Leonardo+da+Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci
__//Biography and major works//__ Leonardo was born on April 15th, 1452, in the small town of Vinci, near Florence, in Tuscany. His father was a wealthy notary, his mother a peasant woman. Leonardo was given the best education that Florence could offer and he rapidly advanced socially and intellectually. In 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his days. In 1472 Leonardo was admitted to the painters' guild of Florence but some years later he was still considered Verrocchio's assistant. In 1478 Leonardo became an independent master. His first commission, to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall, was never executed. His first large painting is **//The Adoration of Magi//**, (Uffizi). In 1482 he entered the service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. He served as principal engineer in the duke's military enterprises and was also active as an architect. In addition, he assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated work "Divina Proportione", a treatise on aesthetics centring on the conception of Golden Section. Evidence indicates that Leonardo had apprentices and pupils in Milan, for whom he probably wrote various texts later compiled as "Treatise of Painting". His most important painting in the early Milan period was **//The Virgin of the Rocks//**, (there are two versions, one in London, at the National Gallery, one in Paris, at Louvre Museum). From 1495 to 1497 Leonardo worked on his masterpiece **//The Last Supper//**, a mural in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. During his long stay in Milan, Leonardo also produced other paintings and drawings (most of which are now lost), theater designs, architectural drawings and models for the dome of Milan Cathedral. In 1500 he returned to Florence. In 1502 he entered the service of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Romagna and son and chief general of Pope Alexander VI. In his capacity as the duke's chief architect and engineer, Leonardo supervised work on the fortresses of the Papal territories in central Italy. A year later he began to design a decoration for the great hall of Palazzo Vecchio. The subject was the battle of Anghiari, a Florentine victory in the war with Pisa. During this long period in Florence, he painted also several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous **//Monna Lisa//** (Louvre), one of the most celebrate portraits ever painted. It is also known as //La Gioconda//, after the presumed name of the woman's husband. Leonardo seems to have had a special affection for the picture, for he took it with him on all his travels. In 1506 Leonardo went again to Milan, at the summons of his French governor, Charles d'Amboise. The following year he was named court painter to Louis XII of France, who was then residing in Milan. For the next six years Leonardo divided his time between Milan and Florence. In Milan he continued his engineering projects and worked on an equestrian figure for a monument to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commander of the French forces in the city. From 1514 to 1516, Leonardo lived in Rome under the patronage of pope Leone X. Then he traveled to France to enter the service of Francis I. He spent his last years at the Chateau de Cloux, near Amboise, where he died on May 2nd, in 1519. Although Leonardo produced a relatively small number of paintings, many of which remained unfinished, he was nevertheless an extraordinary innovative and influential artist. During his early years, his style closely paralleled that of Verrocchio, but he gradually moved away. The **//Monna Lisa//**, Leonardo's most famous work, is as well known for its mastery of technical innovations as for the mysteriousness of his legendary smiling subject. This work is a consummate example of two techniques -sfumato e chairoscuro- of which Leonardo was one of the greater masters. Sfumato (smoked) is a delicately atmospheric haze or smoke effect produced by subtle transitions between areas of color. Chiaroscuro (light and dark) is the technique of modelling and defining forms by means of contrasts between light and shadow. Leonardo was among the first to introduce atmospheric perspective (the effect that the atmosphere appears to have on the color and definition of distant scenery); landscape backgrounds painted in this way are an especially notable characteristic of his paintings. Leonardo's extant drawings, which reveal his brilliant draughtsmanship and his mastery of the anatomy of humans, animals and plant life, may be found in the principal European collections, such as that at Windsor Castle. His most famous drawing is probably the magnificent self-portrait in old-age.

__//La Dama con l'Ermellino (Lady with an Ermine)//__

Leonardo da Vinci's "//La Dama con L'ermellino//" (Lady with an Ermine) is an oil painting on a wood panel, which was painted between 1488 and 1490. It is now displayed at the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow - Poland. After the Nazi's invasion of Poland in 1939 the painting was hidden in a castle's basement. Nevertheless, it was found by the soldiers, who damaged it. After the Second World War the painting was restored, because of a footmark on the edge. This painting is said to represent the portrait of the sixteenth-years old Cecilia Gallerani, who was one of the lovers of Leonardo's patron in Milan, Ludovico Sforza, best known as Ludovico il Moro. The girl was much admired by the court for her beauty, and by Leonardo for her brilliancy. Cecilia Gallerani had been painted with a little animal, which is said to be an ermine, in order to produce a little intellectual charade: in fact, the term "ermine" (ermellino) corresponds to the Greek term "galay", and it recalls the girl's surname (Gallerani). Furthermore, in the Middle Age the ermine was allegory of virtues like balance, calmness and pureness, because of its white fur. According to ethologists' surveys, this little animal cannot be an ermine, because it seems to be more similar to a ferret, which was easy to train and which was common in the lombard countryside. Furthermore, the ermine is a wild animal, and it would had been impossible to use it as a model for the painting. Like the "//Gioconda//" (Monna Lisa), Cecilia has an unperceivable smile, and looks to someone who's coming in the room. According to a X-rays survey, beyond the lady's left shoulder there was a later overpainted window.

Marjolaine Biensan, Elisabetta Poles, Silvia Benetollo, Laura Zuin, Matteo Zacchi