Art is never finished, only abandoned.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) was not just a painter, but also an inventor, military engineer, sculptor, illustrator, architect, and scientist. His talents were extraordinary, yet he left many paintings unfinished, and never published his journals. He was born in Italy, Florence.
Curiosity was constant in Leonardo’s entire life. It led him through the years, all incorporating in an uninterrupted stream of research, study and experiments. The unique synthesis of science, art and technology made Leonardo da Vinci a symbol of the Italian Renaissance.
In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio whose workshop was “one of the finest in Florence”. Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli. Leonardo would have been exposed to both theoretical training and a vast range of technical skills including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling. New ideas in painting were rising up in Florence around this time, as the Renaissance was blossoming. Oil painting had just been introduced to Italy from northern Europe, and Leonardo spent a lot of time mixing different materials, and soon surpassed everyone in his use of the new medium. Leonardo also brought new perspective and depth to painting, as he used his skills in math and geometry to calculate the placement of lines in his drawings and paintings. And perhaps foremost to the new Rensaissance art was Leonardo’s passion to draw things as realistically as possible. He sketched incessantly and was an ardent observer of nature, animals, plants, people.
Later his career flourished. He was called to work in Milan, Venice, Rome and even France by King Francois I.
Leonardo was fascinated by technology and the workings of machines. He invented fire throwers and missiles, and made an early design for a machine gun. Hundreds of inventions were sketched out in his notebooks – tanks, helicopters, bicycles, submarines, hang gliders, pulleys, cranes, bridges and more.
Anatomy was another passion of Leonardo da Vinci. First he became interested in anatomic art when he was asked by a Veronese anatomist named Marc Antonia Della Torre to do the illustrations for a text of anatomy. Della Torre was to do the dissecting and Leonardo the drawings. But Della Torre died unexpectedly. Then Leonardo assumed both tasks. He dissected and drew more than 10 human bodies in the cathedral cellar of the mortuary of Santa Spirito under the secrecy of candlelight, necessitated by the Church’s belief in the sanctity of the human body and a papal decree that forbade human dissection. Leonardo recognized that a scientific knowledge of human anatomy could only be gained by dissecting the human body. He went to hospitals to watch operations and visited morgues to dissect bodies of the dead. He measured muscles, diagrammed organs, discovered the way blood flows through the body, and made important conclusions about lungs and oxygen. His knowledge surpassed the doctors of his time. Leonardo applied this deep understanding of the human body to his art, and excelled in drawing proportional anatomy.
Later in life Leonardo da Vinci settled in the Loire valley, France and became First Painter and Architect and Engineer of the King. Leonardo and King François I closely communicated discussing philosophy, art, science. Though now paralyzed in one arm, Leonardo could still draw and supervise the work of his pupils.
