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 :. | Master of the Pala Sforzesca, profile of an old man | Annunciation (detail) fg47 | Muscles and bone of leg and Hufte | Details of Mona Lisa | Unfinished painting of St. Jerome in the Wilderness |
Related Artists:
pablo casals
Catalan cellist and composer. He studied at Barcelona from 1887 and made his d??but there in 1891. After further study in Madrid and Brussels his international career began in 1899, when he played Lalos Concerto under Lamoureux in Paris. In 1905 he formed a trio with Thibaud and Cortot, recording works by Schubert and Beethoven. As a soloist Casals was renowned for his beautiful tone and intellectual strength. His playing did much to bring Bach's suites into the repertory. He formed the Orquestra Pau Casals in Barcelona in 1919 but his activities were curtailed by the Spanish Civil War. In 1950 at Prades he returned to music-making and later directed festivals at Perpignan and Puerto Rico. His many pupils included Guilhermina Suggia, with whom he formed a liaison. Casals wrote instrumental works and many choral pieces of a simple, devotional nature.
Johann Christian Brand
(March 6, 1722 ?C June 12, 1795)was an Austrian painter (son of the German painter Christian Hilfgott Brand (1694-1756) who taught in Vienna with Karl Aigen) and brother of Friedrich August Brand.Johann Christian Brand influenced ending the baroque era of landscape painting. He died in Vienna. Johann Christian Brand was born in Vienna on March 6, 1722. Influential in ending the baroque era, Johann studied at the Vienna Academy from 1736.He was awarded with the titles Kammermaler* in 1766 and "Professor of Landscape Drawing" in 1772.
Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk
1782-1810 Dutch Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk Gallery Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. In 1803 he was admitted to the Amsterdam Tekenacademie where he was a pupil of the director, Jurriaan Andriessen. Despite a highly successful student career that culminated in a gold medal from the Felix Meritis Society in 1807, he was unable to establish himself as a professional artist during the remainder of his very short working life in Amsterdam. Andriessen's studies from nature seem to have been an important influence; van Troostwijk was one of the earliest artists to paint en plein air. Although he looked back to 17th-century Dutch landscape art and to the work of his contemporaries, in such paintings as Landscape in Gelderland (c. 1808; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; see NETHERLANDS, THE, fig. 21) he achieved a totally new lyricism in the rendering of atmospheric effects. The Raampoortje (1809; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) displays a fresh colouristic touch rare in Dutch painting of this period. His Self-portrait (c. 1810; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) is equally original in composition and colour. He also produced animal paintings in the manner of Paulus Potter, drawings and a few etchings towards the end of his life. Van Troostwijk died before his considerable talents could be recognized, and, although he has come to be seen as an important precursor of much late 19th-century Dutch painting, he had little influence on his immediate successors.