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Leonardo da Vinci

Introduction

An Italian artist, scientist, mathematician, and engineer, da Vinci established a reputation as the most versatile genius of the Renaissance. Born on April 15, 1452, near the small Tuscan hill town of Vinci, Leonardo was the illegitimate son of the prominent Florentine notary Ser Piero da Vinci and a peasant woman known as Caterina. By 1469 his father sent Leonardo, who displayed a proclivity for the arts at an early age, to Florence, where he apprenticed at the workshop of Verrochio. Under Verrocchio's mentorship da Vinci trained both in sculpture and painting, beginning what is known as his first Florentine period. By 1478 he established his own studio in Florence (Kemp, pp. 14-18). Three years later the monks of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned Leonardo to create the altarpiece the Adoration of the Magi, but before completing the project he left for the court of Milan because the intellectual currents of Florence under Lorenzo the Magnificent focused on philosophical speculation, a spiritual system at odds with Leonardo's interest in mathematics and the applied sciences. The paper focuses on Leonardo da Vinci and discusses his style. The paper depicts the style that Leonardo wants to convey through his art and describes the impact of Renaissance on the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

Discussion

Between 1482 and 1499 Leonardo served at the court of the duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza. It was Leonardo who first initiated the contact, writing to the duke and advertising himself as a military and civil engineer. In what is known as his first Milanese period, he worked as an architect, directed court pageants, served as a building consultant, and accepted commissions for paintings. Among his first commissions in Milan was an altarpiece for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin of the Rocks. His stay at Milan also allowed him to complete the mural of the Last Supper, which he painted between 1495 and 1497.

In 1499 the French invaded Milan, interrupting Leonardo's stay. After brief stints in Mantua and Venice, he returned to Florence in 1500. For a period of 10 months he entered the service of Cesare Borgia. During this time he traveled widely throughout central Italy, producing a series of maps that quickly added to the discipline of cartography. By 1503 he returned to Florence, where he was commissioned to design one of the large murals in the council hall of Palazzo della Signoria. Incidentally, Michelangelo competed with him on the opposite wall. For his subject Leonardo chose the Battle of Anghiari. Although vehemently opposed to warfare, he depicted the brute character associated with battle on more than one occasion. Finishing the Battle of Anghiari by 1506, Leonardo began exhibition of his work when King Louis XII of France called upon him to return to Milan.

Leonardo remained in Milan from 1506 to 1513, where he served as the artistic adviser to the French governor Charles d'Amboise. Da Vinci's connection to the French government at this time provided an important ...