Leonardo da Vinci - "The Last Supper" & "Mona Lisa" - A Genius of Global Art (et al)

Leonardo da Vinci –“The Last Supper”  &  “Mona Lisa”  -        A Genius of Global Art (et al)    
 

Leonardo da Vinci 

Artist, Mathematician, Inventor, Writer (1452–1519)

Leonardo da Vinci was a leading artist and intellectual of the Italian Renaissance who's known for his enduring works "The Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa."

Da Vinci has been called a genius and the archetypal Renaissance man.  His full name being Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci.  Da Vinci was an Italian polymath. A polymath (Greek: polymathēs, "having learned much") is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

                         -   Leonardo da Vinci

Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portraits and religious paintings of all time.

'The Last Supper'

 

In 1482, Lorenzo de' Medici, a man from a prominent Italian family, commissioned da Vinci to create a silver lyre and bring it to Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan, as a gesture of peace. Da Vinci did so and then wrote Ludovico a letter describing how his engineering and artistic talents would be of great service to Ludovico's court. His letter successfully endeared him to Ludovico, and from 1482 until 1499, Leonardo was commissioned to work on a great many projects. It was during this time that Da Vinci painted "The Last Supper”.

'Mona Lisa'

 

Da Vinci's most well-known painting, and arguably the most famous painting in the world, the "Mona Lisa," was a privately commissioned work and was completed sometime between 1505 and 1507.  Today, the "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, secured behind bulletproof glass, and is regarded as a priceless national treasure.

Biography   -

Born on April 15, 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of  Vinci, Italy, in the valley of the Arno  river in the territory of Florence.  Born as the illegitimate son of a notary and landlord , Piero da Vinci, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo da Vinci was concerned with the laws of science and nature, which greatly informed his work as an artist,  painter, sculptor, architect , musician, engineer, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist,  inventor, mathematician, draftsman and writer. His ideas and body of work—which includes "Virgin of the Rocks," "The Last Supper," "Leda and the Swan", “Lady with an Ermine” and "Mona Lisa"—have influenced countless artists and made Da Vinci a leading light of the Italian Renaissance.

“He who does not value life does not deserve it.”

-           Leonardo da Vinci

Born out of wedlock, the love child of a respected notary and a young peasant woman, he was raised by his father, Ser Piero, and his stepmothers. At the age of 14, da Vinci began apprenticing with the artist Verrocchio. Verrocchio's workshop was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather arts, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modeling. By the age of 20, he had qualified as a master artist in the Guild of Saint Luke and established his own workshop.

Florentine court records show that Da Vinci was charged with a case of sodomy at the age of 22 and acquitted.

His work for Ludovico included floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor. Leonardo modeled a huge horse in clay, which became known as the "Gran Cavallo", and surpassed in size the two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the model was completed, and Leonardo was making detailed plans for its casting. Michelangelo rudely implied that Leonardo was unable to cast it. In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannons to defend the city from invasion by Charles VIII.

In 1506 he returned to Milan. Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Botticelli and Marco D'Oggione. However, he did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 he was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.

According to Vasari the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus’ robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again. On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint, the landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.

Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio, including the bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the Archangel Michael in Tobias and the Angel.

Da Vinci,  like many leaders of Renaissance humanism did not see a divide between science and art.  His observations and inventions were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, including designs for flying machines  (some 400 years before the Wright brothers' first success), plant studies, war machinery, anatomy and architecture.

As an artist, Leonardo also closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage.  Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.

                      
As an engineer, Leonardo's ideas were vastly ahead of his time. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.

As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Leonardo designed an armored car, a scythed chariot, a pile driver, a revolving crane, a lagoon dredge, and a flying ship.

He crushed intelligent design before anyone even thought of it: His studies of river erosion convinced him that the Earth is much older than the Bible implies, and he argued that falling sea levels—not Noah's Flood—left marine fossils on mountains.

         Vitruvian Man                                                                     Fetus                              

           

Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic.    

      

He has also drawn the picture of a fetus in the womb and the other anatomy drawings which was hitherto unknown to the world. 

In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé near the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, supported by a pension totaling 10,000 scudi.

One of da Vinci's last commissioned works was a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest to reveal a bouquet of lilies.

Clos Luce Home Leanardo died


He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home given to him by King François I.

Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

Vasari, the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament.

The famous artist died in Amboise, France, aged 67 on May 2, 1519.

Da Vinci’s friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects.

Fifteen of his works together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivaled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

                                                         





                                            

                      
                   

Leda with Swan                                                                                                                                                                                                               Virgin of the rocks  

        

Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, François was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."

"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”

-          Leonardo da Vinci

                            Codex

Bill Gates bought  Da Vinci’s the Codex Leicester in 1995 for $30 million. This manuscript, the only one not held in Europe, includes Da Vinci's studies on hydraulics and the movement of water.

MICHAEL   ANGELO     -

(March 6, 1475 - February 18, 1564)

In fact, Michaelangelo deserves a separate Blog post about his life and times and his work. I am making an attempt to highlight his master piece in this post itself.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, writer and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.  

Michaelangelo  was Da Vinci’s contemporary artist and rival. 

Michelangelo is widely regarded as the most famous artist of the Italian Renaissance. Among his works are the "David" and "Pieta" statues and the Sistine Chapel frescoes. 

Michelangelo's father realized early on that his son had no interest in the family financial business, so agreed to apprentice him, at the age of 13, to the fashionable Florentine painter's workshop. There, Michelangelo was exposed to the technique of fresco –  a painting done rapidly in water color on wet plaster on a ceiling, so that the colors penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries.

Michelangelo's distinctive style was  muscular precision and reality combined with almost lyrical beauty.

Prominent books and works of  Michaelangelo  are -

                        

                                     
                            

        

                                                               

                      

      Pieta                                                    Adam                                                                 David

Michelangelo's "Pieta," a sculpture of Mary holding the dead Jesus across her lap adorns  prominence at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.  Today, the "Pieta" remains an incredibly revered work.

Michelangelo had become something of an art star after ’Pieta’.    Michaelangelo’s  David  the 17-foot piece of marble was  a dominating figure. The strength of the statue's sinews, vulnerability of its nakedness, humanity of expression and overall courage made the "David" a prized representative of the city of Florence.

Ceiling of the Sistine Chappel -

The project fueled Michelangelo’s imagination, and the original plan for 12 apostles morphed into more than 300 figures on the ceiling of the sacred space.  Michelangelo completed the 65-foot ceiling alone, spending endless hours on his back and guarding the project jealously until revealing the finished work, on October 31, 1512.

Michelangelo's crowning glory came when he was made chief architect of St. Peter's Basilica in 1546.

Pablo   Piccasso  -

(October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973)

  
While discussing Da Vinci and Michaelangelo, I thought it is apt to mention a modern era’s artist of great stature and relevance, Pablo Picasso.  Spanish expatriate Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, as well as the co-creator of Cubism.

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France.

Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that contributed significantly to—and paralleled the entire development of—modern art in the 20th century.

His father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and art teacher and mother was Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez.

When he was 14 years of age Picasso enrolled in city's prestigious School of Fine Arts.  Picasso chafed at the School of Fine Arts' strict rules and formalities, and began skipping class so that he could roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed. In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando.  Picasso made his decisive break from the classical methods in which he had been trained, and began what would become a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.

Art critics and historians typically break Picasso's adult career into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to 1904 and is called his "Blue Period," after the color that dominated nearly all of Picasso's paintings over these years.  Picasso's most famous paintings from the Blue Period include "Blue Nude," "La Vie" and "The Old Guitarist," all three of which were completed in 1903.

The artistic manifestation of Picasso's improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors—including beiges, pinks and reds—in what is known as his "Rose Period" (1904-06). His most famous paintings from these years include "Family at Saltimbanques" (1905), "Gertrude Stein" (1905-06) and "Two Nudes" (1906).

In 1907, Pablo Picasso produced a painting unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before, a work that would profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," a chilling depiction of five nude prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays. Today, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism, an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and his friend and fellow painter, Georges Braque.

Cubism is a picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality merely as a means and not as an end.

Picasso's early Cubist paintings, known as his "Analytic Cubist" works, include "Three Women" (1907), "Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table" (1909) and "Girl with Mandolin" (1910). His later Cubist works are distinguished as "Synthetic Cubism" for moving even further away from artistic typicalities of the time, creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny, individual fragments. These paintings include "Still Life with Chair Caning" (1912), "Card Player" (1913-14) and "Three Musicians" (1921).

His works between 1918 and 1927 are categorized as part of his "Classical Period," a brief return to Realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. His most interesting and important works from this period include "Three Women at the Spring" (1921), "Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race" (1922) and "The Pipes of Pan" (1923).

From 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement known as Surrealism, the artistic manifestation of which was a product of his own Cubism.

Guernica the master piece of Pablo Picasso –

Picasso's most well-known Surrealist painting, deemed one of the greatest paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. After German bombers supporting Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces carried out a devastating aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, Picasso, outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, painted "Guernica." Painted in black, white and grays, the work is a Surrealist testament to the horrors of war, and features a minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish and terror. "Guernica" remains one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history.

An incorrigible womanizer, Picasso had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes during his lifetime, marrying only twice. He wed a ballerina named Olga Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years, parting ways in 1927. In 1961, at the age of 69, he married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque.

Between marriages, in 1935, Picasso met Dora Maar, a fellow artist, on the set of Jean Renoir's film Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (released in 1936). The two soon embarked upon a partnership that was both romantic and professional. Their relationship lasted more than a decade, during and after which time Maar struggled with depression; they parted ways in 1946, three years after Picasso began having an affair with a woman named Françoise Gilot.

Picasso fathered four children: Paul, Maya, Claude and Paloma.

Leonardo da Vinci was an all time genius of art and a great Italian polymath.  “Mona Lisa” is the world’s number one painting so far.  Da Vinci’s contribution to High Renaissance and Pastel Art is invaluable.

"The Da Vinci Code", the page turner novel of American Author Dan Brown is now quite famous, especially in India.   The novel had created a heated argument and controversy and remains unpopular with a large section of global society.   After all it is a  work of fiction and does not merit  any debate.

Leonardo's biographer Vasari wrote in the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvelously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.

Leonardo’s is an awe-inspiring story. Let the amazing Leonardo Da Vinci remain as the world’s most popular Genius of Art and multifaceted persona.