LEONARDO DA VINCI (1451-1519) : MAJOR PHASES OF HIS CAREER

Born illegitimate son of notary in Vinci, outside of Florence, province of Tuscany

Education: basic math, reading and writing in Italian (but didn’t learn Latin = “unlettered”)

Florentine period: to 1482

Artistic training: 1469 – 76 (ages 17-24: usual age to start apprenticeship = 13)
Apprenticed to Verrocchio, painter & sculptor with workshop in Florence

Verrocchio painting, “Baptism of Christ”: angels & landscape done by Leonardo

Lorenzo de’ Medici (ruler of Florence 1469-1492): patron of arts, commissioned

paintings of “The Annunciation,” and “The Adoration of the Magi” (unfinished)

Milan: 1482- 1499 (leaves due to French invasion of Milan in 1499)

In service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (1452-1508)

See letter of self-recommendation (posted separately): stress on engineering,

weapons design, fortifications, architecture, hydraulics (water systems); as for
sculpture and painting, “I can do any kind of work as well as any man.”

Projects: Last Supper, fresco for refectory of church of Santa Maria delle Grazie

Virgin of the Rocks: landscape background, chiaroscuro (light & dark)

Portraits of members of Sforza court; engineering & water projects

Bronze horse of Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico Sforza

plaster model finished by 1499, but used as target practice by French invaders;

never cast in bronze: too large, beyond technical capabilities of the time

Florence: 1501 –1509 returns to Florence: plan to re-route Arno River (not feasible)
(Medici expelled in 1494, republican government established 1494-1512 )
paints Battle of Anghiari for Republican govt. in Palazzo della Signoria

-                                                         “duelling frescoes” with Michelangelo, who is painting opposite wall
                 military engineering for Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI
                            and head of his father’s papal army in central Italy: maps, fortifications

Milan 1509-1513: service of French conquerors of Duchy of Milan; Leonardo hired by

Charles of Amboise, French governor, at request of French King Louis XII

Hydraulics projects: canal from Milan to Lake Como (system of locks)

Paintings: Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), Saint Anne, Bacchus

Euclid's Geometry translated for him into Italian by friend Luca Pacioli

Works on notebooks: studies in perspective, human body, optics, machines

Rome 1513-1517 Papal court of Leo X, first Medici Pope (from Florence)

Engineering work on port of Civitavecchia, reclamation of Pontine Marshes

Studies of classical mythology, sculpture, ruins in Rome; disappoints the Pope
by time on dissection of human bodies (basis for notebooks anatomical drawings)

France 1517-1519:
Called to court of new French King, Francis I at Amboise, Loire Valley

Architectural designs for royal hunting chateau at Chambord

Takes part in theatrical productions: dies in 1519 at Amboise

Manuscripts left to close friend & student Francesco Melzi

Bibliography: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 2 vols with illustrations (Dover Press)

Kenneth Clark, Leonardo Da Vinci, revised edition 1988

Serge Bramley, Leonardo: The Artist and the Man (l992)