Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath; a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. He was born of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and Caterina.In 1466, at the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. The workshop of this renowned master was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence.Besides metal work ,its products included decorated tournament shields, painted dowry chests, christening platters, small portraits, and devotional pictures.He was exposed to a vast range of technical arts and had the opportunity to learn artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.
By 1472, at the age of twenty, he qualified as a master in the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him.
In 1478 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard. In 1481 the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned The Adoration of the Magi. Between 1482 and 1499, when Louis XII of France occupied Milan, much of Leonardo’s work was in that city. It was there that he was commissioned to paint two of his most famous works, the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.
In 1482, he created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici , the ruler of Florence and patron of arts,was so impressed that he decided to send both the lyre and its maker to Milan, in order to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan.For him,he worked on designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to...
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