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 :. | The Annunciation | Anatomical study of the brain and the scalp | Mona Lisa | La belle Ferronire dg | Study fur the communion |
Related Artists:
Theodore Clement Steele
1847-1926 Theodore Clement Steele Galleries Theodore Clement Steele (September 11, 1847-July 24, 1926) was an American Impressionist painter known for his Indiana landscapes. Steele was born in Owen County, Indiana, and later moved to Indianapolis after study in Cincinnati, Chicago and Munich. He is considered to be the most important of the Hoosier Group of painters and his work is widely collected by museums and individuals. Steele earned his living primarily as a portrait painter and his portraits include one of notable Hoosier Poet James Whitcomb Riley and the official portraits of several Indiana governors. Steele exhibited at and was on the art selection for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904 and was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1913. He enjoyed plein air, or outdoor, painting, which is reflected in many of the landscapes he painted. Steele went through a notable change in style after his return from Munich in 1885. Steele's work, which in the Munich time period sported drab colors and high contrasts, shifted towards a brighter, more vivid color palette after his return to Indiana. Upon T.C. Steele's return, his family lived in the Talbot House, or Tinker Mansion, which is at what is now 16th and Pennsylvania Streets in Indianapolis. In 1898, Steele and J. Ottis Adams bought a home in Brookville, Indiana, which they called "The Hermitage." Steele sold his interest in the home to Adams after the death of his first wife. He received an honorary master's degree from Wabash College in 1900 and an honorary doctorate from Indiana University in 1916.
Alexandre-Jean Dubois
1694 - 1763
STRIGEL, Bernhard
German Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1460-1528..Painter, son or nephew of Hans Strigel II. His training with Hans Striegel II shows stylistically in his early works in the Grisons, e.g. the Last Judgement (1486; Brigels, pilgrimage chapel of St Eusebius) and an altarpiece at Disentis (1489; St Johann Baptist). In the 1480s and 1490s he also worked in the studio of Ivo Strigel. Motifs in his pictures stem from engravings by Martin Schongauer and from Ulm book woodcuts. He met Bartholomus Zeitblom as a fellow worker on the high altar (1493-4) of Blaubeuren Abbey, both being influenced by Netherlandish art: Zeitblom by Rogier van der Weyden but Strigel primarily by Dieric Bouts. This influence is also seen in his Adoration of the Magi altarpiece (c. 1500; Memmingen, Stedtmus.). The altar of the Virgin for the monastery at Salem (1507-8; Salem, Schloss) has links with D?rer's graphic work: an increasing three-dimensionality and monumentalization of the objects and figures, and their disposition in space.