Biography from AskART:
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Ser Piero d'Antonio was a notary, scion of a long line of notaries, in the little village of Vinci. By Caterina, a woman of that village, he had a boy who was born on April 15, 1452, and named Leonardo. The boy's parents married soon after his birth, but they did not marry each other. Caterina was given to a peasant of the village, while Ser Piero was united with a noble lady. The child was brought up in his father's house. If he had been legitimate, he would have been given a typical full education in law or medicine, but happily his fate would have to be in some art, craft or trade.
When Leonardo was thirteen he was placed in the house of Andrea del Verrochio; it was a very happy choice. In Verrochio's studio, Leonard would obtain the best education of his time, not only in art, but in independent and scientific thinking. He remained with Verrochio for at least ten years and the two artists were a large influence on each other. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted as a master of the Florentine guild of painters.
It is said that no other person ever approached Leonardo's tremendous range of interests, abilities and achievements. He was a painter, sculptor, scientist and engineer, but he executed very few paintings in the course of his life. It is remarkable that two of these works are of the same subject: "The Virgin of the Rocks". The existence of both these paintings is a blessing, for it allows us to see the different ways in which a great artist can tackle the same theme, preserving the essential structure, yet changing the spirit greatly.
But Leonardo was far, far more than an artist. He was an engineer. a musician, an architect, a cartographer, a mathematician. He was an astronomer, a botanist, a zoologist, a geologist, a physiologist. The list of his accomplishments, and his interests, is endless. He was also a fine fencer and a superb horseman. He improvised poetry, which he sang well playing a lute that he had made himself. By the time he was twenty-eight he was acknowledged to be the greatest painter of his time - a period which included Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli.
But there was a dark, secretive side to Leonardo. He was restless and moody and feared crowds. He was never satisfied with his work, always blaming himself for not undertaking enough, yet breaking off commission after commission to begin some new project, which in turn remained uncompleted. Still, Leonardo da Vinci remains one of the most gifted human being who ever lived. Leonardo died in 1519 near Amboise, France, while at the court of Francis I. He was sixty-seven, a ripe old age at the time.
Compiled and submitted August 2004 by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Sources include:
The Standard Treasury of the World's Great Paintings
Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures: Leonardo da Vinci
"The Most Gifted Man Who Ever Lived", by Leo Rosten, from the Reader's Digest. "Worth the Wait" by Ken Shulman, ARTnews, March 1995
"The Multimillion Dollar Belle" by Andrew Decker in ARTnews, Summer 1985
"The Enigma of Genius" by A. Richard Turner in Book Review section of LA Times, Sunday, October 7, 2001 |
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