1) Biography

Leonardo da Vinci was born on the 15th April of 1452, in a little village, Vinci (near Empolia), in the mountains situated one day from Firenze.

In 1469 (when Leonardo was 16 years old), he got the permission of his father to go to college in Firenze. He followed an artistic education with the versatile artist Andrea Verrocchio. Verocchio was a painter, a goldsmith, producer of musical instruments and mechanical objects. All these qualities have been handed down from Verocchio to Leonardo.

Twenty years old (1473), Leonardo joined the painters' guild and together with Verocchio he made "The baptism of Christ". With this painting he discovered a real anthology of different styles of oil paint, which gave beautiful results. His master became very jalous because of his success. In this period Leonardo made his first painting: "The valley of Arno". It was a pen drawing of the nature, which was the most beatiful thing on earth according to da Vinci. On this drawing he also used a new technique: sfumato, which literally means: "made to fog".

In 1482 (at the age of 30) he went to Milan, where a war was going on. In the service of the Duke of Milan, he was enlisted as a painter and engineer. As well as completing six paintings during this time, Leonardo offered himself as  designer of cannons, catapults, warships, machines to grave tunnels, ways to reclaim canals, machines to climb on castle walls... His interests in fluid flow were extremely broad : wavemaking, aerodynamics, helicopters, wind vanes, flight of birds, parachutes, watermills, blood flow, irrigation  and ship design.
He became interested in geometry when he illustrated Pacioli's Divina proportione. He studied Euclid and the Platonic solids and  he made pictures of regular solids including the dodecahedron. He gave several methods of squaring the circle using mechanical methods. He even neglected his painting becoming so engrossed in geometry. In 1483 he became again an artist. Leonardo and his master thought Milan was as pretty as Firenze and they wanted to let that be seen. Leonardo's first assignment was the making of a big bronze statue of Sjarozo's father. Da Vinci worked more than 11 years on his model in clay, but it was destroyed in 1499 by the French... 16 years of work, all for nothing.
During the same period when he was working at the bronze statue, he painted on the walls of a monastery "The last dinner". This painting has been through a lot. The walls of the monastery were very humid, which means they were starting to crumble. Once the room of the painting stood totally under water, and even in world war II, a bomb felt on the monastery. Thanks to recent restoration works, this painting has been claired and it will remain one of his most famous works. No doubt Leonardo had many talents in addition to his painting. He realised the construction of a telescope which allowed him to explain the 'old Moon in the new Moon's arms' as the Moon's surface illuminated by light reflected from the Earth.

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Leonardo was also court musician in Milaan. He played the lute, sang and recited poems. He also made illustrations and costumes for parties. In this period he drew missiles, mortar granates, tanks and castles. These are all objects which couldn't be realised in his time, but hundreds of years later all these things were really made. He also designed a sewer system and a plan for the city to stop the Black Dead in Milan. In 1500 Leonardo came back to Firenze. There he painted his most famous painting "Mona Lisa". In this painting we observe a perfect correspondence between the young women and the nature serving as background .This mysterious woman has a very strange smile whom has never been imitated.
Afterwards he got the assignment to paint "The fight at Anghiari" on a wall of a council chamber. Michelangelo painted another wall in this room. Both their jobs didn't get finished. In 1506 Leonardo went back to Milan, where the French controlled everything. He did assignments for Charles d'Amboise (a French commander). Leonardo almost didn't paint for seven years and did mechanics, optics, anatomics and mathemathics. One of his projects was the designing of the Panteïn Swamps, but most of his designs were finished only later.

In 1512 (he was 60) he didn't have any income. This happend because he started a lot but didn't finish anything. In this period he painted his self-portret in red chalk. Even when he was paralysed, he kept on painting. In 1517 he become courtpainter of François I, the French king. Leonardo got in Amboise a little castle, where he made little notes and where he did scientific experiments.
May,2, 1519 Leonardo da Vinci died.
Leonardo has left 5000 papers and notes. The biggest part of these were written in mirror writing. Nobody knows why. Was he left-handed , wanted he to protect his work from plagiarism or from the catholic church? These notes were mainly about anatomics, important sketches who still are used; flying art, works about birds and bats, designs for flying machines and realistic sketches of parachutes and helicopters. He also had non-finished works , mainly about painting and maths. Even though they are unfinished, you can learn a lot from them.

 

2) The controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Adding Machine

3) The Vitruvian Man

4) Quotations by Leonardo da Vinci

5) Sources

6) If you want to know more...