What century was Leonardo da Vinci born in? Biography of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the small village of Anchiano LU, located near the town of Vinci (Vinci FI). He was the illegitimate son of a wealthy notary, Piero da Vinci, and a beautiful villager, Katarina. Shortly after this event, the notary married a girl of noble birth. They had no children, and Piero and his wife took a three-year-old child to their place.

Birth of an artist

The short period of childhood in the village is over. The notary Piero moved to Florence, where he apprenticed his son to Andrea del Veroccio, a famous Tuscan master. There, in addition to painting and sculpture, future artist got the opportunity to study the basics of mathematics and mechanics, anatomy, work with metals and plaster, and methods of leather dressing. The young man eagerly absorbed knowledge and later widely used it in his activities.

An interesting creative biography of the maestro belongs to the pen of his contemporary Giorgio Vasari. In Vasari's Life of Leonardo, Short story about how (Andrea del Verrocchio) involved a student in the execution of the commission "Baptism of Christ" (Battesimo di Cristo).

The angel, painted by Leonardo, so clearly demonstrated his superiority over the teacher that the latter threw away the brush in annoyance and never painted again.

The qualification of the master was awarded to him by the guild of St. Luke. Leonardo da Vinci spent the next year of his life in Florence. His first mature painting was The Adoration of the Magi (Adorazione dei Magi), commissioned for the monastery of San Donato.

Milan period (1482 - 1499)

Leonardo came to Milan as an envoy of peace from Lorenzo de Medici to Lodovico Sforza, nicknamed Moro. Here his work took a new direction. He was enrolled in the court staff, first as an engineer and only later as an artist.

The Duke of Milan, a cruel and narrow-minded man, was little interested in the creative component of Leonardo's personality. The ducal indifference worried the master even less. Interests converged in one. Moreau needed engineering devices for warfare and mechanical structures for the amusement of the court. Leonardo understood this like no one else. His mind did not doze, the master was sure that the possibilities of a person are endless. His ideas were close to the humanists of modern times, but largely incomprehensible to contemporaries.

The same period includes two important works- (Il Cenacolo) for the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie (Chiesa e Convento Domenicano di Santa Maria delle Grazie) and the painting "Lady with an Ermine" (Dama con l'ermellino).

The second is a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, mistress of Duke Sforza. The biography of this woman is unusual. One of the most beautiful and learned ladies of the Renaissance, she was simple and kind, able to get along with people. An affair with a duke saved one of her brothers from prison. She had the most tender relationship with Leonardo, but, according to contemporaries and the opinion of most researchers, their brief relationship remained platonic.

A more common (and also not confirmed) version of the intimate relationship of the master with the students of Francesco Melzi (Francesco Melzi) and Salai (Salai). The artist preferred to keep the details of his personal life a deep secret.

Moro commissioned the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza from the master. The necessary sketches were made and a clay model of the future monument was made. Further work was hampered by the French invasion of Milan. The artist left for Florence. Here he will return, but to another master - the French king Louis XII (Louis XII).

Again in Florence (1499 - 1506)

The return to Florence was marked by the entry into the service of the Duke of Cesare Borgia (Cesare Borgia) and the creation of the most famous canvas - "La Gioconda» (Gioconda). The new work involved frequent trips, the master traveled around Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria with various assignments. His main mission was reconnaissance and preparation of the area for hostilities by Cesare, who planned to subjugate the Papal States. Cesare Borgia was considered greatest villain Christendom, but Leonardo admired his perseverance and remarkable talent as a commander. He argued that the Duke's vices were balanced by "equally great virtues". The ambitious plans of the great adventurer did not come true. Master in 1506 returned to Milan.

Later years (1506 - 1519)

The second Milan period lasted until 1512. The Maestro studied the structure of the human eye, worked on the monument to Giacomo Trivulzio (Gian Giacomo Trivulzio) and his own self-portrait. In 1512 the artist moved to Rome. Giovanni di Medici, son, was elected pope under the name of Leo X (Leo X). The pope's brother, Duke Giuliano di Medici, highly appreciated the work of his compatriot. After his death, the master accepted the invitation of King Francis I (François I) and left for France in 1516.

Francis proved to be the most generous and grateful patron. The maestro settled in the picturesque castle of Clos Lucé (Le Clos Lucé) in Touraine, where he had every opportunity to do what he was interested in. By royal commission, he designed a lion, from whose chest a bouquet of lilies opened. The French period was the happiest in his life. The king gave his engineer an annual annuity of 1,000 ecu and donated land with vineyards, providing him with a peaceful old age. The life of the maestro ended in 1519. He bequeathed his notes, instruments and estates to his students.

Paintings

Inventions and works

Most of inventions of the master was not created during his lifetime, remaining only in notes and drawings. An airplane, a bicycle, a parachute, a tank… He had a dream of flying, the scientist believed that a person can and should fly. He studied the behavior of birds and sketched wings of various shapes. His design for a two-lens telescope is surprisingly accurate, and his diaries include a brief note about the possibility of "seeing the Moon big."

As a military engineer, he was always in demand, the light bridges he invented and the wheel lock for the pistol were used everywhere. He dealt with the problems of urban planning and land reclamation, in 1509 he built the St. Christopher, as well as the Martezana irrigation canal. Duke Moreau rejected his "ideal city" project. A few centuries later, London was built on this project. In Norway there is a bridge built according to his drawing. In France, already being an old man, he designed a canal between the Loire and Saone.

Leonardo's diaries are written in easy, lively language and are interesting to read. His fables, parables and aphorisms speak of the versatility of a great mind.

The secret of genius

There were plenty of secrets in the life of the titan of the Renaissance. The main one opened relatively recently. But did it open? In 1950, a list of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion (Prieuré de Sion), a secret organization created in 1090 in Jerusalem, was published. According to the list, Leonardo da Vinci was the ninth of the Grand Masters of the Priory. His predecessor in this amazing post was Sandro Botticelli, and his successor was Constable Charles de Bourbon (Charles III de Bourbon). The main goal of the organization was to restore the Merovingian dynasty to the throne of France. The Priory considered the offspring of this kind to be the descendants of Jesus Christ.

The very existence of such an organization raises doubts among most historians. But such doubts could have been sown by members of the Priory who wished to continue their activities in secret.

If we accept this version as the truth, the master's habit of complete independence and the strange attraction to France for a Florentine become clear. Even Leonardo's writing style - left hand and right to left - can be interpreted as an imitation of Hebrew writing. This seems unlikely, but the scale of his personality allows us to make the most daring assumptions.

Stories about the Priory cause mistrust of scientists, but enrich artistic creativity. The most striking example is the book by Dan Brown (Dan Brown) "The Da Vinci Code" (Da Vinci Code) and the film of the same name.

• At the age of 24, together with three Florentine youths was accused of sodomy. The company was acquitted for lack of evidence.
• Maestro was a vegetarian. People who consume animal food, he called "walking cemeteries."
• He shocked his contemporaries by the habit of carefully examining and drawing in detail the hanged. Exploring the device human body considered the most important of the activities.
• It is believed that the maestro developed for Cesare Borgia tasteless and odorless poisons and wiretapping devices made of glass tubes.
• TV mini-series "The Life of Leonardo da Vinci"(La vita di Leonardo da Vinci) shot by Renato Castellani, received the Golden Globe Award.
• named after Leonardo da Vinci and is decorated with a huge statue depicting a master with a model helicopter in his hands.

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Leonardo da Vinci, the largest figure of the Italian High Renaissance – perfect example a universal person, the owner of many-sided talent: he was not only a great representative of art - a painter, sculptor, musician, writer, but also a scientist, architect, technician, engineer, inventor. He was born not far from Florence, in the small town of Vinci (hence his name). Leonardo was the son of a wealthy notary and a peasant woman (many biographers believe that he was illegitimate) and was brought up from an early age by his father. He had hopes that the grown-up Leonardo would follow in his footsteps, but social life did not seem interesting to him. At the same time, it is possible that the craft of the artist was chosen for the reason that the professions of a lawyer and a doctor were not available to illegitimate children.

Be that as it may, after moving with his father to Florence (1469), Leonardo gets a job as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, one of the most famous Florentine painters of that period. The technologies of the work of the artist of the Florentine workshop in those days implied technical experiments. Rapprochement with Paolo Toscanelli, an astronomer, was another factor in the awakening of Da Vinci's serious interest in various sciences. It is known that in 1472 he was a member of the Florentine Guild of Artists, and by 1473 his first dated independent artistic work. A few years later (in 1476 or 1478), da Vinci has his own workshop. Literally from the first canvases ("Annunciation", "Madonna Benois", "Adoration of the Magi"), he declared himself as great painter, and further work only increased his fame.

From the beginning of the 80s. the biography of Leonardo da Vinci is connected with Milan, with the work of Duke Ludovic Sforza as a painter, sculptor, military engineer, organizer of festivities, inventor of various mechanical "miracles" that glorified his master. Da Vinci is actively working on his own projects in different areas(for example, over an underwater bell, an aircraft, etc.), but Sforza does not show any interest in them. Da Vinci lived in Milan from 1482 to 1499 - until the troops of Louis XII captured the city and forced him to leave for Venice. In 1502 he was hired as a military engineer and architect by Cesare Borgia.

In 1503 the artist returned to Florence. By this year (tentatively) it is customary to attribute the writing of perhaps his most famous painting - “Mona Lisa” (“La Gioconda”). During the years 1506-1513. da Vinci again lives and works in Milan, this time he serves the French crown (Northern Italy was then under the control of Louis XII). In 1513 he moved to Rome, where the Medici patronized his work.

The last stage of the biography of Leonardo da Vinci is connected with France, where he moved in January 1516 at the invitation of King Francis I. Having settled in the Clos Luce castle, he received the official title of the first royal artist, architect and engineer, and became the recipient of a large rent. Working on the plan of the royal apartments, he mainly acted as an adviser and sage. Two years after his arrival in France, he became seriously ill, it was difficult for him to move around alone, right hand became numb, and the next year he fell completely ill. On May 2, 1519, the great "universal man", surrounded by his disciples, died; he was buried in the nearby royal castle of Amboise.

In addition to works that are universally recognized masterpieces ("The Adoration of the Magi", "The Last Supper", " holy family”,“ Madonna Litti ”,“ Mona Lisa ”), da Vinci left behind about 7000 unrelated drawings, sheets with notes that, after the death of the master, were brought together by his students into several treatises that give an idea of ​​the worldview of Leonardo da Vinci . He is credited with numerous discoveries in the field of art theory, mechanics, natural sciences, mathematics, which have made a significant contribution to the development of science and engineering. Leonardo da Vinci became the embodiment of the ideal of the Italian Renaissance and was perceived by subsequent generations as a kind of symbol of the creative aspirations inherent in that time.

Biography from Wikipedia

Childhood

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Anchiano near the small town of Vinci, not far from Florence at "three in the morning" that is, at 22:30 according to the modern countdown. Noteworthy is the entry in the diary of Leonardo's grandfather, Antonio da Vinci (1372-1468) ( literal translation): “On Saturday, at three in the morning on April 15, my grandson, the son of my son Piero, was born. The boy was named Leonardo. He was baptized by Father Piero di Bartolomeo." His parents were the 25-year-old notary Piero (1427-1504) and his sweetheart, a peasant woman Katerina. Leonardo spent the first years of his life with his mother. His father soon married a rich and noble girl, but this marriage turned out to be childless, and Piero took his three-year-old son to be raised. Separated from his mother, Leonardo tried all his life to recreate her image in his masterpieces. He lived at that time with his grandfather.

In Italy at that time, illegitimate children were treated almost like legitimate heirs. Many powerful people the cities of Vinci took part in the further fate of Leonardo.

When Leonardo was 13, his stepmother died in childbirth. The father remarried - and again soon became a widower. He lived for 77 years, was married four times and had 12 children. The father tried to introduce Leonardo to the family profession, but to no avail: the son was not interested in the laws of society.

Leonardo did not have a surname in modern sense; da Vinci simply means "(originally) from the town of Vinci". His full name is Italian. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, that is, "Leonardo, son of Mr. Piero of Vinci."

Legend of the Shield of Medusa

In his Lives of the Most Famous Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vasari says that once a peasant friend asked Father Leonardo to find an artist to paint a round wooden shield. Ser Piero gave the shield to his son. Leonardo decided to depict the head of the Gorgon Medusa, and in order for the image of the monster to make a proper impression on the audience, he used lizards, snakes, grasshoppers, caterpillars, bats and "other creatures" as the nature "from a variety of which, combining them in different ways, he created a monster very disgusting and terrible, which poisoned with its breath and ignited the air. The result exceeded his expectations: when Leonardo showed the finished work to his father, he was frightened. The son told him: “This work serves the purpose for which it was made. So take it and give it away, for such is the action that is expected from works of art. Ser Piero did not give Leonardo's work to the peasant: he received another shield, bought from a junk dealer. The shield of Medusa was sold by Father Leonardo in Florence for a hundred ducats. According to legend, this shield passed to the Medici family, and when it was lost, the rebellious people expelled the sovereign owners of Florence from the city. Many years later, Cardinal del Monte commissioned a painting depicting the Gorgon Medusa by Caravaggio. The new talisman was presented to Ferdinand I of the Medici in honor of the marriage of his son.

Workshop of Verrocchio

In 1466, Leonardo da Vinci entered Verrocchio's workshop as an apprentice artist.

Verrocchio's workshop was located in the intellectual center of what was then Italy, the city of Florence, which allowed Leonardo to study the humanities, as well as acquire some technical skills. He studied drawing, chemistry, metallurgy, working with metal, plaster and leather. In addition, the young apprentice was engaged in drawing, sculpture and modeling. In addition to Leonardo, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Agnolo di Polo studied in the workshop, Botticelli worked, there were often such famous masters, like Ghirlandaio and others. Subsequently, even when Leonardo's father hires him in his workshop, he continues to cooperate with Verrocchio.

In 1473, at the age of 20, Leonardo da Vinci qualified as a master in the Guild of St. Luke.

Defeated teacher

Painting by Verrocchio "The Baptism of Christ". Angel on the left (lower left corner) - a creation by Leonardo

In the 15th century, ideas about the revival of ancient ideals were in the air. At the Florentine Academy the best minds Italy created the theory of the new art. Creative youth spent their time in lively discussions. Leonardo remained aloof from the hectic social life and rarely left the workshop. He had no time for theoretical disputes: he improved his skills. Once Verrocchio received an order for the painting "The Baptism of Christ" and instructed Leonardo to paint one of the two angels. It was a common practice in art workshops of that time: the teacher created a picture together with student assistants. The most talented and diligent were entrusted with the execution of a whole fragment. Two angels, painted by Leonardo and Verrocchio, clearly demonstrated the superiority of the student over the teacher. As Vasari writes, the amazed Verrocchio abandoned the brush and never returned to painting.

Professional activity, 1472-1513

• In 1472-1477, Leonardo worked on: "The Baptism of Christ", "Annunciation", "Madonna with a Vase".
• In the second half of the 70s, the "Madonna with a Flower" ("Madonna Benois") was created.
• At the age of 24, Leonardo and three other young men were brought to trial on false and anonymous accusations of sodomy. They were acquitted. Very little is known about his life after this event, but it is likely (there are documents) that he had his own workshop in Florence in 1476-1481.
• In 1481, da Vinci completed the first large order in his life - the altarpiece "The Adoration of the Magi" (not completed) for the monastery of San Donato a Sisto, located near Florence. In the same year, work began on the painting "Saint Jerome"
• In 1482, Leonardo, being, according to Vasari, a very talented musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo Medici sent him to Milan as a peacemaker to Lodovico Moro, and sent the lyre with him as a gift. At the same time, work began on the equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza.

• 1483 - work began on the "Madonna in the Grotto"
• 1487 - development of a flying machine - an ornithopter based on bird flight
• 1489-1490 - painting "Lady with an Ermine"
• 1489 - anatomical drawings of skulls
• 1490 - painting "Portrait of a Musician". A clay model of the monument to Francesco Sforza was made.
• 1490 - Vitruvian Man - famous drawing, sometimes called canonical proportions
• 1490-1491 - "Madonna Litta" created
• 1490-1494 - completed "Madonna in the Grotto"
• 1495-1498 - work on the fresco "The Last Supper" in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan
• 1499 - Milan is captured by the French troops of Louis XII, Leonardo leaves Milan, the model of the Sforza monument is badly damaged
• 1502 - enters the service of Cesare Borgia as an architect and military engineer
• 1503 - return to Florence
• 1503 - cardboard for the fresco "Battle in Anjaria (at Anghiari)" and the painting "Mona Lisa"
• 1505 - sketches of the flight of birds
• 1506 - return to Milan and service with King Louis XII of France (at that time in control of northern Italy, see Italian Wars)
• 1507 - study of the structure of the human eye
• 1508-1512 - work in Milan on the equestrian monument to Marshal Trivulzio
• 1509 - painting in St. Anne's Cathedral
• 1512 - "Self-portrait"
• 1512 - moving to Rome under the auspices of Pope Leo X

Personal life

Leonardo had many friends and students. As for love relationships, there is no reliable information on this subject, since Leonardo carefully concealed this side of his life. He was not married, there is no reliable information about novels with women. According to some versions, Leonardo had a connection with Cecilia Gallerani, the favorite of Lodovico Moro, with whom he painted his famous painting “Lady with an Ermine”. A number of authors, following the words of Vasari, suggest intimate relationship with young men, including students (Salai), although there is no evidence of this, others believe that Leonardo never had close relationships at all and with anyone, and he most likely was a virgin, completely uninterested in this side of life and giving preference to the sciences and the arts.

It is believed that da Vinci was a vegetarian (Andrea Corsali, in a letter to Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici, compares Leonardo to a Hindu who did not eat meat). Often attributed to da Vinci “If a person strives for freedom, why does he keep birds and animals in cages? .. man is truly the king of animals, because he cruelly exterminates them. We live by killing others. We are walking graveyards! I gave up meat at an early age.” taken from the English translation of Dmitry Merezhkovsky's novel The Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci".

Among Leonardo's hobbies were even cooking and serving art. In Milan for 13 years he was the manager of court feasts. He invented several culinary devices that make the work of cooks easier. original dish"from Leonardo" - thinly sliced ​​​​stew, with vegetables laid on top - was very popular at court feasts.

Final years and death

Leonardo was present at the meeting of King Francis I with Pope Leo X in Bologna on December 19, 1515. In the years 1513-1516, Leonardo lived in the Belvedere and worked on the painting "John the Baptist"

Francis instructed the craftsman to construct a mechanical lion capable of walking, from whose chest a bouquet of lilies would appear. Perhaps this lion welcomed the king in Lyon or was used during negotiations with the pope.

In 1516, Leonardo accepted the invitation of the French king and settled in his castle of Clos Luce (where Francis I spent his childhood), not far from the royal castle of Amboise. With the official title of the first royal painter, engineer and architect, Leonardo received an annual annuity of a thousand ecu. Never before had Leonardo held the title of engineer in Italy. Leonardo was not the first Italian master who, by the grace of the French king, received “the freedom to dream, think and create,” Andrea Solario and Fra Giovanni Giocondo shared a similar honor before him. In France, Leonardo hardly painted, but masterfully organized court festivities, planning a new palace in Romorantan with a planned change in the riverbed, a canal project between the Loire and Saône, the main two-way spiral staircase in the castle of Chambord.

Two years before his death, the master's right hand went numb, and he could hardly move without assistance. Leonardo spent the third year of his life in Amboise in bed. On April 23, 1519, he left a will, and on May 2, at the age of 68, he died surrounded by his students and his masterpieces in the Clos-Luce castle.

According to Vasari, da Vinci died in the arms of King Francis I, his close friend. This unreliable, but widespread legend in France, is reflected in the paintings of Ingres, Angelika Kaufman and many other painters. Leonardo da Vinci was buried in the castle of Amboise. An inscription was engraved on the tombstone: “The ashes of Leonardo da Vinci rest in the walls of this monastery, the greatest artist, engineer and architect of the French kingdom.

The main heir was the disciple and friend Francesco Melzi, who accompanied Leonardo, who for the next 50 years remained the main manager of the master’s legacy, which included (except for paintings) tools, a library and at least 50 thousand original documents on various topics, of which only a third has survived to this day. Another student of Salai and a servant got half of Leonardo's vineyards each.

Achievements

Art

Leonardo is primarily known to our contemporaries as an artist. In addition, it is possible that da Vinci could also have been a sculptor: researchers from the University of Perugia - Giancarlo Gentilini and Carlo Sisi - claim that the terracotta head they found in 1990 is the only sculptural work of Leonardo da Vinci that has come down to us. However, da Vinci himself at different periods of his life considered himself primarily an engineer or scientist. He did not devote much time to the fine arts and worked quite slowly. Therefore, the artistic heritage of Leonardo is not quantitatively large, and a number of his works have been lost or badly damaged. However, his contribution to world artistic culture is extremely important even against the background of the cohort of geniuses that the Italian Renaissance gave. Thanks to his works, the art of painting moved to a qualitatively new stage in its development. Renaissance artists who preceded Leonardo resolutely abandoned many conventions. medieval art. It was a movement towards realism and much has already been achieved in the study of perspective, anatomy, greater freedom in compositional decisions. But in terms of picturesqueness, work with paint, the artists were still quite conventional and constrained. The line in the picture clearly outlined the subject, and the image had the appearance of a painted drawing. The most conditional was the landscape, which played a secondary role. Leonardo realized and embodied a new painting technique. His line has the right to blur, because that's how we see it. He realized the phenomena of light scattering in the air and the appearance of sfumato - haze between the viewer and the depicted object, which softens color contrasts and lines. As a result, realism in painting moved to a qualitatively new level.

Leonardo was the first to explain why the sky is blue. In the book "On Painting" he wrote: "The blue of the sky is due to the thickness of the illuminated particles of air, which is located between the Earth and the blackness above."

Leonardo, apparently, did not leave a single self-portrait that could be unambiguously attributed to him. Scientists have doubted that Leonardo's famous self-portrait of sanguine (traditionally dated 1512-1515), depicting him in old age, is such. It is believed that perhaps this is just a study of the head of the apostle for the Last Supper. Doubts that this is a self-portrait of the artist have been expressed since the 19th century, the last of which was recently expressed by one of the largest experts on Leonardo, Professor Pietro Marani.

Italian scientists announced a sensational discovery. They claim that an early self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered. The discovery belongs to the journalist Piero Angela.

Leonardo masterfully played the lyre. When Leonardo's case was considered in the court of Milan, he appeared there precisely as a musician, and not as an artist or inventor.

Science and Engineering

His only invention, which received recognition during his lifetime, was a wheel lock for a pistol (wound with a key). At the beginning, the wheeled pistol was not very common, but by the middle of the 16th century it had gained popularity among the nobles, especially among the cavalry, which even affected the design of armor, namely: Maximilian armor for firing pistols began to be made with gloves instead of mittens. The wheel lock for a pistol, invented by Leonardo da Vinci, was so perfect that it continued to be found in the 19th century.

Leonardo da Vinci was interested in the problems of flight. In Milan, he made many drawings and studied the flight mechanism of birds of various breeds and bats. In addition to observations, he also conducted experiments, but they were all unsuccessful. Leonardo really wanted to build an aircraft. He said: “He who knows everything, he can do everything. Just to find out - and the wings will be!

First, Leonardo developed the problem of flight with the help of wings set in motion by human muscle power: the idea of ​​​​the simplest apparatus of Daedalus and Icarus. But then he came to the idea of ​​building such an apparatus to which a person should not be attached, but should retain complete freedom to control it; the apparatus must set itself in motion by its own power. This is essentially the idea of ​​an airplane.

Leonardo da Vinci worked on a vertical takeoff and landing apparatus. On the vertical "ornitottero" Leonardo planned to place a system of retractable ladders. Nature served as an example for him: “look at the stone swift, which sat down on the ground and cannot take off because of its short legs; and when he is in flight, pull out the ladder, as shown in the second image from the top ... so you need to take off from the plane; these ladders serve as legs ... ". Regarding landing, he wrote: “These hooks (concave wedges) which are attached to the base of the stairs serve the same purpose as the tips of the toes of the person who jumps on them, and his whole body is not shaken by this, as if he jumped on his heels."

Leonardo da Vinci proposed the first scheme for a spotting scope (telescope) with two lenses (now known as the Kepler spotting scope). In the manuscript of the Atlantic Code, sheet 190a, there is an entry: “Make spectacle glasses (ochiali) for the eyes to see the moon big” (Leonardo da Vinci. “LIL Codice Atlantico ...”, I Tavole, S. A. 190a),

Leonardo da Vinci may have first formulated the simplest form of the law of conservation of mass for the movement of fluids, describing the flow of a river, however, due to the vagueness of the formulation and doubts about the authenticity, this statement is criticized.

Anatomy and medicine

During his life, Leonardo da Vinci made thousands of notes and drawings on anatomy, but did not publish his work. Making an autopsy of the bodies of people and animals, he accurately conveyed the structure of the skeleton and internal organs, including small parts. According to professor of clinical anatomy Peter Abrams, da Vinci's scientific work was 300 years ahead of its time and in many ways surpassed the famous Grey's Anatomy.

inventions

List of inventions, both real and attributed to Leonardo da Vinci:

• Parachute
• wheel lock
• Bike
• Lightweight portable bridges for the army
• Searchlight
• Catapult
• Robot
• double lens telescope

Parachute

Flying machine drawing

war machine

Aircraft

Automobile

Crossbow

rapid fire weapon

military drum

Searchlight

Vitruvian Man - golden ratio in the image of a person

Thinker

The creator of The Last Supper and Mona Lisa also showed himself as a thinker, realizing early on the need for a theoretical substantiation of artistic practice: “Those who devote themselves to practice without knowledge are like a sailor setting off on a journey without a rudder and a compass ... practice should always be based on good knowledge of theory.

Demanding from the artist an in-depth study of the objects depicted, Leonardo da Vinci entered all his observations into notebook which he always carried with him. The result was a kind of intimate diary, the like of which is not found in all world literature. Drawings, drawings and sketches are accompanied here brief notes on issues of perspective, architecture, music, natural science, military engineering, and the like; all this is interspersed with various sayings, philosophical reasoning, allegories, anecdotes, fables. Taken together, the records of these 120 books provide materials for an extensive encyclopedia. However, he did not seek to publish his thoughts and even resorted to secret writing, full transcript his records have not been completed so far.

Recognizing experience as the only criterion of truth and contrasting the method of observation and induction with abstract speculation, Leonardo da Vinci, not only in words, but in deeds, deals a mortal blow to medieval scholasticism with its predilection for abstract logical formulas and deduction. For Leonardo da Vinci, speaking well means thinking correctly, that is, thinking independently, like the ancients, who did not recognize any authorities. So Leonardo da Vinci comes to deny not only scholasticism, this echo of the feudal-medieval culture, but also humanism, the product of still fragile bourgeois thought, frozen in superstitious worship of the authority of the ancients. Denying book scholarship, declaring the task of science (as well as art) to be the knowledge of things, Leonardo da Vinci anticipates Montaigne's attacks on learned letter-eaters and opens the era of new science a hundred years before Galileo and Bacon.

... Those sciences are empty and full of delusions that are not generated by experience, the father of all certainty, and do not end in visual experience ...

No human research can be called true science unless it has gone through mathematical proofs. And if you say that the sciences that begin and end in thought have truth, then we cannot agree with you on this, because experience, without which there is no certainty, does not participate in such purely mental reasoning.

literary heritage

The vast literary heritage of Leonardo da Vinci has survived to this day in a chaotic form, in manuscripts written with the left hand. Although Leonardo da Vinci did not print a single line of them, however, in his notes he constantly turned to an imaginary reader and throughout the last years of his life did not leave the thought of publishing his works.

Already after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, his friend and student Francesco Melzi selected from them passages related to painting, from which the “Treatise on Painting” (Trattato della pittura, 1st edition, 1651) was subsequently compiled. In its full form, the manuscript legacy of Leonardo da Vinci was published only in the 19th-20th centuries. In addition to its enormous scientific and historical significance, it also has artistic value due to its concise, energetic style and unusually clear language. Living in the heyday of humanism, when the Italian language was considered secondary compared to Latin, Leonardo da Vinci admired his contemporaries for the beauty and expressiveness of his speech (according to legend, he was a good improviser), but did not consider himself a writer and wrote as he spoke; his prose is therefore an example of the colloquial language of the 15th century intelligentsia, and this saved it as a whole from the artificiality and grandiosity inherent in the prose of the humanists, although in some passages of the didactic writings of Leonardo da Vinci we find echoes of the pathos of the humanistic style.

Even in the least "poetic" fragments, the style of Leonardo da Vinci is distinguished by vivid imagery; thus, his "Treatise on Painting" is equipped with excellent descriptions (for example, famous description Flood), striking mastery of the verbal transmission of pictorial and plastic images. Along with descriptions in which the manner of an artist-painter is felt, Leonardo da Vinci gives in his manuscripts many examples of narrative prose: fables, facets (joking stories), aphorisms, allegories, prophecies. In fables and facies, Leonardo stands on the level of the prose writers of the fourteenth century with their ingenuous practical morality; and some of his facets are indistinguishable from Sacchetti's short stories.

Allegories and prophecies have a more fantastic character: in the first, Leonardo da Vinci uses techniques medieval encyclopedias and bestiaries; the latter are in the nature of playful riddles, distinguished by the brightness and accuracy of phraseology and imbued with caustic, almost Voltaireian irony, directed at the famous preacher Girolamo Savonarola. Finally, in the aphorisms of Leonardo da Vinci, his philosophy of nature, his thoughts about the inner essence of things, are expressed in epigrammatic form. Fiction had for him a purely utilitarian, auxiliary meaning.

A special place in the artist's heritage is occupied by the treatise "On the Game of Chess" (lat. "De Ludo Schacorum") - a book by the Italian monk-mathematician Luca Bartolomeo Pacioli from the monastery of the Holy Sepulcher in Latin. The treatise is also known under the name "Repelling Boredom" (lat. "Schifanoia"). Some of the illustrations for the treatise are attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, and some researchers claim that he also compiled some of the chess problems from this collection.

diaries

To date, about 7,000 pages have survived from Leonardo's diaries, which are in various collections. At first, the priceless notes belonged to the master's favorite student, Francesco Melzi, but when he died, the manuscripts disappeared. Separate fragments began to "surface" at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, a considerable number of Leonardo's manuscripts were first published by the curator of the Ambrosian Library, Carlo Amoretti. At first, they did not meet the due interest. Numerous owners did not even suspect what kind of treasure fell into their hands. But when the scientists established the authorship, it turned out that the barn books, and art history essays, and anatomical sketches, and strange drawings, and research on geology, architecture, hydraulics, geometry, military fortifications, philosophy, optics, and drawing technique are the fruit of one person. All entries in Leonardo's diaries are made in a mirror image. Leonardo was ambidexter - in the same degree He was good with both right and left hands. It is even said that he could simultaneously write different texts with different hands. However, he wrote most of the works with his left hand from right to left. Many people think that in this way he wanted to make his research secret. Perhaps that is the way it is. According to another version, the mirror handwriting was his individual feature (there is even evidence that it was easier for him to write in this way than in a normal way); there is even the concept of "Leonardo's handwriting."

Students

From the workshop of Leonardo came such students (“leonardesques”) as:

• Ambrogio de Predis
• Giovanni Boltraffio
• Francesco Melzi
• Andrea Solario
• Giampetrino
• Bernardino Luini
• Cesare da Sesto

The illustrious master summarized his many years of experience in educating young painters in a number of practical recommendations. The student must first master the perspective, explore the forms of objects, then copy the drawings of the master, draw from nature, study the works of different painters, and only after that take on his own creation. “Learn diligence before speed,” advises Leonardo. The master recommends developing memory and especially fantasy, encouraging you to peer into the vague contours of the flame and find new, amazing forms in them. Leonardo calls on the painter to explore nature, so as not to become like a mirror that reflects objects without knowing about them. The teacher created "recipes" for images of faces, figures, clothes, animals, trees, sky, rain. In addition to the aesthetic principles of the great master, his notes contain wise worldly advice to young artists.

After Leonardo

In 1485, after a terrible plague in Milan, Leonardo proposed to the authorities a project of an ideal city with certain parameters, layout and sewerage system. The Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, rejected the project. Centuries passed, and the authorities of London recognized Leonardo's plan as the perfect basis for the further development of the city. In modern Norway, there is an active bridge designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Tests of parachutes and hang gliders, made according to the sketches of the master, confirmed that only the imperfection of the materials did not allow him to take to the skies. At the Roman airport, bearing the name of Leonardo da Vinci, a gigantic statue of a scientist with a model helicopter in his hands is installed. "The one who aspires to the star does not turn around" wrote Leonardo.

Image in modern mass consciousness

Leonardo is an example of a historical figure turned by the mass consciousness into the image of a "magician from science". He was brilliant artist and an unsurpassed mechanical engineer, although by no means the most educated person of his time. The source of myth-making was his notebooks, where he sketched and described both his own technical ideas and what he discovered in the works of predecessor scientists or diaries of travelers, “peeped” from other practitioners (often with his own improvements). Now he is perceived by many as the inventor of "everything in the world." Considered outside the context of other Renaissance engineers, his contemporaries and predecessors, he appears in the eyes of the public as the man who single-handedly laid the foundation of modern engineering knowledge.

• Leonardo da Vinci - main character short story by writer Keith Reed "Signor da V."(English Mr. da V.; 1962).
• In the books of science fiction writer Terry Pratchett there is a character named Leonard, whose prototype was Leonardo da Vinci. Pratchett's Leonard writes from right to left, invents various machines, engages in alchemy, paints pictures (the most famous is the portrait of Mona Ogg).
• Leonardo is a minor character in Assassin's Creed 2 and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, where he is an ally and close friend of the main character of the game, Ezio Auditore. As in life, he is shown talented artist, as well as an inventor whose inventions repeatedly helped Ezio.
• Leonardo - one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is named after da Vinci

Memory

• In 1935, the International Astronomical Union named a crater on the visible side of the Moon after Leonardo da Vinci.
• In honor of Leonardo da Vinci, the asteroid (3000) Leonardo, discovered on March 2, 1981 by the American astronomer Shelte Bass, is named.
• Leonardo da Vinci is an Italian Conte di Cavour-class battleship.
• Davinchiite is a mineral first discovered by Russian geologists on Mount Rasvumchorr and named by them in honor of Leonardo da Vinci. The name was approved by the New Minerals Commission of the International Mineralogical Association on June 2, 2011.

In works of art

• "The Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci is a 1900 novel by Dmitry Merezhkovsky.
• The Life of Leonardo da Vinci - 1971 television miniseries.
• Da Vinci's Demons is a 2013 American television series.

Gallery

"Lady with an Ermine"

human embryo

human embryo

rhombicuboctahedron Paciolli

I. Les manuscrits de Leonard de Vinci, de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut, 1881-1891.

Leonardo da Vinci: Traite de la peinture, 1910.

Il Codice di Leonardo da Vinci, nella Biblioteca del principe Trivulzio, Milano, 1891.

Il Codice Atlantico di Leonardo da Vinci, nella Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milano, 1894-1904.

Leonardo da Vinci was born in the town of Vinci (or near it), located west of Florence, on April 15, 1452. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary and a peasant girl, was brought up in his father's house and, being the son educated person received a thorough primary education.

1467 - at the age of 15, Leonardo went as an apprentice to one of the leading masters of the Early Renaissance in Florence, Andrea del Verrocchio; 1472 - joined the guild of artists, studied the basics of drawing and other necessary disciplines; 1476 - so he worked in the workshop of Verrocchio, apparently in collaboration with the master himself.

By 1480, Leonardo already had large orders, but after 2 years he moved to Milan. In a letter to the ruler of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, he presented himself as an engineer, military expert and artist. The years he spent in Milan were filled with various pursuits. Leonardo da Vinci painted several paintings and the famous fresco "The Last Supper" and began to diligently and seriously keep his notes. The Leonardo whom we recognize from his notes is a design architect (creator of innovative plans that were never carried out), an anatomist, a hydraulician, an inventor of mechanisms, a designer of scenery for court performances, a writer of riddles, puzzles and fables for the entertainment of the court, musician and art theorist.

1499 - after the expulsion of Lodovico Sforza from Milan by the French, Leonardo leaves for Venice, visits Mantua along the way, where he participates in the construction of defensive structures, then returns to Florence. In those days, he was so fascinated by mathematics that he did not want to think about picking up a brush. For 12 years, Leonardo constantly moved from city to city, working for the famous in Romagna, designing defensive structures (never built) for Piombino.

In Florence he enters into a rivalry with Michelangelo; this rivalry culminated in the huge battle compositions that the two artists painted for the Palazzo della Signoria (also Palazzo Vecchio). Then Leonardo conceived a second equestrian monument, which, like the first, was never created. Throughout all these years, he continues to fill out his notebooks. They reflect his ideas relating to a variety of subjects. This is the theory and practice of painting, anatomy, mathematics and even the flight of birds. 1513 - as in 1499, his patrons are expelled from Milan ...

Leonardo leaves for Rome, where he spends 3 years under the auspices of the Medici. Depressed and distressed by the lack of material for anatomical research, he engages in experiments that lead nowhere.

The kings of France, first Louis XII, then Francis I, admired the works of the Italian Renaissance, especially Leonardo's The Last Supper. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that in 1516 Francis I, well aware of the versatile talents of Leonardo, invites him to the court, which was then located in the Amboise castle in the Loire Valley. As the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini wrote, despite the fact that the Florentine worked on hydraulic projects and plans for a new royal palace, his main occupation is the honorary position of court sage and adviser.

Fascinated by the idea of ​​creating an aircraft, the Florentine initially developed the simplest apparatus (Dedalus and Icarus) based on wings. His new idea is an airplane with full control. But it was not possible to bring the idea to life due to the lack of a motor. Also, the famous idea of ​​​​the scientist is a device with vertical takeoff and landing.

Studying the laws of fluids and hydraulics in general, Leonardo made a great contribution to the theory of locks, sewer ports, testing ideas in practice.

Famous paintings by Leonardo - "Gioconda", "Last Supper", "Madonna with an Ermine", and many others. Leonardo was demanding and precise in everything he did. Even before painting, he insisted on a complete study of the object before starting.

Leonardo's manuscripts are priceless. They were fully published only in the XIX-XX centuries. In his notes, Leonardo da Vinci noted not just reflections, but supplemented them with drawings, drawings, and descriptions.

Leonardo da Vinci was talented in many areas, he made a significant contribution to the history of architecture, art, and physics.

Leonardo da Vinci died in Amboise on May 2, 1519; his paintings by this time were usually distributed to private collections, and the notes lay in various collections, almost in complete oblivion, for several more centuries.

Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci encrypted a lot so that his ideas would be revealed gradually, as humanity could “ripen” to them. He wrote with his left hand and in very small letters, from right to left, so that the text looked as if in a mirror image. He spoke in riddles, made metaphorical prophecies, and liked to compose puzzles. Leonardo da Vinci did not sign his works, but they have identification marks. For example, if you take a closer look at the paintings, you can find a symbolic bird taking off. Apparently, there are a lot of such signs, therefore one or another of his hidden “brainchildren” is unexpectedly found on famous canvases, after centuries. So, for example, it was with the Benois Madonna, which for a long time, as a home icon, itinerant actors carried with them.

Leonard discovered the scattering principle (or sfumato). The objects on his canvases have no clear boundaries: everything, as in life, is blurry, penetrates one into another, which means it breathes, lives, awakens fantasy. To master this principle, he advised to practice: look at the stains on the walls that appear from dampness, ashes, clouds or dirt. He deliberately smoked the room where he worked in order to look for images in clubs.

Thanks to the sfumato effect, a flickering smile of the Gioconda appeared: depending on the focus of the gaze, it seems to the viewer that the Gioconda smiles either gently, or, as it were, ominously. The second miracle of the "Mona Lisa" is that she is "alive". Over the centuries, her smile changes, the corners of her lips rise higher. In the same way, the Master mixed the knowledge of various sciences, because his inventions find more and more applications over time. From the treatise on light and shadow come the beginnings of the sciences of penetrating power, oscillatory motion, and the propagation of waves. All of his 120 books have been distributed around the world and are gradually being revealed to mankind.

Leonardo da Vinci preferred the method of analogy to all others. Approximation of analogy is an advantage over the accuracy of a syllogism, when a third inevitably follows from two conclusions. But the more bizarre the analogy, the further the conclusions from it extend. Take, for example, the famous illustration of da Vinci, which proves the proportionality of the human body. A human figure with outstretched arms and spread legs fits into a circle, and with closed legs and raised arms - into a square. This "mill" gave impetus to various conclusions. Leonardo was the only one who created designs for churches in which the altar is placed in the middle (symbolizing the human navel), and the worshipers are evenly around. This church plan in the form of an octahedron served as another invention of genius - a ball bearing.

The Florentine liked to use contraposto, which creates the illusion of movement. Everyone who saw his sculpture of a giant horse in Corte Vecchio involuntarily changed their gait to a more relaxed one.

Leonardo was never in a hurry to finish a work, because unfinishedness is an essential quality of life. Finish means kill! The slowness of the Florentine was the talk of the town, he could make two or three strokes and retire for many days from the city, for example, to improve the valleys of Lombardy or was engaged in the creation of an apparatus for walking on water. Almost every one of his significant works- "incomplete". The master had a special composition, with the help of which he seemed to specially make “windows of incompleteness” on the finished painting. Apparently, in this way he left a place where life itself could intervene and correct something ...

He masterfully played the lyre. When the case of Leonardo was heard in the court of Milan, he appeared there precisely as a musician, and not as an artist or inventor.

There is a version that Leonardo da Vinci was a homosexual. When the artist studied in Verrocchio's workshop, he was accused of harassing a boy who posed for him. The court acquitted him.

According to one version, Gioconda smiles from the realization of her secret for all pregnancy.

According to another, Mona Lisa is entertained by musicians and clowns while she posed for the artist.

There is another assumption, according to which, "Mona Lisa" is a self-portrait of Leonardo.

Leonardo da Vinci, apparently, did not leave a single self-portrait that could be unambiguously attributed to him. Experts doubt that Leonardo's famous sanguine self-portrait (traditionally dated 1512-1515), showing him in his old age, is such. It is believed that this is probably only a study of the head of the apostle for the "Last Supper". Doubts that this is a self-portrait of the artist began to be expressed in the 19th century, the last of which was recently expressed by one of the largest experts on Leonardo da Vinci, Professor Pietro Marani.

Scientists at the University of Amsterdam and American researchers, having studied the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa using a new computer program, unraveled its composition: according to them, it contains 83 percent happiness, 9 percent neglect, 6 percent fear and 2 percent anger.

Leonardo loved water: he developed instructions for scuba diving, he invented and described a device for scuba diving, a breathing apparatus for scuba diving. All the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci formed the basis of modern underwater equipment.

Leonardo was the first painter to dissect corpses in order to understand the location and structure of the muscles.

Observations of the Moon in the phase of the growing crescent led the researcher to one of the important scientific discoveries - Leonardo da Vinci established that sunlight reflects off our planet and returns to the moon as secondary illumination.

The Florentine was ambidexterous - he was equally good with his right and left hands. He suffered from dyslexia (impaired reading ability) - this ailment, called "word blindness", is associated with reduced brain activity in a certain area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe left hemisphere. A well-known fact, Leonardo wrote in a mirror way.

Relatively recently, the Louvre spent 5.5 million dollars to outweigh the most famous masterpiece of the artist "La Gioconda" from the general room to a specially equipped room for it. Two-thirds of the State Hall, which occupies a total area of ​​840 sq. m. The huge room was rebuilt as a gallery, on the far wall of which now hangs the famous creation of the great Leonardo. The reconstruction, which was carried out according to the project of the Peruvian architect Lorenzo Piqueras, lasted about 4 years. The decision to move the Mona Lisa to a separate room was made by the administration of the Louvre due to the fact that in the same place, surrounded by other paintings by Italian masters, this masterpiece was lost, and the public was forced to queue to see the famous painting.

2003, August - the canvas of the great Leonardo worth $ 50 million "Madonna with a spindle" was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland. The masterpiece was stolen from the home of one of Scotland's wealthiest landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch.

It is believed that Leonardo was a vegetarian (Andrea Corsali, in a letter to Giuliano di Lorenzo Medici, compares him with a Hindu who did not eat meat). The phrase often attributed to Leonardo “If a person strives for freedom, why does he keep birds and animals in cages? .. man is truly the king of animals, because he cruelly exterminates them. We live by killing others. We are walking graveyards! Even at an early age I refused meat” is taken from the English translation of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s novel “The Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci".

Leonardo da Vinci designed the submarine, the propeller, the tank, the loom, the ball bearing, and the flying machines.

Building canals, Leonardo made an observation that later entered geology under his name as a theoretical principle for recognizing the time of formation of the earth's layers. He came to the conclusion that our planet is much older than indicated in the Bible.

Among da Vinci's hobbies were even cooking and serving art. In Milan for thirteen years he was the manager of court feasts. He invented several culinary devices that facilitate the work of cooks. The original dish "from Leonardo" - thinly sliced ​​stew, with vegetables laid on top - was very popular at court feasts.

In the books of Terry Pratchett there is a character whose name is Leonard, the prototype of which was Leonardo da Vinci. Pratchett's Leonard writes from right to left, invents various machines, engages in alchemy, paints pictures (the most famous is the portrait of Mona Ogg)

A considerable number of Leonardo's manuscripts were first published by the curator of the Ambrosian Library, Carlo Amoretti.

Italian scientists have made a statement about the sensational discovery. According to them, discovered an early self-portrait of Leonardo. The discovery belongs to the journalist Piero Angela.

Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci (1452 -1519) - italian artist(painter, sculptor, architect) and scientist (anatomist, naturalist), inventor, writer, one of the largest representatives of the art of the High Renaissance, a vivid example of the "universal man".

BIOGRAPHY OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

Born in 1452 near the city of Vinci (from where the prefix of his surname came from). His artistic hobbies are not limited to painting, architecture and sculpture. Despite the enormous merits in the field of exact sciences (mathematics, physics) and natural science, Leonardo did not find sufficient support and understanding. Only after many years of his work were truly appreciated.

Fascinated by the idea of ​​​​creating an aircraft, Leonardo da Vinci first developed the simplest apparatus (Dedalus and Icarus) based on wings. His new idea was an airplane with full control. However, it was not possible to realize it due to the lack of a motor. Also, the famous idea of ​​​​the scientist is a device with vertical takeoff and landing.

Studying the laws of fluids and hydraulics in general, Leonardo made a significant contribution to the theory of locks, sewer ports, testing ideas in practice.

The famous paintings of Leonardo da Vinci are "La Gioconda", "Last Supper", "Madonna with an Ermine", and many others. Leonardo was demanding and precise in all his affairs. Even being fond of painting, he insisted on a complete study of the object before starting the drawing.

Jaconda The Last Supper Madonna with an ermine

The manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci are priceless. They were fully published only in the 19th and 20th centuries, although during his lifetime the author dreamed of publishing part Z. In his notes, Leonardo noted not just reflections, but supplemented them with drawings, drawings, and descriptions.

Being talented in many areas, Leonardo da Vinci made a significant contribution to the history of architecture, art, and physics. The great scientist died in France in 1519.

THE CREATIVITY OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

To the number early works Leonardo also includes the “Madonna with a Flower” kept in the Hermitage (the so-called Benois Madonna, circa 1478), which is decisively different from the numerous Madonnas of the 15th century. Rejecting the genre and meticulous detail inherent in the creations of the masters early renaissance, Leonardo deepens the characteristics, generalizes the forms.

In 1480, Leonardo already had his own workshop and received orders. However, his passion for science often distracted him from art. The large altar composition "Adoration of the Magi" (Florence, Uffizi) and "Saint Jerome" (Rome, Vatican Pinakothek) remained unfinished.

The Milanese period includes paintings mature style - "Madonna in the Grotto" and "The Last Supper". "Madonna in the Grotto" (1483-1494, Paris, Louvre) - the first monumental altar composition of the High Renaissance. Her characters Mary, John, Christ and the angel acquired features of grandeur, poetic spirituality and fullness of life expressiveness.

The most significant of the monumental paintings by Leonardo, The Last Supper, executed in 1495-1497 for the monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan, transfers into the world of real passions and dramatic feelings. Departing from the traditional interpretation of the gospel episode, Leonardo gives an innovative solution to the theme, a composition that deeply reveals human feelings and experiences.

After the capture of Milan by the French troops, Leonardo left the city. The years of wandering began. By order of the Florentine Republic, he made cardboard for the fresco "Battle of Anghiari", which was supposed to decorate one of the walls of the Council Hall in the Palazzo Vecchio (city government building). When creating this cardboard, Leonardo entered into competition with the young Michelangelo, who executed the commission for the fresco "Battle of Kashin" for another wall in the same room.

In the full drama and dynamics of Leonardo's composition, the episode of the battle for the banner, the moment of the highest tension of the forces of the fighters is given, cruel truth wars. The creation of the portrait of Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, circa 1504, Paris, Louvre), one of the most famous works of world painting, belongs to the same time.

The depth and significance of the created image is extraordinary, in which the features of the individual are combined with great generalization.

Leonardo was born into the family of a wealthy notary and landowner Piero da Vinci, his mother was a simple peasant woman Katerina. He got good home education, however, he lacked the systematic study of Greek and Latin.

He masterfully played the lyre. When Leonardo's case was considered in the court of Milan, he appeared there precisely as a musician, and not as an artist or inventor.

According to one theory, Mona Lisa smiles from the realization of her secret to all pregnancy.

According to another version, Gioconda was entertained by musicians and clowns while she posed for the artist.

There is another theory, according to which, "Mona Lisa" is a self-portrait of Leonardo.

Leonardo, apparently, did not leave a single self-portrait that could be unambiguously attributed to him. Scientists have doubted that Leonardo's famous self-portrait of sanguine (traditionally dated 1512-1515), depicting him in old age, is such. It is believed that perhaps this is just a study of the head of the apostle for the Last Supper. Doubts that this is a self-portrait of the artist have been expressed since the 19th century, the last of which was recently expressed by one of the largest experts on Leonardo, Professor Pietro Marani.

Scientists from the University of Amsterdam and specialists from the United States, having studied the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa using a new computer program, unraveled its composition: according to them, it contains 83% happiness, 9% neglect, 6% fear and 2% anger.

Bill Gates purchased the Codex Leicester, a collection of works by Leonardo da Vinci, for $30 million in 1994. It has been on display at the Seattle Museum of Art since 2003.

Leonardo loved the water: he developed instructions for scuba diving, invented and described the diving apparatus, the breathing apparatus for scuba diving. All the inventions of Leonardo formed the basis of modern underwater equipment.

Leonardo was the first to explain why the sky is blue. In the book "On Painting" he wrote: "The blue of the sky is due to the thickness of the illuminated particles of air, which is located between the Earth and the blackness above."

Observations of the moon in the phase of the growing crescent led Leonardo to one of the important scientific discoveries - the researcher found that sunlight is reflected from the Earth and returns to the moon in the form of secondary illumination.

Leonardo was ambidexterous - he was equally good with his right and left hands. He suffered from dyslexia (impaired reading ability) - this ailment, called "word blindness", is associated with reduced brain activity in a certain area of ​​​​the left hemisphere. As you know, Leonardo wrote in a mirror way.

The Louvre recently spent $5.5 million to outweigh famous masterpiece artist "La Gioconda" from the general to a specially equipped room for her. Two-thirds of the State Hall, occupying a total area of ​​840 square meters. The huge room was rebuilt as a gallery, on the far wall of which now hangs the famous creation of Leonardo. The restructuring, which was carried out according to the project of the Peruvian architect Lorenzo Piqueras, lasted about four years. The decision to move the Mona Lisa to a separate room was made by the administration of the Louvre due to the fact that in the same place, surrounded by other paintings by Italian painters, this masterpiece was lost, and the public had to queue to see the famous painting.

In August 2003, Leonardo da Vinci's $50 million painting "Madonna with a Spindle" was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland. The masterpiece has disappeared from the home of one of Scotland's wealthiest landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch. The FBI in November last year released a list of the 10 most notorious crimes in the field of art, including this robbery.

Leonardo left designs for a submarine, a propeller, a tank, a loom, a ball bearing, and flying machines.

In December 2000, British skydiver Adrian Nicholas South Africa descended from a height of 3 thousand meters from a balloon on a parachute, made according to a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci. The Discover website writes about this fact.

Leonardo was the first painter to dismember corpses in order to understand the location and structure of muscles.

A big fan of word games, Leonardo left a long list of synonyms for the male penis in the Codex Arundel.

Being engaged in the construction of canals, Leonardo da Vinci made an observation that later entered geology under his name as a theoretical principle for recognizing the time of formation of the earth's layers. He came to the conclusion that the Earth is much older than the Bible believed.

It is believed that da Vinci was a vegetarian (Andrea Corsali, in a letter to Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici, compares Leonardo to a Hindu who did not eat meat). The phrase often attributed to da Vinci “If a person strives for freedom, why does he keep birds and animals in cages? .. man is truly the king of animals, because he cruelly exterminates them. We live by killing others. We are walking graveyards! Even at an early age I refused meat” is taken from the English translation of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s novel “The Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci".

Leonardo in his famous diaries wrote from right to left in a mirror image. Many people think that in this way he wanted to make his research secret. Perhaps that is the way it is. According to another version, the mirror handwriting was his individual feature (there is even evidence that it was easier for him to write in this way than in a normal way); there is even the concept of "Leonardo's handwriting."

Among Leonardo's hobbies were even cooking and serving art. In Milan for 13 years he was the manager of court feasts. He invented several culinary devices that make the work of cooks easier. The original dish "from Leonardo" - thinly sliced ​​stew, with vegetables laid on top - was very popular at court feasts.

Italian scientists announced a sensational discovery. They claim that an early self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered. The discovery belongs to the journalist Piero Angela.

In Terry Pratchett's books, there is a character named Leonard, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. Pratchett's Leonard writes from right to left, invents various machines, engages in alchemy, paints pictures (the most famous is the portrait of Mona Ogg)

Leonardo is a minor character in Assassin's Creed 2. Here he is shown as a young but talented artist and inventor.

A considerable number of Leonardo's manuscripts were first published by the curator of the Ambrosian Library, Carlo Amoretti.

Bibliography

Compositions

• Tales and parables of Leonardo da Vinci
• Natural science writings and works on aesthetics. (1508).
• Leonardo da Vinci. "Fire and Cauldron (story)"

About him

• Leonardo da Vinci. Selected natural science works. M. 1955.
• Monuments of world aesthetic thought, vol. I, M. 1962. Les manuscrits de Leonard de Vinci, de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut, 1881-1891.
• Leonardo da Vinci: Traite de la peinture, 1910.
• Il Codice di Leonardo da Vinci, nella Biblioteca del principe Trivulzio, Milano, 1891.
• Il Codice Atlantico di Leonardo da Vinci, nella Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milano, 1894-1904.
• Volynsky A. L., Leonardo da Vinci, St. Petersburg, 1900; 2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1909.
• General history of arts. T.3, M. "Art", 1962.
• Gastev A. Leonardo da Vinci (ZhZL)
• Gukovsky M.A. Mechanics of Leonardo da Vinci. - M.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1947. - 815 p.
• Zubov V.P. Leonardo da Vinci. M.: Ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1962.
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Leonardo da Vinci in art

• The Life of Leonardo da Vinci - 1971 television miniseries.
• Da Vinci's Demons is a 2013 American television series.

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Leonardo da Vinci is an Italian scientist, inventor, artist and writer. One of the brightest representatives the Renaissance. Considered by many researchers to be the most brilliant man all times and peoples.

Biography

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the small village of Anchiano, not far from Florence. His father Piero was a notary, his mother Katerina was a simple peasant woman. Shortly after the birth of Leonardo, his father left the family, marrying rich woman. Leonardo spent his first years with his mother. Then the father, who could not have children with his new wife, took the boy to be brought up with him. When he was 13 years old, his stepmother died. The father remarried and became a widower again. His attempts to interest his son in the notarial business were unsuccessful.

At a young age, Leonardo began to demonstrate the extraordinary talent of the artist. His father sends him to Florence, to the workshop of Andrea Verrocchio. Here he mastered the humanities, chemistry, drawing, metallurgy. The apprentice was actively engaged in sculpture, drawing, modeling.

When Leonardo was 20 years old (in 1473), the Guild of St. Luke awarded Leonardo da Vinci the qualification of a master. Then Leonardo had a hand in creating the painting "The Baptism of Christ", which was painted by his teacher Andrea del Verrocchio. Da Vinci's brush belongs to part of the landscape and an angel. Already here the nature of Leonardo as an innovator is manifested - he uses oil paints, which were a novelty in Italy at that time. Verrocchio instructs a talented student to deal with orders for paintings, while he focuses on sculpture. Leonardo's first self-painted painting was Enlightenment.

After this, a period of life begins, which is characterized by the artist's passion for the image of the Madonna. He creates paintings "Madonna Benois", "Madonna with a Carnation", "Madonna Litta". A number of unfinished sketches on the same subject have been preserved.

In 1481, the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned Leonardo to paint The Adoration of the Magi. Work on it was interrupted and abandoned. Already at that time, da Vinci was "famous" for his tendency to suddenly leave work unfinished. The Medici family, ruling in Florence, did not favor the artist, so he decided to leave the city.

In 1482, Leonardo went to Milan to the court of Lodovico Sforza, where he played the lute. The artist hoped to get a reliable patron in the person of Sforza, offering his services as an inventor of weapons for this. However, Sforza was not a fan of open conflicts, but of intrigue and poisoning.

In 1483, da Vinci received his first order in Milan - for the painting of the altar from the Franciscan brotherhood. Immaculate Conception. Three years later, the work was completed, and then another 25 years of litigation lasted over payment for the work.

Soon orders begin to arrive from Sforza. Leonardo becomes a court painter, paints portraits and works on a statue of Francesco Sforza. The statue itself was never completed - the ruler decided to use bronze for the manufacture of cannons.

In Milan, Leonardo begins to create a "Treatise on Painting". This work lasted until the death of a genius. Da Vinci invents a rolling mill, a machine for the production of files, a loom for making cloth. All these valuable inventions did not interest Sforza. Also during this period, Leonardo creates sketches of temples, takes part in the construction of the Milan Cathedral. He developed the city sewer system, carried out land reclamation work.

In 1495, work begins on The Last Supper, which ends after 3 years. In 1498, the painting of the Sala delle Asse in Castello Sforzesco ends.

In 1499, Sforza loses power, Milan is captured by French troops. Leonardo had to leave the city, and the next year he returned to Florence. Here he paints the paintings "Madonna with a spindle" and "St. Anna with Mary and the baby."

In 1502, Leonardo became an architect and chief engineer in the service of Cesare Borgia. During this period, da Vinci designs canals to drain swamps, creates military maps.

In 1503, work began on the portrait of Mona Lisa. For the next decade, Leonardo wrote little, trying to devote more time to anatomy, mathematics and mechanics.

In 1513, Leonardo comes under the patronage of Giuliano Medici and comes with him to Rome. Here, for three years, he studied the manufacture of mirrors, mathematics, explores the human voice and creates new paint formulations. In 1517, after the death of the Medici, Leonardo became a court painter in Paris. Here he works on land reclamation, hydrography and very often communicates with King Francis I.

On May 2, 1519, at the age of 67, Leonardo da Vinci died. His body was buried in the church of Saint Florentin, but the grave was lost during many years of wars.

Main achievements of da Vinci

• Leonardo's contribution to the development of world artistic culture is extremely important. He became the founder of a new painting technique.
• Ring pistol lock.
• Tank.
• Parachute.
• Bike.
• Portable military bridges.
• Catapult.
• Spotlight.
• Telescope.
• Robot.
• Leonardo left a huge legacy in literature. Most of his works have survived to this day poorly ordered, and often written in cryptography.

Important dates in da Vinci's biography

• April 15, 1452 - birth in Anchiano.
• 1466 - the beginning of work in the workshop of Verrocchio.
• 1472 - becomes a member of the Florentine Guild of Artists. Starts work on the paintings "The Annunciation", "The Baptism of Christ", "Madonna with a Vase".
• 1478 - opening of his own workshop.
• 1482 - moving to Milan to the court of Lodovico Sforza.
• 1487 - work on a winged machine - an ornithopter.
• 1490 - the creation of the famous drawing "Vitruvian Man".
• 1495-1498 - the creation of the fresco "The Last Supper".
• 1499 - departure from Milan.
• 1502 - service with Cesare Borgia.
• 1503 - arrival in Florence. The beginning of work on the painting "Mona Lisa". Finished in 1506.
• 1506 - service with the French king Louis XII.
• 1512 - "Self-portrait".
• 1516 - moving to Paris.
• May 2, 1519 - died in the castle of Clos Luce in France.

• He played the lyre masterfully.
• He was the first to scientifically explain the blue of the sky.
• Worked equally well with both hands.
• Most researchers tend to believe that da Vinci was a vegetarian.
• Leonardo's diaries are written in mirror image.
• Was fond of cooking. He created his signature dish "From Leonardo", which was highly appreciated at the court worlds.
• AT computer game"Assassin's Creed 2" da Vinci presented as minor character helping the protagonist with his inventions.
• Despite a good home education, Leonardo felt a lack of knowledge of Latin and Greek.
• According to some suggestions, Leonardo loves carnal pleasures with men. Once he was sued for harassing a posing boy. However, da Vinci was acquitted.
• Leonardo was the first to establish that the light of the moon is the light of the sun reflected from the earth.
• Compiled a list of synonyms for the word "penis". And a very long list.