LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519)
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Classical Man as the Greatest Renaissance Inventor |
He was one of the greatest geniuses in the history of art. Besides classical art expression, like painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture and music he was interested also in town planning, perspective, optics, astronomy, mathematics, aviation, engineering (hydraulic, nautical, military, mechanical), anatomy, biology, zoology, botany, geology, geography... He invented Mona Lisa, new interpretations of classical motives, sfumato, new fresco technique, different kinds of engines and mobiles
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Early Years and Florentine Period (1452-1481/82)
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15. April 1452
born in Vinci, near Florence in Italy. He was illegitimate son of Caterina from Vinci and Ser Piero, notary from Vinci. Leonardo stayed with his father and with his father's wife from his early years. He drew and wrote with his left hand - from right to left.
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1464
began his apprenticeship in a workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. Among the artists who worked at Verrochio in this period were painters such as Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perrugino and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo may possibly have also met Leon Battista Alberti, who lived in Florence at the same time.
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1472
enrolled as a master in the painter's guild.
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1473-74
first major independent commission - Annunciation for the monastery of Monte Oliveto.
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9. April 1474
accused of a homosexual relationship. Anonymous denunciation was given against one seventeen years old Jacopo Sartarelli, accusing him of sodomy. Among the customers of Saltarelli names like Lionardo de Ser Piero da Vinci, Baccino, a tailor, Bartolomeo di Pasquino, a goldsmith, and Lionardo Tuornabuoni came to the surface. Leonardo was not found guilty due to lack of evidences.
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Around 1474
first portrait - Ginevra de' Benci
This portrait already implies some similarities with his most known painting, Mona Lisa.
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7. June 1476
same accusations of homosexuality as in 1474. Leonardo was mentioned in documents as Leonardo ser Pieri di Vincio.
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1476-1478
stayed with the Medici. Lorenzo di Medici was giving him a pension to work as an artist in the garden on the piazza di San Marco in Florence. This garden was famous Hortus Laurentii de Medicis (garden of Lorenzo di Medici), placed opposite of the Dominican monastery of San Marco. The Medici family commissioned some of his first independent works.
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1479
study for The Hanging of Baroncelli
The drawing shows the hanging of Bernardo Baroncelli (29. December 1479), who was the murderer of Giuliano de Medici in Pazzi Conspiracy that happened on April 26, 1478. After the conspiracy the atmosphere in Florence was rather repressive.
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around 1480
St. Jerome (San Gerolamo)
This painting shows progressively skillful use of perspective, spatial relations and human anatomy. He used his famous sfumato technique for painting the landscape.
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1481
Adoration of the Magi
Leonardo receives commission for Adoration of the Magi, which becomes the masterpiece of his early period. The painting remained like St. Jerome unfinished and represents a completely new treatment of the "Adoration motive", together with masterful handling of central perspective and anatomy of the human body. He was probably inspired by Leon Battista Alberti's concept of "Historia" or narrative (as expressed in his treatise De Pictura). A figure of the shepherd on the right side of the picture is considered to be a self portrait of Leonardo.
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Staying in Milan (1482/83-1499) |
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| Renaissance map of Milan |
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End of 1482 or beginning of 1483
moved to Milan where he was employed by the Duke of Milan (Ludovico il Moro), first as an architect, military engineer and sculptor and only later as a painter. Leonardo established his own workshop in Milan and wrote the great part of his Trattato della Pittura and comprehensive notebooks.
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25. April 1483
received the first commission in Milan.
Leonardo was commissioned from the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception (founded in 1477 by Franciscans) a polyptych for Confraternity's chapel in the church of San Francisco Grande in Milan. The only remained part of a polyptych, made between 1483-1486, The Virgin of the Rocks is the painting meant for the central part. Two versions of this picture exist, one in Louvre and the other in the National Gallery in London.
The Louvre version shows the interpretation of the motif of Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in completely unusual manner. The main character is St. John the Baptist, Christ is moved to the lower half of the composition and is treated as a marginal character. Angel Gabriel who points his finger at St. John the Baptist is pictured as a chimera with animal's feet and angel's face. It's assumed that this picture never arrived to the church of San Francisco because it was sold to an unidentified person (presumably Ludovico il Moro or the King of France). Franciscans didn't like its "inappropriate" iconography therefore they ordered the new "corrected" one.
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| Giuliano and Benedeto da Maiano, personal device of Federigo de Montefeltro (ermine), from the studiolo of the Ducal palace at Gubbio |
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1489-90
The Lady with an Ermine
one of the first portraits in iconography of portraits known as a "portrait from life". The person portrayed is not posing, but is caught in "a moment of ignorance", a section from the real life. This portrait probably represents the mistress of Ludovico il Moro, Cecilia Gallerani with ermine (nick name of Ludovico il Moro)
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Around 1490
Vitruvian man
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1494-98
fresco The Last Supper in refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan commissioned by Ludovico Il Moro.
Leonardo is again unusual in his treatment of the motive, for contrary to the common tradition where Judas was always separated from other pupils, demarked as a traitor (Castagno, Ghirlandaio), Leonardo places him in the middle of the happening. New is also approach to composition, where he divided the twelve apostles in four groups of four, while Christ is placed in the vanishing point of the perspective.
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1497-98
mural painting on the ceiling of Castello Sforzesco in Milan painted with leafs of mulberries, which is a pun upon the name of Ludovico Il Moro - gelsomoro is namely Italian word for mulberry.
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Rambling (1499-1503)
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| Marco D Oggiono or Francesco Melzi (attr), Portait of Leonardo da Vinci |
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1499
left Milan. Milan fell to the French and his patron Ludovico il Moro was expelled, so Leonardo left with Salai and Lucca Pacioli. Salai (little devil) was a nick name of Leonardo's student Giacomo Caprotti, who lived with Leonardo for thirty years. It is supposed that they had a sexual relationship as it is supposed also for his later relationship with young aristocrat and painter, Francesco Melzi.
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End of 1499, beginning of 1500
stopped in Mantua at the court of Isabella d'Este. He made her portrait drawing in a classical manner (Portrait of Isabella d'Este,
Paris, Musee du Louvre).
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In the beginning of 1500
probably traveled to Rome and Naples (according to his intention mentioned in the encoded memorandum in Codex Atlanticus).
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March 1500
a brief visit to Venice. He had probably seen Venice before 1469 with Verrocchio and in the early 1490.
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1501
visited Rome.
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1502-3
spent a year as a military engineer entourage of the military captain of Cesare Borgia. On one of his engagement trips, he met Niccolo Machiavelli at Urbino, the great admirer of political virtues of Cesare Borgia.
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Last Years:
Florence (1503-1507) > Milan (1507-1513) > Rome (1513-1516) > France (1516-1519)
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1503-1507
returned to Florence.
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c. 1503-14
Mona Lisa Leonardo's self-portrait
Mona Lisa is fundamentally different from other portraits, for it represents a person sitting, not just a bust like full-face or three-quarter Italian portraits. This Leonardo's invention shows a completely new format and was followed in Italian and also Northern European portraiture through the nineteenth century. Another crucial characteristic is the look of the portrayed, where Mona Lisa directly observes the beholder, a trick already present in various Northern portraits and self-portraits.
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1505
a brief visit to Rome.
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1507-1513
second stay in Milan, which is now in the hands of Maximilian Sforza.
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1507/8
St. John the Baptist is probably the last picture executed completely by Leonardo's hand.
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1508
completed the second version of the painting The Virgin of the Rocks. Iconography on the painting from the National Gallery was changed ("corrected"). Painting is probably a work of Leonardo and his assistants, Marco d'Oggiono and Giovani Antonio Boltraffio.
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1510-13
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
In a way this picture expresses motion - very similar to futuristic expression of motion painted four hundred years later by Giacomo Balla on the picture Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (Leash in Motion).
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1510-15
St. John (Bacchus)
Figure of Thomas in Last Supper and St. John the Baptist also points upwards with his hands.
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1513-16
worked in Rome in service of Giuliano de Medici (brother of Pope Leo X). Michelangelo and Raphael also worked in Rome at that time.
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1516-19
stayed in France (at Amboise) as a court painter and engineer to Frances I of France. He was commissioned by the king to design a royal palace and planned a town near Blois. Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist were the tree pictures that Leonardo took to France and kept them with him till his death.
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2. May 1519
died in the chateau at Cloux and was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise.
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Bibliography
- Mariani, Pietro C., Leonardo da Vinci - the complete paintings, Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, New York, 2000
- Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1987
- The Thames and Hudson Encyclopedia of the Italian Renaissance, Thames and Hudson, London, 1981
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