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 :. | Saint jean-Baptiste | Self Portrait | Leda | Profile one with book leaves gekroten of old man | Six studies fur naked or clothed men |
Related Artists:
CLAEISSENS, Antoon
Flemish painter (b. ca. 1538, Brugge, d. 1613, Brugge). Flemish painter and draughtsman. In 1587 he was working in Rome with the Brussels painter Frans van de Kasteele. That he subsequently lived in Brussels is confirmed by documentary evidence and by his status as court painter to the governors of the southern Netherlands. Stylistically, de Clerck's work (both paintings and drawings) is close to that of the Antwerp late Mannerist Marten de Vos, traditionally thought to have been his teacher, but it is possible that he was apprenticed to Joos van Winghe in Italy. He was later a member of the Brussels painters' guild, where from 1601 to 1611 Jan van Overstraeten was registered as his pupil. It was in 1594 that de Clerck was appointed court painter in Brussels, first to Archduke Ernest. In 1596, after the Archduke's death, his brother Emperor Rudolf II arranged for de Clerck to stay on as court painter in the service of the new Archdukes, Albert and Isabella. In 1609 de Clerck and Wenceslas Cobergher were commissioned to decorate the ceiling of the oratorium in the archducal palace in Brussels
Juan Correa de Vivar
Spanish , c.1510-1566 was a Spanish painter,Correa's date of birth has been determined to be around 1510. Records show he grew up wealthy. When Juan was 17 or 18 years old he joined an artist workshop in Burgundy where he met with many other Spanish artists at the time, including Pedro de Cisneros whom he befriended. Juan's brother Eufrasia and Eufrasia's son Rodrigo also grew up to be artists. Rodrigo was apprenticed with his uncle, and continued some of his uncle's works after his death. In Mascaraque, Juan was a substantial landowner with a nice house where he did much of his painting. He took frequent trips but always stayed in the Toledo area. Juan was married and a religious man. It can be seen in his testament: a copy was found in the church files of Mascaraque. When he died, Juan split all his possessions between his nephew Rodrigo and the church of Mascaraque. Juan was a well-regarded painter during his life, but many records were lost. His works and life were brought to light again when the researcher and art historian Ceen Bermudez in 1800 published a dictionary of famous artists and included a brief article about his works and Italian influences. The full reconstruction of its biography has been primarily accomplished in the 20th century. Records show Juan died on April 16, 1566 in San Miguel. Juan's body was taken back to Mascaraque where he was buried, in the same plot where his parents were laid to rest. Many members of the artistic community came to the funeral service,
CRIVELLI, Carlo
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1430-1495 He produced many large, multi-partite altarpieces in which his highly charged, emotional use of line, delight in detail, decoration and citric colours, often set against a gold ground, convey an intensity of expression unequalled elsewhere in Italy. His mastery of perspective was also used for dramatic impact. As he worked in isolation in the Marches, his style only had local influence. In the 19th century,