Leonardo da Vinci
Considered the paradigm of homo universalis, the Renaissance scholar versed in all areas of human knowledge, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) dabbled in such varied fields as aerodynamics, hydraulics, anatomy, botany, painting, sculpture and architecture, among many. His scientific research was, to a large extent, forgotten and little appreciated by his contemporaries; his painting, however, was immediately recognized as a master able to realize the ideal of beauty in works of disturbing suggestion and delicate poetry.
Recreation of a portrait of Leonardo
On
an artistic level, Leonardo forms, along with Michelangelo and Raphael,
the triad of the great masters of the Cinquecento, and despite the
paucity of his work, the history of painting it counts among its
greatest geniuses. For
others, it is possible that the powerful fascination aroused his
masterpieces (with La Gioconda at the top) appropriate that other
fascination about her figure that has continued to grow over the
centuries, fueled by the many enigmas surrounding his biography, some of them trivial, such as right-to-left, and others
certainly disturbing, like those visionary inventions five centuries
ahead of their time.
Youth and technical discoveries
Leonardo
was born in 1452 in the Tuscan town of Vinci, the illegitimate son of a
peasant woman, Caterina (who married soon after with a craftsman in the
region), and Ser Piero, a wealthy Florentine notary. Italy
was then a mosaic of city-states such as Florence, Venice and small
republics like fiefdoms under the power of princes or the pope. The Eastern Roman Empire fell to the Turks in 1453 and barely survived still very small, the Holy Roman Empire; It was a violent time when, however, the splendor of the courts had no limits.
Although
his father was married four times, had children (eleven in total, with
which Leonardo would build lawsuits paternal inheritance) in his last
two marriages, so the little Leonardo was raised as an only child only. His
enormous curiosity manifested itself early: already in childhood
drawing mythological animals of his own invention, inspired by a deep
observation of the natural environment in which he grew up. Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer, tells how the genius of
Leonardo, still a child, he created a shield of Medusa with dragons that
terrorized his father when he ran into him by surprise.
Aware of his son's talent, his father allowed him to enter as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. Over
the six years that the painters' guild prescribed as instruction before
being recognized as free artist, Leonardo learned painting, sculpture
and mechanical techniques and artistic creation. The
first work of his that has accurate news was the construction of the
image projected by Brunelleschi to crown the church of Santa Maria dei
Fiori copper sphere. Next to Verrocchio's workshop, moreover, it was that of Antonio
Pollaiuolo, where Leonardo made his first studies of anatomy and perhaps
also began in the knowledge of Latin and Greek.
Young graceful and vigorous, Leonardo had inherited the physical strength of the lineage of his father; It
is very likely to be the model for the head of San Miguel in the box
Verrocchio Tobias and the Angel, fine and beautiful features. Moreover, his great creative imagination and skill of his early brush soon surpass those of his teacher. In
the Baptism of Christ, for example, inspired the angels painted by
Leonardo contrast with the abruptness of the Baptist by Verrocchio.
Angels attributed to Leonardo in the Baptism of Christ (c. 1475) by Andrea del Verrocchio
The
young disciple there for the first time used a novel technique recently
arrived from the Netherlands: oil painting, allowing greater softness
in the stroke and deeper penetration into the fabric. In
addition to the extraordinary drawings and virtuous participation in
other paintings of his teacher, his great works of this period are a St.
Jerome and the large panel Adoration of the Magi (both unfinished),
notable for the innovative dynamism given by the skill in contrasts features in the geometric composition of the scene and the extraordinary handling of the technique of chiaroscuro.
Florence was then one of the richest cities in Europe; numerous
weaving mills and workshops manufacturing of silks and brocades from
east and west wool made it the great commercial center of the peninsula;
there the Medicis had established a court whose splendor was not just the artists he had. But when the young Leonardo found that could not of Lorenzo the
Magnificent but praise its virtues of good courtier, in his thirties he
decided to seek a more prosperous horizon.
First Milanese period (1482-1499)
In
1482 he appeared before the powerful Ludovico Sforza, the strongman of
Milan, in whose court would stay seventeen years as "pictor et
ingenierius ducalis." Although
his main occupation was military engineer, projects (mostly unrealized)
included the hydraulic, mechanical (with innovative systems of levers
to multiply human strength) and architecture, in addition to painting
and sculpture. It was the period of full development; following the mathematical foundations established by Leon Battista
Alberti and Piero della Francesca, Leonardo began his notes for the
formulation of a science of painting, while exercised in the
implementation and manufacture of lutes.
Spurred
by the dramatic plague that struck Milan and Leonardo saw the cause
overcrowding and dirt of the city, projected spacious villas, made plans
for piping systems rivers and ingenious defense against the enemy
artillery. Having
received from Ludovico commissioned to create a monumental equestrian
statue in honor of Francesco, the founder of the Sforza dynasty,
Leonardo worked for sixteen years on the project of the "great horse"
that would not happen more than a clay model, destroyed during a battle shortly after.
It
proved especially fruitful friendship with the mathematician Luca
Pacioli, a Franciscan friar who around 1496 concluded his treatise
divine proportion, illustrated by Leonardo. Pondering
the instrument seen as the most accurate knowledge available to man,
Leonardo said that through careful observation objects should be
recognized in its form and structure to describe in paint the most
accurate way. Thus
the drawing became the fundamental instrument of his teaching method,
to the point that it could be said that in his notes the text was to
explain the drawing, and not vice versa, reason why Leonardo da Vinci
has been recognized as the creator of modern scientific illustration.
The
ideal vedere saper guided all his studies, which in the 1490s began to
emerge as a series of unfinished treaties which would then be compiled
in the Codex Atlanticus, named for its large size. Includes
work on painting, architecture, mechanics, anatomy, geography, botany,
hydraulic and aerodynamic, fusing art and science in a single cosmology
which also gives an outlet for an aesthetic debate that was anchored in a
rather sterile neoplatonism .
Although
Leonardo did not seem to worry too much about form their own school, in
his Milanese workshop was created gradually a group of faithful
apprentices and students: Giovanni Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis,
Andrea Solari and his inseparable Salai, among others; scholars
have not agreed yet on the exact attribution of some works of this
period, such as Madonna Litta or the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli.
Detail of Virgin of the Rocks (second version, c. 1507)
Recruited
in 1483 by the brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception for a painting
for the church of San Francisco, Leonardo undertook the realization of
what would be the Virgin very famous of the Rocks, the end result, in
two versions, would not be ready at eight month she is marking the contract, but twenty years later. In both versions the triangular structure of the composition, the
grace of the figures and the brilliant use of the famous sfumato to
enhance the visionary sense of the scene assumed an aesthetic revolution
for his contemporaries.
To
this same period belong the portrait of Ginevra de Benci (1475-1478),
with its innovative relationship of proximity and distance, and the
expressive beauty of La belle Ferronnière. But
by 1498 Leonardo ended a mural in principle a modest commission for the
refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria dalle Grazie, which
would become his definitive consecration painting: The Last Supper. Today we need an effort to understand its original splendor as it deteriorated rapidly and was badly restored many times. The
great plastic capturing the dramatic moment when Christ tells the
apostles "one of you I will betray" gives the scene a psychological
unity and a dynamic apprehension of the fleeting moment of surprise
diners (of which only Judas is excluded). The mural became not only a celebrated Christian icon, but also an object of pilgrimage for artists from around the continent.
The return to Florence
In late 1499 the French entered Milan; Ludovico il Moro lost power. Leonardo
left the city accompanied by Pacioli and after a brief stay in Mantua,
at his admirer Isabella d'Este Marchioness arrived in Venice. Harassed by the Turks, who already dominated the Dalmatian coast and
threatened to take the Friuli, the Signoria of Venice Leonardo hired as a
military engineer.
Within
weeks he designed a number of artifacts whose concrete realization
would only, in many cases, until the nineteenth or twentieth centuries: a
few soldiers armed with from a kind of individual submarine with a
leather tube for air intended drill,
they would attack the boats under to large pieces of artillery
projectiles delayed action and vessels with double wall to resist the
onslaught. The
exorbitant costs, lack of time and perhaps the claims of Leonardo in
the division of spoils, excessive for Venetians made the great ideas not
happen sketches. In April 1500, after nearly twenty years of absence, Leonardo da Vinci returned to Florence.
then he dominated the city Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. Described
by Machiavelli himself as "incomparable model" of political and despot
schemer, this ambitious man and feared he was preparing to embark on the
conquest of new territories. Leonardo,
again as a military engineer, toured the northern territories, drawing
maps, calculating precise distance and projecting bridges and new
artillery guns. But soon after the condottiero fell into disgrace: his captains mutinied, his father was poisoned and he fell seriously ill. In
1503 Leonardo returned to Florence, who was then at war with Pisa, and
conceived there his great project to divert the River Arno behind the
enemy city to fence it also contemplating the construction of a canal
and waterway communicate Florence with the sea. The project was completed only in extraordinary maps of their author.
Santa Ana, the Virgin and Child (c. 1510)
But Leonardo was already recognized as one of the greatest masters of Italy. In 1501 he had drawn a sketch of his Santa Ana, the Virgin and Child, which would move the canvas at the end of the decade. In
1503 he was commissioned to paint a large mural (twice the size of The
Last Supper) in Old Palace: the Florentine nobility wanted to
immortalize some historical scenes of his glory. Leonardo spent three years at The Battle of Anghiari, which would be incomplete and would then be detached by deterioration. Despite the loss, sketches and copies circulated to admire and inspire Rafael, a century later, a famous play Peter Paul Rubens.
Also it survived only in copies another great work of this period: Leda and the Swan. However,
the summit of this Florentine stage (and one of the few finished works
by Leonardo) was the portrait of Mona (short for Madonna) Lisa
Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, why the box is known as La
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda. famous
from the time of its creation, work became model portrait and almost no
one would escape its influence in the world of painting. As picture and as a character, the mythical Gioconda has inspired countless books and legends, and even an opera; but little is known for certain. You
not even know who commissioned the painting, which Leonardo would carry
on his continued vital pilgrimage until his last years in France, where
he sold it to King Francis I of four thousand pieces of gold.
Detail of the Mona Lisa (c. 1503-1507)
Perfecting
his own discovery of the sfumato, leading to an almost miraculous
concreteness, Leonardo managed to capture a gesture between the fleeting
and the perennial: the "enigmatic smile" of the Mona Lisa is one of the
most admired, discussed and imitated chapters of art history , and mystery still continues to fascinate. There is a legend that Leonardo promoted this gesture in his model making lutes sound as she rested; the painting, which has gone through quite a few ups and downs, has
been considered summit and summary of talent and "pictorial science" of
its author.
Back in Milan (1506-1513)
Leonardo's interest in science education was increasingly intense. Attended dissections, on which confeccionaba drawings to describe the structure and functioning of the human body; at
the same time made systematic observations of the flight of birds (on
which he planned to write a treaty), with the conviction that also the
man could fly if he ever know the laws of air resistance (some notes
from this period have been seen as clear precursors of the modern helicopter).
Absorbed
by these thoughts and concerns, Leonardo did not hesitate to leave
Florence in 1506 when Charles d'Amboise, the French governor of Milan,
offered him the position of architect and painter of the court; honored
and admired by his new employer, Leonardo da Vinci project for a castle
and executed sketches for the oratory of Santa Maria dalla Fontana,
founded by the patron. His Milanese stay only was interrupted in the winter of 1507, when he
worked in Florence with the sculptor Giovanni Francesco Rustici in the
execution of the bronzes of the baptistery of the city.
Perhaps
too old-looking for the fifty years that had then, his face was taken
by Rafael as a model of sublime Plato for his work The School of Athens.
Leonardo,
however, painted little, devoting himself to collect his writings and
deepen their studies with the idea of having completed by 1510 his
treatise on anatomy, worked with Marcantonio della Torre, the most
famous anatomist of his time, in the description organ and the study of human physiology.
Leonardo as Plato in The School of Athens (1511), Rafael
The
leonardesco ideal of "cosmological perception" manifested itself in
many branches: wrote on mathematics, optics, mechanics, geology, botany;
your search tended toward finding laws, functions and compatible harmonies for all these disciplines to nature as a unit. Meanwhile,
his former disciples joined some new, including the young nobleman
Francesco Melzi, a faithful friend of the teacher until his death. Along with Ambrogio de Predis, Leonardo culminated around 1507 the second version of Virgin of the Rocks; shortly before, he had left unfulfilled commissioned by the king of France to paint two Madonnas.
The
new strongman of Milan was then Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who sought to
reappropriate for himself the monumental project of the "great horse",
making it a funerary statue for his own tomb in the chapel of San Nazaro
Magiore; but again the equestrian monument moved from the sketches, which led to Leonardo his second frustration as a sculptor. In 1513 a new political instability pushed to leave Milan; Melzi and Salai along he went to Rome, where he was housed in the
belvedere of Giuliano de Medici, brother of the new Pope Leo X.
Last years Rome and France
In
the Vatican he enjoyed a period of tranquility, with a living wage and
without major obligations: drew maps, studied ancient Roman monuments,
designed a residence for the Medici family in Florence and also resumed
his close friendship with the great architect Donato Bramante, until the latter's death in 1514. But in 1516, he died his protector
Giuliano de Medici, Leonardo left Italy definitively to spend the last
three years of his life in the palace of Cloux as "first painter,
architect and mechanic of the king".
The
great respect that I made dispensed Francisco Leonardo pass this last
stage of his life rather as a member of the nobility as an employee of
the royal household. Fatigued
and concentrated on writing his last pages for never completed Treatise
on Painting, cultivated more theory than practice, but still
extraordinary drawings executed on biblical and apocalyptic themes. He managed to complete the ambiguous San Juan Bautista, an androgynous elf overflowing grace, sensuality and mystery; in fact, his disciples would imitate shortly after making it a pagan Baco, which today can be seen in the Louvre in Paris.
Detail of San Juan Bautista (c. 1516)
From 1517 his health, hitherto unshakable, began to worsen. His right arm was paralyzed; but,
with his tireless left hand, Leonardo still made sketches of urban
projects, of rivers and drains to the palatial decorations for parties. Converted
into a museum, home of Amboise was filled with papers and notes
containing ideas of this remarkable man, many of which would have to
wait centuries to demonstrate its feasibility and even its necessity; he even, at this time, to conceive the idea of prefabricated houses. Just for the three fabrics chosen to accompany him on his last leg
(San Juan Bautista, La Gioconda and Santa Ana, the Virgin and Child)
then it can be said that Leonardo had one of the great treasures of his
time.
On May 2, 1519 died in Cloux; Melzi his will he bequeathed to his books, manuscripts and drawings, the disciple took care of returning to Italy. As often happens with great geniuses, they have been woven around his death some legends; one
of them, inspired by Vasari claims that Leonardo, regretted not having
brought a society governed by the laws of the Church existence, pleaded
long and, with his last strength, joined the bier to receive, before
expiring, the sacraments.
Leonardo da Vinci
Considered the paradigm of homo universalis, the Renaissance scholar versed in all areas of human knowledge, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) dabbled in such varied fields as aerodynamics, hydraulics, anatomy, botany, painting, sculpture and architecture, among many. His scientific research was, to a large extent, forgotten and little appreciated by his contemporaries; his painting, however, was immediately recognized as a master able to realize the ideal of beauty in works of disturbing suggestion and delicate poetry.
Recreation of a portrait of Leonardo
On
an artistic level, Leonardo forms, along with Michelangelo and Raphael,
the triad of the great masters of the Cinquecento, and despite the
paucity of his work, the history of painting it counts among its
greatest geniuses. For
others, it is possible that the powerful fascination aroused his
masterpieces (with La Gioconda at the top) appropriate that other
fascination about her figure that has continued to grow over the
centuries, fueled by the many enigmas surrounding his biography, some of them trivial, such as right-to-left, and others
certainly disturbing, like those visionary inventions five centuries
ahead of their time.
Youth and technical discoveries
Leonardo
was born in 1452 in the Tuscan town of Vinci, the illegitimate son of a
peasant woman, Caterina (who married soon after with a craftsman in the
region), and Ser Piero, a wealthy Florentine notary. Italy
was then a mosaic of city-states such as Florence, Venice and small
republics like fiefdoms under the power of princes or the pope. The Eastern Roman Empire fell to the Turks in 1453 and barely survived still very small, the Holy Roman Empire; It was a violent time when, however, the splendor of the courts had no limits.
Although
his father was married four times, had children (eleven in total, with
which Leonardo would build lawsuits paternal inheritance) in his last
two marriages, so the little Leonardo was raised as an only child only. His
enormous curiosity manifested itself early: already in childhood
drawing mythological animals of his own invention, inspired by a deep
observation of the natural environment in which he grew up. Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer, tells how the genius of
Leonardo, still a child, he created a shield of Medusa with dragons that
terrorized his father when he ran into him by surprise.
Aware of his son's talent, his father allowed him to enter as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. Over
the six years that the painters' guild prescribed as instruction before
being recognized as free artist, Leonardo learned painting, sculpture
and mechanical techniques and artistic creation. The
first work of his that has accurate news was the construction of the
image projected by Brunelleschi to crown the church of Santa Maria dei
Fiori copper sphere. Next to Verrocchio's workshop, moreover, it was that of Antonio
Pollaiuolo, where Leonardo made his first studies of anatomy and perhaps
also began in the knowledge of Latin and Greek.
Young graceful and vigorous, Leonardo had inherited the physical strength of the lineage of his father; It
is very likely to be the model for the head of San Miguel in the box
Verrocchio Tobias and the Angel, fine and beautiful features. Moreover, his great creative imagination and skill of his early brush soon surpass those of his teacher. In
the Baptism of Christ, for example, inspired the angels painted by
Leonardo contrast with the abruptness of the Baptist by Verrocchio.
Angels attributed to Leonardo in the Baptism of Christ (c. 1475) by Andrea del Verrocchio
The
young disciple there for the first time used a novel technique recently
arrived from the Netherlands: oil painting, allowing greater softness
in the stroke and deeper penetration into the fabric. In
addition to the extraordinary drawings and virtuous participation in
other paintings of his teacher, his great works of this period are a St.
Jerome and the large panel Adoration of the Magi (both unfinished),
notable for the innovative dynamism given by the skill in contrasts features in the geometric composition of the scene and the extraordinary handling of the technique of chiaroscuro.
Florence was then one of the richest cities in Europe; numerous
weaving mills and workshops manufacturing of silks and brocades from
east and west wool made it the great commercial center of the peninsula;
there the Medicis had established a court whose splendor was not just the artists he had. But when the young Leonardo found that could not of Lorenzo the
Magnificent but praise its virtues of good courtier, in his thirties he
decided to seek a more prosperous horizon.
First Milanese period (1482-1499)
In
1482 he appeared before the powerful Ludovico Sforza, the strongman of
Milan, in whose court would stay seventeen years as "pictor et
ingenierius ducalis." Although
his main occupation was military engineer, projects (mostly unrealized)
included the hydraulic, mechanical (with innovative systems of levers
to multiply human strength) and architecture, in addition to painting
and sculpture. It was the period of full development; following the mathematical foundations established by Leon Battista
Alberti and Piero della Francesca, Leonardo began his notes for the
formulation of a science of painting, while exercised in the
implementation and manufacture of lutes.
Spurred
by the dramatic plague that struck Milan and Leonardo saw the cause
overcrowding and dirt of the city, projected spacious villas, made plans
for piping systems rivers and ingenious defense against the enemy
artillery. Having
received from Ludovico commissioned to create a monumental equestrian
statue in honor of Francesco, the founder of the Sforza dynasty,
Leonardo worked for sixteen years on the project of the "great horse"
that would not happen more than a clay model, destroyed during a battle shortly after.
It
proved especially fruitful friendship with the mathematician Luca
Pacioli, a Franciscan friar who around 1496 concluded his treatise
divine proportion, illustrated by Leonardo. Pondering
the instrument seen as the most accurate knowledge available to man,
Leonardo said that through careful observation objects should be
recognized in its form and structure to describe in paint the most
accurate way. Thus
the drawing became the fundamental instrument of his teaching method,
to the point that it could be said that in his notes the text was to
explain the drawing, and not vice versa, reason why Leonardo da Vinci
has been recognized as the creator of modern scientific illustration.
The
ideal vedere saper guided all his studies, which in the 1490s began to
emerge as a series of unfinished treaties which would then be compiled
in the Codex Atlanticus, named for its large size. Includes
work on painting, architecture, mechanics, anatomy, geography, botany,
hydraulic and aerodynamic, fusing art and science in a single cosmology
which also gives an outlet for an aesthetic debate that was anchored in a
rather sterile neoplatonism .
Although
Leonardo did not seem to worry too much about form their own school, in
his Milanese workshop was created gradually a group of faithful
apprentices and students: Giovanni Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis,
Andrea Solari and his inseparable Salai, among others; scholars
have not agreed yet on the exact attribution of some works of this
period, such as Madonna Litta or the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli.
Detail of Virgin of the Rocks (second version, c. 1507)
Recruited
in 1483 by the brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception for a painting
for the church of San Francisco, Leonardo undertook the realization of
what would be the Virgin very famous of the Rocks, the end result, in
two versions, would not be ready at eight month she is marking the contract, but twenty years later. In both versions the triangular structure of the composition, the
grace of the figures and the brilliant use of the famous sfumato to
enhance the visionary sense of the scene assumed an aesthetic revolution
for his contemporaries.
To
this same period belong the portrait of Ginevra de Benci (1475-1478),
with its innovative relationship of proximity and distance, and the
expressive beauty of La belle Ferronnière. But
by 1498 Leonardo ended a mural in principle a modest commission for the
refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria dalle Grazie, which
would become his definitive consecration painting: The Last Supper. Today we need an effort to understand its original splendor as it deteriorated rapidly and was badly restored many times. The
great plastic capturing the dramatic moment when Christ tells the
apostles "one of you I will betray" gives the scene a psychological
unity and a dynamic apprehension of the fleeting moment of surprise
diners (of which only Judas is excluded). The mural became not only a celebrated Christian icon, but also an object of pilgrimage for artists from around the continent.
The return to Florence
In late 1499 the French entered Milan; Ludovico il Moro lost power. Leonardo
left the city accompanied by Pacioli and after a brief stay in Mantua,
at his admirer Isabella d'Este Marchioness arrived in Venice. Harassed by the Turks, who already dominated the Dalmatian coast and
threatened to take the Friuli, the Signoria of Venice Leonardo hired as a
military engineer.
Within
weeks he designed a number of artifacts whose concrete realization
would only, in many cases, until the nineteenth or twentieth centuries: a
few soldiers armed with from a kind of individual submarine with a
leather tube for air intended drill,
they would attack the boats under to large pieces of artillery
projectiles delayed action and vessels with double wall to resist the
onslaught. The
exorbitant costs, lack of time and perhaps the claims of Leonardo in
the division of spoils, excessive for Venetians made the great ideas not
happen sketches. In April 1500, after nearly twenty years of absence, Leonardo da Vinci returned to Florence.
then he dominated the city Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. Described
by Machiavelli himself as "incomparable model" of political and despot
schemer, this ambitious man and feared he was preparing to embark on the
conquest of new territories. Leonardo,
again as a military engineer, toured the northern territories, drawing
maps, calculating precise distance and projecting bridges and new
artillery guns. But soon after the condottiero fell into disgrace: his captains mutinied, his father was poisoned and he fell seriously ill. In
1503 Leonardo returned to Florence, who was then at war with Pisa, and
conceived there his great project to divert the River Arno behind the
enemy city to fence it also contemplating the construction of a canal
and waterway communicate Florence with the sea. The project was completed only in extraordinary maps of their author.
Santa Ana, the Virgin and Child (c. 1510)
But Leonardo was already recognized as one of the greatest masters of Italy. In 1501 he had drawn a sketch of his Santa Ana, the Virgin and Child, which would move the canvas at the end of the decade. In
1503 he was commissioned to paint a large mural (twice the size of The
Last Supper) in Old Palace: the Florentine nobility wanted to
immortalize some historical scenes of his glory. Leonardo spent three years at The Battle of Anghiari, which would be incomplete and would then be detached by deterioration. Despite the loss, sketches and copies circulated to admire and inspire Rafael, a century later, a famous play Peter Paul Rubens.
Also it survived only in copies another great work of this period: Leda and the Swan. However,
the summit of this Florentine stage (and one of the few finished works
by Leonardo) was the portrait of Mona (short for Madonna) Lisa
Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, why the box is known as La
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda. famous
from the time of its creation, work became model portrait and almost no
one would escape its influence in the world of painting. As picture and as a character, the mythical Gioconda has inspired countless books and legends, and even an opera; but little is known for certain. You
not even know who commissioned the painting, which Leonardo would carry
on his continued vital pilgrimage until his last years in France, where
he sold it to King Francis I of four thousand pieces of gold.
Detail of the Mona Lisa (c. 1503-1507)
Perfecting
his own discovery of the sfumato, leading to an almost miraculous
concreteness, Leonardo managed to capture a gesture between the fleeting
and the perennial: the "enigmatic smile" of the Mona Lisa is one of the
most admired, discussed and imitated chapters of art history , and mystery still continues to fascinate. There is a legend that Leonardo promoted this gesture in his model making lutes sound as she rested; the painting, which has gone through quite a few ups and downs, has
been considered summit and summary of talent and "pictorial science" of
its author.
Back in Milan (1506-1513)
Leonardo's interest in science education was increasingly intense. Attended dissections, on which confeccionaba drawings to describe the structure and functioning of the human body; at
the same time made systematic observations of the flight of birds (on
which he planned to write a treaty), with the conviction that also the
man could fly if he ever know the laws of air resistance (some notes
from this period have been seen as clear precursors of the modern helicopter).
Absorbed
by these thoughts and concerns, Leonardo did not hesitate to leave
Florence in 1506 when Charles d'Amboise, the French governor of Milan,
offered him the position of architect and painter of the court; honored
and admired by his new employer, Leonardo da Vinci project for a castle
and executed sketches for the oratory of Santa Maria dalla Fontana,
founded by the patron. His Milanese stay only was interrupted in the winter of 1507, when he
worked in Florence with the sculptor Giovanni Francesco Rustici in the
execution of the bronzes of the baptistery of the city.
Perhaps
too old-looking for the fifty years that had then, his face was taken
by Rafael as a model of sublime Plato for his work The School of Athens.
Leonardo,
however, painted little, devoting himself to collect his writings and
deepen their studies with the idea of having completed by 1510 his
treatise on anatomy, worked with Marcantonio della Torre, the most
famous anatomist of his time, in the description organ and the study of human physiology.
Leonardo as Plato in The School of Athens (1511), Rafael
The
leonardesco ideal of "cosmological perception" manifested itself in
many branches: wrote on mathematics, optics, mechanics, geology, botany;
your search tended toward finding laws, functions and compatible harmonies for all these disciplines to nature as a unit. Meanwhile,
his former disciples joined some new, including the young nobleman
Francesco Melzi, a faithful friend of the teacher until his death. Along with Ambrogio de Predis, Leonardo culminated around 1507 the second version of Virgin of the Rocks; shortly before, he had left unfulfilled commissioned by the king of France to paint two Madonnas.
The
new strongman of Milan was then Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who sought to
reappropriate for himself the monumental project of the "great horse",
making it a funerary statue for his own tomb in the chapel of San Nazaro
Magiore; but again the equestrian monument moved from the sketches, which led to Leonardo his second frustration as a sculptor. In 1513 a new political instability pushed to leave Milan; Melzi and Salai along he went to Rome, where he was housed in the
belvedere of Giuliano de Medici, brother of the new Pope Leo X.
Last years Rome and France
In
the Vatican he enjoyed a period of tranquility, with a living wage and
without major obligations: drew maps, studied ancient Roman monuments,
designed a residence for the Medici family in Florence and also resumed
his close friendship with the great architect Donato Bramante, until the latter's death in 1514. But in 1516, he died his protector
Giuliano de Medici, Leonardo left Italy definitively to spend the last
three years of his life in the palace of Cloux as "first painter,
architect and mechanic of the king".
The
great respect that I made dispensed Francisco Leonardo pass this last
stage of his life rather as a member of the nobility as an employee of
the royal household. Fatigued
and concentrated on writing his last pages for never completed Treatise
on Painting, cultivated more theory than practice, but still
extraordinary drawings executed on biblical and apocalyptic themes. He managed to complete the ambiguous San Juan Bautista, an androgynous elf overflowing grace, sensuality and mystery; in fact, his disciples would imitate shortly after making it a pagan Baco, which today can be seen in the Louvre in Paris.
Detail of San Juan Bautista (c. 1516)
From 1517 his health, hitherto unshakable, began to worsen. His right arm was paralyzed; but,
with his tireless left hand, Leonardo still made sketches of urban
projects, of rivers and drains to the palatial decorations for parties. Converted
into a museum, home of Amboise was filled with papers and notes
containing ideas of this remarkable man, many of which would have to
wait centuries to demonstrate its feasibility and even its necessity; he even, at this time, to conceive the idea of prefabricated houses. Just for the three fabrics chosen to accompany him on his last leg
(San Juan Bautista, La Gioconda and Santa Ana, the Virgin and Child)
then it can be said that Leonardo had one of the great treasures of his
time.
On May 2, 1519 died in Cloux; Melzi his will he bequeathed to his books, manuscripts and drawings, the disciple took care of returning to Italy. As often happens with great geniuses, they have been woven around his death some legends; one
of them, inspired by Vasari claims that Leonardo, regretted not having
brought a society governed by the laws of the Church existence, pleaded
long and, with his last strength, joined the bier to receive, before
expiring, the sacraments.
