Leonardo da Vinci - The true renaissance man

The word Renaissance comes from the french word for rebirth.

The awakening was when the ideas of ancient greece and rome were brought back by the artists, philosophers and scientists of the day.

Leonardo da Vinci was an expert in painting, sculping, music, science, architecture and engineering

A true Renaissance man meant that they excelled at everything they tried.

Born in 1452 in the small village of vinci near florence. His name da vinci means from vinci.

-As a young man he found himself constantly observing and drawing everything he saw

As a teenager, he was brought to florence to be an apprentice under renaissance master Verrocchio.

He could never properly draw something until he fully understood how it worked and how the parts went together.

He was inspired by the massive dome of the florence cathedral designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.

At the age of 21 he had the opportunity to paint an angel as part of a large painting called the baptism of christ.

After he was trained he went to work in Milan for the ruler Ludovico Sforza

At the age of 24 he decided to set off on his own and set up his own studio in Florence

Leonardo da Vinci promised to design weapons to defeat the duke of Milan’s enemies in the end the Duke of Milan asked him to set up pagents and festivals which he did including designing costumes and elaborate pulleys and machines for theatre shows and behind the scene work.

In his time he designed many weapons and machines that closely resemble modern weapons that were developed centuaries later such as a tank, and a machine gun.

Although he designed many weapons he was a pacifist meaning he hated the thought of war and violence.

His curiosity meant that he left many of his projects and sketches unfinished.

He dissected many bodies, more than 30 of men and women of different ages and then made detailed drawings of their muscle, bone and organ structures.He had a special intersest in anatomy.

He was always very inspired by nature and used a shape of a fish to design the hull of a ship.

He made many detailed sketches of inventions but there wasnt the technology around in his time to actually build them. Many were invented many centuaries later by other people. He was the first person to invent a version of a modern submarine.

He made very detailed maps with detailed information about hills and valleys that were many years ahead of his time a modern geographer would call them modern relief maps.

He was one of the first people to draw anything from a birds eye view.

He had a very unusual system of writing which involved writing in reverse/in mirror - this may have been to keep his ideas a secret or simply because he was left handed and didn’t want to smudge the ink as he wrote.

At the age of 64 in 1516 he went to France to work for King Francis the first who offered him a well paid job and an estate.

Over 5000 pages of his notebooks (codex) survived

He painted the last supper in Milan between 1495 and 1498. It was painted on the dining room of a monastry in Milan . Usually artists did wall paintings as frescos where its done on wet plaster. Leonardo wanted to do an experiment he used oil tempera on stone. Very soon it began to peel. later artists covered his origanal work.

He painted the Mona Lisa in Florence between1503 and 1519. She was the wife of a rich merchant. He used a method of painting called sfumato which is a technique using fine shadowing to create a gradual change between colours making it more realistic and adding depth.