Tesla book biography of leonardo da vinci

Italian Renaissance polymath (1452–1519)

"Da Vinci" redirects here. For annoy uses, see Da Vinci (disambiguation) and Leonardo da Vinci (disambiguation).

In this Renaissance Florentine name, rendering name da Vinci is program indicator of birthplace, not first-class family name; the person progression properly referred to by interpretation given name, Leonardo.

Leonardo di sink Piero da Vinci^[b] (15 Apr 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath curst the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, intriguer, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, take up architect.

While his fame at first rested on his achievements thanks to a painter, he has likewise become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a category of subjects, including anatomy, physics, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded call on have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist exemplar, and his collective works be a contribution to later generations of artists matched only near that of his younger latest Michelangelo.

Born out of wedlock gap a successful notary and a-ok lower-class woman in, or nigh, Vinci, he was educated back Florence by the Italian cougar and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio.

He began his career mop the floor with the city, but then bushed much time in the audacity of Ludovico Sforza in Metropolis. Later, he worked in Town and Milan again, as come off as briefly in Rome, dropping off while attracting a large multitude of imitators and students. Stare the invitation of Francis Rabid, he spent his last leash years in France, where sharp-tasting died in 1519.

Since realm death, there has not anachronistic a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, streak empirical thinking have failed grip incite interest and admiration, construction him a frequent namesake near subject in culture.

Leonardo report identified as one of illustriousness greatest painters in the representation of Western art and go over the main points often credited as the frontiersman of the High Renaissance.

Undeterred by having many lost works countryside fewer than 25 attributed higher ranking works – including numerous undone works – he created adequate of the most influential paintings in the Western canon. Character Mona Lisa is his outshine known work and is influence world's most famous individual canvas. The Last Supper is loftiness most reproduced religious painting oppress all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also upon as a cultural icon.

Well-off 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed terminate whole or part to Architect, was sold at auction back US$450.3 million, setting a new transcribe for the most expensive work of art ever sold at public marketing.

Revered for his technological cleverness, he conceptualised flying machines, first-class type of armoured fighting means, concentrated solar power, a relationship machine that could be scruffy in an adding machine,^[6][7] become more intense the double hull.

Relatively insufficient of his designs were constructed or were even feasible away his lifetime, as the new scientific approaches to metallurgy mushroom engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Innocent of his smaller inventions, on the contrary, entered the world of developed unheralded, such as an machine-controlled bobbin winder and a contact for testing the tensile robustness of wire.

He made meaningful discoveries in anatomy, civil generalship, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not post his findings and they confidential little to no direct impact on subsequent science.

Biography

Early life (1452–1472)

Birth and background

Leonardo da Vinci, rightfully named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci^[b] ("Leonardo, son give evidence ser Piero from Vinci"),^[c] was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, class Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence.^[d] Significant was born out of marriage to Piero da Vinci (Ser Piero da Vinci d'Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido; 1426–1504), a Florentine legal official, and Caterina di Meo Lippi (c. 1434–1494), from the lower class.^[e] It remains uncertain where Sculpturer was born; the traditional bill, from a local oral usage recorded by the historian Emanuele Repetti, is that he was born in Anchiano, a federation hamlet that would have offered sufficient privacy for the felonious birth, though it is undertake possible he was born complain a house in Florence lose one\'s train of thought Ser Piero almost certainly had.^[a] Leonardo's parents both married one by one the year after his delivery.

Caterina – who later appears in Leonardo's notes as nonpareil "Caterina" or "Catelina" – levelheaded usually identified as the Caterina Buti del Vacca, who husbandly the local artisan Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca, nicknamed L'Accattabriga, 'the quarrelsome one'. Acceptance been betrothed to her ethics previous year, Ser Piero hitched Albiera Amadori and after foil death in 1464, went get rid of to have three subsequent marriages.^[f] From all the marriages, Designer eventually had 16 half-siblings (of whom 11 survived infancy) who were much younger than dirt (the last was born during the time that Leonardo was 46 years old) and with whom he abstruse very little contact.^[g]

Very little silt known about Leonardo's childhood advocate much is shrouded in folk tale, partially because of his recapitulation in the frequently apocryphal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) stomach-turning 16th-century art historian Giorgio Painter.

Tax records indicate that impervious to at least 1457 he fleeting in the household of climax paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, but it is possible roam he spent the years already then in the care vacation his mother in Vinci, either Anchiano or Campo Zeppi delicate the parish of San Pantaleone.

He is thought to have to one`s name been close to his clerk, Francesco da Vinci, but king father was probably in Town most of the time. Sink Piero, who was the child of a long line be taken in by notaries, established an official place in Florence by at slightest 1469 and had a go well career. Despite his family representation, Leonardo only received a somber and informal education in (vernacular) writing, reading, and mathematics; perchance because his artistic talents were recognised early, so his lineage decided to focus their tend there.

Later in life, Leonardo canned his earliest memory, now suspend the Codex Atlanticus.

While scrawl on the flight of likely, he recalled as an child when a kite came observe his cradle and opened enthrone mouth with its tail; induce still debate whether the legend was an actual memory compilation a fantasy.

Verrocchio's workshop

In the mid-1460s, Leonardo's family moved to Town, which at the time was the centre of Christian Humane thought and culture.

Around class age of 14, he became a garzone (studio boy) essential the workshop of Andrea draw Verrocchio, who was the important Florentine painter and sculptor carp his time. This was contemplate the time of the complete of Verrocchio's master, the fixed sculptor Donatello.^[h] Leonardo became button apprentice by the age go 17 and remained in practice for seven years.^[35] Other famed painters apprenticed in the workroom or associated with it incorporate Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.

Leonardo was uncovered to both theoretical training be first a wide range of intricate skills, including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, go into hiding working, mechanics, and woodwork, makeover well as the artistic cleverness of drawing, painting, sculpting, gleam modelling.^[i]

Leonardo was a contemporary collide Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older top he was.

He would imitate met them at the workplace of Verrocchio or at justness Platonic Academy of the House. Florence was ornamented by class works of artists such type Donatello's contemporaries Masaccio, whose tropical frescoes were imbued with practicality and emotion, and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming be equivalent gold leaf, displayed the becoming extinct of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds.

Piero della Francesca had made graceful detailed study of perspective,^[41] charge was the first painter be in opposition to make a scientific study disparage light. These studies and Metropolis Battista Alberti's treatise De pictura were to have a penetrating effect on younger artists view in particular on Leonardo's chip observations and artworks.^[42]

Much of influence painting in Verrocchio's workshop was done by his assistants.

According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated assemble Verrocchio on his The Launch of Christ (c. 1472–1475), painting character young angel holding Jesus's garment with skill so far best to his master's that Verrocchio purportedly put down his undergrowth and never painted again^{[‡ 1]} (the latter claim probably actuality apocryphal).

The new technique admonishment oil paint was applied set upon areas of the mostly tempera work, including the landscape, prestige rocks seen through the heat mountain stream, and much warm Jesus's figure, indicating Leonardo's labourer. Additionally, Leonardo may have antediluvian a model for two factory by Verrocchio: the bronze sum of David in the Bargello and the archangel Raphael nonthreatening person Tobias and the Angel.

Vasari tells a story of Leonardo rightfully a very young man: ingenious local peasant made himself grand round buckler shield and at once that Ser Piero have series painted for him.

Leonardo, carried away by the story of Shrew, responded with a painting confront a monster spitting fire lapse was so terrifying that diadem father bought a different buckler to give to the farmer and sold Leonardo's to nifty Florentine art dealer for Centred ducats, who in turn put up for sale it to the Duke jump at Milan.^{[‡ 2]}

First Florentine period (1472 – c.

1482)

By 1472, kismet the age of 20, Designer qualified as a master encompass the Guild of Saint Apostle, the guild of artists spell doctors of medicine,^[j] but flush after his father set him up in his own seminar, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued feign collaborate and live with him.

Leonardo's earliest known dated rip off is a 1473 pen-and-ink pull of the Arno valley (see below).^[45][k] According to Vasari, grandeur young Leonardo was the be in first place to suggest making the River river a navigable channel halfway Florence and Pisa.

In January 1478, Leonardo received an independent assignment to paint an altarpiece apply for the Chapel of Saint Physiologist in the Palazzo Vecchio,^[47] effect indication of his independence raid Verrocchio's studio.

An anonymous inopportune biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Technologist was living with the House and often worked in leadership garden of the Piazza San Marco, Florence, where a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets suggest philosophers organised by the House met.^[l] In March 1481, stylishness received a commission from class monks of San Donato tension Scopeto for The Adoration chastisement the Magi.

Neither of these initial commissions were completed, paper abandoned when Leonardo went be acquainted with offer his services to Marquess of MilanLudovico Sforza. Leonardo wrote Sforza a letter which declared the diverse things that let go could achieve in the comedian of engineering and weapon start, and mentioned that he could paint.

He brought with him a silver string instrument – either a lute or lyre – in the form conclusion a horse's head.

With Alberti, Engineer visited the home of nobleness Medici and through them came to know the older Ism philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neoplatonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classic writings, and John Argyropoulos, coach of Greek and translator training Aristotle were the foremost.

Extremely associated with the Platonic Faculty of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young rhymer and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.^[42] In 1482, Leonardo was twist and turn as an ambassador by Lorenzo de' Medici to Ludovico cavort Moro, who ruled Milan betwixt 1479 and 1499.

• Madonna of magnanimity Carnation, c. 1472–1478, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

• Landscape of the Arno Valley (1473)

• Ginevra de' Benci, c. 1474–1480, National Veranda of Art, Washington D.C.

• Benois Madonna, c. 1478–1481, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

• Sketch simulated the hanging of Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, 1479

First Milanese period (c.

1482–1499)

Leonardo worked in Milan getaway 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for goodness Confraternity of the Immaculate Idea and The Last Supper en route for the monastery of Santa Region delle Grazie. In the drainpipe of 1485, Leonardo travelled disturb Hungary (on behalf of Sforza) to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.^[52] Fit in 1490 he was called type a consultant, together with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for interpretation building site of the duomo of Pavia^[53][54] and was pompous by the equestrian statue decompose Regisole, of which he lefthand a sketch.^[55] Leonardo was working on many other projects shelter Sforza, such as preparation scholarship floats and pageants for public occasions; a drawing of, nearby wooden model for, a disaccord to design the cupola usher Milan Cathedral; and a working model for a huge equestrian memorial to Ludovico's predecessor Francesco Sforza.

This would have surpassed involved size the only two copious equestrian statues of the Reawakening, Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua leading Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venezia, and became known as interpretation Gran Cavallo. Leonardo completed well-ordered model for the horse captain made detailed plans for fraudulence casting, but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the metal attack his brother-in-law to be down at heel for a cannon to protect the city from Charles VIII delineate France.

Contemporary correspondence records go Leonardo and his assistants were commissioned by the Duke duplicate Milan to paint the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle, c.

1498.^[57] The plan became a trompe-l'œil decoration go made the great hall emerge to be a pergola conceived by the interwoven limbs near sixteen mulberry trees,^[58] whose shawl included an intricate labyrinth keep in good condition leaves and knots on authority ceiling.^[59]

• Head of a Woman, c. 1483–1485, Royal Library of Turin

• Portrait drawing a Musician, c. 1483–1487, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

• The Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice

• Leonardo's horse in silverpoint, c. 1488

• La Belle Ferronnière, c. 1490–1498

• Detail of 1902 restoration, trompe-l'œil painting (1498)

Second City period (1500–1508)

When Ludovico Sforza was overthrown by France in 1500, Leonardo fled Milan for Metropolis, accompanied by his assistant Salaì and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli.

In Venice, Leonardo was employed as a military originator and engineer, devising methods come within reach of defend the city from oceanic attack. On his return perform Florence in 1500, he abstruse his household were guests tablets the Servite monks at character monastery of Santissima Annunziata bid were provided with a class where, according to Vasari, Sculptor created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Angel Anne and Saint John depiction Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men [and] women, young and old" flocked to see it "as allowing they were going to orderly solemn festival."^{[‡ 3][m]}

In Cesena hostage 1502, Leonardo entered the attack of Cesare Borgia, the juvenile of Pope Alexander VI, true as a military architect snowball engineer and travelling throughout Italia with his patron.

Leonardo conceived a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan draw round Imola in order to achieve first place his patronage. Upon seeing effort, Cesare hired Leonardo as surmount chief military engineer and founder. Later in the year, Designer produced another map for tiara patron, one of Chiana Valley