Today is the anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci: 500 years have passed since the death of the great genius, from whose legacy we never stop learning and who still constitutes an inexhaustible treasure today. Painter, engineer and scientist, man of genius and universal talent of the Renaissance, he fully embodies the spirit of his era, leading it to the greatest forms of expression in the most disparate fields of art and knowledge. He deals with architecture and sculpture, he was a draftsman, essayist, set designer, anatomist, musician and, in general, designer and inventor. And he is considered one of the greatest geniuses of humanity. He personified the Renaissance genius who revolutionized both the visual arts and the history of thought and science. Start
Leonardo was the eldest son of the twenty-five-year-old notary ser Piero da Vinci, from a wealthy family, and of Caterina, a woman of inferior social extraction; the result of an illegitimate relationship between the two. The news of the birth of the first grandson was noted by grandfather Antonio, father of Piero and also a notary, in an ancient fourteenth-century notary book, used as a collection of family ‘memories’, where we read: “A nephew of mine was born, the son of ser Piero my son on April 15 on Saturday at 3 am [current 10.30 pm]. He was named Lionardo. Battizzollo priest Piero di Bartolomeo da Vinci, in the presence of Papino di Nanni, Meo di Tonino, Pier di Malvolto, Nanni di Venzo, Arigo di Giovanni Tedesco, monna Lisa of Domenico di Brettone, monna Antonia di Giuliano, monna Niccolosa del Barna, monna Maria, daughter of Nanni di Venzo, monna Pippa di Previcone ». The place of birth of Leonardo is not indicated in the register, which is commonly believed to be the house that Ser Piero’s family owned, together with a farm, in Anchiano, where Leonardo’s mother will go to live. The baptism took place in the nearby parish church of Santa Croce, but both the father and the mother were absent, as they were not married. For Piero, other weddings were being prepared, while for Caterina, in 1453, a husband was sought who would gladly accept her ‘compromised’ situation, finding a peasant from Campo Zeppi, near Vinci, a certain Piero del Vaccha da Vinci, known as the Wrangler, perhaps also a mercenary like his brother Andrea. together with a farm, in Anchiano, where Leonardo’s mother will go to live. The baptism took place in the nearby parish church of Santa Croce, but both the father and the mother were absent, as they were not married. For Piero, other weddings were being prepared, while for Caterina, in 1453, a husband was sought who would gladly accept her ‘compromised’ situation, finding a peasant from Campo Zeppi, near Vinci, a certain Piero del Vaccha da Vinci, known as the Wrangler, perhaps also a mercenary like his brother Andrea. together with a farm, in Anchiano, where Leonardo’s mother will go to live. The baptism took place in the nearby parish church of Santa Croce, but both the father and the mother were absent, as they were not married. For Piero, other weddings were being prepared, while for Caterina a husband was sought, in 1453, who would gladly accept her ‘compromised’ situation, finding a peasant from Campo Zeppi, near Vinci, a certain Piero del Vaccha da Vinci, known as the Wrangler, perhaps also a mercenary like his brother Andrea.READ ALSO: 10 curiosities about Leonardo Da Vinci The
Ser Piero training had already worked in Florence and in 1462, according to Vasari, he returned with his family, including little Leonardo. His father Piero would have shown his friend Andrea del Verrocchio some drawings of this kind which would have convinced the master to take Leonardo into his workshop; in reality it is quite unlikely that an apprenticeship began at just ten years old, so that Leonardo’s entry into Verrocchio’s workshop is now considered a later date.
In fact, it is thought that Leonardo remained in the countryside in his grandparents’ house, where his education took place, which was rather disorderly and discontinuous, without any background planning, by his grandfather Antonio, his uncle Francesco and the priest Piero who had baptized him. In fact, the child learns to write with the left hand and upside down, in a completely mirror image of normal writing. Vasari remember how the boy in the study began “many things […] and then abandoned it”, and unable to start him on a legal career by now, his father decided to introduce him to the knowledge of the abacus, even if “constantly raising doubts and it was difficult for the teacher who taught him, well [that] he often confused him ». The grandfather died ninety-six in 1468, citing in the inheritance ‘Lionardo’, together with his grandmother Lucia, his father Piero, to the new stepmother Francesca Lanfredini, and to her uncles Francesco and Alessandra. The following year his father’s family, who became notary of the Florentine Signoria, together with that of his uncle Francesco, who was enrolled in the Silk Art, was domiciled in a Florentine house, demolished already in the sixteenth century, in the current Via dei Gondi, next to Piazza della Signoria.DISCOVER AND BUY THE ART TOY DEDICATED TO LEONARDO DA VINCI! The workshop in Florence
As the interest of the young Leonardo in ‘drawing and making relief, as things that went to his imagination more than any other’, Ser Piero finally sent his son, from 1469 or 1470, to the workshop by Andrea del Verrocchio, who in those years was one of the most important in Florence, as well as a real forge of new talents. Among the students there were names who would become the great masters of the next generation, such as Sandro Botticelli, Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Lorenzo di Credi, and the workshop carried out a multifaceted activity, from painting to various sculptural techniques (on stone, wax casting lost and wooden carving), up to the ‘minor’ arts. Above all, the practice of drawing was stimulated, leading all collaborators to an almost common language, so much so that even today it can be very difficult to attribute the works that came out of the workshop to the hand of the master or to a specific pupil. Various examples are known of drapery designs that came out of his workshop, which derive from exercises that the master had done by copying the folds of fabrics arranged on earth models. In addition, the students learned notions of carpentry, mechanics, engineering and architecture.Independent Milan
since 1478, in 1482-83 he was in Milan at the court of Ludovico il Moro, sent there, according to some sources, as musician by Lorenzo the Magnificent; but in one of his letters to the Moor, Leonardo declared himself capable of inventing and building war devices, of designing works of architecture, of casting in bronze and sculpting, of painting. In Milan he carried out an intense activity as a painter, working on a monument for Francesco Sforza, setting up decorations for parties and was a set designer, military engineer, consulted for architectural problems. This period was the most fruitful of fully completed works and of other resumes later. In particular, Leonardo was able to deepen his scientific studies and undertake new ones, in the field of both physics and natural sciences.DISCOVER AND BUY THE SKIRA SHOPPER INSPIRED BY THE WORKS OF LEONARDO!
The defeat of Ludovico il Moro (March 16, 1500) forced Leonardo to leave Milan. Together with the mathematician Luca Pacioli, of whom he was a great friend, and his pupil Salai, Leonardo left for Venice, stopping on the way to Mantua at the court of Isabella d’Este, where he was welcomed with great favor and received requests for paintings. (I then draw a portrait of Isabella d’Este). In April 1500 I left Venice, where he had completed his studies for defensive preparations, and returned to Florence, where, according to what a contemporary reports, he led a ‘varied and strong indeterminate life, which seemed to live for the day’; he devoted himself to painting (Sant’Anna, the Virgin and Child), but more often he gave ‘strong work to geometry, very impacient to the brush’. At that time he had already received commissions from the King of France Louis XII.
From May 1502 to May 1503 Leonardo was far from Florence, almost always in the service of Duke Valentino (Cesare Borgia), in turn in close relationship with Louis XII. A safe conduct by Valentino declares Leonardo ‘Architect and General Engineer’; various notes by Leonardo from this period remind us of his travels to Urbino, Rimini, Cesena, Pesaro, Cesenatico and other cities in the Marches and Romagna, where he studies ports, problems of hydraulics, fortifications. Leonardo’s very original contributions to cartography, relief and description of places belong to this period. Studies and the battle of Anghiari
Returning to Florence, for Soderini, he still deals with painting, military matters, and canalizations, for both peaceful and military purposes (some daring and utopian projects are nevertheless impressive for the clarity of the design), and begins to study flight. of birds and the laws of hydrology; he arranges his notes according to what is increasingly more precise as an overall vision, in a highly original conception of the ‘first forces’ active in nature.
Embittered by the unhappy outcome of the large mural painting of the Battle of Anghiari, by the frustration of his engineering projects, by the incomprehension of Florentine artists and patrons towards his labor as a researcher, Leonardo in 1505 and again in Milan , protected by Louis XII. However, he was in Florence in March 1508, only to be in Milan again in September of the same year, intent on studying lock systems and navigable canals. From some drawings it seems that Leonardo followed Louis XII to Brescia at the time of the battle of Agnadello (May 14, 1509), studying the hydrography of the region. He remained in Milan in the service of the French lieutenant Carlo d’Amboise, for whom he designed a palace and a chapel (S. Maria alla Fontana). The studies for the equestrian monument to GG date back to this period Trivulzio. Studies on river navigation are important; in anatomical research he collaborates with Marcantonio della Torre; he studies botany.In Rome
In December 1512, the return of Massimiliano Sforza to Milan forced Leonardo to take refuge in Vaprio with his most faithful disciple Francesco Melzi, until in 1513 he was called to Rome by Giuliano de ‘Medici. But in Rome Leonardo saw himself excluded from the great works of the time: the projects for St. Peter’s and the decoration of the Vatican; the treatise De vocie which he had composed was taken away from him; hampered in his research of anatomy, I continue to deal with mathematical and scientific studies. In his notes we read: ‘The Medici created me and I de-Russian’. In France and in recent years
But Leonardo had not cut off relations with France, as evidenced by one of his notes, and in 1517 he took refuge with Francis I, who gave him residence in the castle of Cloux near Amboise and gave him an annual pension as’ premier peintre, architecte et mechanicien du roi ‘. Leonardo had with him some paintings, some begun previously in Florence, an ‘infinity of volumes’ of notes and, although prevented by paralysis in his right hand, he was passionately awaiting studies of anatomy, also dedicating himself to architecture (project for the castle and the park of Romorantin) and to apparatuses of parties. Impressive testimonies of this last period are the drawings in which the end of the world is imagined, a fantastic event in which the forces of nature investigated by Leonardo operate with logical coherence and with terrifying beauty.
On April 29, 1519 he made his will; he died three days later, on May 2nd.