Life
His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's biography Vite.
Leonardo was born in Anchiano, near Vinci, Italy. He was an illegitimate
child. His father Ser Piero da Vinci was a young lawyer and his
mother, Caterina, was a peasant girl. It has been suggested that
Caterina was a Middle Eastern slave owned by Piero, but the evidence
is scant.
This was before modern naming conventions developed in Europe. Therefore,
his full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which
means "Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci". Leonardo himself
simply signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo"
("I, Leonardo"). Most authorities therefore refer to his
works as "Leonardos", not "da Vincis". Presumably
he did not use his father's name because of his illegitimate status.
Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence. He was a vegetarian
throughout his life. He became an apprentice to painter Andrea del
Verrocchio about 1466. Later, he became an independent painter in
Florence.
In 1476 he was anonymously accused of homosexual contact with a
17-year-old model, Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute. He
was charged, along with three other young men, with homosexual conduct.
However, he was acquitted because of lack of evidence. For a time
Leonardo and the others were under the watchful eye of Florence's
"Officers of the Night" — a kind of Renaissance vice squad.
That Leonardo was homosexual is generally accepted. His longest-running
relationship was with a beautiful delinquent Gian Giacomo Caprotti
da Oreno, whom he nicknamed Salai (Little Devil), who entered his
household at the age of 10. Leonardo supported Salai for twenty
five years, and he left Salai half his vineyard in his will.
From 1478 to 1499 Leonardo worked for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan
and maintained his own workshop with apprentices there. Seventy
tons of bronze that had been set aside for Leonardo's "Gran
Cavallo" horse statue were cast into weapons for the Duke in
an attempt save Milan from the French under Charles VIII in 1495
— see also Italian Wars.
When the French returned under Louis XII in 1498, Milan fell without
a fight, overthrowing Sforza. Leonardo stayed in Milan for a time,
until one morning he found French archers using his life-size clay
model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. He left
with his servant and assistant Salai (a.k.a. Gian Giacomo Caprotti)
and his friend (and inventor of double-entry bookkeeping) Luca Pacioli
for Mantua, moving on after 2 months for Venice, then moving again
to Florence at the end of April 1500.
In Florence he entered the services of Cesare Borgia (also called
"Duca Valentino" and son of Pope Alexander VI) as a military
architect and engineer. In 1506 he returned to Milan, now in the
hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries drove out the
French.
In 1507 Leonardo met a 15 year old aristocrat of great personal
beauty, Count Francesco Melzi. Melzi became his pupil, life companion,
and heir.
From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome, where painters like Raphael
and Michelangelo were active at the time; he did not have much contact
with these artists, however.
In 1515 Francis I of France retook Milan, and Leonardo was commissioned
to make a centrepiece (of a mechanical lion) for the peace talks
in Bologna between the French king and Pope Leo X, where he must
have first met the king. In 1516, he entered Francis' service, being
given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé next to the king's
residence at the Royal Chateau at Amboise, and receiving a generous
pension. The king became a close friend.
He died in Cloux, France in 1519. According to his wish, 60 beggars
followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert
in the castle of Amboise.
Leonardo had a great number of friends, some of whom were:
Fazio Cardano — mathematician, jurist
Giovanni Francesco Melzi — painter, pupil
Girolamo Melzi — Captain in Milanese militia
Giovanni Francesco Rustici
Cesare Borgia — warrior
Niccolo Machiavelli — writer
Andrea da Ferrara
Franchinus Gaffurius — music theorist, composer
Francesco Nani — Brother in the Franciscan Order in Brescia
Iacomo Andrea — architect and author
Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli — Franciscan father
Galeazzo da Sanseverino — Commanded ducal army of Milan, singer
Ginevra dei Benci
Atalante Miglioretti — singer, artist, actor
Tomasso Masini da Peretola a.k.a. Zoroastro — student of alchemy,
occultist
Benedetto Dei — writer
Art
Leonardo is well known for the masterful paintings attributed to
him, such as Last Supper (Ultima Cena or Cenacolo, in Milan), painted
in 1498, and the Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda, now at the
Louvre in Paris), painted in 1503–1506. There is significant debate
however, whether da Vinci himself painted the Mona Lisa, or whether
it was primarily the work of his students. Only seventeen of his
paintings, and none of his statues survive. Of these paintings,
only Ginevra de' Benci is in the Western Hemisphere.
Leonardo often planned grandiose paintings with many drawings and
sketches, only to leave the projects unfinished.
In 1481 he was commissioned to paint the altarpiece "The Adoration
of the Magi". After extensive, ambitious plans and many drawings,
the painting was left unfinished and Leonardo left for Milan.
He there spent many years making plans and models for a monumental
seven-metre (24-foot) high horse statue in bronze ("Gran Cavallo"),
to be erected in Milan. Because of war with France, the project
was never finished. Based on private initiative, a similar statue
was completed according to some of his plans in 1999 in New York,
given to Milan and erected there. The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland
has a small bronze horse, thought to be the work of an apprentice
from Leonardo's original design.
Back in Florence, he was commissioned for a large public mural,
the "Battle of Anghiari"; his rival Michelangelo was to
paint the opposite wall. After producing a fantastic variety of
studies in preparation for the work, he left the city, with the
mural unfinished due to technical difficulties.
List of paintings
Annunciation (1475-1480) Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Ginevra de' Benci (~1475) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC,
U.S.
The Benois Madonna (1478-1480) Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg,
Russia
The Virgin with Flowers (1478-1481) Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
Adoration of the Magi (1481) Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Cecilia Gallerani with an Ermine (1488-90) Czartoryski Museum, Krakow,
Poland
A Musician (~1490), Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy
Madonna Litta (1490-91) The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
La Belle Ferronière (1495-1498) Louvre, Paris, France
Last Supper (1498) Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
The Madonna of the Rocks (1483-86) Louvre, Paris, France
The Madonna of the Rocks aka The Virgin of the Rocks (1508) National
Gallery, London, England
Leda and the Swan (1508) Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda Louvre, Paris, France
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (~1510) Louvre, Paris, France
St. John the Baptist (~1514) Louvre, Paris, France
Bacchus (1515) Louvre, Paris, France
Science
and engineering
Perhaps even more impressive than his artistic work are his studies
in science and engineering, recorded in notebooks comprising some
13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and science.
He was left-handed and used mirror writing throughout his life.
Explainable by fact that it is easier to pull a quill pen than to
push it; by using mirror-writing, the left-handed writer is able
to pull the pen from right to left.
His approach to science was an observatory one: he tried to understand
a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and
did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations. Throughout
his life, he planned a grand encyclopedia based on detailed drawings
of everything. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics,
Leonardo the scientist was mostly ignored by contemporary scholars.
He participated in autopsies and produced many extremely detailed
anatomical drawings, planning a comprehensive work of human and
comparative anatomy. Around the year 1490, he produced a study in
his sketchbook of the Canon of Proportions as described in recently
rediscovered writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius. The study,
called the Vitruvian Man, is one of his most well-known works.
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