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 :. | Profile of an old man | The Annunciation | The muscles of arm, shoulder and neck | Study fur the Sforza monument | Jacopo Bellini |
Related Artists:
Antonio Carnicero
Spanish Rococo Era Painter, ca.1748-1814 was a Spanish painter of the Neoclassic style. Born in Salamanca and died in Madrid. He was trained with his father, Alejandro Carnicero, a sculptor. He then traveled to Rome and returned to be named chamber painter for King Charles III of Spain. He also worked as an engraveor.
Ferdinand Roybet
1840-1920 French painter. Although he studied engraving at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, he very early devoted himself exclusively to painting. In 1864 he settled in Paris, where his lyrical, zestful canvases, for example a Jester at the Court of Henry III , quickly met with success. They chiefly show characters in medieval or Renaissance costume in attitudes of studied ease. Critics noted his strong colours and firm brushwork, regretting only that his shadows seemed too sooty.
Francesco Trevisani
Italian Rococo Era Painter , Capodistria 1656-1746 Rome was an Italian painter, active in the period called either early Rococo or late Baroque (barochetto) Born in Capodistria (modern Koper, then part of the Republic of Venice), he was the son of Antonio Trevisani, an architect, by whom he was instructed in the first rudiments of design. He then studied in Venice under Antonio Zanchi. He moved to Rome, where he remained until his death, in 1678. His brother, Angelo Trevisani remained a prominent painter in Venice. In Rome, he was supported by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. He was strongly influenced by Carlo Maratta, as it is manifest in his masterpiece, the frescoes in San Silvestro in Capite (1695-1696). In this commission, he worked alongside Giuseppe Chiari and Ludovico Gimignani. In Rome, he was favored with the patronage of Cardinal Chigi. Chigi employed him in several considerable works, and recommended him to the protection of Pope Clement XI, who not only commissioned him to paint one of the Prophets in San Giovanni Laterano, but engaged him to decorate the cupola of the cathedral in Urbino. There he represented, in fresco, allegories of the four Quarters of the World, in which he displayed much invention and ingenuity. He was employed by the Duke of Modena, in copying the works of Correggio, Parmigianino, and also painted in Brunswick, Madrid, Munich, Stockholm, and Vienna. He also shows Maratta's influence in the cartoons for baptismal chapel in St. Peter's Basilica, in the oval with Prophet Baruch in San Giovanni in Laterano, and in the Death of St. Joseph in Sant'Ignazio. Trevisani painted scenes from the Life of the Blessed Lucy of Narni in the church of Narni (1714-15).