St. Bernadette College of Valenzuela

The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci

Bernadette Lee

Ivy Vanessa Panti

IV - Victorious

Mrs. Erlyn Ocasla

January 8, 2013

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First we would to thank my English and adviser teacher who chose this title as our research paper

which that I had fun while making it. Of course I, Bernadette Lee, would like to thank to some friends

who encourage me on making this research paper, and for my favorite author ‘Dan Brown’ who gave me

a lot of inspiration, especially from his books “The Da Vinci Code”, “Angels and Demons” and “The Lost

Symbol”. Which I use a lot to make this research paper and to some couple of movies that really got my

attention.

I personally really want to make this research paper because it’s very mysterious to me. I want to

know what Leonardo secrets are, which made me feel like a detective or some kind of agent

Lastly I want to thank my parents who didn’t bother to take out the internet just because I’m

finishing this project.

The Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born on  April 15, 1452,

in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was the love child of a

landowner and a peasant girl. Raised by his father, he began

apprenticing at the age of 14 under the artist Verrocchio.

Within six years, he was a master artist and began taking

commissions from wealthy clients.

Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant

woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo

was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine

painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent

in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked

in Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he spent his last years in

France at the home awarded him by Francis I.

Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the

most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all

time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of

the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro,

textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number because of his constant,

and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic

procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings,

scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations

of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank,

concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and he outlined a rudimentary theory of plate

tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but

some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile

strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. He made important discoveries

in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had

no direct influence on later science.

(Self-sketch of himself)

He was educated in his father's house receiving the usual elementary education of reading,

writing and arithmetic. In 1467 he became an apprentice learning painting, sculpture and acquiring

technical and mechanical skills. He was accepted into the painters' guild in Florence in 1472 but he

continued to work as an apprentice until 1477. From that time he worked for himself in Florence as a

painter. Already during this time he sketched pumps, military weapons and other machines.

Between 1482 and 1499 Leonardo was in the service of the Duke of Milan. He was described in a

list of the Duke's staff as a painter and engineer of the duke. As well as completing six paintings during

his time in the Duke's service he also advised on architecture, fortifications and military matters. He was

also considered as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer.

During his time in Milan, Leonardo became interested in geometry. He read Leon

Battista Alberti's books on architecture and Piero della Francesca's On Perspective in Painting. He

illustrated Pacioli's Divina proportione and he continued to work with Pacioli and is reported to have

neglected his painting because he became so engrossed in geometry.

Leonardo studied Euclid and Pacioli's Suma and began his own geometry research, sometimes giving

mechanical solutions. He gave several methods of squaring the circle, again using mechanical methods.

He wrote a book, around this time, on the elementary theory of mechanics which appeared in Milan

around 1498.

Leonardo certainly realised the possibility of constructing a telescope and in Codex

Atlanticus written in 1490 he talks of

... making glasses to see the Moon enlarged.

In a later work, Codex Arundul written about 1513, he says that

... in order to observe the nature of the planets, open the roof and bring the image of a single planet onto

the base of a concave mirror. The image of the planet reflected by the base will show the surface of the

planet much magnified.

See [28] for more details of this quotation and more of Leonardo's ideas about the Universe. He

understood the fact that the Moon shone with reflected light from the Sun and he correctly explained the

'old Moon in the new Moon's arms' as the Moon's surface illuminated by light reflected from the Earth.

He thought of the Moon as being similar to the Earth with seas and areas of solid ground.

In 1499 the French armies entered Milan and the Duke was defeated. Some months later

Leonardo left Milan together with Pacioli. He travelled to Mantua, Venice and finally reached Florence.

Although he was under constant pressure to paint, mathematical studies kept him away from his painting

activity much of the time. He was for a time employed by Cesare Borgia as a

senior military architect and general engineer.

By 1503 he was back in Florence advising on the project to divert the River Arno behind Pisa to help with

the siege of the city which the Florentines were engaged in. He then produced plans for a canal to allow

Florence access to the sea. The canal was never built nor was the River Arno diverted.

The French King gave Leonardo the title of

first painter, architect, and mechanic of the King

Toward the end of his life, in about 1508, King Louis XII of France asked him to accompany him

to Milan, and he went willingly.In 1506 Leonardo returned for a second period in Milan. Again his

scientific work took precedence over his painting and he was involved in hydrodynamics, anatomy,

mechanics, mathematics and optics.

In Milan he stayed working on anatomy and other fields until 1512, when the French lost Milan. He then

had to go to Rome. There, he stayed until his life was finished. He was very good friends with Guiliano

de’ Medici, brother of the duke, and he was well housed and treated very kindly. Sadly, while in the bliss

of the Renaissance, his health started to fail. In March, 1516, Guiliano died, and Leonardo was left alone

in the world, practically deserted. Not far thereafter, on May 2, 1519, the mind of the Renaissance,

Leonardo da Vinci died

The Great Leonardo as a Painter

As a painter Leonardo was famous of his works “The Mona Lisa”, “Madonna of the Rocks” and “The

Last Supper”. He is also known for his Unique painting. It is also known that he usually use “Velature”

style, He use “Sforza” to make “The Last Supper”,

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” 

― Leonardo da Vinci

The Mona Lisa.

The title Mona Lisa is discussed in Da Vinci's biography, written

and published by Giorgio Vasari in 1550. Vasari identified Lisa

del Giocondo as the subject of the painting and pointed out

that mona is commonly used in place of the Italian

word madonna, which could be translated into English as

"madam." Hence, the title Mona Lisa simply means "Madam

Lisa." In addition, a note written by an Italian government clerk

named Agostino Vespucci in 1503 identified Lisa del Giocondo

as the subject of the painting.

The enigmatic smile of the woman in the painting has been the

source of inspiration for many and a cause for desperation in

others. In 1852, Luc Maspero, a French artist, jumped four floors

to his death from a hotel room in Paris. His suicide note explained

that he preferred death after years of struggling to understand the mystery behind the woman's smile.

When discussing the mystery behind the smile, art experts often refer to a painting technique

called sfumato, which was developed by Da Vinci. In Italian, sfumato means "vanished" or "smoky,"

implying that the portrait is ambiguous and blurry, leaving its interpretation to the viewer's imagination.

This technique uses a subtle blend of tones and colors to produce the illusion of form, depth and volume.

The human eye consists of two regions: the fovea, or central area, and the surrounding peripheral area.

The fovea recognizes details and colors and reads fine print, and the peripheral area identifies motion,

shadows and black and white. When a person looks at the painting, the fovea focuses on her eyes, leaving

the peripheral area on her mouth. Peripheral vision is less accurate and does not pick up details, so the

shadows in her cheekbones augment the curvature of her smile.

When the viewer looks directly at the woman's mouth, however, the fovea does not pick up the shadows,

and the portrait no longer appears to be smiling. Therefore, the appearance and disappearance of her smile

really is an attribute of viewers' vision. This is one of the reasons why the painting has remained

an enigma to art enthusiasts and perhaps the most famous painting in the world.

Behind The Last Supper

Last Supper is Leonardo's visual interpretation

of an event chronicled in all four of the Gospels

(books in the Christian New Testament). The

evening before Christ was betrayed by one of his

disciples, he gathered them together to eat, tell

them he knew what was coming and wash their

feet (a gesture symbolizing that all were equal

under the eyes of the Lord). As they ate and

drank together, Christ gave the disciples explicit

instructions on how to eat and drink in the future, in remembrance of him. It was the first celebration of

the Eucharist, a ritual still performed.

Specifically, Last Supper depicts the next few seconds in this story after Christ dropped the bombshell

that one disciple would betray him before sunrise, and all twelve have reacted to the news with different

degrees of horror, anger and shock.

Leonardo, always the inventor, tried using new materials for Last Supper. Instead of using tempera on wet

plaster (the preferred method of fresco painting, and one which had worked successfully for centuries), he

thought he'd give using dry plaster a whirl. His experiment resulted in a more varied palette, which was

Leonardo's intent. What he hadn't taken into account (because, who knew?) was that this method wasn't at

all durable. The painted plaster began to flake off the wall almost immediately, and people have been

attempting to restore it ever since.

It was said that Leonardo painted this to let the people know about the hidden history about Mary

Magdalene and Jesus Christ, as the painting shows the opposite color of their robes, and the distance of

each other.

The Mystery of the Madonna of the Rocks

The Virgin of the Rocks (sometimes

the Madonna of the Rocks) is the name used

for two Late Renaissance paintings

by Leonardo da Vinci, of the same subject, and

of a composition which is identical except for

two significant details. One painting usually

hangs in the Louvre, Paris, and the other in

the National Gallery, London. For a few

months in late 2011 and early 2012 the two

paintings have been brought together in an

exhibition at the National Gallery, London.[1] The paintings are both nearly 2 metres (over 6 feet) high and

are painted in oils. Both were painted on wooden panel; that in the Louvre has been transferred to canvas.[2]

Legendary tales of a childhood meeting between Jesus and his cousin Saint John the Baptist first became

popular in the 14th century. It was claimed that when King Herod ordered the Massacre of the Innocents,

the Holy Family fled to Egypt and on their way met Saint John, who also escaped the massacre.

Detail from Leonardo, The Virgin of the Rocks, about 1491/2-9 and 1506-8

The Virgin of the Rocks demonstrates Leonardo's revolutionary technique of using shadows, rather than

outlines, to model his figures. The Virgin and Child are usually shown in bright daylight, their faces set

against the sky. Leonardo has chosen the dark background of rocks in order to model the faces in light,

which is what makes the image so striking and so unusual.

The Baptism of Christ

The Baptism of Christ is a painting finished around 1475 in the studio of

the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Verrocchio and generally ascribed to him and his

pupil Leonardo da Vinci. Some art historians discern the hands

of other members of Verrocchio's workshop in the painting as

well. The picture depicts the Baptism of Jesus by John the

Baptist as recorded in the Biblical Gospels

ofMatthew, Mark and Luke. The angel to the left is recorded as

having been painted by the youthful Leonardo, a fact which has

excited so much special comment and mythology, that the

importance and value of the picture as a whole and within the

œuvre of Verrocchio is often overlooked. It is housed in

the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.Andrea del Verrocchio was a

sculptor, goldsmith and painter who ran a large and successful

workshop in Florence in the second half of the 15th century.[1] Among his apprentices and close associates were the

painters Botticelli, Botticini, Lorenzo di Credi and Leonardo da Vinci. Verrocchio was not himself a

prolific painter and very few pictures are attributed to his hand, his fame lying chiefly in his sculptured

works. Verrocchio's paintings, as are typical of Florentine works of that date, are in tempera on wooden

panel. The technique of painting artworks in oil paint, previously used in Italy only for durable items like

parade shields, was introduced to Florence by Dutch and Flemish painters and their imported works at

around the date that this painting was created. But Leonardo himself didn’t use the traditional way of

painting he use oil paints which was not likely known in southern of France. Which made the angels in

the painting seem more alive.

As a Scientist and Inventor

While the full extent of his scientific studies has only become recognized in the last 150 years, he

was, during his lifetime, employed for his engineering and skill of invention. Many of his designs, such as

the movable dikes to protect Venice from invasion, proved too costly or impractical. Some of his smaller

inventions entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas

vastly ahead of his own time, conceptually inventing a helicopter, a tank, the use of concentrated solar

Studies of a fœtus from Leonardo's journals

power, a calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics and thedouble hull. In practice, he greatly

advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, astronomy, civil engineering, optics, and the

study of water (hydrodynamics).

Leonardo's most famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, is a study of the proportions of the human body,

linking art and science in a single work that has come to represent Renaissance Humanism.

Approach to scientific investigation

During the Renaissance, the study of Art and Science was not

perceived as mutually exclusive; on the contrary, the one was

seen as informing upon the other. Although Leonardo's training

was primarily as an artist, it was largely through his scientific

approach to the art of painting, and his development of a style

that coupled his scientific knowledge with his unique ability to

render what he saw that created the outstanding masterpieces of

art for which he is famous.

As a scientist, Leonardo had no formal education

in Latin and mathematics and did not attend a university.

Because of these factors, his scientific studies were largely

ignored by other scholars. Leonardo's approach to science was

one of intense observation and detailed recording, his tools of

investigation being almost exclusively his eyes. His journals give insight into his investigative processes.

A recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as a scientist by Frtijof Capra argues that Leonardo

was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed

him, his theorizing and hypothesizing integrating the arts and particularly painting. Capra sees Leonardo's

unique integrated, holistic views of science as making him a

forerunner of modern systems theory and complexity schools

of thought.[3]

The Vitruvian Man is a drawing created by Leonardo da

Vinci circa 1487.[1] It is accompanied by notes based on the

work of the architectVitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen

and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed

positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously

inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or,

less often,Proportions of Man. It is stored in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy, and, like most

works on paper, is displayed only occasionally.

When he work for a duke he was a producer, stage manager etc.

The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry

described[4] by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De Architectura.

Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among theClassical

orders of architecture. Vitruvius determined that the ideal body should be eight heads high. Leonardo's

drawing is traditionally named in honor of the architect.

Leonardo's notes and journals

Leonardo kept a series of journals in which he wrote

almost daily, as well as separate notes and sheets of

observations, comments and plans. He wrote and drew with his

left hand, and most of his writing is in mirror script, which

makes it difficult to read. Much has survived to illustrate

Leonardo's studies, discoveries and inventions.

On his death, his writings were left mainly to his pupil

Melzi with the apparent intention that his scientific work

should be published. This did not take place in Melzi's lifetime,

and the writings were eventually bound in different forms and

dispersed. Some of his works were published as a Treatise on

Painting 165 years after his death.

Publication

Leonardo illustrated a book on mathematical proportion in art written by his friend Luca

Pacioli and called "De divina proportione", published in 1509. He was also preparing a major treatise on

his scientific observations and mechanical inventions. It was to be divided into a number of sections or

"Books", Leonardo leaving some instructions as to how they were to be ordered. Many sections for it

appear in his notebooks.

Investigating the motion of the arm.

These pages deal with scientific subjects generally but also specifically as they touch upon the

creation of artworks. In relating to art, this is not science that is dependent upon experimentation or the

testing of theories. It deals with detailed observation, particularly the observation of the natural world,

and includes a great deal about the visual effects of light on different natural substances such as foliage.[4]

Leonardo writes:

“ Begun at Florence, in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22nd day of March 1508. And

this is to be a collection without order, taken from many papers which I have copied here, hoping to

arrange them later each in its place, according to the subjects of which they may treat. But I believe

that before I am at the end of this [task] I shall have to repeat the same things several times; for

which, O reader! do not blame me, for the subjects are many and memory cannot retain them [all]

and say: ‘I will not write this because I wrote it before.’ And if I wished to avoid falling into this

fault, it would be necessary in every case when I wanted to copy [a passage] that, not to repeat

myself, I should read over all that had gone before; and all the more since the intervals are long

between one time of writing and the next.[4]

Leonardo’s Sketches

An Artillery Park is a 1487 drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.

Drawing of giant crossbow by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1485 to 1487.

ANATOMY

Another area of science he studied was anatomy. In 1489, he started an all new notebook on human

anatomy. He made crude sketches of all parts of body and some truly amazing and wonderful ones. I

made observations on such parts as the eye socket, the optic nerve entering the brain, and complete

human tendons, muscles, and the skeletal system. After that, for 20 years, he basically gave up anatomy

and moved on. Later, toward the end of his life, King Louis XII of France asked him to accompany him to

Milan, and he went willingly. In about 1508, he continued investigating parts of the human body and how

they worked once again. By then, he had made a large breakthrough in his scientific career by building a

theory of how the four powers in the world worked, (which he had found to be movement, weight, force

and percussion.) He was about to apply them to the greatest of all sciences, and by far the most

fascinating, the phenomenon called the human body.

To accomplish what was yearning to know about the human body, he had to dissect about thirty corpses.

He put this beside him right away and was overcome with the beauty and wonder of what he found. His

notebooks that he used were teeming with notes that showed his admiration. Beside one of his drawings

of the heart, he wrote, “Marvelous instrument invented by the Supreme Master”. He was very clever in

finding ways to explore the body. For instance, He used his knowledge and experience as a sculptor to

help him by injecting the organs with wax to make plaster casts. The arms and the legs also helped him

explain what he had discovered about the lever. He dissected every muscle and tugged and pulled at it to

observe how it worked. One of his favorite muscles were the biceps, which he found not only it bent the

arm, but it turned the palm upward! He also proceeded made a model of the legs made of copper wires

connected to the bones to make a skeleton.

PHYSICS

Leonardo also worked with physics and perspective. He used a lot of his perspective ideas in paintings

and sketches. He used physics with many of his inventions. To learn more about his inventions, go to the

invention page.

Eight Barrelled Machine Gun Designed and Drawn by Leonardo da Vinci

Armoured Car a pen drawing dated 1487 by Leonardo Da Vinci

SCIENTIFIC IMPACT

His impact on society after he died is hard to determine. One of his great contributions was that he started

the Scientific Revolution. He revolutionized the way that scientists have researched ever since. The

method has been used to study the world around us by scientists of the posterity for years to come. Much

of his work in many fields and his scientific method fueled scientists for years to come.

And with all of his discoveries came the things he did not achieve. If he had had the mathematics and

accurate measuring instruments, his inventions might have been boundless with possibility. And because

of this, many think that he is not as influential as other people in history are. One quote by Michael H.

Hart in The 100 Most Influential People says this:

“His talent and reputation seem greatly in excess of his actual influence upon history. In his notebooks,

Leonardo left behind sketches of many modern inventions such as airplanes and submarines. While these

notebooks attest to his brilliance and originality, they had virtually no influence upon the development of

science. In the first place, Leonardo did not actually build models of those inventions. In the second place,

although the ideas were very clever, it does not appear that the inventions would have actually worked. It

is one thing to think of the idea of a submarine or airplane, it is another and very much harder thing to

work out a precise, detailed, practical design and to construct a model that actually works.”

Because his books weren’t published for centuries to come and he wrote in “mirror-writing” his impact

was too late, many say. I believe that despite these holdbacks he was one of the smartest, a literal genious,

and revolutionary people in history. He know so much in so many fields it was truly remarkable

The Journal

Leonardo da Vinci journal mostly complies with his invention and studies about the human anatomy.

Perhaps the most expensive 'journal of ideas', Da Vinci's Codex Leicester is on display at the Chester

Beatty Library. The 500-year old "ideas jotter" showing some of the great scientific and philosophy ideas

which are still in use today, was bought by Microsoft founder Bill Gates for $31m (€23m) in 1994.

Some pictures from the journal:

Facts about him:

Leonardo was an apprentice to the artist Andrea di Cione in 1466. Andrea di Cione was known as

Verrocchio and he had one of the best workshops in Florence.

Verrocchio never painted again after collaborating with Leonardo da Vinci on The Baptism of

Chirstpainting. Da Vinci painted the young angel who held the robe of Jesus and his painting

proved to be far superior to Verrocchio, the master.

In 1499, Leonardo da Vinci fled to Venice where he created a system of moveable barricades to

protect the city from attack.

(Left) the river Arno, c. 1504, Drawings and Misc Papers Vol. IV, folio 444r. (Right) the veins of the left arm – those of an older persoan are compared with a young person‘s in the

smaller inset sketch. 1507–8, from Anatomical Studies, folio 69r.

‘Anatomical studies of the shoulder’

Leonardo’s work was unique. Because of his extensive knowledge of the human form and the

way humans show emotions, he was able to paint expressions and gestures that other artists had

never successfully conveyed. His method and technique of laying on the paint and gradation of

tone were innovative

Leonardo was a vegetarian.

Because of his vegetarianism, Leonardo had a habit of purchasing caged birds and then releasing

them into the wild.

Sixty beggars followed his casket as requested in Leonardo da Vinci’s will.

Leonardo was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in

Florence and at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From these studies he created over 200 pages of

drawings.

On 13,000 pages of journal drawings and notes, Leonard recorded all the things that sparked his

interest.

It is believe that Leonardo is a homosexual.

In 1946 Leonardo was almost caught in because of “sodomy”.

Leonardo was suffering from "dyslexia".

Leonardo’s first apprentice, he call him “Silia” means little demon.

It was said that he was a grand master of “Priory of Sion”

Bibliography

Dan Brown – The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown – Angels and Demons

Leonardo da Vinci – The Man who know everything (BBC)

Leonardo da Vinci – The Lost Treasure (BBC)

http://www.theredheadriter.com/2012/05/artist-leonardo-da-vinci-53-interesting-facts/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

http://www.biography.com/people/leonardo-da-vinci-40396

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_inventions_of_Leonardo_da_Vinci

http://www.leonardo-da-vinci.ch/science

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-mystery-behind-the-mona-lisa.htm

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/leonardo/a/last_supper.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_of_the_Rocks

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art/paintings-in-depth/mysterious-virgin/*/

viewPage/3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baptism_of_Christ_(Verrocchio)

http://mmandamon.blogspot.com/2007/06/leonardo-da-vincis-journal.html