SPIH: A named Renaissance painter or sculptor (Leonardo da Vinci)
Leonardo da Vinci was born in Vinci, near Florence in Italy in 1452.
At the age of fifteen, he was sent to train as an artist’s apprentice in Florence.
He worked with other apprentices in the studio of the famous painter and craftsperson, Andrea del Verrocchio.
Here he learned the skills of painting and sculpture.
His first painting of note was one of an angel in the corner of a larger work by Verrocchio called the “Baptist of Christ.” This angel was apparently painted so well that it caused Verrocchio to never paint again.
Leonardo da Vinci was accepted into the Florentine artists’ guild at the age of twent and spent the next ten years working there, sometimes for Lorenzo de Medici.
In 1482, he went to Milan to work for Ludovico Sforza, who often used him to organize engineering works and festivals.
Around this time also, Leonardo da Vinci was compiling notebooks full of ideas for tanks, submarines, helicopters and parachutes. These notes were written in ‘mirror writing’ – from right to left.
During his seventeen years in Milan, da Vinci painted only six paintings, including “The Virgin of the Rocks” and “The Last Supper,” which is a fresco painted onto a wall of a monostary in Santa Maria delle Grazie.
In 1499, Leonardo left Milan and went to Florence where, among other work, he painted “The Mona Lisa,” which is now on display in Paris’ Louvre Museum.
Sfumato is used in this painting which is a Renaissance technique which causes the lady’s hair and clothing to blend into the background.
Leonardo da Vinci also studied science, dissecting corpses in his study of anatomy and drawing plants, horses and birds in flight in his effort to further the study of biology.
He died in France, as a guest of King Francis I, in 1519.
History Junior Cert Notes 