THE LIFE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI – BIOGRAPHY
Leonardo da Vinci (born April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance architect, musician, anatomist, inventor, engineer, sculptor, geometer and painter. His best-known works are Mona Lisa (1503 – 1507) and The Last Supper (1495 – 1497).
He is one of the greatest artists of the world, who reached the peak of Renaissance art and is known not only for his works of art, but also for his researches and inventions in various fields.
Leonardo was born in Anchiano, near the town of Vinci in Florence, Italy, as the out-of-wedlock child of Ser Piero da Vinci, a young notary, and Caterina, possibly the daughter of a farmer. He was born before the establishment of modern naming rules in Europe. Hence his full name is “Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci”, which means “Leonardo, son of Piero the Vinci”. He signed his works as “Leonardo” or “Io, Leonardo (I, Leonardo)”.
Although there is no concrete evidence, it is estimated that Leonardo’s mother, Caterina, was a Middle Eastern slave who belonged to her father, Piero. His father, Leonardo’s first wife, Albiera, was married the year he was born, and never to Caterina.
Leonardo’s mother took care of him when he was a baby, but a few years later, when his mother was married to another and settled in the neighboring town, he began to live in his grandfather’s house, which his father rarely visited; occasionally he would go to Florence to his father’s house. He was accepted into the family because his father had no children with his first wife, but he was never considered a legitimate child and received no love from anyone in the family except his uncle Francesco.
Leonardo, who lived in Vinci until the age of 14, went to Florence with his father in 1466 after his grandparents died consecutively. Children out of wedlock were forbidden to go to university, so they had no chance to go to university. Leonardo, who made beautiful drawings from a young age, showed his paintings to his father, the famous painter and sculptor of the time, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Verrochio took him with him as an apprentice. In addition to Leonardo Verrocchio, he had the opportunity to work with famous artists such as Lorenzo di Credi and Pietro Perugino. In the workshop, he learned not only to paint, but also to play the lyre.
He left Florence in 1482 and entered the service of Duke Shorza of Milan. His letter, in which he explained that he could build bridges, weapons, ships, bronze, marble and clay sculptures in order to enter the service of the duke, but did not send, is considered the most extraordinary job application of all time.
Leonardo worked for the Duke of Milan for 17 years until the city was taken by the French in 1499. He was engaged not only in painting and sculptures, organizing festivals for the Duke, but also designed buildings, machinery and weapons. Between 1485 and 1490, he was interested in nature, mechanics, geometry, flying machines, as well as architectural structures such as churches, castles and canal construction, made anatomy studies and trained students. His interests were so broad that he couldn’t finish most of the tasks he started. Between 1490 and 1495 he developed a habit of recording his work and drawings in a notebook. These drawings and notebook pages have been collected in museums and personal collections. One of these collectors was Bill Gates, who collected manuscripts of Leonardo’s work in the field of hydraulics.
Leonardo, who left Milan in 1499 and began to look for a new protector (patron), traveled in Italy for 16 years. He worked for many people, many of them left his works unfinished.
It is said that he started working on the Mona Lisa, which is considered one of the best paintings in human history, in 1503. After completing this painting, he never left his side and carried it with him on all his travels. In 1504, he returned to Florence on the news of his father’s death. He fought with his brothers for the right to inheritance, but his efforts proved fruitless. However, his beloved uncle left his whole being to him.
In 1506, Leonardo met Count Francesco Melzi, the 15-year-old son of a Lombardy aristocrat. Melzi became his best student and closest for the rest of his life. The young man whom he took under his protection in 1490 at the age of 10 and whom he named Salai had been with him for 30 years, but this young man, known as his student, had never produced any artistic products.
From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome and took part in various projects developed for the Pope. He continued to work in anatomy and physiology, but the Pope forbade him to work on cadavers.
Upon the death of his protector Giuliano de’ Medici in 1516, King 1. He received an invitation from Francis to become the chief painter, engineer and architect of France. He settled in the mansion prepared for him, southwest of Paris, right next to the Royal Palace near Amboise. The king, who greatly admired Leonardo, often came to visit and chat.
Leonardo da Vinci, who had a stroke on his right arm, focused more on scientific studies than painting. He was helped by his friend Melzi. Salai left him after arriving in France.
Leonardo died on 2 May 1519 at his home in Amboise at the age of 67. It is rumored that he died in the king’s arms, however, it is known that on May 1 the king was in another city and could not come there in a day. In his will, he left the main part of his inheritance to Melzi. He was buried in the Church of Saint Florentin in Amboise.
Personal life
Leonardo kept his private life secret. It is claimed that he does not like physical contact: “The activity of reproduction and everything connected with it is so disgusting that people will soon disappear without pleasant faces and emotional tendencies” was later analyzed by Sigmund Freud, who ruled that Leonardo was “frigid”.
In 1476, he was accused by an unknown person of having a sodomy relationship with 17-year-old model Jacopo Saltarelli while living with his lover Verrocchio. After two months of investigation, the case was dropped due to the fact that no witnesses could be found, also due to the respectable position of Leonardo’s father. After this incident, Leonardo and his friends were followed for a while by the organization called “Watchmen of the Night” in Florence. (It is also mentioned in the legal records of Podeta that the Watchmen of the Night was an organization founded in Italy during the Renaissance and operating for the suppression of sodomyism.)
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, also known by the nickname “Salai” or “il Salaino”, was described by Giorgio Vasari as “the radiant and beautiful young man with wonderful curly hair that Leonardo enjoyed greatly”. Il Salaino became a maid in Leonardo’s house in 1490 at the age of 10. The relationship between Leonardo and il Saliano is not considered “easy”. In 1491, he described Leonardo il Salaino as a “thief, liar, stubborn and filthy” and made the analogy of “Little Satan” for him. Nevertheless, il Salaino remained in Leonardo’s service for 30 years as his companion, servant, and assistant. Leonardo continued to call il Salaino the “Little Devil.” Drawn naked in Leonardo’s artist notebooks, il Salaino is depicted as a handsome and curly-haired adolescent.
In 1506, Leonardo met 15-year-old Count Francesco Melzi. Melzi described Leonardo’s feelings for him in a letter as “a sviscerato et ardentissimo amore” (very passionate and extremely burning love). During these years, Il Salaino had to accept that Melzi was constantly by Leonardo’s side. Melzi became Leonardo’s student and then his life partner. Also Leonardo Da Vinci; France’s foundation dates back to ancient times (1099 A.D.) It is known that he was a master (Chairman) of the Order of Sion between 1510 and 1519.
Both relationships are an example of the erotic master-apprentice relationship that was common in Florence in Leonardo’s time. In addition to these two relationships, Leonardo is also claimed to have had an affair with Cesare Borgia and Niccolò Machiavelli “beyond friendship”.
Leonardo’s interest in young men was also the subject of controversy in the 16th century. In a fictional dialogue in “l’amore masculino” (men’s love) in “Il Libro dei Sogni” (Book of Dreams) written by Gian Paolo Lomazzo in 1563, Leonardo appeared as one of the protagonists and said, “Know that love between men is a virtue that brings men together through various feelings of friendship. This makes them more masculine and courageous,” Leonardo was quoted as saying.
Vegetarianism
As can be seen from Leonardo’s work and early biographers, Leonardo was an honest and morally sensitive person. His respect for life shows that he was a vegetarian at least at some stage of his life.
Works of art Florentine period
There are no known works of Leonardo da Vinci between 1466 and 1472. During this apprenticeship, he mixed paints in the workshop and painted small portions of the paintings. In 1472, he became an independent painter in Florence, but did not leave his master’s workshop.
Leonardo da Vinci’s first known painting is the “Arno Valley” painting dated August 5, 1472. In this painting, which reflects Leonardo’s genius, the details decrease as the depth increases, and the color of the paper dominates the picture. This technique was later called the extinction perspective.
Between 1471 and 1475, Leonardo assisted Andrea del Verrocchio in his painting “The Baptism of Christ”. The main elements of the painting were already drawn by Verrochio. Leonardo depicted the body of Jesus with a kneeling angel. The angel was much more successful than the figures Verrochio drew. Seeing this, Verrochio is said to have never put his hand on his brushes again. Indeed, this is Verrochio’s last known painting.
Leonardo is thought to have opened his own workshop in the period 1476-1478, and there are at least two paintings he made to order during this period.
One of the most important paintings he painted during the Florentine period is “St. Jerom”. This painting, which is estimated to be of Mona Lisa quality if completed, is in the Vatican today.
Leonardo worked on the painting “The Worship of the Reclusive Kings” on an order he received between 1481 and 1482, but when he entered the service of the Duke of Milan in 1482, he left the giant painting unfinished and went to Milan.
Milan period
The most important of the paintings he made at the beginning of the Milan period is “The Virgin of the Rocks”. There are two versions of this work, one in the Louvre Museum and the other in the National Gallery of London.
“The Woman from Ermin”, which was commissioned upon the interest created by the Virgin of Rocks, is one of the few paintings that have survived to the present day. It is in the Czartorisky Museum in Poland.
In 1490, Sforza’s musical play “The Dance of the Planets” for the festival he organized made him famous throughout Italy.
Between 1495 and 1497, he worked on one of his most important works, The Last Meal. “The Last Meal” is a mural on the wall of a monastery refectory in Milan. Unfortunately, the mixture he tried while making this great work was not successful, and the work was broken down as early as the 1500s.
Leonardo was also engaged in mathematics during the Milan period and helped the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli write his work “On the Golden Ratio”.
The work that took up the most of his time was the “Bronze Horse Statue”, which the duke was asked to do in honor of his father. For this work, which is planned to be the largest horse sculpture in the world, Leonordo studied the anatomy of horses for a long time. At the end of his work, which began in 1483, he prepared a giant clay model in 1493. Tons of bronze were needed for the bronze sculpture. While waiting for the bronze to be prepared, he worked on The Last Supper. The statue was never made because the bronze needed for the statue was used by Sforza to make weapons. The clay model was dismantled as a target for soldiers after the French invasion of Milan.
Nomadic period
After leaving Milan, he began working on a portrait of Isabella d’Este, who was keen on collecting the works of the painters of the period in Mantova, but when he went to Venice in 1501, he did not complete the work despite all the insistence and letters of Isabella d’Este.
In Venice, he developed various projects to be used against the Ottomans (such as installing a movable embankment in the Isonzo Valley, using divers to drill the bottom of Ottoman ships), but when none of them were implemented, he moved to Florence.
He drafted a monastery known as The Virgin Mary and Child Jesus with St. Anna, which is in the National Gallery in London, but he left this work unfinished upon an engineering proposal from Cesare Borgia. Pope 6. Alexander’s son Cesare Borgia worked as a military engineer in his service, drawing maps.
It is known that when he left Cesare, he wrote a letter to Bayezid II about his projects such as the construction of a bridge over the Golden Horn and a windmill.
When he returned to Florence, there was war between Pisa and Florence. He planned to change the bed of the Arno River, which flowed from Florence to Pisa, to dehydrate the city, but the plan was not successful.
After the work on the Arno River bed, he worked on the mural called the Battle of Anghiarai. While working on this painting about Florence’s victory over Milan in 1440, Michelangelo was working on the opposite wall for the painting The Battle of Cascina. The conflict between the two artists became the “War of Wars”. Leonardo, who was called to Milan by the King of France before the work was completed, shuttled between the two cities for a while, but finally had to leave the painting unfinished. (His rival Michelangelo was also forced to abandon his own painting because he was summoned to Rome.)
In Milan, he worked as a decorator for the members of the palace, organizing palace entertainments. In time, he returned to the study of anatomy. Taking a renewed interest in painting, he began to make the Mona Lisa. He kept this painting by his side throughout his life and carried it with him on all his journeys.
Although he was revered as an old sage in Rome, where he visited in 1513, unlike Raphael and Michelangelo, he did not receive much order from the Medici family. However, he took part in the commission established to locate Michelangelo’s David (David) and was instrumental in its placement in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, although Michelangelo did not want it.
After the French defeated Milan in 1515, Guiliano de Medici gave the King of France the task of building a mechanical lion to be presented to the King of France at peace negotiations. The lion he made (the symbol of Florence) would walk a few steps and then pull out from his heart a lily, the symbol of France. The young king admired him. When Guiliano de Medici died a year later, he summoned King Leonardo of France and thus spent his last years in France.
Science and engineering
Leonardo’s work in science and engineering is as impressive and innovative as artistic ones. The notes and drawings in his notebook, which consists of 13,000 pages, fuse art and science. Leonardo received these notes during his travels in Europe. Leonardo was left-handed and wrote all his writings in such a way that they could only be read when viewed in a mirror.
Leonardo’s view of science was observant, he described and depicted an unknown down to the smallest detail in order to understand it, he did not attach importance to theory and experiment. Because he was not trained in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars have ignored his scientific work, whereas Leonardo taught himself Latin.
Anatomy
Leonardo began his studies of human anatomy while he was apprenticed to Andrea del Verrocchio, because Verrochio encouraged all his students to learn anatomy. When he began to gain success in the arts, he was allowed to study cadavers at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. He then studied cadavers at the Maggiore Hospital in Milan and the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome. In 1510-1511 he worked with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre. In 30 years, he examined 30 cadavers of different ages for men and women. Together with Marcantonio, he worked on publishing a theoretical work on anatomy and prepared over 200 drawings. These drawings were published only after Leonardo’s death in 1580 under the title “Theses on Painting”.
Leonardo made many drawings of human skeletons and was the first to describe the double-s form of the spine. He made investigations about the pelvis and the coccyx and determined that the coccyx consisted of 5 different bones. He managed to perfectly describe the human skull and sections of the brain. He made numerous drawings showing the structure of the lungs, urinary bladder, genitals and even sexual intercourse. “She is one of the first few people to make drawings about the position of the fetus in the womb in order to understand the miracle of pregnancy. In addition to human anatomy, he also has drawings of the anatomy of various animals.
Leonardo was interested not only in the structure of the human body, but also in its function, so he carried out studies on physiology as well as anatomy. He also has drawings about people with physiological deformation.
His work in the field of anatomy led to the design of the first robot in written history. The design, called “Leonardo’s robot,” was probably made in 1495, but it was only in the 1950s that it became apparent. Although he had no knowledge of blood circulation, he added heart valves to the robot so that the blood was pumped to the muscles for consumption. A drawing he made inspired a British heart surgeon in 2005 to discover a whole new way to treat damaged hearts.
Inventions and engineering
Because of his great interest in flight, he studied the flight of birds in detail and designed a wide variety of flying machines, including a helicopter that could be operated by four people and a light hang glider.
In 1502, he designed a 240-meter-long bridge for Sultan Bayezid II to be built at the entrance to the Golden Horn. This bridge was not built, but in 2001, as part of the Vebjørn Sand Da Vinci Project in Norway, Leonardo’s vision was brought to life by building a smaller bridge based on this design.
Although he described war as the worst of human activities, Leonardo’s notebooks also include work in the field of military engineering, including designs such as machine guns, armored tanks, bombs, parachutes. His other inventions include a submarine, the first mechanical calculator built using gears, and a car powered by a spring-loaded mechanism. During his years in the Vatican, he made a design to heat the water with the help of concave mirrors to use solar energy. Although many of Leonardo’s designs were not brought to life during his lifetime, many of them were modeled with IBM support and are on display at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum at the Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise.
Leonardo’s notebooks
Leonardo’s notebooks are written mainly on four different subjects: architecture, mechanics, painting, and human anatomy. These notebooks consist of different sizes and types of independent papers, and although scattered after his death, they are now in large collections such as the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and the British Library. Some of the notebooks in the British Library can be viewed on the Internet . The notebook, called Codex Leicester, is Leonardo’s only major scientific work in a private collection and is now owned by Bill Gates.
In January 2005, in one of the secret rooms of a monastery located next to the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze in Florence, a laboratory was found in which Leonardo carried out his flight and other scientific work.