Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (aka Leonardo da Vinci) was born was born on 15 April 1452 in, or close to, the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence. His exact birthplace is unkown. He was the son of Piero who was a Florentine legal notary and Caterina di Meo Lippi who was from the lower class. There is not much information on his childhood. His first master piece was the Codex Atlanticus. Which existed of drawings and writings on paper used for Atlases. It describes everything from flight to weaponry to musical instruments and from mathematics to botany. These studies formed the base for his later inventions. He started working at the age of 17 in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. He worked and learned there for 7 years about drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and woodwork, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting, and modelling. His first famous painting was made in collaboration with Verrocchio titled "The Baptism of Christ".
The Baptism Of Christ (1475)
By 1472 when he was 20 he was qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine. In 1478 he was commisioned to paint the altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the Florentine town hall, the Palazzo della Signoria. He became close with the Medici of Florence. By 1482 he moved from Florence to Milan where his painting career would grow. He painted The "Virgin Of The Rocks" for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and "The Last Supper" for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Leonardo travelled to Hungary to meet king Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.
By 1500 he returned to Florence. There he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack. In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. Back in Florence in 1503 Leonardo had begun working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the model for the Mona Lisa.
In the so called Dossier Secrets Leonardo Da Vinci was mentioned to be the 12th Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. An organisation to defend the origin of the official bloodline of Jesus Christ which survived in the royal kings of France: the Merovingians. The organisation followed the system of Grand Masters of the Knights Templars. But it was all fraud. The organisation started officially in 1956 by Pierre Plantard who smuggled documents into the National Library and pretended these documents were there for ages. Everthing in these documents were the creation of himself and was one big hoax.
TOP 10 INVENTIONS
Giant Crossbow
Original drawing for the Ornithopter
His inventions were based around 2 principles: To fly (like birds) and weapons.
Ornithopters (by flapping wings like a birth)
Helical air screw (the basis for a modern helicopter)
Parachute (Like we use to know)
Self-supporting bridge (invented as an emergency bridge for soldier troops)
Giant crossbow
Armoured fighting vehicle (the basis for a military tank)
Equestrian sculpture (project for a bronze horse but never completed)
Diving suits (the basis for scuba gear)
The ‘robot’ (A mechanical knight)
Mechanical lion (given as a gift to the king of France and was able to walk on its four legs and open its chest while extracting a bouquet of flowers out of it)
TOP 10 PAINTINGS
For all info on the Mona Lisa see my earlier blog post here.
Mona Lisa (1503-1519)
One of his 2 most famous works is "Last Supper" displaying a story of the new testament of the bible. There are also 3 copies of the painting by students of Da Vinci (Cesare da Sesto, Marco d'Oggiono and Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli). The original painting has the feet of Jesus Christ cut out to make space for a new door in the monastery (Santa Maria Delle Grazie) where it is displayed on the wall. The spilted salt near Judas has a meaning to the fact that he would betray Jesus and explains bad luck. Judas is also searching for his purse with money. Also it displays a very young John the Baptist or is it Mary Magdalene? Jesus in the middle forms a triangle as well as the space left to him next to John but in this case the triangle is upside down. Besides this the combination of numbers 3 and 4 are symbolic. See video for further explanation also concerning the numbers.
Part of the copy by Da Vinci's student: Marco d'Oggiono
Last Supper (1495–1498)
Annunciation was his first painting he was commisioned for. It was brought to Uffizi in 1867 from the church of San Bartolomeo a Monteoliveto, outside Porta San Frediano in Florence. It copies an invention of Verrocchio’s, the shape of the lectern, inspired by the tomb of Piero the Gouty in the church of San Lorenzo, Florence.
Annunciation (1472-1475)
The Lady With An Ermine' came into Polish hands in 1800, after it was bought by the young Prince Adam Czartoryski. Princess Izabela was not very happy and scandalous enough she would have painted the background in black because she hated the original blue background. It now hangs in the Louvre in Paris.
Lady with an Ermine (1489–1491)
This one is the last painting by Da Vinci and displays John the Baptist. He is pointing to heaven.
Saint John the Baptist (1513-1519)
Two copies exist of "The Virging Of The Rocks". Although the one in the Louvre in Paris in considered to be really painted by Leonardo. The other one in London is considered to be one of his students.
The Virgin of the Rocks (1483–1486)
The Salvator Mundi is painting disappeared from 1763 until 1900 and re-appeared at Sotheby's in England in 1958. It presents Jesus Christ holding a crystal orb in his hand. Many experts believe this painting is not by Da Vinci. Evidence shows that the Italian master had studied the science of optics. He left behind notes and diagrams on the subject. So, if he were painting a solid glass orb, Leonardo da Vinci would show the true distortion of objects behind curved glass experts say based on his studies.
The distorting of the orb is not correct in this painting experts said. But a recent study by computer scientists show that when the orb is made of hollow glass the distortion is very accurate.
Salvator Mundi (1500)
This painting of the mythological Leda and the swan appears to be lost and was seen for the last time in Château de Fontainebleau in 1625. Probably destroyed. A drawing of Da Vinci still exists as wel as this copy below probably by Francesco Melzi another student of Da Vinci.
Leda And The Swan (1503–1510)
The Vitruvian Man (1490)
The self portrait below made in red chalk on paper is not universally accepted as a real Da Vinci.
