Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Florentine Renaissance man, genius, artist in all media, architect, military engineer. Possibly the most brilliantly creative man in European history, he advertised himself, first of all, as a military engineer. In a famous letter dated about 1481 to Ludovico Sforza, of which a copy survives in the Codice Atlantico in Milan, Leonardo asks for employment in that capacity. He had plans for bridges, very light and strong, and plans for destroying those of the enemy. He knew how to cut off water to besieged fortifications, and how to construct bridges, mantlets, scaling ladders, and other instruments. He designed cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, designed to fire small stones, almost in the manner of hail??grape- or case-shot (see ammunition, artillery). He offered cannon of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use and, where it is not possible to employ cannon ?? catapults, mangonels and trabocchi and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. And he said he made armoured cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with their artillery ?? and behind them the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed, and without any opposition. He also offered to design ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke. The large number of surviving drawings and notes on military art show that Leonardo claims were not without foundation, although most date from after the Sforza letter. Most of the drawings, including giant crossbows (see bows), appear to be improvements on existing machines rather than new inventions. One exception is the drawing of a tank dating from 1485-8 now in the British Museum??a flattened cone, propelled from inside by crankshafts, firing guns. Another design in the British Museum, for a machine with scythes revolving in the horizontal plane, dismembering bodies as it goes, is gruesomely fanciful. Most of the other drawings are in the Codice Atlantico in Milan but some are in the Royal Libraries at Windsor and Turin, in Venice, or the Louvre and the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Two ingenious machines for continuously firing arrows, machine-gun style, powered by a treadmill are shown in the Codice Atlantico. A number of other sketches of bridges, water pumps, and canals could be for military or civil purposes: dual use technology. Leonardo lived at a time when the first artillery fortifications were appearing and the Codice Atlantico contains sketches of ingenious fortifications combining bastions, round towers, and truncated cones. Models constructed from the drawings and photographed in Calvi works reveal forts which would have looked strikingly modern in the 19th century, and might even feature in science fiction films today. On 18 August 1502 Cesare Borgia appointed Leonardo as his Military Engineer General, although no known building by Leonardo exists. Leonardo was also fascinated by flight. Thirteen pages with drawings for man-powered aeroplanes survive and there is one design for a helicoidal helicopter. Leonardo later realized the inadequacy of the power a man could generate and turned his attention to aerofoils. Had his enormous abilities been concentrated on one thing, he might have invented the modern glider.   Related Paintings of LEONARDO da Vinci :. | Portrat of a musician | The Virgin and the Nino with Holy Ana | Rule fur the proportion of the human figure | Master of the Pala Sforzesca, profile of an old man | Hi Hieronymus |
Related Artists:
staffan hallstrom
Staffan Hallström, född 1914 i Stockholm, död 1976, var en svensk målare och tecknare. Staffan Hallström föräldrar var Gustaf Hallström, antikvarie vid Statens historiska museum och Astrid Hallström, född Berg. Han studerade på Gerlesborgsskolan, Tekniska skolan 1932-34 och vid Kungliga Konsthögskolan i Stockholm 1935-41 för bland annat Isaac Grenewald och Olle Hjortzberg 1935-41. Han företog studieresor till Frankrike, Italien, Nederländerna och Belgien. Staffan Hallström bodde och arbetade under 1940-talet i Saltsjö-Duvnäs, där han hyrde rum av konstnären Olle Nyman. Han fick då kontakt med Evert Lundqvist, som inspirerade honom och gav honom stöd. Tillsammans med Olle Nyman, Evert Lundqvist och Roland Kempe ingick han i Saltsjö-Duvnäs-gruppen. Senare hade han även atelje på Varvsgatan och kombinerad bostad och atelje vid Brunkebergstorg. År 1946 hade han sin debututställning på Konstnärshuset i Stockholm. Han slog igenom med utställningen Hundra målningar på Konstakademien 1961 och spåddes då lysande framtid framför allt av skulptören Torsten Renqvist. Staffan Hallström, arbetade i nyexpressionistisk stil och bland hans mest kända verk är Ingens hundar från 1958, som köptes in av Moderna museet. Detta motiv målade han sedan i olika versioner. Tillsammans med Lasse Andreasson gestaltade han 1972 Masmos tunnelbanestation med verket Ta ned solen i tunnelbanan, målningar på plåt utefter spårväggarna. Han är representerad på bland annat Moderna och Nationalmuseum. .
PESNE, Antoine
French painter (1683-1757) French painter active in Prussia. He studied with his father, the portrait painter Thomas Pesne (1653-1727), and with his maternal great-uncle, Charles de La Fosse. In 1703, as a pupil at the Academie Royale, he would have won the Prix de Rome with his Moses and the Daughters of Jethro (untraced), had not Jules Hardouin Mansart, adviser to the Academie, deemed all entries that year unworthy. Nevertheless Pesne left for Italy, making the acquaintance of Jean Raoux in Venice and being allowed the use of a studio in Rome by Charles Porson, Director of the Academie de France. While in Venice, Pesne painted the portrait of Friedrich Ernst von Knyphausen
Oehme, Ernst Ferdinand
German, 1797-1855