Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Florentine Renaissance man, genius, artist in all media, architect, military engineer. Possibly the most brilliantly creative man in European history, he advertised himself, first of all, as a military engineer. In a famous letter dated about 1481 to Ludovico Sforza, of which a copy survives in the Codice Atlantico in Milan, Leonardo asks for employment in that capacity. He had plans for bridges, very light and strong, and plans for destroying those of the enemy. He knew how to cut off water to besieged fortifications, and how to construct bridges, mantlets, scaling ladders, and other instruments. He designed cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, designed to fire small stones, almost in the manner of hail??grape- or case-shot (see ammunition, artillery). He offered cannon of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use and, where it is not possible to employ cannon ?? catapults, mangonels and trabocchi and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. And he said he made armoured cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with their artillery ?? and behind them the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed, and without any opposition. He also offered to design ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke. The large number of surviving drawings and notes on military art show that Leonardo claims were not without foundation, although most date from after the Sforza letter. Most of the drawings, including giant crossbows (see bows), appear to be improvements on existing machines rather than new inventions. One exception is the drawing of a tank dating from 1485-8 now in the British Museum??a flattened cone, propelled from inside by crankshafts, firing guns. Another design in the British Museum, for a machine with scythes revolving in the horizontal plane, dismembering bodies as it goes, is gruesomely fanciful. Most of the other drawings are in the Codice Atlantico in Milan but some are in the Royal Libraries at Windsor and Turin, in Venice, or the Louvre and the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Two ingenious machines for continuously firing arrows, machine-gun style, powered by a treadmill are shown in the Codice Atlantico. A number of other sketches of bridges, water pumps, and canals could be for military or civil purposes: dual use technology. Leonardo lived at a time when the first artillery fortifications were appearing and the Codice Atlantico contains sketches of ingenious fortifications combining bastions, round towers, and truncated cones. Models constructed from the drawings and photographed in Calvi works reveal forts which would have looked strikingly modern in the 19th century, and might even feature in science fiction films today. On 18 August 1502 Cesare Borgia appointed Leonardo as his Military Engineer General, although no known building by Leonardo exists. Leonardo was also fascinated by flight. Thirteen pages with drawings for man-powered aeroplanes survive and there is one design for a helicoidal helicopter. Leonardo later realized the inadequacy of the power a man could generate and turned his attention to aerofoils. Had his enormous abilities been concentrated on one thing, he might have invented the modern glider.   Related Paintings of LEONARDO da Vinci :. | Madonna with the Yarnwinder (detail) dft | The organs of the woman | Aurelio Luini attributed, profile of an old man | Madonna with the Yarnwinder after 1510 | Portrat of a musician |
Related Artists:
Maxime Maufra
was a French landscape and marine painter, etcher and lithographer. Maufra first began painting at 18. He was encouraged to do so by two artists from Nantes: the brothers Leduc. However, he didnet fully embrace his painting career right away. Being a businessman, he only painted on his spare time from 1884 to 1890. During this time, Maufra discovered the work of the Impressionists and was able to display his works at the Paris Salon of 1886. In 1890, Maufra decided to give up commerce and to become a full-time painter. He left Nantes for Brittany, where he was able to meet Paul Gauguin and Paul Serusier. Maufra had his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1894, at Le Barc de Toutteville. Returning from Brittany, Maufra was the first painter to take up residence in The Bateau-Lavoir, a famous Parisian residence for artists. In his paintings, Maufra sometimes quoted the pointillisit technique of Pissarro or Sisley, and also took from the strong colors and powerful drawing of the Pont Aven school. However, Maufra stayed an independent artist his all life through, and dedicated his art to recording the beauty of nature.
Popova, Liubov
Russian Constructivist Painter and Designer, 1889-1924
Miles Evergood
Australian Painter, 1871-1939, was an Australian artist. Evergood was born Myer Blashki in Melbourne, eleventh child of Philip Blashki, jeweller, and his wife Anna, nee Imergud. He studied for a while at the national gallery school under Bernard Hall between 1893 and 1895. He exhibited at the Victorian Artists Society, and the Royal Art Society, Sydney, before leaving for the United States in 1898. He worked principally in New York, with frequent visits to Europe, for about 30 years, establishing a good reputation as a painter. He changed his name to Miles Evergood while in the United States. Evergood returned to Australia about the end of 1931 and worked for a year in Queensland and became a member of the Royal Queensland Art Society. He then went to Sydney and Melbourne holding exhibitions of his work, and died of cancer in Melbourne on 3 January 1939. Evergood was a capable artist, who mostly painted landscapes in oil with affinities to the post impressionists.