Biography of Leonardo da Vinci

(1452/04/15 - 1519/05/02)

Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine artist

He was born April 15, 1452 in Vinci, in the Valley of the Arno River, Tuscany, territory of the Republic of Florence and the Medici.
Illegitimate and firstborn son of the notary Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci and Caterina, a peasant woman. His baptism took place in the nearby Parish Church of Santa Croce, but both the father and the mother did not attend the not being married. Leonardo had no surname in the current sense, and "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Lionardo di be Piero da Vinci". The inclusion of the title of 'being' indicates that his father was a gentleman. His mother found a husband who accepted his "committed" situation. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano at home of his mother, and from 1457, at home from his father and grandparents. In 1452, his father Piero had married Albiera Giovanni Amadori, which had no children.
In 1460 he moved to Florence, where it was formed. Her stepmother died in 1464, when the family was already living in Florence, and was buried in San Biagio. Be Piero married three times over: in 1464, with Francesca di be Giuliano Lanfredini, who also died childless; with Margherita di Francesco di Jacopo di Guglielmo, in 1475, which finally gave him six children; He had six others with his fourth and last marriage. Leonardo had thus twelve half-brothers and half-sisters, all much younger than he (the last was born when Leonardo was forty years), and those who did not have much to do but large number of problems by the inheritance from his father.
Around 1466 attended the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, which starts in various activities, from the painting of altarpieces, and tables, to the development of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze. In 1472 he was admitted to the Guild of painters in Florence, and 1476 still refers to him as an Assistant of Verrocchio, in whose work the baptism of Christ (c. 1470, Uffizi, Florence), painted the angel kneeling on the left and the landscape of Leonardo shades. His first assignment was an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the City Council Florentine although it did not run.
Masterpiece, the adoration of the Magi (Uffizi), which left unfinished, commissioned its first are the monks of San Donato de Scopeto near Florence, to 1481. Other works of this period are: the Madonna Benois (c. 1478, Hermitage, Petersburgo), the portrait of Geneva from Benci (c. 1474, National Gallery, Washington), and the unfinished Saint Jerome (c. 1481, Pinacoteca Vaticana). In 1482, is placed at the service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, after having written a letter in which the artist was offered as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, inventor and hydraulic and where he claimed that he could build portable bridges, who knew the techniques to carry out bombing and Cannon, which could make boats as well as armoured vehicles, catapults and other machines of war and that could even be sculptures in marble Bronze and terracotta. He helped the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in his celebrated work divina proportione (1509). The most important work of the period in Milan are the two versions of the Virgin of the rocks (1483-1485, Louvre, Paris; 1490 decade - 1506-1508, National Gallery, London), where he applied the triangular compositional diagram enclosing the Virgin, child, St. John and the angel, and where the sfumatotechnique applied for the first time. From 1495 to 1497 works in his masterpiece the last supper, mural painting for the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. In addition, he has other paintings, drawings and models for the dome of the Cathedral of Milan. His largest Commission was bronze equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovicofather colossal size, for its location in the courtyard of the Castle Sforzesco. However, in December 1499, the Sforza family was expelled from Milan by French troops. The statue was unfinished and was destroyed by French archers who used it as a target.
In 1500 he returned to Florence. In 1502 he began to serve Caesar Borgia, Duke of Romagna, son of Pope Alexander VI. As architect and engineer of the Duke, he oversaw the works on the strengths of the Papal territories from the center of Italy. In 1503 was a member of the Commission of artists responsible for deciding on the appropriate location of the David of Michelangelo (1501-1504, Academy, Florence), and also served as engineer in the war against Pisa. At the end of this year it started to plan the decoration for the great Hall of the Palace of the Signoria with the subject of the battle of Anghiari. He made numerous drawings and completed a carton in 1505, but never came to make the painting on the wall. The carton was destroyed in the 17TH century. During his second Florentine period, he made several portraits, of which only the La Gioconda (1503-1506, Louvre, Paris), has been preserved also known as Monna Lisa. It seems that he felt a great fondness for this work since it took her with them on their journeys. The Mona Lisa, known as la Gioconda, that enigmatic face woman, actually existed: was Lisa Gherardini, second wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a wealthy Florentine silk merchant, according to the Florentine historian Giuseppe Pallanti, who concluded that the figure painted by Leonardo between 1503 and 1506 was real.
In 1506 he returned to Milan in the service of the French Governor Carlos II Chaumont, Amboise Marshal. A year later appointed him court painter of Louis XII of France, who resided at that time in the Italian city. During the following six years he spent his time between Milan and Florence. This time appears to be the second version of the Virgin of the rocks and Santa Ana, the Virgin and child (c. 1506-1513, Louvre, Paris). From 1514 to 1516 Leonardo lived in Rome under the patronage of Giuliano de Medici, brother of Pope Leo X. It is housed in the Belvedere Palace in the Vatican, focusing mainly on scientific and technical experiments.
Sublime painter, sculptor, engineer of cutting-edge, original inventor, musician, innovative architect, strategist bold, eccentric writer, demanding teacher... is considered one of the greatest geniuses of mankind. In the scientific part interest in anatomical studies of the human body, can be based on post-mortems of the bodies that carried out, while this practice was prohibited in the 15th century. It is believed that he could dissect some thirty bodies that drew much of the body's organs with detail and clarity.
Leonardo da Vinci was strictly vegetarian, called omnivores "devourers of corpses". It seems that it never had a relationship with women except for his friendship with Cecilia Gallerani. It kept a secret private life. In Florence, when Leonardo was an apprentice of Verrochio, has filed a complaint against the painter accusing him of pederast. Its guards got it fended off the public trial. His sexuality has been the subject of controversy and it seems that he had intimate relationships with his pupils Salai and Melzi. In 1476, Leonardo and the other three young men were charged with sodomy, although the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. In any case, Leonardo remained unmarried and childless.
In 1516 he went to live in France, to the Court of François I, where he spent his last years in the castle of Cloux, near Amboise.
On April 23, 1519, wrote Testament notary Guglielmo Boreau, expressing his desire to be buried in the Church of Saint-Florentin, with a ceremony funeral accompanied by chaplains and Friars Minor, as well as sixty poor people, each with a torch. Leonardo died on 2 may of the same year in Amboise, Kingdom of France. He was buried in the cloister of the Church of Saint-Florentin in Amboise. Fifty years later, the tomb was violated and his remains were scattered during the religious struggle between Catholics and Huguenots.