Leonardo da Vinci





Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519) was a celebrated Italian
Renaissance architect, inventor, engineer, sculptor and painter. He can be
seen as the archetype of the Renaissance Man and has been described as a genius.

Life

His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's biography Vite.

Leonardo was born in Vinci, Italy. His father Ser Piero da Vinci was a
well-off landowner or craftsman and his mother a peasant girl called
Caterina. It has been suggested that Caterina was a slave of middle eastern
origin owned by Piero, but the evidence is scant.

This was before modern naming conventions developed in Europe. Therefore,
his full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo,
son of Piero, from Vinci". Leonardo himself simply signed his works
"Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo"). Most authorities therefore
refer to his works as "Leonardos," not "da Vincis." Presumably he did not
use his father's name because he was an illegitimate child.

Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence. He was a vegetarian throughout
his life. He became a painter's apprentice and later an independent painter
in Florence.

From 1482 to 1499 he worked for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan and
maintained his own workshop with apprentices there. Seventy tons of bronze
that had been set aside for Leonardo's "Gran Cavallo" horse statue was cast
into weapons for the Duke to save Milan from the French under Charles VIII
in 1495 - see also Italian Wars.

When the French returned under Louis XIII in 1498, Milan fell without a
fight, overthrowing Sforza. Leonardo stayed in Milan for a time, until one
morning he found French archers using his life-size clay model for the "Gran
Cavallo" for target practice. He left with Salai and his friend (and
inventor of double-entry bookkeeping) Luca Pacioli for Mantua, moving on
after 2 months for Venice, then moving again to Florence at the end of April
1500.

In Florence he entered th services of Cesare Borgia (also called "Duca Valentino"
and son of Pope Alexander VI) as military architect and engineer. In 1506 he
returned to Milan, now in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss
mercenries drove out the French. There he met Francesco Melzi, who would
become a close friend and companion until Leonardo's death, and later his heir.

From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome, where painters like Raphael and
Michelangelo were active at the time; he did not have much contact with
these artists, however.

In 1515 Francis I of France retook Milan, and Leonardo was commissioned to
make a centrepiece (of a mechanical lion) for the peace talks in Bologna
between the French king and Pope Leo X, where he must have first met the
king. In 1516, he entered Francis' service, being given the use of the manor
house Clos Lucˇ next to the king's residence at the Royal Chateau at
Amboise, and recieving a generous pension. The king became a close friend.

He died in Cloux, France in 1519. According to his wish, 60 beggars followed
his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of
Amboise.

Leonardo appears to never have had intimate relations with women. In 1476 he
was anonymously accused of homosexual contact with a 17-year-old model,
Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute. He was, together with three other
young men, charged with homosexual conduct and acquitted because of lack of
evidence. For a time Leonardo and the others were under the watchful eye of
Florence's "Officers of the Night" - a kind of Renaissance vice squad.

Art

Leonardo often planned grand paintings with many drawings and sketches, only
to leave the projects unfinished in the end.

In 1481 he was commissioned to paint the altarpiece "The Adoration of the
Magi". After grand plans and many drawings, the painting was left unfinished
and Leonardo left for Milan.

There he spent many years making plans and models for a monumental 7 metre
(24 feet) high horse statue in bronze ("Gran Cavallo"), to be erected in
Milan. Because of war with France, the project was never finished. Based on
private initiative, a similar statue was completed according to some of his
plans in 1999 in New York, given to Milan and erected there.

Back in Florence, he was commissioned for a large public mural Battle of
Anghiari; his rival Michelangelo was to paint the opposite wall. After
producing a fantastic variety of studies preparing for the work, he left
town, the mural unfinished because of technical difficulties.

Science and Engineering

Maybe even more impressive than his artistic work are his studies in science
and engineering, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes
and drawings which combine art and science. He was left-handed and used
mirror writing throughout his life.

His approach to science was an observatory one: he tried to understand a
phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not
emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations. Throughout his life, he
planned a grand encyclopedia based on detailed drawings of everything. Since
he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, Leonardo the scientist
was mostly ignored by contemporary scholars.

He was always fascinated by the topic of flight, producing detailed studies
of the flight of birds and plans for several flying machines, including a
helicopter powered by four men (which would not have worked since it would
have rotated) and a light hang-glider which could have flown. On January 3,
1496 he unsuccessfully tested a flying machine he had constructed.

He participated in autopsies and produced many extremely detailed anatomical
drawings, planning a comprehensive work of human and comparative anatomy.

In 1502 Leonardo da Vinci produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m)
bridge as part of a civil engineerin project for Sultan Beyazid II of Constantinople.
The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosphorus known
as the Golden Horn. It was never built, but Da Vinci's vision was resurrected in
2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway.

His notebook also contain several inventions in the military field: machine
guns, an armored tank powered by humans or horses, cluster bombs, etc. even
though he later held war to be the worst of human activities. Other
inventions include a submarine, a cog-wheeled device that has been
interpreted as the first mechanical calculator, and a car powered by a
spring mechanism. In his years in the Vatican, he planned an industrial use
of solar power, by employing concave mirrors to heat water.

In astronomy, Leonardo believed that the Sun and Moon revolve around the
Earth and that the Moon reflect the sun light because its being covered by water.

Leonardo did not publish or otherwise distribute the contents of his
notebooks. They remained obscure until the 19th century, and were not
directly of value to the development of science and technology until that
time. On this basis, L. Sprague de Camp, in his book, The Ancient Engineers,
considered Leonardo not the first modern engineer, but "the last of the
ancient ones", pointing out that after Leonardo's time the practice of
disseminating and publishing scientific discoveries began in earnest.

In 1994, one of da Vinci's notebooks was purchased by American entrepreneur
Bill Gates for US$25 million. A lot of his drawings are now owned by the
British Royal family.