Leonardo da Vinci, Painter

Posted by Tel Asiado Apr 15, 2008

Great Thinker Datebook: April 15.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer and scientist, is born April 15, in the Republic of Florence. Da Vinci was the founder of the classic style of High Renaissance.

Less than twenty of this paintings are known, and few of them completed to his satisfaction. Da Vinci is best known for Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

As his brilliant mind flowed with ideas, Da Vinci kept these ideas either written or doodled on his notepads. He left numerous notebooks of writings and sketches. Notably, Leonardo da Vinci's writings were written backward, so that it could only be legible when held up to a mirror.

Leonardo is best known for his painting the Mona Lisa, considered the most recognizable and analyzed work of art. Many scholars tried to determine the identity of the woman in the painting. Today, songs are composed and fiction books written about her.

When he was 30 years old, da Vinci began a sculpture of a horse, said to be difficult to design because the final product weighed many tons when cast in bronze. He spent years sketching the solution how the horse could be balanced. When he finally tried to cast the horse, all the bronze had been used to built cannons for the impending war.

The horse sculpture remained unfinished until 1999, not until a Japanese-American sculptor used his drawings and plans to build the horse. The completed horse sculpture was 23 feet high, weighed 15 tons. It was perfectly balanced!

One of Leonardo da Vinci's last known paintings is St John the Baptist. In 1517, two years before he died, he became chief painter, architect, and engineer to Francis I at Amboise, France. He died there.