Vinci appeared to prophesy the future with his sketches of devices that resemble a modern-day bicycle and a type of helicopter.

Perhaps his most well-known invention is a flying machine, which is based on the physiology of a bat. These and other explorations into the mechanics of flight are found in da Vinci's Codex on the Flight of Birds, a study of avian aeronautics, which he began in 1505.

Like many leaders of Renaissance humanism, da Vinci did not see a divide between science and art. He viewed the two as intertwined disciplines rather than separate ones. He believed studying science made him a better artist.

In 1502 and 1503, da Vinci also briefly worked in Florence as a military engineer for Cesare Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI and commander of the papal army. He traveled outside of Florence to survey military construction projects and sketch city plans and topographical maps.

He designed plans, possibly with noted diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli , to divert the Arno River away from rival Pisa in order to deny its wartime enemy access to the sea.

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Da Vinci’s Study of Anatomy and Science

Da Vinci thought sight was humankind’s most important sense and eyes the most important organ, and he stressed the importance of saper vedere, or “knowing how to see.” He believed in the accumulation of direct knowledge and facts through observation.

“A good painter has two chief objects to paint — man and the intention of his soul,” da Vinci wrote. “The former is easy, the latter hard, for it must be expressed by gestures and the movement of the limbs.”

To more accurately depict those gestures and movements, da Vinci began to study anatomy seriously and dissect human and animal bodies during the 1480s. His drawings of a fetus in utero, the heart and vascular system, sex organs and other bone and muscular structures are some of the first on human record.

In addition to his anatomical investigations, da Vinci studied botany, geology, zoology, hydraulics, aeronautics and physics. He sketched his observations on loose sheets of papers and pads that he tucked inside his belt.

Da Vinci placed the papers in notebooks and arranged them around four broad themes—painting, architecture, mechanics and human anatomy. He filled dozens of notebooks with finely drawn illustrations and scientific observations.

Ludovico Sforza also tasked da Vinci with sculpting a 16-foot-tall bronze equestrian statue of his father and founder of the family dynasty, Francesco Sforza. With the help of apprentices and students in his workshop, da Vinci worked on the project on and off for more than a dozen years.

Da Vinci sculpted a life-size clay model of the statue, but the project was put on hold when war with France required bronze to be used for casting cannons, not sculptures. After French forces overran Milan in 1499 — and shot the clay model to pieces — da Vinci fled the city along with the duke and the Sforza family.

Ironically, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who led the French forces that conquered Ludovico in 1499, followed in his foe’s footsteps and commissioned da Vinci to sculpt a grand equestrian statue, one that could be mounted on his tomb. After years of work and numerous sketches by da Vinci, Trivulzio decided to scale back the size of the statue, which was ultimately never finished.

Final Years

Da Vinci returned to Milan in 1506 to work for the very French rulers who had overtaken the city seven years earlier and forced him to flee.

Among the students who joined his studio was young Milanese aristocrat Francesco Melzi, who would become da Vinci’s closest companion for the rest of his life. He did little painting during his second stint in Milan, however, and most of his time was instead dedicated to scientific studies.

Amid political strife and the temporary expulsion of the French from Milan, da Vinci left the city and moved to Rome in 1513 along with Salai, Melzi and two studio assistants. Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of newly installed Pope Leo X and son of his former patron, gave da Vinci a monthly stipend along with a suite of rooms at his residence inside the Vatican.

His new patron, however, also gave da Vinci little work. Lacking large commissions, he devoted most of his time in Rome to mathematical studies and scientific exploration.

After being present at a 1515 meeting between France’s King Francis I and Pope Leo X in Bologna, the new French monarch offered da Vinci the title “Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King.”

Along with Melzi, da Vinci departed for France, never to return. He lived in the Chateau de Cloux (now Clos Luce) near the king’s summer palace along the Loire River in Amboise. As in Rome, da Vinci did little painting during his time in France. One of his last commissioned works was a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest to reveal a bouquet of lilies.

How Did Leonardo da Vinci Die?

Da Vinci died of a probable stroke on May 2, 1519, at the age of 67. He continued work on his scientific studies until his death; his assistant, Melzi, became the principal heir and executor of his estate. The “Mona Lisa” was bequeathed to Salai.

For centuries after his death, thousands of pages from his private journals with notes, drawings, observations and scientific theories have surfaced and provided a fuller measure of the true "Renaissance man."

Book and Movie

Although much has been written about da Vinci over the years, Walter Isaacson explored new territory with an acclaimed 2017 biography, Leonardo da Vinci , which offers up details on what drove the artist's creations and inventions.

The buzz surrounding the book carried into 2018, with the announcement that it had been optioned for a big-screen adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio .

Salvator Mundi

In 2017, the art world was sent buzzing with the news that the da Vinci painting "Salvator Mundi" had been sold at a Christie's auction to an undisclosed buyer for a whopping $450.3 million. That amount dwarfed the previous record for an art work sold at an auction, the $179.4 million paid for “Women of Algiers" by Pablo Picasso in 2015.

The sales figure was stunning in part because of the damaged condition of the oil-on-panel, which features Jesus Christ with his right hand raised in blessing and his left holding a crystal orb, and because not all experts believe it was rendered by da Vinci.

However, Christie's had launched what one dealer called a "brilliant marketing campaign," which promoted the work as "the holy grail of our business" and "the last da Vinci." Prior to the sale, it was the only known painting by the old master still in a private collection.

The Saudi Embassy stated that Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud of Saudi Arabia had acted as an agent for the ministry of culture of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Around that time, the newly-opened Louvre Abu Dhabi announced that the record-breaking artwork would be exhibited in its collection.

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QUICK FACTS

• Name: Leonardo da Vinci
• Birth Year: 1452
• Birth date: April 15, 1452
• Birth City: Vinci
• Birth Country: Italy
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance artist and engineer, known for paintings like "The Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa,” and for inventions like a flying machine.
• Science and Medicine
• Writing and Publishing
• Architecture
• Technology and Engineering
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Leonardo da Vinci was born out of wedlock to a respected Florentine notary and a young peasant woman.
• Da Vinci used tempera and oil on dried plaster to paint "The Last Supper," which led to its quick deterioration and flaking.
• For da Vinci, the "Mona Lisa" was forever a work in progress, as it was his attempt at perfection, and he never parted with the painting.
• Death Year: 1519
• Death date: May 2, 1519
• Death City: Amboise
• Death Country: France

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Leonardo da Vinci Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/leonardo-da-vincii
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: August 28, 2019
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
• Nothing is hidden beneath the sun.
• Obstacles cannot bend me. Every obstacle yields to effort.
• We make our life by the death of others.
• Necessity is the mistress and guardian of nature.
• One ought not to desire the impossible.
• He who neglects to punish evil sanctions the doing thereof.
• Darkness is the absence of light. Shadow is the diminution of light.
• The painter who draws by practice and judgment of the eye without the use of reason, is like the mirror that reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite to it without knowledge of the same.
• He who does not value life does not deserve it.
• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
• Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

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Leonardo, Mona Lisa

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Lisa Gherardini (known as the Mona Lisa), c. 1503–19, oil on poplar panel, 77 x 53 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Video transcript

[0:00] [music]

Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re in the single most crowded room in the Louvre, but for good reason. This is the room that holds the “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci. Without a doubt, the most famous painting in the world.

Dr. Beth Harris: [0:14] Of course, it’s her smile that’s so famous today. It certainly is a smile that doesn’t clearly tell us what she’s feeling. It’s ambiguous.

Dr. Zucker: [0:24] I think it allows people to read into it in any way that they prefer.

Dr. Harris: [0:28] Sigmund Freud, for example, saw a combination of a maternal gaze, but also a gaze that was flirtatious. I think I do see both of those aspects here.

[0:40] This is a portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant, and as we look out at the sea of people taking selfies in front of the Mona Lisa, it’s good to remember that only the elite could have their portrait painted during the Renaissance. This was an expensive proposition. And of course, you’d have to go and sit for the artist many times so that he could capture your likeness.

Dr. Zucker: [1:01] Because they were expensive, they were reserved for kings and queens and the nobility.

[1:06] What we see during the Renaissance is the growth of the merchant class. The fact that a wealthy merchant would hire Leonardo to paint his wife’s portrait is a reminder of the fortunes that are being made by traders, by bankers, and others during the Renaissance.

Dr. Harris: [1:20] Well, especially in the city of Florence, which was such an economic hub during the Renaissance. We know, in fact, that the patron of this painting was a cloth merchant.

Dr. Zucker: [1:29] This painting has quite a number of innovations, but one of the most important is that it’s half-length. Generally, portraits were busts, that is, from the chest up.

Dr. Harris: [1:38] This was an incredibly influential new formula for the portrait. If you think about the standard form of the portrait before this with the figure in profile, bust length, it’s a very static pose, very formal, very stiff.

[1:52] But as soon as Leonardo turned the head toward us, positioned the shoulders three-quarter toward us also, and included the hands, suddenly we had an image of a figure that was much more natural, someone who you could imagine having a conversation with.

[2:08] Portraits that included a background and that also included the hands did exist in the Northern Renaissance. But this is a new formula for Italy, and will be tremendously influential with artists like Raphael and others.

Dr. Zucker: [2:23] Another very influential aspect of this painting is a technique that Leonardo employed which is known as “sfumato.” That simply means “smoke.”

[2:30] What it refers to is the slightly hazy quality that Leonardo introduces to remove the sometimes sharp quality that existed in early Renaissance paintings, where each object looks too isolated. It’s an atmospheric quality that creates a sense of unity throughout the painting.

Dr. Harris: [2:47] And makes the figure appear to almost emerge out of the darkness. So we see that she’s seated on a chair in a loggia, [an] open porchway.

[2:57] We see on either side of her what look like the base of two columns. We don’t know if the painting was cut down and there were originally full columns on either side of her, but we do know that early copies of this painting do show those columns on either side of the figure.

Dr. Zucker: [3:14] There’s a lot about this painting that we don’t fully understand. This was a commission, and yet Leonardo kept the painting. He never delivered it to the man who commissioned it. Later in Leonardo’s life, when he moved to France, he brought the painting with him, which is why it’s now in the Louvre.

[3:28] One question that I think we should address is why is this the most famous image in the world.

Dr. Harris: [3:33] It reminds me of another very famous image of a woman that’s very ambiguous and mysterious. That’s “The Woman with a Pearl Earring” by Vermeer from more than a century later. Perhaps our culture has some fascination with images of mysterious women.

Dr. Zucker: [3:50] I think that’s probably an important part of it, but then I think fame grows on itself. In 1911, the painting was stolen, and it was headlines around the world. That accelerated its fame. It has become the subject of numerous other paintings by artists as diverse as Marcel Duchamp or Andy Warhol. This raises an interesting issue.

[4:09] Here’s a painting that was made for a private home, to exist in a domestic interior to celebrate a man’s wife or to celebrate a specific occasion, perhaps the birth of a child or the purchasing of a new home. But here it is instead in a huge gallery with hundreds of people, a painting that exists in millions of multiples around the world.

[4:30] It’s such an unexpected fate for what Leonardo surely saw as a relatively minor commission.

[4:36] [music]

Portraits were once rare

We live in a culture that is so saturated with images, it may be difficult to imagine a time when only the wealthiest people had their likeness captured. The wealthy merchants of renaissance Florence could commission a portrait, but even they would likely only have a single portrait painted during their lifetime. A portrait was about more than likeness, it spoke to status and position. In addition, portraits generally took a long time to paint, and the subject would commonly have to sit for hours or days, while the artist captured their likeness.

View of crowd surrounding Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Lisa Gherardini (known as the Mona Lisa) , c. 1503–19, oil on poplar panel, 77 x 53 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris; photo: -JvL- , CC BY 2.0)

The most recognized painting in the world

The Mona Lisa was originally this type of portrait, but over time its meaning has shifted and it has become an icon of the Renaissance—perhaps the most recognized painting in the world. The Mona Lisa is a likely a portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant. For some reason however, the portrait was never delivered to its patron, and Leonardo kept it with him when he went to work for Francis I , the King of France.

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Lisa Gherardini (known as the Mona Lisa) , c. 1503–19, oil on poplar panel, 77 x 53 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

The Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile has inspired many writers, singers, and painters. Here’s a passage about the Mona Lisa , written by the Victorian-era (19th-century) writer Walter Pater:

We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in that circle of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least. The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all “the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed!

Left: Piero della Francesca, Portrait of Battista Sforza , c. 1465–66, tempera on panel (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence); right: Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Lisa Gherardini (known as the Mona Lisa) , c. 1503–19, oil on poplar panel, 77 x 53 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Piero della Francesca’s Portrait of Battista Sforza  is typical of portraits during the Early Renaissance (before Leonardo ); figures were often painted in strict profile, and cut off at the bust. Often the figure was posed in front of a birds-eye view of a landscape.

A new formula

Hans Memling, Portrait of a Young Man at Prayer , c. 1485–94, oil on oak panel ( Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza , Madrid)

With Leonardo’s portrait, the face is nearly frontal, the shoulders are turned three-quarters toward the viewer, and the hands are included in the image.

Leonardo uses his characteristic sfumato —a smokey haziness—to soften outlines and create an atmospheric effect around the figure. When a figure is in profile, we have no real sense of who she is, and there is no sense of engagement. With the face turned toward us, however, we get a sense of the personality of the sitter.

Northern Renaissance artists such as Hans Memling (see the Portrait of a Young Man at Prayer ) had already created portraits of figures in positions similar to the Mona Lisa . Memling had even located them in believable spaces. Leonardo combined these Northern innovations with Italian painting’s understanding of the three dimensionality of the body and the perspectival treatment of the surrounding space.

Left: Unknown, Mona Lisa , c. 1503–05, oil on panel (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid); right: Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Lisa Gherardini (known as the Mona Lisa) , c. 1503–19, oil on poplar panel, 77 x 53 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

A recent discovery

An important copy of the Mona Lisa was recently discovered in the collection of the Prado in Madrid. The background had been painted over, but when the painting was cleaned, scientific analysis revealed that the copy was likely painted by another artist who sat beside Leonardo and copied his work, brush-stroke by brush-stroke. The copy gives us an idea of what the Mona Lisa might look like if layers of yellowed varnish were removed.

Bibliography

Read a Reframing Art History chapter that discusses Leonardo da Vinci—” Art in Sovereign States of the Italian Renaissance, c. 1400–1600 .”

Theresa Flanigan, “Mona Lisa’s Smile: Interpreting Emotion in Renaissance Female Portraits,” Studies in Iconography , vol. 40 (2019), pp. 183–230.

This painting at the Louvre .

Louvre Feature: A Closer Look at the Mona Lisa .

Not Just Another Fake Mona Lisa from The New York Times Interactive.

Mona Lisa at Universal Leonardo.

Important fundamentals

Cite this page.

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Leonardo Da Vinci: a Polymath’s Legacy

How it works

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Artistic Masterpieces
• 3 Innovations in Engineering and Science
• 4 Enduring Influence and Legac
• 5 Conclusion

Introduction

So, Leonardo da Vinci, right? When you think of the Renaissance, his name probably pops up. Born way back in 1452 in a place called Vinci in Italy, he was a real jack-of-all-trades. I mean, he wasn’t just a painter. He was also a scientist, engineer, and inventor. His curiosity was off the charts, and he had this knack for blending art and science like no one else. This essay’s gonna dive into what he did in art, his cool engineering and science ideas, and how he’s still influencing us today.

By looking at these bits, we can really see how amazing his legacy is and just how smart he was.

Artistic Masterpieces

Leonardo’s art is probably what he’s best known for. His paintings are full of tiny details, lifelike human expressions, and some pretty neat techniques. Take the “Mona Lisa” for example. It’s super famous and shows off his skill with sfumato. That’s just a fancy word for making colors blend smoothly together, giving the painting a realistic vibe. And then there’s “The Last Supper,” which captures a big moment with lots of emotion and interaction. Besides his finished paintings, his sketches and notebooks are packed with studies on anatomy, perspective, and light. This stuff didn’t just improve his own art; it pushed Renaissance art forward and showed how art and science could mix. Loads of artists after him took notes and got inspired by his work.

Innovations in Engineering and Science

But Leonardo wasn’t just about painting. He was a big thinker in engineering and science too. His sketches and designs for machines were way ahead of his time. He thought up things like the aerial screw, which is kinda like an early version of the helicopter, and all sorts of flying machines inspired by birds. Even though most of his inventions never got built back then, they showed he really got aerodynamics and mechanics. His anatomy work, like the “Vitruvian Man,” gave people new insights into the human body. His dissections and studies helped kickstart modern medical science. So, whether it was engineering or science, Leonardo was always looking ahead and thinking about what could be.

Enduring Influence and Legac

Leonardo’s influence didn’t stop when he died. His work has shaped so many fields and inspired loads of people. In art, his techniques and studies are still a big deal, from the Renaissance right up to today. His notebooks are treasures full of scientific notes, mechanical ideas, and artistic sketches that people still study and admire. His way of mixing art, science, and engineering is a model for modern innovation. People all over the world look up to his holistic approach to learning and discovery. Leonardo’s legacy shows us just how connected different fields of study are and reminds us to keep our curiosity alive.

Leonardo da Vinci’s achievements show just how smart and curious he was. His art set a high bar for emotional depth and excellence that’s still unmatched. His engineering and science ideas, even if they weren’t all built, paved the way for future tech and discoveries. And his lasting influence keeps pushing people in all sorts of fields to think creatively and broadly. Leonardo’s life is a great example of what the human spirit can achieve and the importance of looking at things from different angles. By celebrating his legacy, we not only honor his amazing work but also keep the drive for knowledge and innovation alive in our own time.

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Leonardo da Vinci

Introduction.

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, near Vinci, in what is now Italy. When he was about 15 he began studying with the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. Verrocchio taught him about painting, sculpture, and the design of mechanical devices.

Paintings and Notebooks

Later Years

In 1503 Leonardo returned to Florence. There he continued his scientific studies and worked on four great paintings, including the Mona Lisa . He spent some of his later years in Milan and Rome. In 1516 he moved to Cloux (now Clos-Lucé), France, to work for the French king. He spent most of his time there editing his writings. Leonardo died in Cloux on May 2, 1519.

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10 of Leonardo da Vinci’s Most Important Inventions

Jon Bauckham

26 jan 2021.

It’s something of an understatement to say that Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a ‘genius’.

As well as being responsible for world-famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper , the Renaissance man was also a highly talented anatomist, zoologist, geologist, mathematician and military engineer (to name but a few), whose insatiable curiosity about the world around him knew no bounds.

During the course of his life – from his early days in Florence, right through to his final years in France – the polymath sketched out ideas and recorded scientific investigations on thousands of sheets of paper, gathered today in volumes known as codices.

In this article we delve into Leonardo’s notes and pick out 10 of his most impressive inventions and feats of engineering – some of which foreshadow innovations of more recent times.

1. Ornithopters

Among his numerous scientific interests, Leonardo harboured a particular obsession with flight. By studying the anatomy of birds, he hoped to build a machine that would one day allow humans to join them in the skies.

Towards the end of his life, the polymath gathered his thoughts on the topic in a text known as the Codice sul volo degli uccelli (‘Codex on the Flight of Birds’), written around 1505–06.

However, concepts for so-called flying machines were sketched throughout Leonardo’s career. Typically, the contraptions he drew were ‘ornithopters’, with membrane-covered wings designed to flap up and down.

Whether lying horizontally or standing in an upright position, the pilot would have operated the machines using pedals and levers – very much relying on their physical strength to get off the ground and stay airborne.

Detail from one of Leonardo da Vinci’s many flying machine designs, c1485. The drawing appears in a collection of sketches and notes known as Manuscript B , held by the Institut de France in Paris (Image Credit: Public Domain ).

2. Helical air screw

Another notable flying machine design (pictured below) can be found in a collection of Leonardo’s papers known today as Manuscript B . Sketched during the 1480s, the device – sometimes dubbed the ‘helical air screw’ – bears more than a passing resemblance to a modern helicopter.

Instead of individual rotor blades, however, Leonardo’s invention features a single, screw-shaped blade, designed to ‘bore’ into the air and allow the machine to ascend vertically.

Unfortunately, none of Leonardo’s flying machines would have actually worked. Not only would the materials have been too heavy, but human muscle power alone simply isn’t sufficient for such devices to take flight.

A modern-day model of Leonardo’s helical air screw, which predates the invention of the helicopter by more than 400 years (Image Credit: Citron / CC-BY-SA-3.0)

3. Parachute

As well as building machines that would enable humans to soar up into the clouds, Leonardo was also interested in creating devices that would allow people to descend from great heights.

In a drawing found in the Codex Atlanticus , Leonardo depicts a contraption resembling a parachute, constructed from reinforced cloth and wooden poles. Designed to be “12 arms wide and 12 tall”, the device, Leonardo writes, would enable a man to leap off a tall structure “without hurting himself”.

A miniature version of Leonardo’s pyramid-shaped parachute, which was successfully tested by a British skydiver in 2000. The original design is found in the Codex Atlanticus in Milan (Image Credit: Nevit Dilmen / CC).

In June 2000, a British skydiver named Adrian Nicholas constructed his own replica of Leonardo’s ‘parachute’, which he tested by jumping out of a hot-air balloon positioned 10,000 feet above the province of Mpumalanga in South Africa.

Although he deployed a conventional parachute shortly before landing, Nicholas sailed towards earth strapped to Leonardo’s device for a total of five minutes, reporting a surprisingly smooth descent.

4. Self-supporting bridge

Leonardo was employed by a number of powerful patrons throughout his life, including Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Cesare Borgia , son of Pope Alexander VI.

Of the numerous contraptions Leonardo invented for his patrons, one of the simplest – but most effective – is a portable wooden bridge that appears in the Codex Atlanticus .

A modern incarnation of Leonardo’s self-supporting bridge, constructed in Denmark. The simple structure was designed to be erected in a matter of minutes, making it ideal for military use (Image Credit: Cntrading / CC).

Designed to help armies cross bodies of water, the bridge is made up of several notched wooden poles, erected without the need for any screws or other fastenings.

As demonstrated by modern replicas (like that pictured above), the pressure created by the interlocking beams keeps the whole structure firmly in place.

5. Giant crossbow

A more famous military invention, sketched c1490, is also found in the Codex Atlanticus .

Commonly dubbed the ‘giant crossbow’, the ludicrously large contraption (as demonstrated by the size of the man in the drawing, below) was designed to launch projectiles such as boulders.

While there is no evidence to suggest a working prototype was ever built, Leonardo believed that the sheer sight of such weapons would strike fear into the hearts of the enemy.

Leonardo’s ‘giant crossbow’, accompanied by notes written in his characteristic mirror-writing script. The weapon – although never built – was deliberately designed to be intimidating (Image Credit: Public Domain ).

Overall, the crossbow was one of a number of siege weapons that Leonardo drew after studying the works of an earlier military engineer named Roberto Valturio, who published a treatise named De re militari (‘On the Military Arts’) in 1472.

Other such contraptions are depicted on the same sheet as the crossbow, improving on Valturio’s designs.

6. Armoured fighting vehicle

Alongside his so-called ‘helicopter’ and ‘parachute’, Leonardo designed several other contraptions that foreshadow innovations of more recent times.

Among them is the armoured car that appears in the Codex Arundel (below), which has often been likened to a modern tank.

Conceived in c1487, the conical vehicle is depicted with cannons around its full circumference, allowing it to attack from 360 degrees.

Crucially, the soldiers inside the tank would have been protected from enemy fire thanks to metal plates reinforcing its wooden shell.

Leonardo’s sketch of a fighting vehicle or ‘tank’, which appears among the pages of the Codex Arundel at the British Library (Image Credit: Public Domain ).

Unusually for a man of his engineering ability, the gears in Leonardo’s supporting drawings are configured in such a way that renders the vehicle immobile.

This may have been a genuine mistake, but some historians have posited that Leonardo incorporated the error on purpose, just in case in his notes were ever stolen and someone else tried to copy the design.

7. Equestrian sculpture

Although ostensibly employed by Ludovico Sforza as a military engineer, Leonardo also pledged that he would build a huge equestrian monument as a memorial to the duke’s late father, Francesco.

In order to create the sculpture – intended to be 24 feet high – Leonardo carefully studied the anatomy of horses, and undertook calculations to work out how much bronze would be needed.

Most crucially of all, Leonardo also came up with innovative new methods for the casting process, which involved designing complex machinery to construct the moulds required.

An early study for Leonardo’s equestrian monument for the Duke of Milan, dated c1490. He later simplified the design, realising that it would be too complicated to make a reality (Image Credit: Public Domain ).

Unfortunately, the scheme was put on hold following the outbreak of the Italian Wars in the 1490s, and Milan’s bronze supplies were diverted to make weapons instead.

Then, when French troops entered Milan in 1499 and Sforza was overthrown, the project was abandoned for good. According to one story, the invading soldiers used Leonardo’s massive clay model of the sculpture for target practice.

8. Diving suits

Following the invasion of Milan, Leonardo fled the city state and spent a brief stint in Venice.

As his temporary new home was also under threat from foreign powers (this time by the Ottoman empire), the polymath again offered his services as a military engineer.

In the  Codex Arundel , Leonardo depicts designs for diving suits made from leather, complete with glass goggles and cane tubing.

In theory, the suits would have allowed Venetian soldiers to walk on the seabed and sabotage enemy ships from below – their breathing made possible by air tanks floating on the water’s surface.

One of Leonardo’s designs for underwater breathing apparatus (found in the Codex Arundel ), alongside a modern museum exhibit showing how the mask would have fit over the diver’s head (Image Credit: Public Domain / Public Domain ).

9. The ‘robot’

As well as flying machines, bridges and weapons, Leonardo also made contraptions designed purely for entertainment.

Around 1495, he drew up plans for a mechanical knight – an armour-clad ‘robot’ that could sit up, move its head, and even wave a sword in its hands.

Having immersed himself in the study of anatomy, Leonardo knew how to make the knight’s complex system of gears and pulleys emulate the movements of the human body as closely as possible.

While a complete drawing of the knight doesn’t survive, American robotics expert Mark Rosheim managed to construct a successful working replica in 2002 using Leonardo’s notes.

A miniature model of Leonardo’s mechanical knight and its inner workings on display in Berlin. Fragments of the original design were not discovered until the 1950s (Image Credit: Public Domain ).

10. Mechanical lion

Another impressive automaton was conceived towards the end of Leonardo’s life, when – under the employ of Giuliano de’ Medici (brother of Pope Leo X) – he built a mechanical lion as a diplomatic gift for King Francis I of France.

According to contemporary reports, the beast could walk, move its head, and open its chest to reveal fleurs-de-lys .

As it happens, Leonardo entered the king’s service in 1516. He was given his own house in the Loire Valley, where he died three years later, aged 67.

Leonardo was buried in Amboise inside a small chapel located within the grounds of the royal castle – a relatively modest final resting place for one of the greatest minds the world has ever seen.

A drawing of the castle at Amboise, France – the town where Leonardo spent the final years of his life. The sketch is attributed to his assistant, Francesco Melzi (Image Credit: Public Domain ).

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100 Words Essay On Leonardo Da Vinci In English

The full name of Leonardo da Vinci was�Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. A man well-known and studied worldwide. He was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. He enjoyed spending his time outdoors and was a very observant person. This can be seen in his journals. He liked to dissect corpses.

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Who was the Mona Lisa in real life?

How many years did it take to paint the mona lisa , where is the real mona lisa kept, what is the value of the mona lisa , why is the mona lisa so famous.

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There has been much speculation and debate regarding the identity of the Mona Lisa ’s sitter. Scholars and historians have posited numerous possibilities, including that she is Lisa del Giocondo (née Gherardini), wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo—hence the alternative title to the work, La Gioconda . That identity was first suggested in 1550 by artist biographer Giorgio Vasari .

Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503, and it was in his studio when he died in 1519. He likely worked on it intermittently over several years, adding multiple layers of thin oil glazes at different times. Small cracks in the paint, called craquelure, appear throughout the whole piece, but they are finer on the hands, where the thinner glazes correspond to Leonardo’s late period.

The Mona Lisa hangs behind bulletproof glass in a gallery of the Louvre Museum in Paris , where it has been a part of the museum’s collection since 1804. It was part of the royal collection before becoming the property of the French people during the Revolution (1787–99).

The Mona Lisa is priceless. Any speculative price (some say over a billion dollars!) would probably be so high that not one person would be able or willing to purchase and maintain the painting. Moreover, the Louvre Museum would probably never sell it. The museum attracts millions of visitors each year, most of whom come for the Mona Lisa , so a steady stream of revenue may be more lucrative in the long run than a single payment. Indeed, the museum considers the Mona Lisa irreplaceable and thus spends its resources on preventive measures to maintain the portrait rather than on expensive insurance that can only offer mere money as a replacement.

Many theories have attempted to pinpoint one reason for the art piece’s celebrity, including its theft from the Louvre in 1911 and its tour to the U.S. in 1963, but the most compelling arguments insist that there is no one explanation. The Mona Lisa ’s fame is the result of many chance circumstances combined with the painting’s inherent appeal.

Mona Lisa , oil painting on a poplar wood panel by Leonardo da Vinci , probably the world’s most famous painting . It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, when Leonardo was living in Florence , and it now hangs in the Louvre Museum , Paris , where it remained an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven identity have made the painting a source of ongoing investigation and fascination.

The painting presents a woman in half-body portrait, which has as a backdrop a distant landscape. Yet this simple description of a seemingly standard composition gives little sense of Leonardo’s achievement. The three-quarter view, in which the sitter’s position mostly turns toward the viewer, broke from the standard profile pose used in Italian art and quickly became the convention for all portraits, one used well into the 21st century. The subject’s softly sculptural face shows Leonardo’s skillful handling of sfumato (use of fine shading) and reveals his understanding of the musculature and the skull beneath the skin. The delicately painted veil, the finely wrought tresses, and the careful rendering of folded fabric demonstrate Leonardo’s studied observations and inexhaustible patience. Moreover, the sensuous curves of the sitter’s hair and clothing are echoed in the shapes of the valleys and rivers behind her. The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting—especially apparent in the sitter’s faint smile—reflects Leonardo’s idea of the cosmic link connecting humanity and nature, making this painting an enduring record of Leonardo’s vision. In its exquisite synthesis of sitter and landscape, the Mona Lisa set the standard for all future portraits.

There has been much speculation and debate regarding the identity of the portrait’s sitter. Scholars and historians have posited numerous interpretations, including that she is Lisa del Giocondo (née Gherardini), the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, hence the alternative title to the work, La Gioconda . That identity was first suggested in 1550 by artist biographer Giorgio Vasari . Another theory was that the model may have been Leonardo’s mother, Caterina. That interpretation was put forth by, among others, Sigmund Freud , who seemed to think that the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile emerged from a—perhaps unconscious—memory of Caterina’s smile. A third suggestion was that the painting was, in fact, Leonardo’s self-portrait, given the resemblance between the sitter’s and the artist’s facial features. Some scholars suggested that disguising himself as a woman was the artist’s riddle. The sitter’s identity has not been definitively proven. Numerous attempts in the 21st century to settle the debate by seeking Lisa del Giocondo’s remains to test her DNA and recreate an image of her face were inconclusive.

Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa about 1503, and it was in his studio when he died in 1519. He likely worked on it intermittently over several years, adding multiple layers of thin oil glazes at different times. Small cracks in the paint, called craquelure, appear throughout the whole piece, but they are finer on the hands, where the thinner glazes correspond to Leonardo’s late period.

French King Francis I , in whose court Leonardo spent the last years of his life, acquired the work after the artist’s death, and it became part of the royal collection. For centuries the portrait was secluded in French palaces, until insurgents claimed the royal collection as the property of the people during the French Revolution (1787–99). Following a period hanging in Napoleon ’s bedroom, the Mona Lisa was installed in the Louvre Museum at the turn of the 19th century.

In 1911 the painting was stolen, causing an immediate media sensation. People flocked to the Louvre to view the empty space where the painting had once hung, the museum’s director of paintings resigned, and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and artist Pablo Picasso were even arrested as suspects. Two years later an art dealer in Florence alerted local authorities that a man had tried to sell him the painting. Police found the portrait stashed in the false bottom of a trunk belonging to Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian immigrant who had briefly worked at the Louvre fitting glass on a selection of paintings, including the Mona Lisa . He and possibly two other workers had hidden in a closet overnight, taken the portrait from the wall the morning of August 21, 1911, and run off without suspicion . Peruggia was arrested, tried, and imprisoned, while the Mona Lisa took a tour of Italy before making its triumphant return to France.

During World War II the Mona Lisa , singled out as the most-endangered artwork in the Louvre, was evacuated to various locations in France’s countryside, returning to the museum in 1945 after peace had been declared. It later traveled to the United States in 1963, drawing about 40,000 people per day during its six-week stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C . It also toured to Tokyo and Moscow in 1974.

Scholars have noted that the Mona Lisa is in fairly good condition for its age. The poplar panel shows some evidence of warping from resistance to its original frame and to braces added by early restorers. To prevent the widening of a small crack, visible near the centre of the upper edge of the painting, dovetails were added to the back of the painting. Restorers later pasted heavy canvas over the crack and replaced the top dovetail.

The glass protecting the Mona Lisa was replaced with a bulletproof case after several attacks in 1956, one of which damaged an area near the subject’s left elbow. The Mona Lisa thus escaped harm from acts of vandalism in 1974 during the work’s visit to Tokyo and in 2009 when a museumgoer threw a ceramic mug at it.

Leonardo da Vinci

This painter, inventor, and all-around supergenius rocked Renaissance Italy. Check out the timeline below to learn about the life of this legend.

Leonardo da Vinci is born in Vinci, Italy . (Get it? Da Vinci? From Vinci?) As a child, outdoorsy Leo loves hanging out in nature .

Teenaged Leonardo moves to Florence, Italy, where he takes painting lessons. Using a technique called tempera, the artist mixes color pigments with water and egg yolk to make paint.

The genius starts scribbling down some 20,000 pages of ideas. (Can you say writer’s cramp?) He spells words backward and reverses each letter so his notes only look normal when reflected in a mirror. “Mirror writing” might have helped protect his ideas from snoops.

Leonardo sketches designs of a flying machine . His blueprints make him the first known person to seriously study ways for humans to take flight.

Asked by the Duke of Milan to paint a mural for a dining room, Leonardo creates “The Last Supper.” People love the piece and Leonardo rockets to superstardom.

Leonardo starts work on the “Mona Lisa,” a painting famous for its eyes that seem to follow viewers wherever they move. Creepy !

Asked to be the King of France’s official painter, Leonardo goes to, um, France, where he stays for the rest of his life.

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110 Leonardo da Vinci Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best leonardo da vinci topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 interesting topics to write about leonardo da vinci, 📌 simple & easy leonardo da vinci essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on leonardo da vinci, ❓ questions about leonardo da vinci.

• Leonardo Da Vinci The other great work by Leonardo is the Mona Lisa, which he painted in the 1500s, and it is arguably one of the most famous paintings in the world to date.
• Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”: Line, Space, Light, Color When looking at the picture, the variation of colors is such that one can easily identify the background. The ambiguity of the painting is very amusing.
• Leonardo da Vinci Painting “Ginevra de’ Benci” The essay explores the strengths, elements, and styles of the artwork. Leonardo da Vinci uses the best elements of art and principles of design to give the painting “Ginevra de’ Benci” powerful themes such as […]
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• Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring Both “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and the “Mona Lisa” are considered masterpieces of their respective periods; both painters were able to capture their subjects in a way that is both realistic and evocative.
• Da Vinci’s and Michelangelo’s Paintings Comparison Two of the greatest artists of all time, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo are very much noted as the masters of the two greatest qualities of craft and communication.
• Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” and da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” The second image is a piece of Renaissance art entitled The Last Supper and created by Leonardo da Vinci in the 1490s. The postmodern piece questions the norms and conventions of the patriarchal society depicted […]
• Leonardo Da Vinci and His Painting “Last Supper” The lack of obstruction in the picture and the simplicity of the room used in the image depict the drama of the event.
• Da Vinci’s Last Supper: Artwork Analysis Of all famous paintings in the history of humankind, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper takes a very special spot, representing the pinnacle of both Da Vinci’s artistic development and the progress of the Renaissance era.
• Leonardo da Vinci – Artist, Scientist, Inventor The painting “The Amo Valley” also portrayed some of the best artistic styles. This talent made it easier for Leonardo da Vinci to produce the best paintings.
• The Vebjorn Sand da Vinci Project The size of the bridge was changed when the Sand-led team finally developed the right version to fit in the current context.
• Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci and Its Interpretations To prove this statement it is possible to introduce the special set of pictures which can serve as the best evidence to the idea of diversity between reproductions and pictures devoted to the same issue.
• Leonardo Da Vinci and Galileo Galilei: Art and Science From the art, Leonardo described the wakes’ tricky nature and the vertical up-welling of water in the paths. The case of Galileo is similar to that of Leonardo in terms of influence as art-informed science.
• Masaccio’s “Holy Trinity” and Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” One of the techniques developed during the early Renaissance period that continued well into the High Renaissance and beyond was the technique of the Illusion of Space.
• Lippi’s vs. Da Vinci’s Artworks Comparison Hence, within the framework of this work, the works of The Pitti Tondo by Filippo Lippi and Madonna and Child with St.
• Fuseli’s The Nightmare vs. Da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks Paintings The mythical story of a young John the Baptist and Jesus leaving Egypt and meeting in the wilderness is depicted in the painting Virgin of the Rocks.
• Arts of Georgia O’Keefe, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Baca It is interesting to note the latter subject as one of Georgia O’Keefe’s focuses. In contrast, the dark shading in the mural’s bottom parts depicts a dark picture of subordination to one’s culture.
• Leonardo da Vinci: The Outstanding Inventor A razor-sharp mind can be a nation’s best defense mechanism, which is why it is no coincidence that Da Vinci worked in the military field to find ways to increase the chances of success in […]
• Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa as a Source of Inspiration In both Mona Lisa and Instafamous, Lisa del Gioconda is at the center of the composition. However, in Mona Lisa, it is Da Vinci’s gaze that determines how she is depicted and perceived, while in […]
• Humanities. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Portfolio He developed ideas by understanding how each part of the existing machines worked and he eventually combined them to come up with new improved machines besides inventions that never existed In 1482 he entered the […]
• Analysis of a Postcard Reproduction of Leonard Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa by Duchamp Taking into account Greenberg’s model and aesthetic criteria for evaluating the works of art, Marcel Duchamp’s reproduction of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa can be defined as a clear representation of kitsch.
• Engineering Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci Among these inventions were the Machine for Storming Walls, the Automatic Igniting Device for Firearms, the Ornithopter Flying Machine, the Stretching Device for a Barrel, the Flying Machine 1488, the Flying Machine 2, the Armoured […]
• Leonardo Da Vinci – The Greatest Artist of Renaissance In the modern day, Leonardo da Vinci is considered by many to be the greatest artist and possibly even the greatest person of all time. The greatness of Leonardo is evidenced by the description of […]
• Style and Composition: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Some artists prefer to use definite colors to identify the mood and the primary meaning of a certain allegory or a set of images in the picture, while others try to compose the same images […]
• The Painting St. John the Baptist by Leonardo Da Vinci The whole construct of this painting is maintained in the nature of Renaissance and glory of antique art. The frontal element of the whole performance is concentrated on the hand of the man.
• Leonardo da Vinci and Andy Warhol It is also to misunderstand Leonardo, for the Mona Lisa’s smile is the supreme example of that complex inner life, caught and fixed in durable material, which Leonardo in all his notes on the subject […]
• “The Da Vinci Code”, “Angels and Demons” and “Deception Point” by Dan Brown All his books invariably deal with plots in the nature of conspiracies in one way or the other and in this regard, his two novels, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons are very […]
• Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci: Two Geniuses The two implications of these is that mannerisms was used to refer to the actual style of the artist, or to acknowledge that the artist had a unique approach that was beautiful in its own […]
• Louvre Museum: Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” The composition is based upon the pyramid of the woman’s body, giving the painting a great deal of stability, as well as the organic curvilinear forms of the feminine. The Louvre is so full of […]
• The Genius and Mysterious Leonardo Da Vinci The techniques that Da Vinci used in his paintings showed his careful studies in anatomy, lighting, and in the juxtaposition of elements in a painting.
• “Leonardo Da Vinci: Homo Minister ET Interpres Naturae” by Walter Pater Pater uses descriptions of Leonardo’s angel in Verrocchio’s Baptism of the Christ to illustrate the early genius of the boy in Florence who seemed to instinctively resent the superficial miniature perfection of the masters of […]
• Michelangelo and Da Vinci’s Art Appreciation It symbolizes the incident of the last supper during the last days of Jesus when he declared that one of his disciples would inform him. The artist did the masterpiece in an attempt to produce […]
• Leonardo da Vinci’s vs. Fra Filippo Lippi’s Paintings The high Renaissance is also characterized by the need to paint ideals of the cosmic world in sculptures and paintings. In the case of the early Renaissance, artists were interested in humanism.
• Da Vinci’s Painting Last Supper: Art of Being Ahead of Time The Last Supper, for instance, renders the anguish soaring in the air with the help of its spacious elements; compared to the thought provoking empty elements of the picture, the vapid lack of space in […]
• The Portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci Analysis Some people are of the view that the person in the portrait is too old to be Da Vinci. There is great disparity between the age that Da Vinci died of and the age of […]
• The Italian Renaissance: Leonardo Da Vinci It marked the transformation of the continent from the middle ages to the modern era. Leonardo captured the emotion and attitudes of his subject as was expected in the renaissance.
• Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti The same light is used to tell us more about the environment The extreme end of the image which represent the distance between the lady and the landscape is lighter.
• Will The Da Vinci Code be still relevant in 2070? The reason why Brown’s novel was able to attain such popularity is that the motifs, contained in it, correspond to the unconscious anxieties, on the part of those for whom it was written the dwellers […]
• Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown After considering the evidence that Brown uses in the ‘Da Vinci Code’, especially the gospel of Philip, I am of the opinion that although Gnostic gospels rejected by the early church portray Jesus as more […]
• The Da Vinci Code As of today, a clear correlation can be seen between the quality of living in every particular country and the extent of citizens’ sense of religiosity the higher are the standards of living, the lesser […]
• Form and Content: Leonardo Da Vinci & Claude Monet What accounts for the earlier mentioned qualitative subtlety of this particular painting is that, while working on it, Da Vinci took a practical advantage of the artistic technique of a linear perspective, which in turn […]
• The Artwork “The Vitruvius Man” by Leonardo da Vinci This drawing is often referred to as the canon of proportion because it was used as the basis for the correlations of human proportions and the reference to geometry as it is illustrated in the […]
• The Life and Times of Artist and Scientist Leonardo da Vinci
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• Vitruvian Man and Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci
• Influential Artists Harriet Beecher Stowe, Daniel Defoe, Leonardo Da Vinci and Pablo Picasso
• Mathematical Order in the Artwork of Leonardo Da Vinci
• Symbolism in Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’
• The Creative, Calculative, Coherent Leonardo Da Vinci
• The Achievements of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci in the Renaissance Period
• Portrait Composition: Comparing And Contrasting Leonardo Da Vinci & Rafael Sanzio
• Leonardo Da Vinci And His Famous Depiction Of Classical Learning
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• The Virtual Characteristics of the Mona Lisa Painting by Leonardo da Vinci
• Leonardo da Vinci and His Influence in the Renaissance Period
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• Painting at the Court of Milan by Leonardo Da Vinci
• The Effects of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti on the World
• The Similar Lives that Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci Lived
• Leonardo Da Vinci : The Epitome Of A Renaissance Man
• Leonardo da Vinci as the Definition of Renaissance Artist
• Leonardo Da Vinci : The Greatest Of The Renaissance Period
• The Life and Artistic Genius of the Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci
• The Characteristics Of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Dwarf
• The Use of the Iconic Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci in the Twenty-First Century
• The Restoration Issues of The Virgin Child with Saint Anne, an Unfinished Painting by Leonardo da Vinci
• The Differing Geniuses of Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton
• Leonardo Da Vinci ‘s Impact On The World During The Renaissance Era
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• The Influences of Verrocchio, and the Styles and Characteristics of Leonardo da Vinci in Annunciation
• Leonardo Da Vinci in Milan According to Giorgione Vasari
• The History of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Famous Painting, The Mona Lisa
• The Importance Of Humanism And Leonardo Da Vinci
• Learning Never Exhausts The Minds, By Leonardo Da Vinci
• Life and Works of the Michelangelo, Raphael, Titan and Leonardo da Vinci
• Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci and Their Renaissance Art
• Freeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Fight for the Standard in the Hall of the Five Hundred at Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper And Jacopo Tintoretto’s
• Why Is Leonardo Da Vinci So Famous?
• How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Die?
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• How Old Was Leonardo Da Vinci When He Died?
• How Beloved British Artist Ralph Steadman Illustrates the Life of Leonardo Da Vinci?
• In What Was Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci?
• How Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo Are Alike and Also Different?
• How “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo Da Vinci and “Sistine Chapel” by Michelangelo Are Alike and Also Different?
• What Are Three Facts About Leonardo Da Vinci?
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• How Long Did It Take To Paint the “Mona Lisa” for Leonardo Da Vinci?
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• What Were Leonardo Da Vinci’s Top 7 Inventions?
• How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Change the World With Art?
• What Is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Most Famous and Most Important Work?
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IvyPanda . 2024. "110 Leonardo da Vinci Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/leonardo-da-vinci-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "110 Leonardo da Vinci Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/leonardo-da-vinci-essay-topics/.

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