Leonardo da VinciA True Renaissance Man

“To develop a complete mind: Study the Science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

-Leonardo da Vinci

Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk, 1512

“Renaissance Man”Leonardo da Vinci was a master of many things. He was an accomplished painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, inventor, scientist and musician.

Unlike many other artists, Leonardo da Vinci was famous even during his lifetime. So many artists spend their lives struggling to make a name for themselves. But Da Vinci was a well known expert of many subjects and his services were often sought after. Churches and monasteries asked him to paint religious scenes, he was an engineer with the Florentine military, and he was court Painter to King Louis XII of France.

His interests spanned across many subjects including: math, geometry, physics, anatomy, botany, geography, music and theater.

He used science to search for new ideas. But, he considered art to be the most important science of all.

About the ArtistLeonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Anchiano, near Vinci Italy and died on May 2, 1519. His father, Ser Piero, was a notary. His mother, Caterina, was a peasant.

His last name is not really “da Vinci”. It refers to the area of Italy where he was born, “of Vinci”.

He lived during the Renaissance, a cultural movement that led to important developments in areas such as art and science.

He apprenticed in the workshop of Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio when he was 15 yrs. old.

At 20 yrs. old he was accepted into the painters’ guild of Florence, Italy.

Arno Landscape in ink, August 5, 1473

This is Leonardo da Vinci’s earliest known drawing.

PaintingsLeonardo da Vinci completed many paintings throughout his lifetime. His most famous religious painting is in the Dominican Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Completed in 1498, it depicts The Last Supper between Jesus and his disciples. Rather than painting a traditional fresco, a painting done very quickly on wet plaster, he chose to paint on dry plaster so that he could work more slowly and add a lot of detail. It took him three years to finish this painting. The original was beautiful, but it soon started to peel off of the wall and the painting has had several extensive restorations. The last restoration was finished in 1999 and there are almost no original portions left.

The Madonna of the Rocks

This is the title of both of these paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. The works are almost identical except for the lighting, colors, landscaped plants and some of the positions of the figures. Art Historians cannot be sure, but they believe that the painting to the left is the original and that the painting on the right was done later. The “earlier” version hangs at the Louvre in Paris and the “later” version hangs at the National Gallery in London. Both were painted around 1486.

Leonardo da Vinci worked in the style ofSfumato (pronounced sfoo·mah·toe). This style that he started is now a trademark of Renaissance art. Other painters picked up his style and it and makes their work stand out from other styles and time periods. Sfumato paintings have an almost hazy quality about them. There are no harsh outlines, the light and dark areas blend together. This look is achieved by artists building up very thin layers of paint.

Art historians and scientists have worked to uncover the secrets of paintings. Using special x-rays, they can see the many layers of a painting. Some of Leonardo’s paintings have 20-30 layers of paint! The layers each had to dry before the next one could be applied. Imagine how thin those layers are and how long it took to complete a painting!

This is an x-ray of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous paintings. Can you guess which one?

The Mona Lisa…Not just one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous pieces, but possibly the world’s most famous painting! Her Italian title is La Gioconda and though her true identity is not known she is believed to be Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant named Francesco del Giocondo.

This painting is a wonderful example of the sfumatomethod and was painted over three years. The many layers of paint give her skin a soft glow and the hazy background disappears into the distance. Nearly 40 layers of paint were used around her nose and eyes. Leonardo used not only brushes to apply the paint and but also his fingertips!

Her serious eyes and gentle smile draw in the viewer. It is said that Leonardo da Vinci invited musicians, clowns and people to read poetry into the studio to entertain Mona Lisa while he was painting her.

Have you figured out where she is looking? That’s right…no matter how you approach the painting, the mysterious Mona Lisa is always watching YOU!

The Mona Lisa, 1503-1506

Six million people visit Mona Lisa every year. She has hung in the Louvre art museum in Paris since 1804. You can see that she is enclosed in a climate controlled area and protected by bulletproof glass.

Leonardo never sold this painting. He kept it until his death, when the king of France purchased it. It remained in the hands of kings until the French Revolution and eventually Mona Lisa made her way to the museum.

Before coming to the Louvre, the painting had been the victim of many things– it had rocks thrown at it, was sprayed with acid and was even stolen! She will stay here indefinitely, where she can be protected from any effects of the environment or vandalism and she will be enjoyed by the public.

The Mona Lisa is over 500 years old and still remains a big part of our culture. Many artists or companies have copied this piece or adapted it into a piece of their own. Here are some examples of how the Mona Lisa has been used by other people…

Andy Warhol, Colored Mona Lisa, 1963

Salvador Dali, Self Portrait Mona Lisa, 1973

The “Art” of Leonardo da Vinci’s Journals

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant man eager to learn as much as possible about the world around him. He spent much of his life recording his discoveries into notebooks. He documented things both as an artist and also as a scientist. As an artist, he believed that the only way to truly paint anything well was to have studied the anatomy or structure of it first. His notebooks contain many drawings of plants, animals and people.

Leonardo took many notes alongside his drawings as he studied. His notebooks are all written in a type of “mirror writing”. He was left-handed and it was actually quicker for him to write backwards. Some people think that he may have also written like that to keep his notes and discoveries more mysterious and harder to decode by anyone who looked through his work.

Leonardo really wanted to learn about the structure of the skeleton and muscles. He examined bodies, alive and dead, to best understand how they work!

Can you tell what kinds of animals he was studying?

He was even fascinated by mythical animals like dragons!

When he was a boy, he made a toy dragon to scare the other kids. As an old man he was still being a prankster and trying to scare people…he had a pet lizard and put wings, horns and a beard on it and pretended it was a dragon!

Leonardo da Vinci was also an inventor. Some of the things he observed in nature sparked him to think about how it could apply to man. Notice how his studies of birds inspired his flying machines!

This glider model was built from sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. See how much it looks like a bird? He was ahead of his time in thinking that there may be a way to make humans fly. He used his knowledge of bird flight to apply it to human flight.

Helicopter While not all of Da Vinci’s designs actually worked when they were built, he was on the right track. And some of the technology that we use today is founded on some of the same ideas he was using hundreds of years ago.

Parachute

Crossbow A lot of his inventions were of interest to the military of his time. They wanted his designs because they were so advanced and could give them an advantage over their enemies.

Tank

Catapult

Leonardo’s inventions weren’t just helpful in keeping people safe from other people. He had a fascination with water and his understanding of mechanics proved useful when working on several civil projects. He designed a new kind of canal lock called a miter lock. Before, it took several men to operate a lock and in the coastal Italian cities where water was a part of daily life, that was hard. Da Vinci’s new miter lock operated with the strength of just one man and revolutionized how future locks were built worldwide.

Da Vinci’s study of perpetual motion helped him to design a machine to alleviate a need that he was seeing across communities. Irrigation for crops and harnessing water power was made easier once he designed the water wheel.

Boat

A group of students used his design to make a model, look how strong it is!

Self-Supporting Bridge

There is no doubt that Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most brilliant minds that the world has ever seen. His love of learning about the world around him and his pursuit of knowledge is an inspiration.

Vitruvian Man, 1487

If you’ve found his curiosity to be contagious there are countless books, websites and project kits available to teach us more about Leonardo.

And lucky for us, there happens to be an excellent opportunity right here “in our own backyard”! The Discovery Place museum in Uptown has an exhibit RIGHT NOW called Da Vinci’s Machines. This exhibit is included in your admission price to the museum and gives visitors a glimpse into the brilliant mind of Da Vinci. It features some of his artwork and models that have been made from his drawings of inventions. Part of the experience includes a chance to try building some of his inventions yourself! Catch this cool exhibit before it leaves in May!

For more information, visithttps://science.discoveryplace.org/explore/exhibitions/da-vincis-machines

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