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Leonardo
was born on April 15, 1452, in the small Tuscan
town of Vinci, near Florence. He was the son of
a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman.
In the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence,
where Leonardo was given the best education that
Florence, the intellectual and artistic center
of Italy, could offer. He rapidly advanced
socially and intellectually. He was handsome,
persuasive in conversation, and a fine musician
and improviser. About 1466 he was apprenticed as
a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio,
the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of
his day. In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo was
introduced to many activities, from the painting
of altarpieces and panel pictures to the
creation of large sculptural projects in marble
and bronze. In 1472 he was entered in the
painter's guild of Florence, and in 1476 he is
still mentioned as Verrocchio's assistant. In
Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (circa 1470,
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), the kneeling
angel at the left of the painting is by
Leonardo. In
1478 Leonardo became an independent master. His
first commission, to paint an altarpiece for the
chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine
town hall, was never executed. His first large
painting, The Adoration of the Magi (begun 1481,
Galleria degli Uffizi), left unfinished, was
ordered in 1481 for the Monastery of San Donato
a Scopeto, Florence. Other works ascribed to his
youth are the so-called Benois Madonna (c. 1478,
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg), the portrait
Ginerva de' Benci (c. 1474, National Gallery,
Washington, D.C.), and the unfinished Saint
Jerome (c. 1481, Pinacoteca, Vatican).
Years
in Milan About
1482 Leonardo entered the service of the duke of
Milan, Ludovico Sforza, having written the duke
an astonishing letter in which he stated that he
could build portable bridges; that he knew the
techniques of constructing bombardments and of
making cannons; that he could build ships as
well as armored vehicles, catapults, and other
war machines; and that he could execute
sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. He served
as principal engineer in the duke's numerous
military enterprises and was active also as an
architect. In addition, he assisted the Italian
mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated
work Divina Proportione (1509). Evidence
indicates that Leonardo had apprentices and
pupils in Milan, for whom he probably wrote the
various texts later compiled as Treatise on
Painting (1651; trans. 1956). The most important
of his own paintings during the early Milan
period was The Virgin of the Rocks, two versions
of which exist (1483-85, Musée du Louvre,
Paris; 1490s to 1506-08, National Gallery,
London); he worked on the compositions for a
long time, as was his custom, seemingly
unwilling to finish what he had begun. From 1495
to 1497 Leonardo labored on his masterpiece, The
Last Supper, a mural in the refectory of the
Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.
Unfortunately, his experimental use of oil on
dry plaster (on what was the thin outer wall of
a space designed for serving food) was
technically unsound, and by 1500 its
deterioration had begun. Since 1726 attempts
have been made, unsuccessfully, to restore it; a
concerted restoration and conservation program,
making use of the latest technology, was begun
in 1977 and is reversing some of the damage.
Although much of the original surface is gone,
the majesty of the composition and the
penetrating characterization of the figures give
a fleeting vision of its vanished splendor.
During his long stay in Milan, Leonardo also
produced other paintings and drawings (most of
which have been lost), theater designs,
architectural drawings, and models for the dome
of Milan Cathedral. His largest commission was
for a colossal bronze monument to Francesco
Sforza, father of Ludovico, in the courtyard of
Castello Sforzesco. In December 1499, however,
the Sforza family was driven from Milan by
French forces; Leonardo left the statue
unfinished (it was destroyed by French archers,
who used it as a target) and he returned to
Florence in 1500. Return
to Florence In
1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare
Borgia, duke of Romagna and son and chief
general of Pope Alexander VI; in his capacity as
the duke's chief architect and engineer,
Leonardo supervised work on the fortresses of
the papal territories in central Italy. In 1503
he was a member of a commission of artists who
were to decide on the proper location for the
David (1501-04, Accademia, Florence), the famous
colossal marble statue by the Italian sculptor
Michelangelo, and he also served as an engineer
in the war against Pisa. Toward the end of the
year Leonardo began to design a decoration for
the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The
subject was the Battle of Anghiari, a Florentine
victory in its war with Pisa. He made many
drawings for it and completed a full-size
cartoon, or sketch, in 1505, but he never
finished the wall painting. The cartoon itself
was destroyed in the 17th century, and the
composition survives only in copies, of which
the most famous is the one by the Flemish
painter Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1615, Musée
du Louvre). During this second Florentine
period, Leonardo painted several portraits, but
the only one that survives is the famous Mona
Lisa (1503-06, Musée du Louvre). One of
the most celebrated portraits ever painted, it
is also known as La Gioconda, after the presumed
name of the woman's husband. Leonardo seems to
have had a special affection for the picture,
for he took it with him on all of his subsequent
travels. Later
Travels and
Death
In
1506 Leonardo went again to Milan, at the
summons of its French governor, Charles
d'Amboise. The following year he was named court
painter to King Louis XII of France, who was
then residing in Milan. For the next six years
Leonardo divided his time between Milan and
Florence, where he often visited his half
brothers and half sisters and looked after his
inheritance. In Milan he continued his
engineering projects and worked on an equestrian
figure for a monument to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio,
commander of the French forces in the city;
although the project was not completed, drawings
and studies have been preserved. From 1514 to
1516 Leonardo lived in Rome under the patronage
of Pope Leo X: he was housed in the Palazzo
Belvedere in the Vatican and seems to have been
occupied principally with scientific
experimentation. In 1516 he traveled to France
to enter the service of King Francis I. He spent
his last years at the Château de Cloux,
near Amboise, where he died on May 2, 1519.
Paintings
Although
Leonardo produced a relatively small number of
paintings, many of which remained unfinished, he
was nevertheless an extraordinarily innovative
and influential artist. During his early years,
his style closely paralleled that of Verrocchio,
but he gradually moved away from his teacher's
stiff, tight, and somewhat rigid treatment of
figures to develop a more evocative and
atmospheric handling of composition. The early
The Adoration of the Magi introduced a new
approach to composition, in which the main
figures are grouped in the foreground, while the
background consists of distant views of
imaginary ruins and battle scenes. Leonardo's
stylistic innovations are even more apparent in
The Last Supper, in which he re-created a
traditional theme in an entirely new way.
Instead of showing the 12 apostles as individual
figures, he grouped them in dynamic
compositional units of three, framing the figure
of Christ, who is isolated in the center of the
picture. Seated before a pale distant landscape
seen through a rectangular opening in the wall,
Christ—who is about to announce that one of
those present will betray him—represents a
calm nucleus while the others respond with
animated gestures. In the monumentality of the
scene and the weightiness of the figures,
Leonardo reintroduced a style pioneered more
than a generation earlier by Masaccio, the
father of Florentine painting. The
Mona Lisa, Leonardo's most famous work, is as
well known for its mastery of technical
innovations as for the mysteriousness of its
legendary smiling subject. This work is a
consummate example of two
techniques—sfumato and chiaroscuro—of
which Leonardo was one of the first great
masters. Sfumato is characterized by subtle,
almost infinitesimal transitions between color
areas, creating a delicately atmospheric haze or
smoky effect; it is especially evident in the
delicate gauzy robes worn by the sitter and in
her enigmatic smile. Chiaroscuro is the
technique of modeling and defining forms through
contrasts of light and shadow; the sensitive
hands of the sitter are portrayed with a
luminous modulation of light and shade, while
color contrast is used only sparingly.
An
especially notable characteristic of Leonardo's
paintings is his landscape backgrounds, into
which he was among the first to introduce
atmospheric perspective. The chief masters of
the High Renaissance in Florence, including
Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, and Fra Bartolommeo,
all learned from Leonardo; he completely
transformed the school of Milan; and at Parma,
Correggio's artistic development was given
direction by Leonardo's work. Leonardo's
many extant drawings, which reveal his brilliant
draftsmanship and his mastery of the anatomy of
humans, animals, and plant life, may be found in
the principal European collections; the largest
group is at Windsor Castle in England. Probably
his most famous drawing is the magnificent
Self-Portrait (c. 1510-13, Biblioteca Reale,
Turin). Sculptural
and Architectural
Drawings
Because
none of Leonardo's sculptural projects was
brought to completion, his approach to
three-dimensional art can only be judged from
his drawings. The same strictures apply to his
architecture; none of his building projects was
actually carried out as he devised them. In his
architectural drawings, however, he demonstrates
mastery in the use of massive forms, a clarity
of expression, and especially a deep
understanding of ancient Roman sources.
Scientific
and Theoretical
Projects
As
a scientist Leonardo towered above all his
contemporaries. His scientific theories, like
his artistic innovations, were based on careful
observation and precise documentation. He
understood, better than anyone of his century or
the next, the importance of precise scientific
observation. Unfortunately, just as he
frequently failed to bring to conclusion
artistic projects, he never completed his
planned treatises on a variety of scientific
subjects. His theories are contained in numerous
notebooks, most of which were written in mirror
script. Because they were not easily
decipherable, Leonardo's findings were not
disseminated in his own lifetime; had they been
published, they would have revolutionized the
science of the 16th century. Leonardo actually
anticipated many discoveries of modern times. In
anatomy he studied the circulation of the blood
and the action of the eye. He made discoveries
in meteorology and geology, learned the effect
of the moon on the tides, foreshadowed modern
conceptions of continent formation, and surmised
the nature of fossil shells. He was among the
originators of the science of hydraulics and
probably devised the hydrometer; his scheme for
the canalization of rivers still has practical
value. He invented a large number of ingenious
machines, many potentially useful, among them an
underwater diving suit. His flying devices,
although not practicable, embodied sound
principles of aerodynamics. A
creator in all branches of art, a discoverer in
most branches of science, and an inventor in
branches of technology, Leonardo deserves,
perhaps more than anyone, the title of Homo
Universalis, Universal Man. Self
Portrait, National Gallery at Turin. Portrait
of Isabelle d'Este, black and red chalk with pastel
highlights, Musée du Louvre, Paris The
Annunciation, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Click
on Image to see enlargement La Gioconda
(The Mona Lisa), oil on canvas, 1503-06,
Musée du Louvre, Paris. Click
on Image to see enlargement Study of the
Heads of an Old Man and a Youth, Galleria degli
Uffizi, Click
on Image to see enlargement Proportions
of Man, Academy, Venice. Click
on Image to see enlargement Click
on Image to see enlargement Study of an
Old Man's Profile, Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence Click
on Image to see enlargement Drawing of
the face of the angel from The Virgin of the Rocks.
National Library, Turin Click
on Image to see enlargement Drawing of a
Woman's Head, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Click
on Image to see enlargement Litta
Madonna, Hermitage, St Petersburg |
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