Art

Leonardo da Vinci




  Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was one of the great Masters of the High
Renaissance, influencing Italian art for a century after his death.

  Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the small town of Vinci, near
Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and in the             mid-1460s the family resettled to Florence where he received the best education available. About 1466, he was apprenticed to the studio of
Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of the
day. In 1472 he was entered in the painters' guild of Florence but in 1476
was still mentioned as Verrocchio's assistant. The kneeling angel in the left
of Verrocchio's painting, Baptism of Christ (circa 1470), was painted by
da Vinci.

  In 1478 he became an independent master. His early work paralleled
Verrocchio's tight, rigid treatment of his figures. His first large painting, The
Adoration of the Magi, was left unfinished but was started in 1481 for the
Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, Florence. It shows a departure from
the work of his teacher. Da Vinci compositional approach moved the group
of figures to the foreground for emphasis while the battle raged as a distant
view. Other early works include Benois Madonna (c. 1478), Ginerva
de'Benci (c. 1474) and the unfinished painting, Saint Jerome (c. 1481).

  About 1482 da Vinci entered the service of the duke of Milan, serving as
the principal engineer for the duke's military enterprises. It is also probable
that during this time he had apprentices and pupils for whom he wrote the
texts which would later be compiled as Treatise on Painting. The
important paintings he produced during this Milan period were two versions
of The Virgin of the Rocks (1483-85, in the collection of the Louvre, and
1490s to 1506-08 which hangs in the National Gallery, London).

His works:

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