Transcript Great Men of the Renaissance

Renaissance
“To be Reborn”
Great Men of the Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci
Michealangelo
The Last Supper
We know so little about the circumstances surrounding da Vinci's
creation of "The Last Supper" that an account offering this much
detail is immediately suspect. Certainly da Vinci didn't take twentyfive years, or even ten years, to complete his work, as claimed in
these accounts. Documentary evidence indicates he began "The Last
Supper" in 1495 and was finished with it by 1498. (At the outside,
Da Vinci would had to have completed his work by the end of 1499;
that year he fled Milan ahead of the invading French and didn't
return to the city until 1506.) Other details presented here are
woefully wrong as well: We have no records of whom Leonardo used
as models for the figures in "The Last Supper," but he was painting
on a wall, undoubtedly from sketches, so in no case would he have
had models sitting in a "studio" for "days" while he "painted on
canvas."
The Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa (begun c. 1503)
Without doubt simply the most famous portrait in the
world - instantly recognised virtually anywhere - the Mona
Lisa was one of just two paintings that Leonardo had in the
room in which he died in the farmhouse at Cloux, northern
France in May 1519 (The other was his St John the Baptist,
whose own mysterious smirk is not to everyone's tastes,
see below.) But despite the Mona Lisa's amazing celebrity,
almost everything about this painting is the subject of hot
debate.
Superbly executed on poplar wood as the epitome of the
sfumato technique - which creates imperceptible
transitions between light and shade, without the usual
outline of the image - it now hangs in the Louvre, Paris. Its
curator, Jean-Pierre Cuzin, says: 'Today's art critics call
attention to the painting's mystery and harmony. But the
first art historians to describe it emphasised its striking
realism, pointing out "the lips that smile" and "the eyes
that shine". Giorgio Vasari, for example, wrote in his early
biography of Vinci, Lives of the Painters: "As art may
imitate nature, she does not appear to be painted, but
truly of flesh and blood. On looking closely at the pit of her
throat, one could swear that the pulses were beating."'
Who was the model? Lisa dei Gioconda, wife of a rich silk
merchant of Florence, has long been considered the
leading candidate for the subject of the painting, although
others - such as Constanza D'Avalos, the Duchess of
Ischia, Isabella D'Este who had begged Leonardo to paint
her, and Isabella Gualanda, mistress of his last Italian
patron. New research conducted by Sherwin Nuland,
Professor of Clinical Anatomy at Yale University indicates
Da Vinci’s Flying Machine
Da Vinci First Applied Science to Early Ideas of Flight
da Vinci
Although the possibilities of flight for man was only one of the many interests
of the great Italian creative genius, Leonardo da Vinci, he is generally credited
with sketching the first plans for flying machines which might have become
airborne had there been a sufficiently light power plant available.
Da Vinci, who lived from 1452 to 1519, conducted extensive research on the
possibility of flight using either the ornithopter (flapping wing) principle or the
aerial screw principle for vertical flight.
DAVID
The Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence is home to
Michelangelo's most famous statue of "David."
The "David" was commissioned to Michelangelo in
1501 by the Cathedral Works Committee (Opera Del
Duomo). At the age of 26, he was given a leftover
block of marble that came from the mountains of
Carrara, and which had previously been worked on
by numerous artists. Hailed by the city after his
tremendous accomplishment of turning the stone
into a masterpiece, Michelangelo was awarded a
house and studio in which to work.
One of the principal components of Renaissance art
is the painter or sculptors' obsession with the
perfection of form and proportion. The "David" is
not proportionally accurate; his upper body is
bigger than the rest of his body. Experts say that
this is not a mistake on Michelangelo's part; it was
fully intentional. Michelangelo calculated that from
the viewer's vantage point, the upper torso would
have to be bigger as it is farther away.
Full View of Sistine Chapel which took
Michealangelo 20 years to complete
Renaissance Men
Men who were very good at many
different things, but not experts at
anything.
Da Vinci’s Accomplishments
Aerial screw
"Trovo,
se questo strumento a vite sarà ben fatto, cioè fatto di tela lina,
stopata i suoi pori con amido, e svoltata con prestezza, che detta vite si fa la
femmina nell’aria e monterà in alto". "I believe that if this screw device is well
manufactured, that is, if it is made of linen cloth, the pores of which have been
closed with starch, and if the device is promptly reversed, the screw will
engage its gear when in the air and it will rise up on high"
This is one of Leonardo's best known drawings. Some experts have identified it as the
ancestor of the helicopter. The only drawing accompanying Leonardo's note is the
sketch of an aerial screw with a diameter of 5 metres, made of reed, linen cloth and
wire, operated presumably by four men who might have stood on the central platform
and exerted pressure on the bars in front of them with their hands, so as to make the
shaft turn. A machine thus designed would probably never have risen off the ground or
been set moving; the idea remains, however, that if an adequate driving force were
applied, the machine might have spun in the air and risen off the ground.