Leonardo Da Vinci - a Worshipper of Nature's Divine Order - Essay Example

Humanities essay over D.M. Field's Leonardo Da Vinci 2002 Leonardo Da Vinci patrons might find his failures to complete a commission exasperating, just as we may share their regrets at the perfectionism which made it difficult for him to bring a work of art to a successful conclusion, but contemporaries generally had no doubts about the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. Naturally, in that era of classical revival, he was often compared with the great scholars of ancient Greece, with Archimedes, Pythagoras, and most of all, perhaps, with Plato, whose figure in Raphael's famous painting of the School of Athens is generally believed to be modeled on the venerable Leonardo. Leonardo's name was actually Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci, though he was known throughout his life as Leonardo or Leonardo Ser Piero. 'Da Vinci' is simply a reference to the Tuscan village in which he was born. Referring to him as 'Da Vinci' is a little like referring to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery of Alamein as 'Of Alamein'or Joan of Arc as 'Of Arc'. It is strange that Brown calls him 'Da Vinci' consistently, despite the fact he apparently studied art in Seville and his wife is supposedly an art historian. The life and work of Leonardo, the archetypical 'Renaissance Man' for whom no branch of knowledge was allowed to remain a closed book, has proved endlessly fascinating to later generations. At one time he was known only as a painter, although many of his works by other hands were unknown and a number of inferior works by other hands were wrongly attributed to him. The full, amazing extent of his genius emerged only in quite recent times with the rediscovery of his notebooks and drawings. For a time, even Leonardo the painter seemed to be submerged by the weight of his new reputation as a scientist. Some readjustment has taken place since then. As a scientist and engineer, Leonardo's achievements, though staggering enough, have proved to be a shade less novel than once we thought, while at the same time a succession of brilliant art historians, beginning with Bernhard Berenson and Kenneth Clark, have made us far more knowledgeable about his art. Though Leonardo would have jibbed at such a judgment, he was and is, first and foremost a great painter; a man whose output was tiny compared with other geniuses of his time (a Michelangelo, a Raphael, a Titian) yet included possibly the two most famous paintings in history, the Mona Lisa and the Last Super. Leonardo was a 'worshipper of Nature's divine order' and seems to think this put him at odds with the Church. Leonardo certainly had a fascination with nature but to pretend he was a 'Nature worshipper' in any supernatural or religious sense is taking things well beyond the evidence. Leonardo was not a particularly devout Catholic in his lifetime, but he was certainly a Catholic Christian, like anyone of his age. By Leonardo's time, the dissection of corpses for anatomical study was accepted and widespread. It was done under license to prevent grave-robbing, but it would not have put Leonardo at odds with the Church in any way. The picture the last supper ,a mural with a size of 8.8 x 4.6m in the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle grazie in Milan ,created in the years 1494 to 1498 ,is also known as the world-famous cenacolo of Leonardo. It is the subject of many legends, as a fairy free interpretation in the context of the film the da Vinci code sacrilege. It was in the context of conservation measures subject of several misguided experiments. Once there ,also because of technical shortcomings of the original ,over the centuries serious damage by vandalism, neglect ,poor environmental conditions ,especially clumsy repairs were carried away ,his remains are finally 1904-1908 on a scientific basis has been preserved. In contrast to the later-born Michel Angelo Leonardo was an open and friendly terms. He had a propensity for solitude and described him with the words."If you are alone, you will quite belong". He not like other renaissance artists, the glory of the ancient art through the imitation revive their models .according to their own opinion, he was only students of nature. Out of the ordinary and often kundige, but above all, the fantastic and unusual phenomena of the world attracted him most. Strange shape of hills and rocks, rare plants and animals, unusual faces and figures of people were the things that he in his paintings and in his studies of nature responded. But even with the exploration of the human body by sections of mortal, he ground breaking discoveries, which he graphically very closely held. Evidence of the preference of the young artist can be found in the legends about lost work from his youth. One of these reports knows of monochrome painting of Adam and Eve in tempera, he praises besides the beauty of the figures the infinite truth and decoration of leaves and animals in the backgrounds in terms of treatment of the subject by Albrecht Durer in his thirty years later manufactured remember the famous engraving. With the same investigation and not less effect the allegedly painted on other occasion the head of a snake with medusa hair. Finally, from Leonardo reported that he at that time with sculpture employed by several heads of smiling children and women modeled. There is nothing in any of the copious notes and writings that Leonardo has left us to suggest that he thought he could turn lead into gold or create alchemical elixirs to extend life. The earliest dated drawing Arno is the landscape of 5 August 1473. He painted around 1478-1480 a portrait of Ginevra de Bencis, a daughter of Amerigo de Benci, the Leonardo's passion for kosmografische studies told (Washington, national gallery). Leonardo however, deaf more with projects in mechanics, hydraulics, architecture, military technology and the construction and operation of experimental studies and observations in each branch of theoretical or applied science. Leonardo's sketches of war machines etc were an attempt to secure the patronage of the governor of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. While they may look radical and outlandish to modern eyes, they have precedents in other works of the time, such as Roberto Valtario's De Re Militari, and in ancient military works, such as the treatise of Vegetius. Even his parachute and his flying machine have less well-known predecessors. In the late 20th century, interest in Leonardo's inventions has escalated. There have been many projects which have sought to turn diagrams on paper into working models. One of the factors is the awareness that, although in the 15th and 16th centuries Leonardo had available a limited range of materials, modern technological advancements have made available a number of robust materials of light-weight which might turn Leonardo's dreams into reality. This is particularly the case with his designs for flying machines. Leonardo did not have an 'enormous output' of art of any kind. If anything, he is renowned for his relatively small output and for his tendency to begin projects without completing them and for taking on projects and never starting them. He was actually notorious for this in his lifetime, to the great frustration of his patrons. The 'hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions' Brown refers to seem to exist entirely in Brown's imagination. In his whole career, there is only vague evidence of one Papal commission. Leonardo seems to have made some suggestions to Pope Leo X as to the best way to drain the marshes around Rome. He was also a guest of the same pope in Rome for a while, where he was given license to dissect cadavers in a Papal hospital there (so much for his scientific work being some kind of threat to the Church), but that is the limit of his direct connections with the Papacy. Read More