LEONARDO DA VINCI 1452-1519

LEONARDO DA VINCI 1452-1519 Lionardo di Ser Piero da Vinci was born to Ser Piero in the town of Vinci (near Florence) in the early hours of 15 April 1452, and died in Amboise (in the Loire valley of France) on 2 May 1519. He is one of the most prominent figures of the Italian Renaissance and the ultimate icon of European painting. During Leonardo’s youth in Florence, he was apprenticed to the sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. Around 1482, he moved to Milan, where he painted the Virgin of the Rocks . While in the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he created the Last Supper – a work that made him one of the most famous artists of his time. In 1500, he returned to Florence and produced a series of masterpieces: Saint Anne, the Mona Lisa, The Battle of Anghiari and Saint John the Baptist. In 1506, he went back to Milan, where he stayed until the election of the Medici Pope Leo X in 1513, which led him to move to Rome. He left Italy for France at the invitation of the French king François I in 1516, and spent his last years in Amboise, on the banks of the river Loire. The essence of Leonardo’s revolutionary approach to painting can be summarised as follows: to reproduce the reality of life within an infinite space made up of light and shade, he developed a uniquely free style of drawing and painting that enabled him to endow his figures with the nature of movement. He aimed tomake painting a science encompassing the whole physical world, able to express the truth of appearances. Leonardo ushered in a modernity that would surpass antiquity and pave the way for future forms of art.