Transcript This was his most famous work.

LEONARDO DA VINCI & MICHELANGELO
The Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci
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As a young man, Leonardo da Vinci applied for a
job with the ruling duke of Milan.
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wrote, “I have plans for bridges, very light and
strong and suitable for carrying very easily. When a
place is besieged I know how to cut off water from the
trenches and how to construct… scaling ladders and
other instruments.” He went on to describe his plans for
destroying fortresses, constructing various “engines” for
attack and defense, and making cannons and armored
cars.
Jack-of-all Trades
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Leonardo was a great engineer, but he was also
one of the foremost artists of the age, indeed of
any age.
He was a Jack-of-all trades, a sculptor, a painter, a
designer, and a scientist. Most of all, he was a
visionary.
He was most known for his…
 Paintings
 Sculptures
 inventions
An Apprentice
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Born in 1452 near the village of Vinci, about 60
miles of Florence.
At age 15, his father took him to a famous artists
and asked him to make Leonardo his apprentice.
 Apprentice
– someone who agreed to live with and
work for another for a specified period, in return for
instruction in a trade or craft.
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About five years after he began his apprenticeship,
Leonardo established his own workshop in Florence.
 Great
works – many incomplete
Spectacularly Talented
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Story: He was assigned
to paint an angel in
one of his master’s
commissioned paintings.
When the master saw
what he had pained, he
found it so beautiful he
knew that he could
never equal it. The
master then gave up
painting to concentrate
on sculpture.
Working for the Duke of Milan
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He was about 30 yrs old when he sent his resume to
the duke of Milan and was hired for the job.
During his 17-year stay in Milan, Leonardo
completed some of his greatest work.
The Last Supper
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The duke asked Leonardo
to paint a picture of the
Last Supper. This took him
3 years to complete. It
was said that the prior
complained that the artist
was taking too much time.
 Prior:
the person, or
officer, in charge of a
priory, or monastery
Beyond Milan
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In 1500, Leonardo
returned to Florence.
During this period he
completed his other
most famous painting
and perhaps the most
famous portrait in the
world, the Mona Lisa.
His use of light and
shade have been
admired by many.
A True Renaissance Man
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Leonardo left behind few finished works of art: only
about a dozen paintings and not one complete
sculpture. He did leave many detailed and highly
accurate drawings of human anatomy and of
various mechanical devices. And he left more than
5,000 pages from his notebooks.
No one was more able to imagine what could be
than Leonardo. He was in many ways the
embodiment of the Renaissance, a true Renaissance
man, devoted to knowledge and beauty in all its
forms and expressions.
 Renaissance
man: one who is highly skilled and has
broad interests in many or all of the arts and sciences.
Unfinished Works
Michelangelo’s Greatest Work
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Michelangelo’s Greatest Work was the ceiling of
the Sistine Chapel.
The ceiling was 5,000 square feet
He painted it with scenes from the Old Testament.
It took him 4 years to complete.
His patron was not happy with how long it was
taking, so one day he whacked Michelangelo with a
cane and threatened to throw him off the scaffold if
he did not speed up his work.
The Sistine Chapel
Problems While Painting the Sistine
Chapel
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Difficult conditions
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Shut up in a huge room all day for 4 years
His back and neck ached.
His eyes were so used to focusing on a ceiling several feet away
that he could not read a letter unless he held it at the same
distance.
One artist wrote, “There is no other work to compare with
this for excellence, nor could there be”.
The frescoes include more than 300 figures, some of them
18 feet high, and cover a space 118 feet long and 46 feet
wide. This was his most famous work.
The Sistine Chapel
Sculptor, Painter, & Architect
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He thought of himself as a sculptor, not a painter.
He was a master at many artistic abilities.
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He began to apprentice in an artist’s workshop when he was 13
years old.
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Painting
Sculpting
Architecture
He learned how to paint backgrounds, create frescoes, and draw with
precision.
Lorenzo de’ Medici invited him to join an academy of art, where he
learned the techniques of sculpture.
He later moved to Rome, where he studied the ancient city’s
sculpture, architecture, and painting.
Michelangelo’s Pietá
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His first major work that gave him a reputation of a
master sculptor
Michelangelo’s Pieta was said to be the most
beautiful work of marble in all of Rome.
Pieta
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The Pietá still remains in Rome & can be found in St.
Peter’s Basilica.
Michelangelo’s Statue of David
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Michelangelo created a sculpture of David (a
young biblical hero who killed the giant Goliath) in
1501.
It was made from a colossal block of marble that
had been discarded years earlier by another
sculptor because it was flawed.
His ability to make this masterpiece out of a flawed
piece of marble marked him as the greatest
sculptor of his age.
Michelangelo’s Sculpture of David
Return to Florence
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In 1517, Michelangelo returned to Florence. The pope
asked him to design the front of the Medici family church
there.
During this project he had to train workers to quarry marble
and have a road built through a mountain to transport it.
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Quarry: to obtain stone from a pit or excavation by cutting,
digging, or blasting it.
He designed the tombs for Lorenzo de Medici and his
brother.
He also agreed to design a library to be attached to the
Medici church.
Pope Paul III named Michelangelo the chief painter, sculptor,
and architect of the Vatican.
The Last Judgment
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Pope Paul III also asked Michelangelo to paint the
Sistine Chapel wall with the theme of the Last
Judgment, when all living and dead people would
stand before God to be judged.
The Last Judgment took him 5 years to complete. He
was 66 years old when he finished.
The strain of the work took its toll on his health.
The Last Judgment
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It is a work of great power
that depicts Jesus cursing
the damned and welcoming
the blessed. Its brown and
orange colors, as well as
the expressions and
movements of Jesus and the
other figures, give it a
gloomy, even grim, feeling.
Last Project
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At 71 years of age, Michelangelo was appointed chief
architect for St. Peter’s Basilica.
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He worked on the exterior of the building.
He also worked on its dome, which became a model for domes
throughout the western world.
He continued working almost until the day he died in 1564.
He said, “ I regret that I am dying just as I am beginning
to learn the alphabet of my profession.”
He never married, but said his wife, “was his art,” and his
children “the works I shall leave.”