Day of the Distinguished

Here is my speech for Day of the Distinguished.  I hope you like it and I hope you can guess who

I am.  Here it is:

 

I was born April 15th 1452.  I have 12 siblings  and my dad married 4 women.  I was an apprentice to the famous painter Verrocchio at age 14.  I helped paint “The Baptism of Christ”. Most of the paintings were touched up and credited to Verrocchio.  After leaving Verrocchio’s study I got my first commission in 1478 to build an altarpiece to put in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.  3 years later I got another commission from the Augustinian monks of Florence’s San Donato a Scopeto to paint “Adoration of the Magi.”  But I moved to Milan and never finished either of them.  In 1482 I got a commission from the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici to build a silver lyre to bring to show peace to Ludovico Sforza who was ruling Milan.  But the start of a war stopped me from finishing it, though not finishing a project is not unusual.  I have a bunch of sketches that I never even started on such as:  scuba gear, a plane, a helicopter, a robot, a self-moving cart, a parachute, a ball bearing, a machine gun, an armored tank, and a sanitary city.  A sanitary city is a city that has different layers and all the sewage that is least sanitary goes to the bottom.  The way all of the sewage gets to the bottom is by a system of canals.  The water is propelled through the canals by a system of hydraulics like modern plumbing. I also sent a letter to the future duke of Milan that did not explain my painting skills but my military engineering.  I sketched ideas such as an armored tank, an armored chariot, and a crossbow that took a few men to fire.  I was accepted to work at the Duke’s so I worked for him for 17 years.  I was not just a painter and inventor I was also a researcher  I studied botany, geology, zoology, hydraulics, aeronautics, and physics.  I studied human anatomy too.  I wrote all my observations loosely in notebooks and tucked them in my belt.  There were 4 subjects: painting, architecture, mechanics, and human anatomy.  I was also commissioned to paint the last supper on the back wall of the dining room in the monastery of Milan’s Santa Maria delle Grazie.  The painting is about when Jesus tells the 12 apostles that one of them would betray him.  But sadly I made A poor decision to paint on dried plaster  with tempera oil rather than  painting on new plaster with fresco.  The reason this was a poor choice was because it dried and cracked sooner.  While working in Milan the Duke asked me to build a big 16ft tall statue of his family founder.  I was planning to build it out of bronze and so I started to sculpt in clay but the war between France and Milan stopped me.  Once France got through Milan’s defences I fled with the Duke and the Sforza family.  Once back in Florence I started on my most famous painting which everyone argues who was the sitter.  People also argue about the expression on the person's face.  I went back to Milan to the people who overtook it a few years previous.  I devoted most of my time there studying science.  I got a commission to build an equestrian statue.  I was commissioned by Gian Giacomo who was the man who helped drive the duke out of Milan.  But it never got finished because Gian kept changing the size.  Once I was done in Milan I moved to Rome and Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of newly installed Pope Leo X and son of his former patron gave me a room at the Vatican.  I got hardly any commissions but I was present at the 1515  meetings between the king of France, King Francis the I and Pope Leo the X of Bologna.  My final commission was a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest and show lilies inside.  Who am I?

I hope you guess who I was.  If you do not know who I was look at my next blog post.  Bye!

I was born April 15th 1452.  I have 12 siblings