Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)• Leonardo DaVinci

(known as Leonardo)

• 1452-1519• Painter, Inventor• Did not have any

students or followers which was unusual at the time he lived.

• Why do you think that was unusual?

• This is a self portrait Leonardo drew when he was 50 years old, a few years before he died.

• What is a self-portrait?

• What can you tell about Leonardo from looking at this drawing?

• When he was learning to paint, Leonardo studied dead bodies to learn how to improve his painting. He thought that if he knew how things looked on the inside he could draw them better on the outside.

• He would go to the morgue with a notebook and draw what he saw.

• Consider this page from one of his notebooks. What do you notice?

• How do you think this exploration might have helped his painting?

• Can you see how studying the human body from the inside helped him?

• Notice the details in the body of baby Jesus. What do you see?

• Notice Mary’s hands. What do you see?

• Compare these paintings of Madonna and Child by Leonardo on the left and Giotto on the right.

• How are they similar? How are they different?

• Leonardo was more interested in experimenting with painting than in the actual completion of the work.

• This is one of his most famous paintings and he didn’t even finish it!

• What do you see in this picture? • Pay attention to the “action” in the foreground. • What do you see in the background? • What do you think Leonardo was thinking about when he painted

this picture?

• These are portraits of three different women that Leonardo painted.

• How do you think each one is feeling? Why?• What else do you notice about these paintings?

• Leonardo used a technique called sfumato, which is a smudging of the edges of the object in the front with the background.

• Where do you see the sfumato? Why do you think he used this technique?

• What do you like about Leonardo’s paintings? Why?• What don’t you like about Leonardo’s paintings?

Why?