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 :. | Details of Mona Lisa | Portrait | Study fur the Sforza-Reiterstandbild | The Fotus in the Uterus | Woman portrait |
Related Artists:
James Stark
(November 19, 1794 - March 24, 1859) was an English landscape painter of the "Norwich School".Stark was born in Norwich, the youngest son of distinguished dyer Michael Stark (1748-1831, Scottish), and showed a talent for art from an early age. He was educated at the Grammar School where he was friends with John Berney Crome. He was then apprenticed for 3 years to John Berney's father, distinguished landscape artist John Crome, from 1811. In that same years he exhibited work at the Norwich Society of Artists (being elected a member in 1812,) and his work "A view on King Street river, Norwich" was shown by the Royal Academy, London. In 1814 he moved to London, exhibiting at the British Institution between 1814-18, winning a prize of £50 in 1818. In 1817 he entered the Royal Academy as a student, and eventually began to receive commissions for his work. Ill health forced Stark to return to Norwich after only 2 years study. There he devoted himself to painting the scenery around the city and executed a series of paintings of Norfolk rivers which were eventually engraved and published in 1834. In 1821 he married Elizabeth Younge Dinmore (d. 1834-35). In 1830, he again settled in London, taking up residence in Chelsea, and exhibited at the British Institution, Royal Academy and Society of British Artists. In 1839, he moved to Windsor, painting many pictures of the scenery of the Thames, but moved back to London in 1849 in order to further his son's education in art. Stark died at Mornington Place, Camden, London, in March 1859. Stark's only son, Arthur James Stark (1831-1902), born in Chelsea, London, became a landscapes and animal painter. On a few of his father's pictures he was employed to draw the cattle.
Alfred R. Waud
American, 1828-1891,was an American artist and illustrator, born in London, England. He is most notable for the sketches he made as an artist correspondent during the American Civil War. Before emigration, Alfred Waud had entered the Government School of Design at Somerset House, London, with the intention of becoming a marine painter. This did not come to fruition, but as a student, he also worked as a painter of theatrical scenery. He intended to pursue that work in the United States, when he immigrated in 1850, seeking employment with actor and playwright John Brougham. In the 1850s, he worked variously as an illustrator for a Boston periodical, the Carpet-Bag, and provided illustrations for books such as Hunter's Panoramic Guide from Niagara to Quebec (1857). The period during the American Civil War was time when all images in a publication had to be hand drawn and engraved by skilled artist. Photography existed but there was no way to transfer a photograph to a printing plate since this was well before the advent of the halftone process for printing photographs. Photographic equipment was too cumbersome and exposure times were to slow to be used on the battlefield. An artist such as Waud would do detailed sketches in the field, which were then rushed by courier back to the main office of the newspaper they were working for. There a staff of engravers would use the to sketches create finished engravings for publication. In 1860 Alfred Waud became an illustrator or special artist (a full time paid staff artist) for the New York Illustrated News. In April 1861, the newspaper assigned Waud to cover the Army of the Potomac, Virginia main Union army. He first illustrated General Winfield Scott in Washington, D.C., and then entered the field to render the First Battle of Bull Run in July. Waud followed a Union expedition to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina the next month. That autumn, he sketched army activity in the Tidewater region of Virginia. Waud joined Harper's Weekly toward the end of 1861, continuing to cover the war. In 1864 Alfred brother, William Waud (who up to that time had been working with Frank Leslie Illustrated Newspaper), joined Alfred on the staff of Harper's and they worked together during the Petersburg Campaign. Alfred Waud attended every battle of the Army of the Potomac between the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 and the Siege of Petersburg in 1865. Alfred was one of only two artists present at the Battle of Gettysburg. His depiction of Pickett Charge is thought to be the only visual account by an eyewitness. Waud died in 1891 in Marietta, Georgia, while touring battlefields of the South.
Panfilo Nuvolone
(1581-1651) was an Italian painter of the Mannerist period, who painted both religious and still life topics, active in Cremona and Mantua. Born to a Mantuan gentleman, he was the father of a family of Cremonese painters. In that town, he apprenticed with Giovanni Battista Trotti (known as il Malosso). Afterwards he moved to Milan, where frescoe church ceilings, and painted altarpieces and still lifes. One of his few documented still lifes depict a bowl of peaches, and recalls the near-contemporary paintings of fruit bowls in Milan, including the 1594-98 painting in the Ambrosiana by Caravaggio and similarly themed paintings by Fede Galizia. His son, Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, also a prominent in painter in Lombardy. Panfilo's younger son Giuseppe Nuvolone also a painter. Giuseppe's son Carlo was a mediocre quadratura specialist active mainly around Cremona.