Leonardo da Vinci and artworks

Gabriel Séailles

• Publisher: Parkstone International
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781781608548
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs

Leonardo's early life was spent in Florence, his maturity in Milan, and the last three years of his life in France. Leonardo's teacher was Verrocchio. First he was a goldsmith, then a painter and sculptor: as a painter, representative of the very scientific school of draughtsmanship; more famous as a sculptor, being the creator of the Colleoni statue at Venice, Leonardo was a man of striking physical attractiveness, great charm of manner and conversation, and mental accomplishment. He was well grounded in the sciences and mathematics of the day, as well as a gifted musician. His skill in draughtsmanship was extraordinary; shown by his numerous drawings as well as by his comparatively few paintings. His skill of hand is at the service of most minute observation and analytical research into the character and structure of form. Leonardo is the first in date of the great men who had the desire to create in a picture a kind of mystic unity brought about by the fusion of matter and spirit. Now that the Primitives had concluded their experiments, ceaselessly pursued during two centuries, by the conquest of the methods of painting, he was able to pronounce the words which served as a password to all later artists worthy of the name: painting is a spiritual thing, cosa mentale. He completed Florentine draughtsmanship in applying to modelling by light and shade, a sharp subtlety which his predecessors had used only to give greater precision to their contours. This marvellous draughtsmanship, this modelling and chiaroscuro he used not solely to paint the exterior appearance of the body but, as no one before him had done, to cast over it a reflection of the mystery of the inner life. In the Mona Lisa and his other masterpieces he even used landscape not merely as a more or less picturesque decoration, but as a sort of echo of that interior life and an element of a perfect harmony. Relying on the still quite novel laws of perspective this doctor of scholastic wisdom, who was at the same time an initiator of modern thought, substituted for the discursive manner of the Primitives the principle of concentration which is the basis of classical art. The picture is no longer presented to us as an almost fortuitous aggregate of details and episodes. It is an organism in which all the elements, lines and colours, shadows and lights, compose a subtle tracery converging on a spiritual, a sensuous centre. It was not with the external significance of objects, but with their inward and spiritual significance, that Leonardo was occupied.

Table of contents

• Head of the Virgin in Three-Quarter View Facing Right, 1508-1512
• The Virgin and Child with Two Angels, Leonardo da Vinci and the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, probably 1470s
• Study of Flowers, c.1481-1483
• Bust of an Apostle with Right Hand Raised, c.1495
• Comparative Studies of Human and Horse Legs, c.1506-1508
• Cataclysmic Study, c.1511-1512
• A Study for the Costume of a Masquerader, c.1517-1518
• Study for the Fight with the Dragon, Undated
• Heads in Profile, c.1478
• Five Grotesque Heads, Undated
• Head of a Woman
• A Portrait of a Young Woman in Right Profile, c. 1485-1490
• The Head of a Youth in Right Profile, c.1510
• Profiles of a Young and an Old Man
• Study of a Hand, c.1483
• Study of a Nude, Undated
• Studies of Anatomy
• The Head of St James and Architectural Sketches, c.1495
• Three Dancing Nymphs, Undated
• Hercules with the Lion Nemean, c.1505-1508
• Drapery for a Seated Figure, Undated
• Drapery for a Seated Figure from the Front, Undated
• Study of Weapons, Undated
• Pharmacopoeia on the Flight of Birds, 1505-1506
• The Distance from the Sun to Earth and the Size of the Moon, 1506-1508
• Study of Geometric Transformations, Undated
• A Sheet of Pictograms, Drawn over an Architectural Plan, c.1490
• Vertical Flying Machine, 1487-1490
• Different Types of Chains, 1493-1497
• Chariot Armed with Scythe, c.1485
• Mechanism for Alternative to Continuous Movement, c.1485
• Giant Mechanical Digger, c.1503
• Machine Gun, c.1482
• Rapid Fire Trigger, Undated
• Mortars Firing Cannonballs, Undated
• The Etruscan Mausoleum
• Automobile, Undated