...been curious about how different things could be if I were born five hundred years ago in a Renaissance period which is best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. They were both great artists but if I could choose to work with one of them, without having to think twice, Leonardo da Vinci would be the one. It would be so much fun to work with a man of unquenchable curiosity and feverishly inventive imagination like him. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. I was spellbound when I first learned about his professions and I have held him in awe ever since. Most people may look up to him because of his intelligence or his contributions, which are undeniably outstanding, but the true reason why I honor this man so much is that I don’t see him as a genius but as a human being who has the same hopes, fears, and dreams as we all have. He wasn’t born to a perfect or well-off family and his father ran away when he knew that his mother was pregnant. Therefore, having him wasn’t quite on purpose. Since Leonardo and I suffered the same fate, I feel a connection to him. Behind the paintings and contributions he made, I can feel the innermost loneliness he had hidden. Although being an illegitimate child prevented him from going to university or having a prestigious job in a society, it couldn’t...
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...Piero da Vinci was born on April 15th, 1452 and was said to be 1. “One of the most brilliant men on earth”. Da Vinci was born in Vinci, Italy as a love child to a landowner and a peasant woman. Leonardo was raised by his father, Ser Piero, who home schooled him. He began working for an artist by the name of “Verrocchio” at 14 years old. Da Vinci worked for Verrocchio for only 6 years and had already mastered art, leather arts, metal working, and pottery. Da Vinci began acquiring jobs from very wealthy people at such a young age, which eventually lead to the painting “Mona Lisa.” By 20 years of age, Da Vinci was already a master artist in the Guild of Saint Luke. Due to his accomplishments he was able to establish his own workshop. Even though he may have been considered a genius by some, he wasn’t perfect. Florentine records prove that Da Vinci was charged with sodomy at the age of 22 that possibly involved one of his male models. After Leonardo was charged it was said that 1. “Two years, his whereabouts went entirely undocumented.” It is assumed that he wanted to avoid further exposure. In 1482 a man by the name of “Lorenzo de Medici” who was from a very wealthy Italian family asked Leonardo to craft a silver lyre for “Ludovico il Moro”, who was at the time, the Duke of Dilman, as a sign of peace. Da Vinci followed through with the plan and then wrote a letter to Ludovico telling him of Da Vinci’s engineering and artistic talents could help with his court. Da Vinci’s letter...
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...| Leonardo Da Vinci | Renaissance Man | | Jenny Bevier | 8/20/2010 | | Very few that have ever lived have been acknowledged as a genius. Leonardo Da Vinci was a renaissance man who was a true pioneer of his time. Though he is best known as an artist, he was far more than that. Leonardo was also an engineer, inventor, and scientist. He had one of the best scientific minds of his time. He carried out research in fields ranging from architecture and civil engineering to astronomy, anatomy, geography, geology, and paleontology. Leonardo was a renaissance man whose works of art and studies of mechanics and science paved the way for many artists, engineers, and doctors today. Da Vinci was born in 1452 in the small town of Anchiano, Italy. He was an illegitimate child of a Florentine Notary, Piero Da Vinci, and a peasant woman named Catrina (The World Wide Art Gallery, 2010, para. 2). Until the age of five Leonardo lived in the Hamlet of Anchiano with his mother. From 1457 on he lived with his father, grandparents, and uncle Fracesco in the small town of Vinci, Italy. Da Vinci never received a formal education. However, he was informally taught Latin, geometry, and mathematics by his stepmother Alberia, and her mother in law Monna Lucia. Also, he learned from scholarly textbooks that were owned by various family members. When Leonardo was fifteen, he was apprenticed to the artist Andrea Di Cione, known as Verrocchio. During this time is when Leonardo was...
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...The Genius That is Da Vinci & Michelangelo Tammy Klapper-Sinclair Art 101 Art Appreciation Instructor: Todd Leisek October 15, 2012 Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti were two of the most famous and talented artists of their time. Born only 20 years apart, their artistic styles and interpretation had a similar focus, much of which was thought of as a reflection of their tortured and troubled minds. Michelangelo was intrigued with the precision of the human form and sought perfection of such in his work. Leonardo da Vinci saw a strong, continuous connection between art and science, and many of his works were explanations and findings of many such experiments. Michelangelo and da Vinci were both ground-breaking, pioneering artistic giants and innovators. Through their use of brilliant color, influential and powerful imagery, and their unusual ways of creating complexity in their work, they established themselves as two of the worlds’ greatest artistic geniuses. Although their artwork and forms were quite different, they shared many similar commonalties. For example, both da Vinci and Michelangelo attained much of their inspiration from passages in the bible. They were also both also extremely eccentric and seemingly tormented men who were also very misunderstood and underestimated during their time. It was also believed that both repressed their homosexuality. Both famous men have gone on to live eternally through their ageless and remarkably, breathtaking...
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...THE LIFE AND DEATH AND FAMOUS WORKS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI Nathan Grissom History 101 Western Civilization to Antiquity-1650 April 16th, 2017 The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci Leonardo Da Vinci was born on Saturday April 15th in 1452 at three in the morning in Vinci, Italy. It would be 10:30 PM in today’s time. Da Vinci was known as a renaissance man who had a curious mind and his intellect was high. He was raised in a farmhouse near the hills of Tuscany. He was raised by his father and his stepmothers and around the age of five years old he had moved to his father’s estate where his uncle and grandparents lived. Leonardo would receive little education beyond the usual reading and writing and math. His love for art was...
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...Of Genesis Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the most prominent men in history and was the creator of many new ideas. He created many works of art and invented many new technologies that would be considered extreme for the time period. One of the biggest works of art he completed was “The Last Supper”. This painting, done in fresco, plays a significant role in Christianity and depicts Jesus with his disciples. Along with “The Last Supper”, The Book of Genesis was produced to influence belief on a group of individuals. These works of art are cemented in history and can be connected to each other by their significant individual affects on human existence. “The Last Supper” and the creation story in The Book of Genesis are connected to one another by theology and both share themes such as creationism and humanism. To understand how these individual pieces of work are connected to each other, one must first breakdown why these works of art were created. The Last Supper is one of the most thought-provoking and controversial works of Leonardo da Vinci. It is a mural painting, which means that it is directly painted on a wall, and is created by Leonardo in Milan from 1495 till 1498. Da Vinci painted it for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza who decided that he wanted this religious scene painted. The Last Supper measures 15 feet × 29 feet and covers the back wall of the dining hall at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. Leonardo spent 3 years painting it because of its measurements...
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...Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most influential persons in human history. Born in 1452, he demonstrated excellence in multiple disciplines. For that reason, he was often called the Renaissance man. He was painter, inventor, military engineer, architect, sculptor and this list goes on. Blessed with brilliant mind and unbelievable skills, he went on discovering major branches of science and nature. His works have influenced countless researchers and scientists all over the world and in many ways shaped a big part of human civilization today. In today’s world, he is most notable for his famous paintings Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Mostly self-educated, his personal notes were full of innovations, theories and observations about numerous...
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...LEORNADO DA VINCI AND HIS ART [pic] His early childhood Leonardo da Vinci is usually regarded as an artistic genius who possessed great ability in art and understanding of the human physical features and natural sciences as depicted in his art. Leonardo da Vinci was also an accomplished musician and scientist. No other artist of his generation had such exceptional ability and left behind such a wealth of graphic work. He was somehow controversial and as a young man he was accused of being a homosexual (Frank Zöllner 2002 p.7). However even though most of his works were of exceptional quality he had a tendency of not finishing his works and sometimes fled due to social problems. Leonardo da Vinci was born in 15th April 1452 in the village of Tuscan in Florence (Leonardo 2002 p 3). He was the son of ser piero da Vinci, a young lawyer and Caterina. He was of noble origin form his mother’s side (Leonardo 2002 p 4). His mother bestowed upon him not only the beauty of his person but also very many other gifts that placed him high above ordinary people. It is said that he was somehow a genius and usually solved with ease whatever he put his mind to (Leonardo 2002 p 4). When he was still young he enrolled in the study of very many different things but he usually abandoned them once he had jut began to know them. One of the courses he studied was arithmetic and after a few months he had understood it so much that he used to come up with problems and difficulties which...
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...The artistic work that I have chosen for this assignment is Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. Created between 1495 and 1498, the Da Vinci painted the oil painting on the walls of Santa Maria Delle Grazie in Milan in Italy. The masterpiece depicts a scene from the Gospel of John, wherein Jesus is having his last supper with his 12 apostles and announces that he would be betrayed by one of them. The painting is considered to be one of the best specimens of Biblical art and the art inspired during the Italian High Renaissance. Among the few reasons that led me to choose this painting is the expressions of the characters depicted in the painting — be it Jesus or his 12 apostles— capturing a myriad of expressions that range from shock to...
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...Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, inventor, and architect. He was very talented. He is one of the most well known artists of all time. He created two of the most world renowned and admired paintings ever, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Born in Anchiano, Tuscany, what is now known as Italy, Leornardo da Vinci was born. Da Vinci’s mother and father were never married. His mother was a peasant and his father was an attorney and notary. He lived with his father started around the age of 5 and his uncle helped raise him. Da Vinci didn’t have much of an education. He just had basic math, reading, and writing skills. His father recognized his talent for art and got his apprenticeship at about age 15 with the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. He was an apprentice for about a decade. In 1472, da Vinci was offered a...
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...“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”- Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519). Da Vinci is one of the most interesting personalities in the entire history of art. Like he said, “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”, (From the book “Masters of art Leonardo da Vinci” by Sergio and Andrea Ricciardi, pg. 32) he never stopped observing, experimenting and inventing. Da Vinci was born near the Tuscan town of Vinci, but active in Florence (1472–ca. 1482, 1500–1508) and Milan (ca. 1482–99, 1508–13), spending the last years of his life in Rome (1513–16) and France (1516/17–1519), where he died.( From the book in the Library Tower...
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...Did you know the world’s most famous painting the Mona Lisa was by a Renaissance man? In fact, most famous pieces of art mentioned in textbooks or hung up in museums were done by Renaissance men. So, how did these paintings come to be? Well, that question starts with fall and the rebirth of a country. That fall was the fall of Rome; very similar to spending hours and hours building a snowman only to have it melt in matter of minutes, except hours were actually decades and the snowman was an empire. The fall of Rome left people defenseless, and the Pope who hardly ever got involved in political matters, began ordering armies to take over cities. Men rode in on horses to Jerusalem, the holy capital of the world and decapitated those who were blasphemous against the holy one. And the chaos only further ensued when the Crusaders, Christian soldiers, got a hold of Jerusalem, they went after the Jews and non believers and so on. But, people finally had...
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...Da Vinci’s The Last Supper is yet another key component of the book and is the source of many of Dan Brown’s claims. One of the major issues with all of Brown’s claims about the painting is that Brown almost assumes that the painting is at least close to its original state, with only some portions being changed. Therefore, if relying solely on the information provided in the book, the claims make sense and don’t generally contradict each other. However, if the reader happens to have any basic knowledge of the painting, art history, preservation techniques, or conservation techniques, Brown’s claims start to lose a large amount of credibility. For instance, Brown briefly mentions in Chapter 55 that The Last Supper is a fresco. Frescoes are...
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...Mona Lisa The lady behind the painting By: Max Beagle I. Introduction A. The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci’. B. The location of the painting is in the Musee du Louvre. C. The Mona Lisa was worked on for four years. D. Till this day there has been many debates and a multitude of theories in an effort to uncover the mysteries behind the Mona Lisa E. The two biggest mysteries are the identity of the lady in the paint and the nature of her smile. II. Who is the lady behind the painting? a. Most commonly known as Lisa Gherardini Giocondo b. Another rumor is she is to be da Vinci’s mistress, Duchess of Milan (Isabella). Da Vinci was the family’s painter. c. Others believe the Mona Lisa is a feminine version of da Vinci. Digital analysis reveals da Vinci’s facial characteristics are perfectly aligned with one another. III. The Smile a. The painting technique is referred to as “sfumato” meaning “vanished” or “smoky”. This technique leaves interpretation to the viewer’s imagination. b. When looking at the portrait it appears the Mona Lisa is smiling. When looked at closely, she is no longer smiling. The appearing and disappearing of her smile is an attribute to the viewer’s vision. c. The painting remains an enigma to art enthusiasts. d. Famous French artist, Luc Maspero jumped four floors from a hotel to his death. In his suicide not he said “I preferred death after years of struggling to understand the mystery...
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...man that would later become one of the greatest and most renowned artists of all time. This man was Leonardo Di Vinci. Di Vinci was born in 1452 in the small town of Anchiano, which is near Vinci, Italy. Some historians say he was actually born in Vinci, Italy. He was said to be an illegitimate child of a Florentine notary named Piero Di Vinci, and a woman named Caterina whom is also said to have been a peasant 1. His father raised him. “A painter, a sculptor, an architect and an engineer, Leonardo Di Vinci's numerous skills have earned him the title of renaissance master.” This paper shall explore the life and works of Leonardo Di Vinci. In his early years, Leonardo became an apprentice in one of a highly acclaimed studio in Italy. At 20 years old Leonardo was accepted into the painters' guild of Florence. Leonardo worked there until 1483, when moved to Milan. The first piece of artwork that Leonardo completed in Milan was the Madonna of the Rocks1. Di Vinci’s most Famous works are The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and Vitruvian Man: The Proportions of the Human Figure. The Mona Lisa is a piece of art that is most recognized among work of fine art. People recognize within an instant of seeing it. It is also one of the most talked about pieces of art because of the longtime tale of there being a mystery behind her smile. Leonardo began to work on the Mona Lisa in Florence, Italy in the year 15032. The Mona Lisa is said to depict Leonardo’s ideal of pure beauty...
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