Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance architect, musician, anatomist, inventor, engineer, sculptor, geometer, and painter. He has been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" and as a universal genius. Leonardo is famous for his masterly paintings, such as The Last Supper and Mona Lisa. He is also known for designing many inventions that anticipated modern technology, although few of these designs were constructed in his lifetime. In addition, he helped advance the study of anatomy, astronomy, and civil engineering. Renaissance humanism saw no mutually exclusive polarities between sciences and arts.

Life

Personal life

The first known biography of Leonardo was published in 1550, by Giorgio Vasari in his Vite de' piu eccelenti architettori, pittori e scultori italiani ("The lives of the most excellent Italian architects, painters and sculptors"). Most of the information collected by Vasari was from first-hand accounts of Leonardo's contemporaries (Vasair was only a child when Leonardo died), and it remains the first reference in studying Leonardo's life.

Related Topics:
1550 - Giorgio Vasari

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Leonardo, the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary and a local peasant woman, was born before modern naming conventions developed in Europe; his name "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", simply means "Leonardo, son of ser Piero, from Vinci". Leonardo signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo").

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Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence, where he started drawing and painting. His early sketches were of such quality that his father soon showed them to the painter Andrea del Verrocchio, who subsequently took on the fourteen-year old Leonardo as an apprentice. In this role, Leonardo also worked with Lorenzo di Credi and Pietro Perugino.

Related Topics:
Florence - Drawing - Painting - Andrea del Verrocchio - Lorenzo di Credi - Pietro Perugino

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:But the greatest of all Andrea's pupils was Leonardo da Vinci, in whom, besides a beauty of person never sufficiently admired and a wonderful grace in all his actions, there was such a power of intellect that whatever he turned his mind to he made himself master of with ease. —Vasari Later, he became an independent painter in Florence.

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In 1476, he was accused anonymously, along with three other men, of sodomy with a 17 year-old model, Jacopo Saltarelli, who was a notorious male prostitute. After two months in jail, he was acquitted because no witnesses stepped forward. For some time afterwards, Leonardo and the others were kept under observation by Florence's Officers of the Night - a Renaissance organisation charged with suppressing the practice of sodomy, as shown by surviving legal records of the Podestà and the Officers of the Night.

Related Topics:
Sodomy - Jacopo Saltarelli - Prostitute - Officers of the Night - Podestà

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Some modern critics have contended that Leonardo's love of boys was well-known even in the sixteenth century. Rocke reports that in a fictional dialogue on l'amore masculino (male love) written by the contemporary art critic and theorist Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Leonardo appears as one of the protagonists and declares, "Know that male love is exclusively the product of virtue which, joining men together with the diverse affections of friendship, makes it so that from a tender age they would enter into the manly one as more stalwart friends." In the dialogue, the interlocutor inquires of Leonardo about his relations with his assistant, Salai, "Did you play the game from behind which the Florentines love so much?"

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In contrast, Freud, in an analysis of the artist, took the position that the following sentence, taken from one of Leonardo's notebooks, "indicates his frigidity": The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.

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There is no evidence that Leonardo was ever intimately involved with any woman, nor in a close friendship with one. Though he kept his private life particularly secret, it is known that he surrounded himself with youths and men throughout his life, and his art reflects an appreciation of androgynous beauty (and in at least one instance, masculine sexuality). This has contributed to the opinion of some that he was a homosexual. One of his lovers may have been Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (nicknamed Salai (Little Devil)). Gian entered Leonardo's

Related Topics:
Androgynous - Homosexual

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household around 1488 at the age of 10, becoming his servant and assistant for the next thirty years.

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In 1506, Leonardo met Count Francesco Melzi, the 15 year old son of a Lombard aristocrat. Salai eventually accepted Melzi's continued presence and the three undertook journeys throughout Italy. Though Salai was always introduced as Leonardo's "pupil", he never produced any work of artistic merit. Melzi, however, became Leonardo's pupil and life companion. Leonardo had many other friends who are now figures renowned in their fields, or for their influence on history; these included Niccolò Machiavelli, Cesare Borgia and Franchinus Gaffurius.

Related Topics:
Count Francesco Melzi - Lombard - Niccolò Machiavelli - Cesare Borgia - Franchinus Gaffurius

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It is apparent from the works of Leonardo and his early biographers that he was a man of high integrity and very sensitive to moral issues. His respect for life led him to being a vegetarian at least part of his life (although the term 'vegan' would fit him well, as he even entertained the notion that taking milk from cows amounts to stealing. Under the heading, "Of the beasts from whom cheese is made," he answers, "the milk will be taken from the tiny children." http://www.propheties.it/variouspeople/leonardo.htm). Vasari reports a story that as a young man in Florence he often bought caged birds just to release them from captivity. He was also a respected judge on matters of beauty and elegance, particularly in the creation of pageants.

Related Topics:
Vegetarian - Vegan - Pageant

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