Leonardo Da Vinci Essay

So I know it been a long period of time since the last post and there is a reason.  The reason is I was writing an essay.  The essay was about Leonardo da Vinci.  Actually I was typing it.  But here it is:

Leonardo da Vinci

    Leonardo Da Vinci (full name: Leonardo di ser da Vinci) was said to be one of the greatest and smartest people of all time.  He was known as a “Renaissance Man” or polymath. This means a person who is very talented in many subjects.  He was one of the most curious and inventive persons of his era.  He had ideas far ahead of his time that he sketched in detail even though he didn’t always make them.   

Leonardo Da Vinci’s name means Leonardo of Vinci since Vinci was a town in Italy where Leonardo was born.  He was born on April 15th, 1452.  His father was very wealthy.  He married Leonardo’s mother, Caterina Da Vinci, who sadly died young. His father Married 4 wives after that, giving Leonardo 12 siblings, all younger than him.  Leonardo lived his first 5 years with his mother but from 1457 on he lived with his father’s parents.

    At the age of 14, Leonardo was an apprentice of the famous painter Andrea di Cione also known as Verrocchio.  Verrocchio's paintings were mostly done by his employees.  Leonardo was an apprentice from 1466-1476.  Verrocchio was known as the most talented sculptor and painter of his time.   Leonardo helped paint some of the most famous paintings like “The Baptism of Christ”. The paintings were touched up by Verrocchio and credited to him.

After leaving Verrocchio's study, Leonardo got his first independent commission in 1478.  The commission was for an altarpiece to put in a chapel inside Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.  Three years later the Augustinian monks of Florence’s San Donato a Scopeto asked him to paint “Adoration of the Magi.” Leonardo left the city for Milan while never finishing either of them. Four years later in 1482, Florentine ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici commissioned Leonardo to create a silver lyre and bring it as a peace offering to Ludovico Sforza, who was the ruler of Milan at the time.  Although the start of war stopped Leonardo from building the silver lyre, leaving projects incomplete was not unusual for him because he was often side-tracked with his other interests and hobbies.  

Afterwards,  Leonardo looked for a job and sent a letter that didn’t describe his art skills very much but his military engineering.  He sent the letter to the future Duke of Milan.  Leonardo sketched ideas such as an armored tank, an armored chariot, and “a giant crossbow that took a small army of men to work” (Biography.com).  The duke accepted and Leonardo went to work for him for 17 years.  Leonardo did not think of art and science as two different subjects but intertwined together.

“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” (Biography.com).   Leonardo thought human sight was the most important trait of the human anatomy.  Leonardo also started to study human anatomy.   He studied sex organs, bones, and muscles.  His detailed sketches were the first of those studies on human record.

Leonardo also studied: botany, geology, zoology, hydraulics, aeronautics, and physics. He wrote his observations loosely in notebooks and he tucked those notebooks in his belt.  He had 4 notebooks based each on a different subject such as painting, architecture, mechanics, and human anatomy. There were many notebooks that had very detailed drawings of things, yet they were rarely experimental, meaning he did not always execute his drawings.

In addition to some of Leonardo’s famous paintings, like the “Mona Lisa” and “The Baptism of Christ” Leonardo sketched the following: 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.  The sanitary city is a city that is meant to keep diseases to a minimum.  At Leonardo’s time the black plague was killing many people.  The idea was to have different layers of the city and anything that is the least sanitary goes to the bottom.  All the stuff would get to the bottom by a system of canals (like modern plumbing) lead by a hydraulic system.

In addition to all of his studying and sketching, Leonardo worked on a lot of different projects while in Milan.  He started painting “Virgin of the Rocks” in 1483 wich showed da Vinci’s different use of chiaroscuro.  Chiaroscuro is a type of painting where their is a stark contrast between light and dark that gives a three dimensional feeling to his figures.  

Around 1495, Ludovico asked da Vinci to paint “The Last Supper” on the back wall of the dining room inside the monastery of Milan’s Santa Maria delle Grazie. The painting took about three years to complete.  It shows the moment when Jesus tells the Twelve Apostles, gathered around the table for the Passover dinner, that one of them would soon betray him. The different expressions on the faces and the body language of the men around the table make it seem realistic. The decision by da Vinci to paint with tempera and oil on dried plaster rather than painting a fresco on new plaster caused the painting to dry and crack sooner. Even though it was cracked and broken, it was conserved by modern techniques, and now it is holding together.

While working in Milan, da Vinci was asked to sculpt a 16 foot tall statue of the Duke of Milan’s family founder. Da Vinci planned to build it out of bronze.  Da vinci soon started working on it by sculpting in clay but he couldn’t finish because the bronze was needed for the war between France and Milan.  Once France broke through Milan’s defenses, they raided the city and smashed all the clay statues.  

Leonardo fled back to Italy with the duke and the Sforza family.  After a short stay in Mantua and Venice, Da Vinci shortly returned to Florence around 1502.  He briefly worked for Cesare Borgia doing military work.  Leonardo was also working for the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, the commander of the papal army.  

In 1503, Leonardo started work on the most famous of his paintings. Some consider it the most famous painting ever. Leonardo started the “Mona Lisa”.  Nobody knew that Leonardo was painting it. The character in the painting is unknown and is a woman with a mysterious smile.  Da Vinci’s sfumato painting technique made the smile unique.  Sfumato is one of four painting techniques used during the Renaissance.  Sfumato means to tone down or to evaporate. It makes the colors blend into each other in a unique way.

In addition to the puzzling smile of the “Mona Lisa”, the fact that nobody knows who it is in the painting adds to the mystery.  It has been said it was the Princess Isabella of Naples, an unknown courtesan and even Da Vinci’s own mother could be the sitters.  Other people say that it wasn’t even a women; some say it could have been Leonardo’s apprentice Salai dressed in womens clothing.  It did have a high chance of being Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant.  The painting’s original name was ( “La Gioconda”)  which gives people a good idea that it was her, but really nobody knows. Some students of Renaissance art think that the lady or man commissioned it to celebrate the couple's pregnancy.  If however, the Giocondo family asked Leonardo to make it, they did not receive it.  Da Vinci never really parted with the painting. Currently it is on display in the Louvre museum in Paris, France.  It is protected by bulletproof glass and is considered a national treasure that is priceless and millions of people visit it each year.

Leonardo had returned to Milan to work for the French rulers who overtook Milan seven years prior.  While there he met a young Milanese aristocrat named Francesco Melzi who became Da Vinci's best friend for his entire life.  Da Vinci did almost no painting in his second time in Milan--in fact, he studied science.  Leonardo was commissioned to build an equestrian statue.  He was commissioned by Gian Giacomo Trivulzio--the very same person who drove Ludovico out seven years prior. Gian wanted to put the statue on his tomb.  Leonardo started sketching the statue but Gian wanted to dial back the size.  Like many of his works, it was never finished.

    After his time in Milan, da Vinci moved to Rome and devoted most of his time there to studying math and science.  Da vinci went to Rome with Salai Melzi and with two studio assistants.  Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of newly installed Pope Leo X and son of his former patron had given Da Vinci a sort of allowance called a stipend.   Giuliano de’ Medici also gave Leonardo a suite of rooms at the Vatican.  Leonardo didn’t have any big commissions.  Da Vinci was present during the 1515 meetings between the king of France, King Francis I and Pope Leo X in Bologna.  The new French king offered da Vinci a title as “Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King” as well as Melzi.  They departed to France never to return.  Leonardo stayed in the Chateau de Cloux which is close to the King’s summer palace.  Leonardo’s final commission was a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest to show lilies inside.  Leonardo died at age 67, on May 2nd, 1519.  Leonardo's assistant was given his estate and was Leonardo’s heir.  However, the “Mona Lisa” was given to Salai.

Leonardo was truly a “Renaissance Man”.  He made many human anatomy breakthroughs and many scientific innovations.  He sketched a lot of ideas that were ahead of his time. These ideas made a very big contribution to our modern world.  Leonardo’s inventions, sketches, and developments have given many advances in the fields of science, art, architecture, and engineering.  

As you can see I have been busy.  I hope you like it and it took a lot of work.  Also give credit to my mom she helped me a lot on this essay.  So thanks for reading and I will have another post soon.  Bye!