Italy
BIOGRAPHY:
Leonardo Da Vinci, world renowned as a genius not only in art, but also his work in anatomy, optics, and hydraulics, was born in 1452 to a nobleman and a peasant woman who lived in Vinci, a town in the Tuscany region, near Florence. He was given the best Florentine education, and came to work as an apprentice was Andrea del Verrocchio, another painter. While apprenticing with Verrocchio, Da Vinci was introduced to various different forms of art, from canvas painting to making alter pieces. He was given the opportunity to work on one of Verrocchio's paints, Baptism of Christ, where Da Vinci painted the kneeling angel on the left side.
By 1478, Da Vinci had become an independent painter, drawing his first commission when we was asked to paint an altar piece for the Florentine town hall. He, however, never executed its creation. His first large painting, which was also left unfinished, was The Adoration of the Magi, commissioned by the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto. Other works attributed to a young Da Vinci are Benois Madonna, Ginevra de Benci, and St. Jerome.
About 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. Da Vinci wrote the duke an astonishing letter in which he stated that he could build portable bridges; that he knew the techniques of constructing bombardments and of making cannons. He said that he could build ships as well as armored vehicles, catapults, and other war machines; and that he could execute sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. He served as principal engineer in the duke's numerous military enterprises and was active also as an architect. In addition, he assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated work Divina Proportione. Also, while in Milan, evidence shows he might have had a few students as well, for which he wrote Treatise on Painting. During his years in Milan, his most important and famous paintings are The Virgin on the Rocks and The Last Supper, which took him years to complete. Unfortunately, The Last Supper had begun to deteriorate by 1500, and much of the painting's original splendor has been lost.
In 1502 Leonardo 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. Also while in Florence, Leonardo worked on several portraits, including his most famous work, the Mona Lisa, and another celebrated piece, La Gioconda.
In 1506, on the summons of French governor n 1506 Leonardo again went to Milan, at the summons of its French governor, Charles d'Amboise. That following year, he was appointed court painter for French King, Louis XII, who was living in Milan. For the rest of his life, Da Vinci divided his time between Milan and Florence, often visiting family and looking after his inheritance. He was then called to Rome by Pope Leo X, where he spent most of his time working on science, rather than paintings. In 1516 he traveled to France to enter the service of King Francis I. He spent his last years at the Château de Cloux, near Amboise, where he died.
PAINTING:
Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
(1503-5)
Oil on panel, 77 x 53 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
After the fall of his patron in 1499, Leonardo left Milan to find employment. In April 1500 he stopped in Florence, before working in Central Italy as a mapmaker and military engineer for Cesare Borgia.Traveling back to Florence in 1503, Da Vinci completed several significant projects including the "Mona Lisa."
The Mona Lisa (Louvre, Paris), also known as La Gioconda, is a portrait of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1505.
This figure of a woman, dressed in the Florentine fashion of her day and seated in a visionary, mountainous landscape, is a remarkable instance of Leonardo's sfumato technique of soft, heavily shaded modeling. The Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring and aloof, has given the portrait universal fame.
Reams have been written about this small masterpiece by Leonardo, and the gentle woman who is its subject has been adapted in turn as an aesthetic, philosophical and advertising symbol, entering eventually into the irreverent parodies of the Dada and Surrealist artists. The history of the panel has been much discussed, although it remains in part uncertain. According to Vasari, the subject is a young Florentine woman, Monna (or Mona) Lisa, who in 1495 married the well-known figure, Francesco del Giocondo, and thus came to be known as ``La Gioconda''. The work should probably be dated during Leonardo's second Florentine period, that is between 1503 and 1505. Leonardo himself loved the portrait, so much so that he always carried it with him until eventually in France it was sold to François I, either by Leonardo or by Melzi.
From the beginning it was greatly admired and much copied, and it came to be considered the prototype of the Renaissance portrait. It became even more famous in 1911, when it was stolen from the Salon Carré in the Louvre, being rediscovered in a hotel in Florence two years later. It is difficult to discuss such a work briefly because of the complex stylistic motifs which are part of it. In the essay ``On the perfect beauty of a woman'', by the 16th-century writer Firenzuola, we learn that the slight opening of the lips at the corners of the mouth was considered in that period a sign of elegance. Thus Mona Lisa has that slight smile which enters into the gentle, delicate atmosphere pervading the whole painting. To achieve this effect, Leonardo uses the sfumato technique, a gradual dissolving of the forms themselves, continuous interaction between light and shade and an uncertain sense of the time of day.
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