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Leonardo da Vinci was born on  April 15th, 1452 --  He was born in Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence, which is in Italy.

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Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2nd, 1519 -- in Cloux France.

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He had divorced parents. His mothers name was Caterina and his fathers name was Ser Piero. He wasn't married and didn't have any kids. Leonardo da Vinci was mentored by his dad before he went professional.

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Leonardo da Vinci did many things he was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor,architect, and engineer. He was very good at all of these subjects and used them very well. He had famous paintings, sculptures and invented many things.

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Leonardo da vinci had one big powerful ally, this was the Duke of Milan to the King of France. Leonardo worked with him for a long time. the Duke of Milan to the King of France supported Leonardo till the time that he left.

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Leonardo was supported by many wealthy patrons, one being Isabella d’Este paid Leonardo to do paintings and sculptures. Another on being  the Duke of Milan to the King of France. The Duke of Milan to the King of France, was a powerful ally and a wealthy patron because of the things that he did for Leonardo.

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I don't know what class he was in, but he surrounded himself with rich people. And by doing this he ended up having powerful allies and made money.

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Leonardo da vinci's mentor was his father. His father got him a workshop and worked with him for a while before he went off on his own.

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Leonardo had a big impact today. He made many inventions including a tank, helicopter, parachute, and more. He made maps of lots of different places as well. He also studied math and reading. Leonardo has impacted us now in a huge way and will have a big impact in the future because of all the things he has done.

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Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance Man. He was well rounded and focused on many things. He could do a lot of things very well. He focused on Sculpting, painting, architecting, and engineering. He also studied math and reading.

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One of Leonardo's accomplishments was the Mona Lisa. This painting set the standard for all future paintings.

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Another one of his accomplishments was his anatomical studies. He studied the human body and drew it in his notebook. He used this to make sculptures.

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Another one of his accomplishments was his science inquiries. He wrote down all of the math and science in his notebook and invented many things. This included the helicopter, the parachute, and the tank.

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Leonardo da Vinci - Paintings, Inventions & Quotes

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Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance artist and engineer, known for paintings like “The Last Supper” and “Mona Lisa,” and for inventions like a flying machine.

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Table of Contents

What is Leonardo da Vinci best known for?

How many Leonardo da Vinci paintings are there?

What was Leonardo da Vinci's personality like?

What was Leonardo da Vinci's family like?

Who was Leonardo apprenticed to?

Leonardo da Vinci, (Italian: "Leonardo from Vinci") (born April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence [Italy]-died May 2, 1519, Cloux [now Clos-Lucé], France), Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper (1495-98) and Mona Lisa (c. 1503-19) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time.

The unique fame that Leonardo enjoyed in his lifetime and that, filtered by historical criticism, has remained undimmed to the present day rests largely on his unlimited desire for knowledge, which guided all his thinking and behaviour. An artist by disposition and endowment, he considered his eyes to be his main avenue to knowledge; to Leonardo, sight was man's highest sense because it alone conveyed the facts of experience immediately, correctly, and with certainty. Hence, every phenomenon perceived became an object of knowledge, and saper vedere ("knowing how to see") became the great theme of his studies. He applied his creativity to every realm in which graphic representation is used: he was a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. But he went even beyond that. He used his superb intellect, unusual powers of observation, and mastery of the art of drawing to study nature itself, a line of inquiry that allowed his dual pursuits of art and science to flourish.

Life and works

Early period: Florence

Leonardo's parents were unmarried at the time of his birth. His father, Ser Piero, was a Florentine notary and landlord, and his mother, Caterina, was a young peasant woman who shortly thereafter married an artisan. Leonardo grew up on his father's family's estate, where he was treated as a "legitimate" son and received the usual elementary education of that day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Leonardo did not seriously study Latin, the key language of traditional learning, until much later, when he acquired a working knowledge of it on his own. He also did not apply himself to higher mathematics-advanced geometry and arithmetic-until he was 30 years old, when he began to study it with diligent tenacity.

Leonardo's artistic inclinations must have appeared early. When he was about 15, his father, who enjoyed a high reputation in the Florence community, apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio. In Verrocchio's renowned workshop Leonardo received a multifaceted training that included painting and sculpture as well as the technical-mechanical arts. He also worked in the next-door workshop of artist Antonio Pollaiuolo. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters' guild of Florence, but he remained in his teacher's workshop for five more years, after which time he worked independently in Florence until 1481. There are a great many superb extant pen and pencil drawings from this period, including many technical sketches-for example, pumps, military weapons, mechanical apparatus-that offer evidence of Leonardo's interest in and knowledge of technical matters even at the outset of his career.

First Milanese period (1482-99)

In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan to work in the service of the city's duke-a surprising step when one realizes that the 30-year-old artist had just received his first substantial commissions from his native city of Florence: the unfinished panel painting Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria, which was never begun. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. It may have been that the rather sophisticated spirit of Neoplatonism prevailing in the Florence of the Medici went against the grain of Leonardo's experience-oriented mind and that the more strict, academic atmosphere of Milan attracted him. Moreover, he was no doubt enticed by Duke Ludovico Sforza 's brilliant court and the meaningful projects awaiting him there.

Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan, until Ludovico's fall from power in 1499. He was listed in the register of the royal household as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis ("painter and engineer of the duke"). Leonardo's gracious but reserved personality and elegant bearing were well-received in court circles. Highly esteemed, he was constantly kept busy as a painter and sculptor and as a designer of court festivals. He was also frequently consulted as a technical adviser in the fields of architecture, fortifications, and military matters, and he served as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer. As he would throughout his life, Leonardo set boundless goals for himself; if one traces the outlines of his work for this period, or for his life as a whole, one is tempted to call it a grandiose "unfinished symphony."

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As a painter, Leonardo completed six works in the 17 years in Milan. (According to contemporary sources, Leonardo was commissioned to create three more pictures, but these works have since disappeared or were never done.) From about 1483 to 1486, he worked on the altar painting The Virgin of the Rocks, a project that led to 10 years of litigation between the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, which commissioned it, and Leonardo; for uncertain purposes, this legal dispute led Leonardo to create another version of the work in about 1508. During this first Milanese period he also made one of his most famous works, the monumental wall painting Last Supper (1495-98) in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie (for more analysis of this work, see below Last Supper). Also of note is the decorative ceiling painting (1498) he made for the Sala delle Asse in the Milan Castello Sforzesco.

During this period Leonardo worked on a grandiose sculptural project that seems to have been the real reason he was invited to Milan: a monumental equestrian statue in bronze to be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. Leonardo devoted 12 years-with interruptions-to this task. In 1493 the clay model of the horse was put on public display on the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Maximilian to Bianca Maria Sforza, and preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to be 16 feet (5 metres) high. But, because of the imminent danger of war, the metal, ready to be poured, was used to make cannons instead, causing the project to come to a halt. Ludovico's fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was perhaps the grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. The ensuing war left the clay model a heap of ruins.

As a master artist, Leonardo maintained an extensive workshop in Milan, employing apprentices and students. Among Leonardo's pupils at this time were Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis, Bernardino de' Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Andrea Solari, Marco d'Oggiono, and Salai. The role of most of these associates is unclear, leading to the question of Leonardo's so-called apocryphal works, on which the master collaborated with his assistants. Scholars have been unable to agree in their attributions of these works.

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Leonardo da Vinci | Biography, Art, Paintings, Mona Lisa, Drawings, Inventions, Achievements, & Facts

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Leonardo da Vinci, (Italian: "Leonardo from Vinci") (born April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence [Italy]-died May 2, 1519, Cloux [now Clos-Lucé], France), Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.

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About Leonardo (article) | Leonardo da Vinci | Khan Academy

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Leonardo Da Vinci’s Patrons: The People Who Paid For The Masterpieces | HistoryExtra

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In Renaissance Italy, work for artists came via commissions from wealthy patrons. Francis Ames-Lewis looks at the various organisations of the state and of the church, plus the private individuals – particularly Isabella d’Este – who paid Leonardo to produce his masterpieces

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Leonardo da Vinci and the Ottoman Empire

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The Renaissance genius Leonardo Da Vinci passed away in May 1519, and on the 500-year commemoration of his death, museums and media have reflected on his life's legacy. At the same time, Da Vinci is also making the news as the painting Salvator Mundi, drawn by him or one of his assistants, has allegedly been installed in the yacht of Saudi crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, instead of its planned destination, Abu Dhabi's branch of the Louvre.

While attention has focused on the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper, and now the Salvator Mundi, one of his many unrealised projects was a proposed bridge in Istanbul.

His life's legacy demonstrates that even while the physical bridge was never built, his overtures to the Sultan symbolise his construction of a cultural bridge between Renaissance Italy and the Ottoman Empire.
A bridge for the Sultan
In his lifetime Da Vinci had numerous, powerful patrons, from the Duke of Milan to the King of France. But he had also sought the patronage of Sultan Bayezid II in 1502.

Either during Da Vinci's sojourn in Venice or Rome, he submitted designs to the Ottoman Sultan for a bridge to span the Golden Horn inlet of the Bosphorus, in order to link the districts of Eminonu to Karakoy.

I, your faithful servant, understand that it has been your intention to erect a bridge from Galata to Stambul, but that this has not been done because there were no experts available. I, your faithful servant, know how to do it.

Leonardo Da Vinci's letter to Sultan Bayezid II - 1502 (Topkapi Archives)

As specified by Ludwig H. Heydenreich in his book, Leonardo the Inventor, the Sultan was exasperated by Da Vinci's project and rejected as it was too advanced for its time. DaVinci's plans included a parabolic curve, keystone arch, and a pressed bow, a method that would not be developed until 300 years later.

Da Vinci's rival, Michelangelo, was invited to design the bridge, as well as paint and sculpt for Ottoman Selim I, but he was already committed to another project. In 1506 Pope Julius II had commissioned Michelangelo to work on Saint Peter's Basilica. If history had gone in a different direction, art history would have had a portrait of Selim I instead of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

If Da Vinci's first bridge plan was not ambitious enough, he even proposed building a bridge across continents: "I plan to build a suspension bridge across the Bosphorus to allow people to travel between Europe and Asia. By the power of God, I hope you will believe my words." That project was not realised until 1973, which was then the fourth largest suspension bridge in the world.

The design for the smaller bridge did serve as an inspiration to Norwegian artist Vebjorn Sand, who used Da Vinci's design for the construction of a pedestrian walkway in As, Norway, the first civil-engineering project based on a Leonardo sketch.
"Da Vinci's Demons"
While Da Vinci's bridge may be a forgotten footnote of history, his relationship with the Ottomans served as the basis for the plot of a historical fantasy series on the Starz TV network based loosely on his life, "Da Vinci's Demons," which aired from 2013 to 2015.

The series, focusing on the life of a young Leonardo, places him in the southern Italian town of Otranto before the 1480 Ottoman incursion into the Italian peninsula - even though there is no historical evidence of him ever being there at this time.

The question remains as to why the writers of this show invented a role for Leonardo witnessing an Ottoman amphibious invasion of the Italian peninsula, instead of focusing on his attempts to work for the Empire.

On one level, an invasion is more entertaining than building bridges. But the series' decision is also a reflection of our times when volatile relations between the West and the Middle East are reflected in pop culture.

This phenomenon is witnessed in another 2014 historical fantasy film, " Dracula Untold." One headline reviewing the film reads " Dracula Gets a Makeover for the ISIS Age in Dracula Untold," revealing how these media are a reflection of our contemporary zeitgeist.

Both the Starz TV series and Dracula Untold went into production before Daesh's dramatic seizure of Mosul in 2014, but nonetheless, both artefacts of Hollywood culture serve as a reflection of widespread anxiety over groups such as Al Qaeda or Daesh.

Bram Stoker's original novel was a reflection of Victorian-era fears of Eastern European immigrants. While the historical figure Vlad Tepes from modern-day Romania did fight Ottoman forces, this aspect of history was never a factor in the original novel or the many Hollywood remakes throughout the twentieth century.

In the post-9/11 era, the anti-Muslim sentiment is resurrected for the gothic protagonist who resurrected himself to combat the Ottomans, a stand-in for militant Islam in the 21st century.
Leonardo's bridge across cultures
The entertainment mentioned above are cultural artefacts of a clash of civilisations ethos that has filtered into mass media. However, the overture by Leonardo to the Sultan breaks down binaries of the West versus Islam, where despite religious differences, culture flowed, and aesthetics and beauty mattered was not suppressed in favour of religion or geopolitics of the time.

The Ottoman court actively courted renaissance artists. Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople (and also Otranto), also employed Italian humanists who read to the Sultan daily from Livy and the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini came to Istanbul to paint the Sultan's portrait which today hangs in the National Gallery in London.

While the Renaissance is viewed as a phenomenon that serves as the basis of "Western civilisation," the interaction between the Italian peninsula and the Ottoman Empire demonstrates it was a greater Mediterranean process, a product of hybridity rather than dichotomies between East and West.

Da Vinci's artistic legacy never made it to the region during his lifetime. Ideally, if the Salvator Mundi were to be placed in a public museum, instead of a private yacht, the bridge between Renaissance Italy and the region might finally be fulfilled.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT World.

We welcome all pitches and submissions to TRT World Opinion - please send them via email, to opinion.editorial@trtworld.com

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Leonardo da Vinci and the Ottoman Empire

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The Renaissance genius Leonardo Da Vinci passed away in May 1519, and on the 500-year commemoration of his death, museums and media have reflected on his life's legacy.