Leonardo
da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 near the Tuscan town of Vinci, the
illegitimate son of a local lawyer. He was apprenticed to the sculptor
and painter Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence and in 1478 became an
independent master. In about 1483, he moved to Milan to work for the
ruling Sforza family as an engineer, sculptor, painter and architect.
From 1495 to 1497 he produced a mural of 'The Last Supper' in the
refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.
Da Vinci was in Milan until the city was invaded by the French in 1499
and the Sforza family forced to flee. He may have visited Venice before
returning to Florence. During his time in Florence, he painted several
portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous 'Mona Lisa'
(1503-1506).
In 1506, da Vinci
returned to Milan, remaining there until 1513. This was followed by
three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king
Francis I, Leonardo moved to the Château of Cloux, near Amboise in
France, where he died on 2 May 1519.
The fame of Da Vinci's
surviving paintings has meant that he has been regarded primarily as an
artist, but the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks reveal the
most eclectic and brilliant of minds. He wrote and drew on subjects
including geology, anatomy (which he studied in order to paint the human
form more accurately), flight, gravity and optics, often flitting from
subject to subject on a single page, and writing in left-handed mirror
script. He 'invented' the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute
some 500 years ahead of their time.
If all this work had been
published in an intelligible form, da Vinci's place as a pioneering
scientist would have been beyond dispute. Yet his true genius was not as
a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two: an
'artist-engineer'. His painting was scientific, based on a deep
understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light
and shade. His science was expressed through art, and his drawings and
diagrams show what he meant, and how he understood the world to work.
Leonardo
da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 near the Tuscan town of Vinci, the
illegitimate son of a local lawyer. He was apprenticed to the sculptor
and painter Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence and in 1478 became an
independent master. In about 1483, he moved to Milan to work for the
ruling Sforza family as an engineer, sculptor, painter and architect.
From 1495 to 1497 he produced a mural of 'The Last Supper' in the
refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.
Da Vinci was in Milan until the city was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family forced to flee. He may have visited Venice before returning to Florence. During his time in Florence, he painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous 'Mona Lisa' (1503-1506).
In 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, remaining there until 1513. This was followed by three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king Francis I, Leonardo moved to the Château of Cloux, near Amboise in France, where he died on 2 May 1519.
The fame of Da Vinci's surviving paintings has meant that he has been regarded primarily as an artist, but the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks reveal the most eclectic and brilliant of minds. He wrote and drew on subjects including geology, anatomy (which he studied in order to paint the human form more accurately), flight, gravity and optics, often flitting from subject to subject on a single page, and writing in left-handed mirror script. He 'invented' the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute some 500 years ahead of their time.
If all this work had been published in an intelligible form, da Vinci's place as a pioneering scientist would have been beyond dispute. Yet his true genius was not as a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two: an 'artist-engineer'. His painting was scientific, based on a deep understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light and shade. His science was expressed through art, and his drawings and diagrams show what he meant, and how he understood the world to work.
Da Vinci was in Milan until the city was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family forced to flee. He may have visited Venice before returning to Florence. During his time in Florence, he painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous 'Mona Lisa' (1503-1506).
In 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, remaining there until 1513. This was followed by three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king Francis I, Leonardo moved to the Château of Cloux, near Amboise in France, where he died on 2 May 1519.
The fame of Da Vinci's surviving paintings has meant that he has been regarded primarily as an artist, but the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks reveal the most eclectic and brilliant of minds. He wrote and drew on subjects including geology, anatomy (which he studied in order to paint the human form more accurately), flight, gravity and optics, often flitting from subject to subject on a single page, and writing in left-handed mirror script. He 'invented' the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute some 500 years ahead of their time.
If all this work had been published in an intelligible form, da Vinci's place as a pioneering scientist would have been beyond dispute. Yet his true genius was not as a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two: an 'artist-engineer'. His painting was scientific, based on a deep understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light and shade. His science was expressed through art, and his drawings and diagrams show what he meant, and how he understood the world to work.
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