Biography of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci: interesting facts from life, achievements

During the Renaissance there were many brilliant sculptors, artists, musicians, and inventors. Leonardo da Vinci stands out against their background. He created musical instruments, he owned many engineering inventions, painted paintings, sculptures and much more.

His external characteristics are also amazing: tall height, angelic appearance and extraordinary strength. Let's get acquainted with the genius Leonardo da Vinci; a short biography will tell about his main achievements.

Biography facts

He was born near Florence in the small town of Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci was the illegitimate son of a famous and wealthy notary. His mother is an ordinary peasant woman. Since the father had no other children, at the age of 4 he took little Leonardo to live with him. The boy demonstrated his extraordinary intelligence and friendly character from a very early age, and he quickly became a favorite in the family.

To understand how the genius of Leonardo da Vinci developed, a brief biography can be presented as follows:

1. At the age of 14 he entered Verrocchio's workshop, where he studied drawing and sculpture.
2. In 1480 he moved to Milan, where he founded the Academy of Arts.
3. In 1499, he left Milan and began moving from city to city, where he built defensive structures. During this same period, his famous rivalry with Michelangelo began.
4. Since 1513 he has been working in Rome. Under Francis I, he becomes a court sage.

Leonardo died in 1519. As he believed, nothing he started was ever completed.

Creative path

The work of Leonardo da Vinci, whose brief biography was outlined above, can be divided into three stages.

1. Early period. Many works of the great painter were unfinished, such as the “Adoration of the Magi” for the monastery of San Donato. During this period, the paintings “Benois Madonna” and “Annunciation” were painted. Despite his young age, the painter already demonstrated high skill in his paintings.
2. Leonardo's mature period of creativity took place in Milan, where he planned to make a career as an engineer. The most popular work written at this time was The Last Supper, and at the same time he began work on the Mona Lisa.
3. In the late period of creativity, the painting “John the Baptist” and a series of drawings “The Flood” were created.

Painting always complemented science for Leonardo da Vinci, as he sought to capture reality.

Inventions

A short biography cannot fully convey Leonardo da Vinci's contribution to science. However, we can note the most famous and valuable discoveries of the scientist.

1. He made his greatest contribution to mechanics, as can be seen from his many drawings. Leonardo da Vinci studied the fall of a body, the centers of gravity of pyramids and much more.
2. He invented a car made of wood, which was driven by two springs. The car mechanism was equipped with a brake.
3. He came up with a spacesuit, fins and a submarine, as well as a way to dive to depth without using a spacesuit with a special gas mixture.
4. The study of dragonfly flight has led to the creation of several variants of wings for humans. The experiments were unsuccessful. However, then the scientist came up with a parachute.
5. He was involved in developments in the military industry. One of his proposals was chariots with cannons. He came up with a prototype of an armadillo and a tank.
6. Leonardo da Vinci made many developments in construction. Arch bridges, drainage machines and cranes are all his inventions.

There is no man like Leonardo da Vinci in history. That is why many consider him an alien from other worlds.

Five secrets of da Vinci

Today, many scientists are still puzzling over the legacy left by the great man of the past era. Although it’s not worth calling Leonardo da Vinci that way, he predicted a lot, and foresaw even more, creating his unique masterpieces and amazing with his breadth of knowledge and thought. We offer you five secrets of the great Master that help lift the veil of secrecy over his works.

Encryption

The master encrypted a lot in order not to present ideas openly, but to wait a little until humanity “ripened and grew up” to them. Equally good with both hands, da Vinci wrote with his left hand, in the smallest font, and even from right to left, and often in mirror image. Riddles, metaphors, puzzles - this is what is found on every line, in every work. Never signing his works, the Master left his marks, visible only to an attentive researcher. For example, after many centuries, scientists discovered that by looking closely at his paintings, you can find a symbol of a bird taking off. Or the famous “Benois Madonna,” found among traveling actors who carried the canvas as a home icon.

Sfumato

The idea of ​​dispersion also belongs to the great mystifier. Take a closer look at the canvases, all the objects do not reveal clear edges, just like in life: the smooth flow of one image into another, blurriness, dispersion - everything breathes, lives, awakening fantasies and thoughts. By the way, the Master often advised practicing such vision, peering into water stains, mud deposits or piles of ash. Often he deliberately fumigated his work areas with smoke in order to see in the clubs what was hidden beyond the reasonable eye.

Look at the famous painting - the smile of the “Mona Lisa” from different angles, sometimes tender, sometimes slightly arrogant and even predatory. The knowledge gained through the study of many sciences gave the Master the opportunity to invent perfect mechanisms that are becoming available only now. For example, this is the effect of wave propagation, the penetrating power of light, oscillatory motion... and many things still need to be analyzed not even by us, but by our descendants.

Analogies

Analogies are the main thing in all the works of the Master. The advantage over accuracy, when a third follows from two conclusions of the mind, is the inevitability of any analogy. And Da Vinci still has no equal in his whimsicality and drawing absolutely mind-blowing parallels. One way or another, all of his works have some ideas that are not consistent with each other: the famous “golden ratio” illustration is one of them. With limbs spread and apart, a person fits into a circle, with his arms closed into a square, and with his arms slightly raised into a cross. It was this kind of “mill” that gave the Florentine magician the idea of ​​​​creating churches, where the altar was placed exactly in the middle, and the worshipers stood in a circle. By the way, engineers liked this same idea - this is how the ball bearing was born.

Contrapposto

The definition denotes the opposition of opposites and the creation of a certain type of movement. An example is the sculpture of a huge horse in Corte Vecchio. There, the animal’s legs are positioned precisely in the contrapposto style, forming a visual understanding of the movement.

Incompleteness

This is perhaps one of the Master’s favorite “tricks”. None of his works are finite. To complete is to kill, and da Vinci loved every one of his creations. Slow and meticulous, the hoaxer of all times could take a couple of brush strokes and go to the valleys of Lombardy to improve the landscapes there, switch to creating the next masterpiece device, or something else. Many works turned out to be spoiled by time, fire or water, but each of the creations, at least meaning something, was and is “unfinished”. By the way, it is interesting that even after the damage, Leonardo da Vinci never corrected his paintings. Having created his own paint, the artist even deliberately left a “window of incompleteness,” believing that life itself would make the necessary adjustments.

What was art before Leonardo da Vinci? Born among the rich, it fully reflected their interests, their worldview, their views on man and the world. The works of art were based on religious ideas and themes: affirmation of those views on the world that the church taught, depiction of scenes from sacred history, instilling in people a sense of reverence, admiration for the “divine” and consciousness of their own insignificance. The dominant theme also determined the form. Naturally, the image of the “saints” was very far from the images of real living people, therefore, schemes, artificiality, and staticity dominated in art. The people in these paintings were a kind of caricature of living people, the landscape is fantastic, the colors are pale and inexpressive. True, even before Leonardo, his predecessors, including his teacher Andrea Verrocchio, were no longer satisfied with the template and tried to create new images. They had already begun the search for new methods of depiction, began to study the laws of perspective, and thought a lot about the problems of achieving expressiveness in the image.

However, these searches for something new did not yield great results, primarily because these artists did not have a sufficiently clear idea of ​​the essence and tasks of art and knowledge of the laws of painting. That is why they fell again into schematism, then into naturalism, which is equally dangerous for genuine art, copying individual phenomena of reality. The significance of the revolution made by Leonardo da Vinci in art and in particular in painting is determined primarily by the fact that he was the first to clearly, clearly and definitely establish the essence and tasks of art. Art should be deeply life-like and realistic. It must come from a deep, careful study of reality and nature. It must be deeply truthful, it must depict reality as it is, without any artificiality or falsehood. Reality, nature is beautiful in itself and does not need any embellishment. The artist must carefully study nature, but not to blindly imitate it, not to simply copy it, but in order to create works, having understood the laws of nature, the laws of reality; strictly comply with these laws. To create new values, values ​​of the real world - this is the purpose of art. This explains Leonardo's desire to connect art and science. Instead of simple, casual observation, he considered it necessary to systematically, persistently study the subject. It is known that Leonardo never parted with the album and wrote drawings and sketches in it.

They say that he loved to walk through the streets, squares, markets, noting everything interesting - people’s poses, faces, their expressions. Leonardo's second requirement for painting is the requirement for the truthfulness of the image, its vitality. The artist must strive for the most accurate representation of reality in all its richness. At the center of the world stands a living, thinking, feeling person. It is he who must be depicted in all the richness of his feelings, experiences and actions. For this purpose, it was Leonardo who studied human anatomy and physiology; for this purpose, as they say, he gathered peasants he knew in his workshop and, treating them, told them funny stories in order to see how people laugh, how the same event causes people have different impressions. If before Leonardo there was no real man in painting, now he has become dominant in the art of the Renaissance. Hundreds of Leonardo's drawings provide a gigantic gallery of types of people, their faces, and parts of their bodies. Man in all the diversity of his feelings and actions is the task of artistic depiction. And this is the strength and charm of Leonardo’s painting. Forced by the conditions of the time to paint pictures mainly on religious subjects, because his customers were the church, feudal lords and rich merchants, Leonardo powerfully subordinates these traditional subjects to his genius and creates works of universal significance. The Madonnas painted by Leonardo are, first of all, an image of one of the deeply human feelings - the feeling of motherhood, the boundless love of a mother for her baby, admiration and admiration for him. All his Madonnas are young, blooming women full of life, all the babies in his paintings are healthy, full-cheeked, playful boys, in whom there is not an ounce of “holiness.”

His apostles in The Last Supper are living people of different ages, social status, and different characters; in appearance they are Milanese artisans, peasants, and intellectuals. Striving for truth, the artist must be able to generalize what he finds individual and must create the typical. Therefore, even when painting portraits of certain historically known people, such as Mona Lisa Gioconda, the wife of a bankrupt aristocrat, Florentine merchant Francesco del Gioconda, Leonardo gives them, along with individual portrait features, a typical feature common to many people. That is why the portraits he painted survived the people depicted in them for many centuries. Leonardo was the first who not only carefully and carefully studied the laws of painting, but also formulated them. He deeply, like no one before him, studied the laws of perspective, the placement of light and shadow. He needed all this to achieve the highest expressiveness of the picture, in order to, as he said, “become equal to nature.” For the first time, it was in the works of Leonardo that the painting as such lost its static character and became a window into the world. When you look at his painting, the feeling of what was painted, enclosed in a frame, is lost and it seems that you are looking through an open window, revealing to the viewer something new, something they have never seen. Demanding the expressiveness of the painting, Leonardo resolutely opposed the formal play of colors, against the enthusiasm for form at the expense of content, against what so clearly characterizes decadent art.

For Leonardo, form is only the shell of the idea that the artist must convey to the viewer. Leonardo pays a lot of attention to the problems of the composition of the picture, the problems of placement of figures, and individual details. Hence his favorite composition of placing figures in a triangle - the simplest geometric harmonic figure - a composition that allows the viewer to embrace the whole picture as a whole. Expressiveness, truthfulness, accessibility - these are the laws of real, truly folk art formulated by Leonardo da Vinci, laws that he himself embodied in his brilliant works. Already in his first major painting, “Madonna with a Flower,” Leonardo showed in practice what the principles of art he professed meant. What is striking about this picture is, first of all, its composition, the surprisingly harmonious distribution of all the elements of the picture that make up a single whole. The image of a young mother with a cheerful child in her arms is deeply realistic. The directly felt deep blue of the Italian sky through the window slot is incredibly skillfully conveyed. Already in this picture, Leonardo demonstrated the principle of his art - realism, the depiction of a person in the deepest accordance with his true nature, the depiction of not an abstract scheme, which was what medieval ascetic art taught and did, namely a living, feeling person.

These principles are even more clearly expressed in Leonardo’s second major painting, “The Adoration of the Magi” from 1481, in which what is significant is not the religious plot, but the masterful depiction of people, each of whom has their own, individual face, their own pose, expressing their own feeling and mood. Life truth is the law of Leonardo’s painting. The fullest possible disclosure of a person’s inner life is its goal. In “The Last Supper” the composition is brought to perfection: despite the large number of figures - 13, their placement is strictly calculated so that they all as a whole represent a kind of unity, full of great internal content. The picture is very dynamic: some terrible news communicated by Jesus struck his disciples, each of them reacts to it in their own way, hence the huge variety of expressions of inner feelings on the faces of the apostles. Compositional perfection is complemented by an unusually masterful use of colors, harmony of light and shadows. The expressiveness of the painting reaches its perfection thanks to the extraordinary variety of not only facial expressions, but the position of each of the twenty-six hands drawn in the picture.

This recording by Leonardo himself tells us about the careful preliminary work that he carried out before painting the picture. Everything in it is thought out to the smallest detail: poses, facial expressions; even details such as an overturned bowl or knife; all this in its sum forms a single whole. The richness of colors in this painting is combined with a subtle use of chiaroscuro, which emphasizes the significance of the event depicted in the painting. The subtlety of perspective, the transmission of air and color make this painting a masterpiece of world art. Leonardo successfully solved many problems facing artists at that time and opened the way for the further development of art. By the power of his genius, Leonardo overcame the medieval traditions that weighed heavily on art, broke them and discarded them; he was able to push the narrow boundaries that limited the creative power of the artist by the then ruling clique of churchmen, and show, instead of the hackneyed gospel stencil scene, a huge, purely human drama, show living people with their passions, feelings, experiences. And in this picture the great, life-affirming optimism of the artist and thinker Leonardo again manifested itself.

Over the years of his wanderings, Leonardo painted many more paintings that received well-deserved world fame and recognition. In "La Gioconda" a deeply vital and typical image is given. It is this deep vitality, the unusually relief rendering of facial features, individual details, and costume, combined with a masterfully painted landscape, that gives this picture special expressiveness. Everything about her—from the mysterious half-smile playing on her face to her calmly folded hands—speaks of great inner content, of the great spiritual life of this woman. Leonardo's desire to convey the inner world in the external manifestations of mental movements is especially fully expressed here. An interesting painting by Leonardo is “The Battle of Anghiari”, depicting the battle of cavalry and infantry. As in his other paintings, Leonardo sought here to show a variety of faces, figures and poses. Dozens of people depicted by the artist create a complete impression of the picture precisely because they are all subordinated to a single idea underlying it. It was a desire to show the rise of all man’s strength in battle, the tension of all his feelings, brought together to achieve victory.

Not impressed? Well, the bearing may not be the coolest thing an inventor can do, but a lot of modern technology works with the help of bearings. Ball bearings allow drive shafts to rotate, push goods in a store or factory, and are the basis of almost any moving mechanism. Smooth balls placed between two moving surfaces virtually eliminate friction. For the first time, the idea, as many believe, was born during the Roman Empire, but historians believe that it was in da Vinci’s notebooks that the first sketches of the bearing appeared. Many of the devices invented by the genius would not work without bearings. But as with many of the inventor's concepts, the bearing had to be reinvented by someone else.

The distance from which a body falls depends on two factors: the force of gravity, which pulls it down, and the resistance of the atmosphere in which it falls. In the absence of an atmosphere, a falling body will simply accelerate to tremendous speed until it hits the surface, but the air slows down the fall until the body reaches the so-called terminal velocity. Different objects have different maximum speeds. For a person falling in the Earth's atmosphere - a parachutist, for example - this speed is approximately 193.1 km/h. Slowly, right? Let it be so, but this is enough for a person falling from an airplane to turn into a cake after hitting the surface of the earth. Only a parachute can save him.

Da Vinci, fascinated by the idea of ​​a flying man, conceived his parachute as a means of drifting through the air. Its pyramidal structure was draped with fabric. As da Vinci wrote in his notes, such a device would allow a person to “fall from any height without any injury or damage.” The twenty-first century naturalists who implemented da Vinci's idea recognized that it worked exactly as he predicted.

Da Vinci was inspired by birds. He watched them, drew them and thought about creating his own flying machines. One of the results of this hobby was the ornithopter, a device invented by da Vinci that could theoretically lift a person into the air like a bird. While a da Vinci parachute would allow a man to jump off a cliff and stay alive, an ornithopter would allow him to float in the air above the ground.

On paper, an ornithopter looks more like a bird (or bat) than modern aircraft. Its wings will start working after the pilot turns the handle. This invention demonstrates da Vinci's deep understanding of aerodynamics. Modern attempts to reproduce the ornithopter have shown that it could indeed fly - if it were lifted into the air. Building an aircraft that uses weak human muscles would be more difficult.

The parachute and ornithopter were only two of the flying machines described by da Vinci in his notebooks. Others included a glider and a helicopter-like aircraft, which we may talk about later.

The da Vinci machine gun or "33-barrel organ" was not a machine gun in the modern sense. He could not quickly fire bullets from one barrel. But it could fire volleys at short intervals, and if built, it would effectively mow down the advancing infantry.

The mechanism of this machine gun is simple. Da Vinci proposed assembling 11 muskets on a rectangular board, and then folding three such boards into a triangle. By placing a shaft in the middle, the whole thing could be rotated so that one set of 11 guns would fire while the other two cooled down and reloaded. After this, the entire mechanism turned over and fired another salvo.

And although da Vinci constantly noted in his notebooks that he hated war and cursed killing machines, he needed money, and he could easily convince wealthy patrons that such machines would help them defeat their enemies. Perhaps it was for the best that none of the killing machines conceived by da Vinci were built.

While living in Venice in the late 15th century, da Vinci developed the idea to repel invading ships. It was enough to send men to the bottom of the harbor in diving suits, and there they would simply open the bottoms of ships like tin cans. You may be underwhelmed by this idea because its implementation currently seems quite simple. But in Da Vinci's time this was unheard of. Da Vinci's divers could breathe using an underwater bell filled with air and wore masks with glass holes through which they could see underwater. In another version of the concept, divers could breathe using wine bottles filled with air. In both cases, the men would carry bottles to urinate in, so they could stay underwater for a very long time. Da Vinci's plan was not only feasible - it was practical!

These diving suits were actually created, but the invaders they were intended to be used against were successfully defeated by the Venetian fleet before underwater sabotage was needed.

Armored tank

While working for the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, da Vinci proposed what would become his crowning achievement in the field of military vehicles: the armored tank. Assisted by eight strong men, the armored tank looked like a turtle, bristling with 36 guns on all sides. It was equipped with a system of gears that formed a sequence. Eight people were protected from battle by the outer shell, so they could deliver such a “hedgehog” on foot right into the thick of the battle without being wounded. A weapon firing in all directions from an armored tank could be disastrous for an enemy squad.

The diagram of the armored tank in Da Vinci's notes contains a funny flaw: the wheels for forward movement turned in the opposite direction from the rear wheels. Built this way, the tank would not be able to move. Da Vinci was too smart to make such an unfortunate mistake, so historians have given several reasons why the inventor made such a mistake deliberately. Perhaps he really didn't want this car to be built. Another option is that he was afraid that the scheme would fall into the clutches of enemies, so he made a mistake to make sure that no one else could build the tank except him.

Self-propelled trolley

Working model.

Da Vinci's self-propelled cart is being promoted as the first automobile in history. Moreover, since it did not have a driver, it can also be considered the first robotic vehicle in history.

Da Vinci's drawings did not fully reveal the internal mechanism, so modern engineers had to guess what made the cart move forward. The best guess was a spring mechanism like the one used in watches. The springs were hidden in drum-shaped housings and could be wound by hand. And while the spring unwinds, the cart moves forward like a wind-up toy. The steering wheel could be programmed using a series of blocks in the gear chain, although the fact that the cart could only turn to the right would have significantly limited its usefulness.

Leonardo apparently considered his cart to be something of a toy, but we can be sure that if it had been built, more useful improvements would soon have followed.

Cities of the future

Leonardo da Vinci Bridge.

When Leonardo lived in Milan around 1400, the Black Plague was raging across Europe. Cities suffered far more than the countryside, and da Vinci theorized that there was something special about cities that made them vulnerable to the disease. This idea is surprisingly relatable, considering that germ theory was only developed in the early 20th century. Da Vinci set out to develop his own plan: a city, originally designed and created from scratch, that would be sanitary and habitable.

The result was a triumph of urban planning that was never built. Da Vinci's “ideal city” was divided into several levels, each of which had minimal unsanitary conditions, and a network of canals facilitated the rapid removal of waste. Water was to be supplied to the buildings through a hydraulic system, which served as the prototype of the modern one. The resources needed to create such a city were beyond the means at Da Vinci's disposal, and he was unable to find a philanthropist willing to shell out his money to build such a city.

Air propeller

Da Vinci's propeller is probably the coolest project that was found in his notebooks. It would operate on the principle of a modern helicopter. The flying machine looked like a huge pinwheel. The helicopter's "blades" were made of flax. If spun fast enough, they could create thrust, the aerodynamic phenomenon that allows planes and helicopters to fly. The air would create pressure under each of the blades, thereby lifting the flying car into the sky.

At least that was the idea. Could such a propeller fly? Hardly. But it would be cool.

Robot Knight

Leonardo da Vinci carefully studied human anatomy.

If the da Vinci self-propelled cart was the first working design for robotic transport, the robot knight could be the first humanoid robot, C-3PO of the 15th century. Da Vinci carefully studied the anatomy of the human body and spent hours dissecting corpses to find out how it worked. He realized that muscles move bones. After this, he decided that the same principle could form the basis of a machine. Unlike most of da Vinci's inventions, Leonardo appears to have actually built a robot knight, but it was used primarily as entertainment at the parties of the genius's generous patron, Lodovico Sforza. Of course, that robot was much different from .

Da Vinci's robot has not survived, and no one knows exactly what he was capable of. But apparently, he walked, sat and even worked with his jaws. It used a system of pulleys and gears. In 2002, robotics expert Mark Rosheim took da Vinci's workbooks to build a working model of the 15th century robot. As a result, Rosheim borrowed some ideas to create planetary reconnaissance robots, which.

As you can see, after half a century of space exploration, Leonardo da Vinci's projects finally went into outer space.

(Leonardo da Vinci) (1452–1519) - the greatest figure, multifaceted genius of the Renaissance, founder of the High Renaissance. Known as an artist, scientist, engineer, inventor.

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the town of Anchiano near the city of Vinci, located near Florence. His father was Piero da Vinci, a notary who came from a prominent family in the city of Vinci. According to one version, the mother was a peasant woman, according to another, a tavern owner known as Katerina. At about the age of 4.5 years, Leonardo was taken into his father's house, and in documents of that time he is named as the illegitimate son of Piero. In 1469 he entered the workshop of the famous artist, sculptor and jeweler Andrea del Verrocchio ( 1435/36–1488). Here Leonardo went through his entire apprenticeship: from rubbing paints to working as an apprentice. According to the stories of contemporaries, he painted the left figure of the angel in Verrocchio's painting Baptism(c. 1476, Uffizi Gallery, Florence), which immediately attracted attention. The naturalness of movement, the smoothness of lines, the softness of chiaroscuro - distinguishes the figure of an angel from Verrocchio’s more rigid writing. Leonardo lived in the master's house even after he was accepted into the Guild of St. Luke, a guild of painters, in 1472.

One of the few dated drawings by Leonardo was created in August 1473. View of the Arno Valley from above, it was made with a pen with quick strokes, conveying vibrations of light and air, which indicates that the drawing was made from life (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).

The first painting attributed to Leonardo, although its authorship is disputed by many experts, is Annunciation(c. 1472, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). Unfortunately, the unknown author made later corrections, which significantly deteriorated the quality of the work.

Portrait of Ginevra de Benci(1473–1474, National Gallery, Washington) is permeated with a melancholy mood. Part of the picture at the bottom is cropped: probably, the hands of the model were depicted there. The contours of the figure are softened using the sfumato effect, created even before Leonardo, but it was he who became the genius of this technique. Sfumato (Italian sfumato - foggy, smoky) is a technique developed in the Renaissance in painting and graphics, which allows you to convey the softness of modeling, the elusiveness of object outlines, and the feeling of an airy environment.

Between 1476 and 1478 Leonardo opens his workshop. This period dates back to Madonna with a flower, so-called Madonna Benoit(c. 1478, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). The smiling Madonna addresses the baby Jesus sitting on her lap; the movements of the figures are natural and flexible. This painting exhibits Leonardo's characteristic interest in showing the inner world.

An unfinished painting is also an early work. Adoration of the Magi(1481–1482, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). The central place is occupied by the group of Madonna and Child and the Magi placed in the foreground.

In 1482, Leonardo left for Milan, the richest city of that time, under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508), who maintained an army and spent huge amounts of money on magnificent festivities and the purchase of works of art. Introducing himself to his future patron, Leonardo talks about himself as a musician, military expert, inventor of weapons, war chariots, cars, and only then talks about himself as an artist. Leonardo lived in Milan until 1498, and this period of his life was the most fruitful.

The first commission Leonardo received was to create an equestrian statue in honor of Francesco Sforza (1401–1466), father of Lodovico Sforza. Working on it for 16 years, Leonardo created many drawings, as well as an eight-meter clay model. In an effort to surpass all existing equestrian statues, Leonardo wanted to make a grandiose sculpture, to show a horse rearing up. But when faced with technical difficulties, Leonardo changed his plan and decided to depict a walking horse. In November 1493 model Horse without a rider was put on public display, and it was this event that made Leonardo da Vinci famous. About 90 tons of bronze were required to cast the sculpture. The collection of metal that had begun was interrupted, and the equestrian statue was never cast. In 1499 Milan was captured by the French, who used the sculpture as a target. After some time it collapsed. Horse- a grandiose, but never completed project - one of the significant works of monumental sculpture of the 16th century. and, according to Vasari, “those who have seen the huge clay model ... claim that they have never seen a more beautiful and majestic work,” called the monument “a great colossus.”

At the Sforza court, Leonardo also worked as a decorative artist for many festivities, creating previously unseen decorations and mechanisms, and making costumes for allegorical figures.

Unfinished canvas Saint Jerome(1481, Vatican Museum, Rome) shows the saint in a moment of penance in an elaborate turn with a lion at his feet. The picture was painted in black and white colors. But after covering it with varnish in the 19th century. the colors turned olive and golden.

Madonna of the Rocks(1483–1484, Louvre, Paris) is a famous painting by Leonardo, painted in Milan. The image of the Madonna, baby Jesus, little John the Baptist and an angel in a landscape is a new motif in Italian painting of that time. Through the opening of the rock one can see a landscape to which sublimely ideal features are given, and in which the achievements of linear and aerial perspective are shown. Although the cave is dimly lit, the picture is not dark, faces and figures softly emerge from the shadows. The finest chiaroscuro (sfumato) creates the impression of dim diffused light, modeling faces and hands. Leonardo connects the figures not only by a common mood, but also by the unity of space.

LADY WITH ERMINE. 1485–1490. Czartoryski Museum

Lady with an ermine(1484, Czartoryski Museum, Krakow) is one of Leonardo’s first works as a court portrait painter. The painting depicts Lodovic's favorite Cecilia Gallerani with the emblem of the Sforza family, an ermine. The complex turn of the head and the exquisite bend of the lady’s hand, the curved pose of the animal - everything speaks of the authorship of Leonardo. The background was rewritten by another artist.

Portrait of a musician(1484, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan). Only the young man's face is completed, the rest of the picture is not painted. The type of face is close to the faces of Leonardo's angels, only executed more courageously.

Another unique work was created by Leonardo in one of the halls of the Sforza Palace, which is called Donkey. On the vaults and walls of this hall he painted crowns of willows, whose branches are intricately intertwined and tied with decorative ropes. Subsequently, part of the paint layer fell off, but a significant part was preserved and restored.

In 1495 Leonardo began work on Last Supper(area 4.5 × 8.6 m). The fresco is located on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, at a height of 3 m from the floor and occupies the entire end wall of the room. Leonardo oriented the perspective of the fresco towards the viewer, thereby it organically entered into the interior of the refectory: the perspective reduction of the side walls depicted in the fresco continues the real space of the refectory. Thirteen people are sitting at a table parallel to the wall. In the center is Jesus Christ, to the left and right of him are his disciples. The dramatic moment of exposure and condemnation of betrayal is shown, the moment when Christ has just uttered the words: “One of you will betray Me,” and the different emotional reactions of the apostles to these words. The composition is built on a strictly verified mathematical calculation: in the center is Christ, depicted against the background of the middle, largest opening of the rear wall, the vanishing point of perspective coincides with his head. The twelve apostles are divided into four groups of three figures each. Each is given a vivid characterization through expressive gestures and movements. The main task was to show Judas, to separate him from the rest of the apostles. By placing him on the same line of the table as all the apostles, Leonardo psychologically separated him by loneliness. Creation last supper became a notable event in the artistic life of Italy at that time. As a true innovator and experimenter, Leonardo abandoned the fresco technique. He covered the wall with a special composition of resin and mastic, and painted with tempera. These experiments led to the greatest tragedy: the refectory, which was hastily repaired by order of Sforza, the picturesque innovations of Leonardo, the lowland in which the refectory was located - all this served a sad service to the preservation last supper. The paints began to peel off, as Vasari already mentioned in 1556. Secret supper It was restored several times in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the restorations were unskilled (paint layers were simply reapplied). By the mid-20th century, when last supper fell into a deplorable state, they began scientific restoration: first the entire paint layer was fixed, then later layers were removed, and Leonardo’s tempera painting was revealed. And although the work was severely damaged, these restoration works made it possible to say that this Renaissance masterpiece was saved. Working on the fresco for three years, Leonardo created the greatest creation of the Renaissance.

After the fall of Sforza's power in 1499, Leonardo travels to Florence, stopping at Mantua and Venice along the way. In Mantua he creates cardboard with Portrait of Isabella d'Este(1500, Louvre, Paris), made with black chalk, charcoal and pastel.

In the spring of 1500, Leonardo arrived in Florence, where he soon received an order to paint an altar painting in the Monastery of the Annunciation. The order was never completed, but one of the options is considered to be the so-called. Burlington House Cardboard(1499, National Gallery, London).

One of the significant commissions received by Leonardo in 1502 to decorate the wall of the meeting room of the Signoria in Florence was Battle of Anghiari(not preserved). Another wall for decoration was given to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), who painted a painting there Battle of Kashin. Leonardo's sketches, now lost, showed a panorama of the battle, in the center of which a fight for the banner took place. Cartons by Leonardo and Michelangelo, exhibited in 1505, were a huge success. As is the case with Last Supper, Leonardo experimented with paints, as a result of which the paint layer gradually crumbled. But preparatory drawings and copies have survived, which partly give an idea of ​​the scale of this work. In particular, a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) has survived, which shows the central scene of the composition (c. 1615, Louvre, Paris).
For the first time in the history of battle painting, Leonardo showed the drama and fury of battle.

MONA LISA. Louvre, Paris Mona Lisa- the most famous work of Leonardo da Vinci (1503–1506, Louvre, Paris). Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the third wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo dele Giocondo. Now the picture has been slightly changed: originally columns were drawn on the left and right, now cut off. The small-sized painting makes a monumental impression: the Mona Lisa is shown against the backdrop of a landscape where the depth of space and airy haze are conveyed with the greatest perfection. Leonardo’s famous sfumato technique is here brought to unprecedented heights: the thinnest, as if melting, haze of chiaroscuro, enveloping the figure, softens the contours and shadows. There is something elusive, bewitching and attractive in a light smile, in the liveliness of facial expression, in the majestic calm of the pose, in the stillness of the smooth lines of the hands.

In 1506 Leonardo received an invitation to Milan from Louis XII of France (1462-1515). Having given Leonardo complete freedom of action and regularly paying him, the new patrons did not require specific work from him. Leonardo is interested in scientific research, sometimes turning to painting. Then the second version was written Madonnas of the Rocks(1506–1508, British National Gallery, London).

MADONNA AND CHILD AND ST. ANNA. OK. 1510. Louvre, Paris

St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child(1500–1510, Louvre, Paris) is one of the themes of Leonardo’s work, to which he repeatedly addressed. The last development of this topic remained unfinished.

In 1513 Leonardo travels to Rome, to the Vatican, to the court of Pope Leo X (1513–1521), but soon loses the pope's favor. He studies plants in the botanical garden, draws up plans for draining the Pontine swamps, and writes notes for a treatise on the structure of the human voice. At this time he created the only Self-portrait(1514, Bibliotheca Reale, Turin), executed in sanguine, showing a gray-haired old man with a long beard and a gaze.

Leonardo's last painting was also painted in Rome - Saint John the Baptist(1515, Louvre, Paris). St. John is shown as pampered with a seductive smile and feminine gestures.

Leonardo again receives an offer from the French king, this time from Francis I (1494–1547), successor of Louis XII: to move to France, to an estate near the royal castle of Amboise. In 1516 or 1517 Leonardo arrives in France, where he is given apartments at the Cloux estate. Surrounded by the king's respectful admiration, he receives the title "First Artist, Engineer and Architect of the King." Leonardo, despite his age and illness, is engaged in drawing canals in the Loire River valley and takes part in the preparation of court festivities.

Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519, leaving his drawings and papers in his will to Francesco Melzi, a student who kept them throughout his life. But after his death, all the countless papers were distributed all over the world, some were lost, some are stored in different cities, in museums around the world.

A scientist by vocation, Leonardo even now amazes with the breadth and variety of his scientific interests. His research in the field of aircraft design is unique. He studied the flight, gliding of birds, the structure of their wings, and created the so-called. ornithopter, a flying machine with flapping wings, never realized. He created a pyramidal parachute, a model of a helical propeller (a variant of a modern propeller). Observing nature, he became an expert in the field of botany: he was the first to describe the laws of phyllotaxy (laws governing the arrangement of leaves on the stem), heliotropism and geotropism (laws of the influence of the sun and gravity on plants), and discovered a way to determine the age of trees by annual rings. He was an expert in the field of anatomy: he was the first to describe the valve of the right ventricle of the heart, demonstrated anatomy, etc. He created a system of drawings that now help students understand the structure of the human body: he showed the object in four views to examine it from all sides, created an image system organs and bodies in cross section. His research in the field of geology is interesting: he gave descriptions of sedimentary rocks and explanations of marine deposits in the mountains of Italy. As an optical scientist, he knew that visual images are projected upside down on the cornea of ​​the eye. He was probably the first to use a camera obscura (from Latin camera - room, obscurus - dark) - a closed box with a small hole in one of the walls - for sketching landscapes; rays of light are reflected on the frosted glass on the other side of the box and create an inverted color image, used by 18th century landscape painters. for accurate reproduction of views). In Leonardo's drawings there is a design for an instrument for measuring the intensity of light, a photometer, which was brought to life only three centuries later. He designed canals, locks, and dams. Among his ideas you can see: lightweight shoes for walking on water, a lifebuoy, webbed gloves for swimming, a device for underwater movement, similar to a modern spacesuit, machines for making rope, grinding machines and much more. Talking to mathematician Luca Pacioli, who wrote the textbook About Divine Proportion, Leonardo became interested in this science and created illustrations for this textbook.

Leonardo also acted as an architect, but none of his projects were ever brought to life. He participated in a competition to design the central dome of the Milan Cathedral, created a design for a mausoleum for members of the royal family in the Egyptian style, and a project he proposed to the Turkish Sultan for the construction of a huge bridge across the Bosphorus Strait, under which ships could pass.

There are a large number of Leonardo's drawings left, made with sanguine, colored crayons, pastels (Leonardo is credited with the invention of pastels), silver pencil, and chalk.

In Milan Leonardo begins to paint Treatise on Painting, work on which continued throughout his life, but was never completed. In this multi-volume reference book, Leonardo wrote about how to recreate the world around him on canvas, about linear and aerial perspective, proportions, anatomy, geometry, mechanics, optics, the interaction of colors, and reflexes.

John the Baptist. 1513-16

Madonna Litta 1478-1482 Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Leda with a swan 1508 - 1515 Ufizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

The life and work of Leonardo da Vinci left a colossal mark not only in art, but also in science and technology. Painter, sculptor, architect - he was a natural scientist, mechanic, engineer, mathematician, and made many discoveries for subsequent generations. This was the greatest personality of the Renaissance.

"Vitruvian Man"- the generally accepted name for a graphic drawing by da Vinci made in 1492. as an illustration for entries in one of the diaries. The drawing depicts a naked male figure. Strictly speaking, these are even two images of the same figure superimposed on each other, but in different poses. A circle and a square are described around the figure. The manuscript containing this drawing is sometimes also called the “Canon of Proportions” or simply “Proportions of Man.” Now this work is kept in one of the museums of Venice, but is exhibited extremely rarely, since this exhibit is truly unique and valuable both as a work of art and as a subject of research.

Leonardo created his “Vitruvian Man” as an illustration of the geometric studies he carried out based on the treatise of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius (hence the name of da Vinci’s work). In the treatise of the philosopher and researcher, the proportions of the human body were taken as the basis for all architectural proportions. Da Vinci applied the research of the ancient Roman architect to painting, which once again clearly illustrates the principle of the unity of art and science put forward by Leonardo. In addition, this work also reflects the master’s attempt to relate man to nature. It is known that da Vinci considered the human body as a reflection of the universe, i.e. was convinced that it functions according to the same laws. The author himself considered the Vitruvian Man as a “cosmography of the microcosm.” There is also a deep symbolic meaning hidden in this drawing. The square and circle in which the body is inscribed do not simply reflect physical, proportional characteristics. A square can be interpreted as the material existence of a person, and a circle represents its spiritual basis, and the points of contact of geometric figures with each other and with the body inserted into them can be considered as the connection of these two foundations of human existence. For many centuries, this drawing was considered as a symbol of the ideal symmetry of the human body and the universe as a whole.

Leonardo da Vinci was born in the town of Vinci (or near it), located west of Florence, on April 15, 1452. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary and a peasant girl, was brought up in his father’s house and, being the son of an educated man, received a thorough primary education.

1467 - at the age of 15, Leonardo apprenticed to one of the leading masters of the Early Renaissance in Florence, Andrea del Verrocchio; 1472 - joined the guild of artists, studied the basics of drawing and other necessary disciplines; 1476 - he worked in Verrocchio’s workshop, apparently in collaboration with the master himself.

By 1480, Leonardo already had large orders, but 2 years later he moved to Milan. In a letter to the ruler of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he introduced himself as an engineer, military expert and artist. The years he spent in Milan were filled with various activities. Leonardo da Vinci painted several paintings and the famous fresco “The Last Supper” and began to diligently and seriously keep his notes. The Leonardo we recognize from his notes is an architect-designer (the creator of innovative plans that were never implemented), an anatomist, a hydraulic engineer, an inventor of mechanisms, a creator of decorations for court performances, a writer of riddles, puzzles and fables for the entertainment of the court, musician and painting theorist.

1499 - after the expulsion of Lodovico Sforza from Milan by the French, Leonardo leaves for Venice, visits Mantua on the way, where he participates in the construction of defensive structures, and then returns to Florence. At that time, he was so passionate about mathematics that he didn’t even want to think about picking up a brush. For 12 years, Leonardo constantly moved from city to city, working for the famous in Romagna, designing defensive structures (never built) for Piombino.

In Florence he enters into rivalry with Michelangelo; This rivalry culminated in the enormous battle compositions that the two artists painted for the Palazzo della Signoria (also Palazzo Vecchio). Then Leonardo conceived a second equestrian monument, which, like the first, was never created. Throughout all these years, he continues to fill out his notebooks. They reflect his ideas relating to a variety of subjects. This is the theory and practice of painting, anatomy, mathematics and even the flight of birds. 1513 - as in 1499, his patrons are expelled from Milan...

Leonardo leaves for Rome, where he spends 3 years under the auspices of the Medici. Depressed and upset due to the lack of material for anatomical research, he engages in experiments that lead nowhere.

The kings of France, first Louis XII, then Francis I, admired the works of the Italian Renaissance, especially Leonardo's Last Supper. Therefore, it is not surprising that in 1516 Francis I, well aware of Leonardo’s versatile talents, invited him to the court, which was then located in the castle of Amboise in the Loire Valley. As the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini wrote, despite the fact that the Florentine worked on hydraulic projects and the plan of the new royal palace, his main occupation was the honorary position of court sage and adviser.

Fascinated by the idea of ​​​​creating an aircraft, the Florentine first developed the simplest apparatus (Daedalus and Icarus) based on wings. His new idea is an airplane with full control. But it was not possible to bring the idea to life due to the lack of a motor. Also, the scientist’s famous idea is a device with vertical take-off and landing.

Studying the laws of fluid and hydraulics in general, Leonardo made a great contribution to the theory of locks and sewer ports, testing ideas in practice.

Famous paintings by Leonardo - “La Gioconda”, “The Last Supper”, “Madonna with an Ermine”, and many others. Leonardo was demanding and precise in everything he did. Even before painting, he insisted on fully studying the subject before starting.

Leonardo's manuscripts are priceless. They were fully published only in the 19th and 20th centuries. In his notes, Leonardo da Vinci noted not just thoughts, but supplemented them with drawings, drawings, and descriptions.

Leonardo da Vinci was talented in many fields; he made significant contributions to the history of architecture, art, and physics.

Leonardo da Vinci died in Amboise on May 2, 1519; By this time, his paintings were usually distributed to private collections, and his notes lay in various collections, almost completely forgotten, for several more centuries.

Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci encrypted a lot so that his ideas would be revealed gradually, as humanity could “ripen” to them. He wrote with his left hand and in very small letters, from right to left, so that the text looked like a mirror image. He spoke in riddles, made metaphorical prophecies, and loved to make puzzles. Leonardo da Vinci did not sign his works, but there are identification marks on them. For example, if you take a closer look at the paintings, you may find a symbolic bird taking off. There are, apparently, a lot of such signs, which is why one or another of his hidden “brainchildren” are unexpectedly discovered on famous canvases, centuries later. So, for example, it happened with the “Benois Madonna”, which for a long time, as a home icon, was carried with itinerant actors.

Leonard discovered the principle of scattering (or sfumato). The objects on his canvases have no clear boundaries: everything, like in life, is blurry, penetrates one into another, which means it breathes, lives, awakens imagination. To master this principle, he advised practicing: looking at stains on walls, ashes, clouds or dirt that appear from dampness. He specially fumigate the room where he worked with smoke in order to look for images in clubs.

Thanks to the sfumato effect, the flickering smile of Gioconda appeared: depending on the focus of the view, it seems to the viewer that Gioconda is smiling either tenderly or sinisterly. The second miracle of the Mona Lisa is that it is “alive.” Over the centuries, her smile changes, the corners of her lips rise higher. In the same way, the Master mixed the knowledge of various sciences, so his inventions find more and more applications over time. From the treatise on light and shadow come the beginnings of the sciences of penetrating force, oscillatory motion, and wave propagation. All of his 120 books have been distributed around the world and are gradually being revealed to humanity.

Leonardo da Vinci preferred the analogy method to all others. The approximate nature of an analogy is an advantage over the precision of a syllogism, when a third inevitably follows from two conclusions. But the more bizarre the analogy, the further the conclusions from it extend. Take, for example, Da Vinci’s famous illustration, which proves the proportionality of the human body. A human figure with outstretched arms and spread legs fits into a circle, and with closed legs and raised arms, into a square. This “mill” gave rise to various conclusions. Leonardo was the only one who created designs for churches in which the altar is placed in the middle (symbolizing the human navel), and the worshipers are evenly spaced around. This church plan in the form of an octahedron served as another invention of the genius - the ball bearing.

The Florentine loved to use contrapposto, which creates the illusion of movement. Everyone who saw his sculpture of a giant horse in Corte Vecchio involuntarily changed their gait to a more relaxed one.

Leonardo was never in a hurry to finish a work, because unfinishment is an integral quality of life. Finishing means killing! The Florentine's slowness was the talk of the town; he could make two or three strokes and leave the city for many days, for example, to improve the valleys of Lombardy or to create an apparatus for walking on water. Almost every one of his significant works is “unfinished.” The master had a special composition, with the help of which he seemed to specially create “windows of incompleteness” in the finished painting. Apparently, he left a place where life itself could intervene and correct something...

He played the lyre masterfully. When Leonardo's case was heard in the Milan court, he appeared there precisely as a musician, and not as an artist or inventor.

There is a version that Leonardo da Vinci was a homosexual. While the artist was studying in Verrocchio's studio, he was accused of molesting a boy who posed for him. The court acquitted him.

According to one version, Gioconda smiles from the realization of her secret pregnancy.

According to another, the Mona Lisa was entertained by musicians and clowns while she posed for the artist.

There is another assumption, according to which, “Mona Lisa” is a self-portrait of Leonardo.

Leonardo da Vinci, apparently, did not leave a single self-portrait that could be unambiguously attributed to him. Experts doubt that Leonardo's famous self-portrait of Sanguine (traditionally dated 1512-1515), depicting him in old age, is such. It is believed that this is probably only a study of the head of the apostle for the Last Supper. Doubts that this is a self-portrait of the artist began to be expressed in the 19th century; the last one to express them was recently one of the leading experts on Leonardo da Vinci, Professor Pietro Marani.

Scientists at the University of Amsterdam and American researchers, having studied the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa using a new computer program, unraveled its composition: according to them, it contains 83 percent happiness, 9 percent disdain, 6 percent fear and 2 percent anger.

Leonardo loved water: he developed instructions for underwater diving, he invented and described a device for underwater diving, a breathing apparatus for scuba diving. All of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions formed the basis of modern underwater equipment.

Leonardo was the first of the painters to begin dismembering corpses in order to understand the location and structure of the muscles.

Observations of the Moon in the waxing crescent phase led the researcher to one of the important scientific discoveries - Leonardo da Vinci established that sunlight is reflected from our planet and returns to the moon in the form of secondary illumination.

The Florentine was ambidextrous - he was equally good with his right and left hands. He suffered from dyslexia (impaired reading ability) - this ailment, called “word blindness,” is associated with reduced brain activity in a certain area of ​​​​the left hemisphere. It is a well-known fact that Leonardo wrote in a mirror manner.

Relatively not so long ago, the Louvre spent $5.5 million to move the artist’s most famous masterpiece, La Gioconda, from the general public to a room specially equipped for it. Two-thirds of the State Hall, occupying a total area of ​​840 square meters, was allocated for La Gioconda. m. The huge room was rebuilt into a gallery, on the far wall of which the famous work of the great Leonardo now hangs. The reconstruction, which was carried out according to the design of the Peruvian architect Lorenzo Piqueras, lasted about 4 years. The decision to move the “Mona Lisa” to a separate room was made by the administration of the Louvre due to the fact that in its original place, surrounded by other paintings by Italian masters, this masterpiece was lost, and the public was forced to stand in line to see the famous painting.

2003, August - a painting by the great Leonardo worth 50 million dollars, “Madonna with a Spindle,” was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland. The masterpiece was stolen from the home of one of the richest landowners in Scotland, the Duke of Buccleuch.

It is believed that Leonardo was a vegetarian (Andrea Corsali, in a letter to Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici, compares him to an Indian who did not eat meat). The phrase often attributed to Leonardo: “If a person strives for freedom, why does he keep birds and animals in cages? .. man is truly the king of animals, because he cruelly exterminates them. We live by killing others. We are walking cemeteries! At an early age I gave up meat” is taken from the English translation of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s novel “Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci."

Leonardo da Vinci created designs for a submarine, a propeller, a tank, a loom, a ball bearing and flying cars.

While building canals, Leonardo made an observation that later entered geology under his name as a theoretical principle for recognizing the time of formation of the earth's layers. He concluded that our planet is much older than the Bible indicated.

Da Vinci's hobbies even included cooking and the art of serving. In Milan, for thirteen years, he was the manager of court feasts. He invented several culinary devices to make the work of cooks easier. Leonardo's original dish - thinly sliced ​​stewed meat with vegetables placed on top - was very popular at court feasts.

In Terry Pratchett's books there is a character whose name is Leonard, whose prototype was Leonardo da Vinci. Pratchett's Leonard writes from right to left, invents various machines, practices alchemy, paints pictures (the most famous is the portrait of Mona Ogg)

A considerable number of Leonardo's manuscripts were first published by the curator of the Ambrosian Library, Carlo Amoretti.

Italian scientists made a statement about the sensational discovery. According to them, an early self-portrait of Leonardo has been discovered. The discovery belongs to the journalist Piero Angela.

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Anchiato near the city of Vinci (hence the prefix to his surname). The boy's father and mother were not married, so Leonardo spent his first years with his mother. Soon his father, who served as a notary, took him into his family.

In 1466, da Vinci entered as an apprentice in the studio of the artist Verrocchio in Florence, where Perugino, Agnolo di Polo, Lorenzo di Credi also studied, Botticelli worked, Ghirlandaio and others visited. At this time, Leonardo became interested in drawing, sculpture and modeling, studied metallurgy, chemistry , drawing, mastered working with plaster, leather, and metal. In 1473, da Vinci qualified as a master at the Guild of St. Luke.

Early creativity and scientific activity

At the beginning of his career, Leonardo devoted almost all his time to working on paintings. In 1472 - 1477 the artist created the paintings “The Baptism of Christ”, “The Annunciation”, “Madonna with a Vase”. At the end of the 70s he completed Madonna with a Flower (Benois Madonna). In 1481, the first major work in the work of Leonardo da Vinci was created - “The Adoration of the Magi”.

In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan. Since 1487, da Vinci has been developing a flying machine that was based on bird flight. Leonardo first created a simple apparatus based on wings, and then developed an airplane mechanism with full control. However, it was not possible to bring the idea to life, since the researcher did not have a motor. In addition, Leonardo studied anatomy and architecture, and discovered botany as an independent discipline.

Mature period of creativity

In 1490, da Vinci created the painting “Lady with an Ermine”, as well as the famous drawing “Vitruvian Man”, which is sometimes called “canonical proportions”. In 1495 - 1498 Leonardo worked on one of his most important works - the fresco "The Last Supper" in Milan in the monastery of Santa Maria del Grazie.

In 1502, da Vinci entered the service of Cesare Borgia as a military engineer and architect. In 1503, the artist created the painting “Mona Lisa” (“La Gioconda”). Since 1506, Leonardo has served under King Louis XII of France.

Last years

In 1512, the artist, under the patronage of Pope Leo X, moved to Rome.

From 1513 to 1516 Leonardo da Vinci lived in the Belvedere, working on the painting “John the Baptist”. In 1516, Leonardo, at the invitation of the French king, settled in the castle of Clos Lucé. Two years before his death, the artist’s right hand became numb and it was difficult for him to move independently. Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his short biography in bed.

The great artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519 at the castle of Clos Luce near the city of Amboise in France.

Other biography options

• Leonardo was demanding and precise in all his affairs. Even when he became interested in painting, he insisted on fully studying the object before starting to draw.
• Leonardo da Vinci made a huge contribution to engineering and hydraulics; the scientist invented the bicycle, wheel lock, searchlight, catapult, etc.
• Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts are priceless. They were fully published only in the 19th and 20th centuries. In his notes, Leonardo noted not just thoughts, but supplemented them with drawings, drawings, and descriptions.
• The life of Leonardo da Vinci, whose biography was full of incredible events, is described by many famous authors - D. Merezhkovsky, V. Zubov, M. Landrus, R. Giacobbo, A. Gastev and others. Many of the books about the artist were created for children.
• see all