Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Leonardo Da Vinci
    Leonardo Da Vinci
    Leonardo Da Vinci
    Ebook103 pages56 minutes

    Leonardo Da Vinci

    By Gabriel Séailles

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Leonardo’s early life was spent in Florence, his maturity in Milan, and the last three years of his life in France. Leonardo’s teacher was Verrocchio. First he was a goldsmith, then a painter and sculptor: as a painter, representative of the very scientific school of draughtsmanship; more famous as a sculptor, being the creator of the Colleoni statue at Venice, Leonardo was a man of striking physical attractiveness, great charm of manner and conversation, and mental accomplishment. He was well grounded in the sciences and mathematics of the day, as well as a gifted musician. His skill in draughtsmanship was extraordinary; shown by his numerous drawings as well as by his comparatively few paintings. His skill of hand is at the service of most minute observation and analytical research into the character and structure of form. Leonardo is the first in date of the great men who had the desire to create in a picture a kind of mystic unity brought about by the fusion of matter and spirit. Now that the Primitives had concluded their experiments, ceaselessly pursued during two centuries, by the conquest of the methods of painting, he was able to pronounce the words which served as a password to all later artists worthy of the name: painting is a spiritual thing, cosa mentale. He completed Florentine draughtsmanship in applying to modelling by light and shade, a sharp subtlety which his predecessors had used only to give greater precision to their contours. This marvellous draughtsmanship, this modelling and chiaroscuro he used not solely to paint the exterior appearance of the body but, as no one before him had done, to cast over it a reflection of the mystery of the inner life. In the Mona Lisa and his other masterpieces he even used landscape not merely as a more or less picturesque decoration, but as a sort of echo of that interior life and an element of a perfect harmony. Relying on the still quite novel laws of perspective this doctor of scholastic wisdom, who was at the same time an initiator of modern thought, substituted for the discursive manner of the Primitives the principle of concentration which is the basis of classical art. The picture is no longer presented to us as an almost fortuitous aggregate of details and episodes. It is an organism in which all the elements, lines and colours, shadows and lights, compose a subtle tracery converging on a spiritual, a sensuous centre. It was not with the external significance of objects, but with their inward and spiritual significance, that Leonardo was occupied.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherParkstone International
    Release dateMar 15, 2013
    ISBN9781781606292
    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Related to Leonardo Da Vinci

    Related ebooks

    Visual Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      I Love Drawing

      Nov 15, 2018

      I Love Drawing
      3 min read

    • Article

      William Orpen

      Nov 29, 2019

      William Orpen
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sigmund Freud And The Play On The Burden Of Representation

      Oct 25, 2018

      In 1989 American Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth created the installation Zero & Not on occasion of the 50th anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s death. It marked the beginning of the Sigmund Freud Museum Contemporary Art Collection featuring outstanding i

      1 min read

    • Article

      Mature Faces

      Jul 12, 2019

      Mature Faces
      6 min read

    • Article

      Morgan Weistling

      Apr 21, 2020

      Morgan Weistling
      3 min read

    • Article

      Chiaroscuro Portraiture

      Feb 13, 2020

      Chiaroscuro Portraiture
      5 min read

    • Article

      Fresh Paint

      Apr 16, 2021

      Fresh Paint
      2 min read

    • Article

      3. Value And Drama

      Dec 27, 2019

      3. Value And Drama
      4 min read

    • Article

      Blue In Green

      Sep 6, 2019

      Blue In Green
      4 min read

    • Article

      Textured DRAWINGS

      Jan 21, 2022

      Textured DRAWINGS
      4 min read

    • Article

      Journey Of discovery

      Sep 1, 2020

      Journey Of discovery
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Shadow And The Flash

      Sep 10, 2019

      The Shadow And The Flash
      13 min read

    • Article

      1. Economy

      Jul 12, 2019

      1. Economy
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Addictive Sketcher

      Nov 27, 2020

      The Addictive Sketcher
      1 min read

    • Article

      Pencils Poised Please

      May 13, 2020

      Pencils Poised Please
      11 min read

    • Article

      Light And Shadow

      Jun 11, 2021

      Light And Shadow
      7 min read

    • Article

      2. Optics And Luminosity

      Nov 29, 2019

      2. Optics And Luminosity
      4 min read

    • Article

      Noteworthy

      Jul 8, 2021

      Noteworthy
      1 min read

    • Article

      Thinking on Paper

      Apr 1, 2022

      Thinking on Paper
      4 min read

    • Article

      Art For Art’s Sake

      Oct 13, 2019

      Art For Art’s Sake
      7 min read

    • Article

      Up Close And Personal

      Jul 9, 2021

      Up Close And Personal
      5 min read

    • Article

      Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun

      Feb 26, 2018

      Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun
      10 min read

    • Article

      Paint What Inspires You

      May 13, 2020

      Paint What Inspires You
      2 min read

    • Article

      5. Atmospheric Perspective

      Nov 26, 2021

      5. Atmospheric Perspective
      3 min read

    • Article

      Portraits WITH LIFE

      Nov 29, 2019

      Portraits WITH LIFE
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Leonardo Da Vinci

    3/5

    5 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I knew next to nothing about the subject, and this book served moderately well as a short introduction. Nuland is most excited about our hero as a student of anatomy, which makes sense as Nuland is a medical doctor. There were interesting bits about the process of preserving the anatomy for dissection; we have it so easy now in biology class.
    • 4/5
      Good but brief look at a fascinating man. I knew he was an artist but I never realized the breadth of his curiosity and his genius.
    • 2/5
      Thin, short and not particularly compelling. I understand that there isn't much biographical information available, and I think Nuland gave it the old college try, but this just didn't work for me.
    • 2/5
      Not what it could have been. Nuland seems as much in thrall of Leonardo that he warns about early in this short biography. Apparently Leonardo was so ahead of his time that any "warts" in his life can be excused. Leonardo may have been the first to do a lot of things, including studies of the human body, but since he didn't finish his project to publish his work, virtually everything had to be rediscovered.Some of Nuland's personal views bleed through more than on more than a few pages.

    Book preview

    Leonardo Da Vinci - Gabriel Séailles

    Author: Gabriel Séailles

    Layout:

    Baseline Co. Ltd

    61A-63A Vo Van Tan Street

    4th Floor

    District 3, Ho Chi Minh City

    Vietnam

    ISBN: 978-1-78160-629-2

    © Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA

    © Parkstone Press International, New York, USA

    All rights reserved

    All rights of adaptation and reproduction reserved for all countries. Unless otherwise mentioned, the copyright for the reproductions of art work belong to the photographers who created them. In spite of our research, in some cases we were unable to establish the intellectual property rights. Please address any claims to the publishing house.

    Gabriel Séailles

    Leonardo da Vinci

    Table of content

    1. Portrait of a Young Woman, Genevra d’Benci, 1474-1476

    2. Dreyfus Madonna (Virgin of the pomegranates), c.1471

    3. Virgin and Child (Virgin with carnation), c.1470

    BIOGRAPHY

    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

    1. Portrait of a Young Woman,

    Genevra d’Benci, 1474-1476.

    Oil on panel, 42.7 x 37 cm.

    The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

    Leonardo was born in 1452 on the right bank of the Arno in the town of Vinci between Florence and Pisa. His father was Ser Piero who at that time was twenty-two or twenty-three years old. His mother was a young peasant girl named Catarina. One may well imagine the details of the little family drama that took place at the birth of Leonardo which put a brusque and prosaic end to his parents’ romantic idyll. Ser Piero broke his vows with Catarina, at the urging of his father without a doubt, taking his son with him, and in that same year married Albiera di Giovanni Amadori. For her part, Catarina quietly married a certain Accatabriga di Piero del Vacca, a peasant who did not look too closely into her past. As an illegitimate son living with his father, Leonardo grew up without that maternal influence which every great man with self-respect should experience. Leonardo da Vinci spent his childhood in his father’s house. Probably he was not made to suffer because he had been born out of wedlock, since it was his good luck that during his childhood no legitimate child was born to turn his stepmother’s mistrust against him.

    We know very little about his early studies. He went from Vinci to Verrocchio’s studio in 1470 at the latest, and, starting in the year 1472, his name is written in the register of the painters’ guild as an independent member. Perugin and Lorenzo di Credi were his fellow students at the studio. This is the time when, with the divine gift of youth and infinity of hope, the world opened up before him. As an artist, from his very first works, he attracted all eyes, aroused the attention of his rivals and, if we can believe the legend, discouraged his master. Verrochio had received an order from the Vallombrosa monks for a Baptism of Christ and Leonardo contributed a kneeling angel to that painting. The figure should have been unnoticeable within the group work, but it stood out to such an extent that nothing else was noticed. Vasari tells the story that since the master-painter was so disturbed to see a child paint better than himself, Verrocchio decided that from that day forward he would never again take up a brush. During that first stay in Florence, Leonardo must have led a brilliant, and probably somewhat dissipated, existence,. More than once his comic verve showed up at the expense of the stolid bourgeoisie of Florence.

    Almost all of Leonardo’s first works have been lost. They are hardly known at all except from the descriptions of Vasari. But those descriptions are enough to show us that from the beginning he had found his own identity as an artist. Already the scholar in him appears within the artist, studying

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1