Da Vinci personality- the most mysterious, brilliant and little studied in history.

The biography of the Italian is very scarce, and he kept his personal life under a heavy lock - there are legends about it, but there are no reliable sources.

But the paintings, inventions, theories, diaries of the master are subject to fame and can shed light on some details of his life.

The great scientist and artist has always stood out from the background of others. Even as a child, he was incredibly curious, asking about everything he saw and heard.

It was hard to survive the separation from his mother, while still a child, he withdrew into himself, and, having matured, began to live in the world of creativity, devoted himself entirely to finding answers to exciting questions.

Birth and childhood

Da Vinci was born on April 15, 1451 in the village of Anchiano, which was located near the village of Vinci, Florence. Parents were not married - this affected inner world boy and his relationship with his father. Leonardo's mother was a peasant woman, Katerina, and his father, a young notary, Piero.

Initially, the son lived with Katerina, then dad took him to him. At that time, Piero was married for the first time, but the couple had no children. Ten years later, da Vinci's stepmother died, and his father remarried and was re-widowed. In general, the boy had 4 stepmothers, 12 brothers and sisters.

At the age of 14, he entered the studio of the painter Andrea Verrocchio as an apprentice. The institution is conveniently located in the heart of intellectual Italy. This work determined the further fate of a unique person.

Youth

In parallel with work, the young da Vinci studied the humanities and technical sciences.

Over the years, he has learned:

• metallurgy;
• chemistry;
• drawing;
• sculpture;
• drawing;
• modeling.

Together with the talent, the famous masters Agnolo di Polo, Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino studied in the workshop of Verrocchio. At the age of 20, Leonardo received the qualification of a master in the Guild of St. Luke. After 4 years, he was accused of sodomy, but was acquitted at the trial.

The first artistic masterpieces

The first masterpiece of Leonardo was the painting "The Baptism of Christ", which was ordered by Verrocchio.

The master asked the student to draw one of the two angels and a landscape. Andrea himself painted the rest of the canvas, including the second angel. The difference between them turned out to be colossal - da Vinci's angel turned out better. Verrocchio was so amazed that he abandoned his brush.

The next works of the genius were "The Annunciation", "Madonna with a Vase", "Madonna Benois".

It is hard to imagine that these masterpieces appeared from under the brush of a 20-year-old guy.

Leonardo received his first big order at the age of 30. The monastery of San Donato a Sisto asked to paint the canvas "Adoration of the Magi", which da Vinci never finished.

At the same age, the artist was engaged in another major work - the painting "Saint Jerome".

Personal life

Da Vinci was reputed famous person and during his lifetime, he was always surrounded by friends and students. But the master did not want to disclose intimate relationships.

For 67 years, he never married. Some historians believe that there was a love affair between the genius and Cecilia Gallerani, from whom the portrait of the “Lady with an Ermine” was written off.

Other historians claim that the Italian preferred men. One of the students named Salai, who served as the master's sitter for the paintings "John the Baptist" and "Bacchus", was allegedly the teacher's lover. There is also a theory that Leonardo was a virgin and did not love anyone, devoting himself to the study of the unknown.

last years of life

In the last years of his life, the Italian lived in the Clos Luce castle, accepting the invitation of the French King Francis I.

He almost did not draw, but he successfully organized holidays at court, and also planned a new palace in Romorantan, a spiral staircase in the castle of Chambord, a canal between Saone and Loire.

At the age of 65, Leonardo became difficult to move around, his right hand became numb. Before his death, he was constantly in bed, walking only with the help of loved ones.

The genius of all times died on May 2, 1519, in the castle of Clos Luce, among his students and masterpieces.

buried brilliant artist in the castle of Amboise and in his honor, an inscription was knocked out on a tombstone, which says that the ashes of the greatest person who visited the French kingdom rest in the walls of the monastery.

The work of Leonardo da Vinci

He left behind many discoveries, works of art, records that provide detailed encyclopedic information on various sciences.

Art

Contemporaries know da Vinci as an artist, although the master himself considered painting only a hobby, and with age he devoted less and less time to it. But even in it, the genius succeeded - he created his own technique, put Renaissance painting on a new, higher level.

He painted not only in tempera, which was used by most artists of the era, but also in oil, which gave the figures figurativeness.

Da Vinci masterfully played the lyre. When he was tried, the case was about a musician, not an artist or an inventor. It is believed that he was engaged in sculpture. But only the terracotta head has survived to this day.

Scientific inventions of the "Magician from Science"

Leonardo was deeply engaged in science, he created many things that made life easier for mankind. Although half of them are called attributed to the author, it is still deserved.

The list is impressive:

• Submarine;
• diving suit;
• parachute
• armored tank;
• two-lens telescope;
• portable bridge;
• spotlight;
• self-propelled cart (car prototype);
• bearing;
• robot;
• wheel lock, which became popular during the life of the creator.

Da Vinci was obsessed with the idea of ​​flight and dreamed of designing an airplane. Among his drawings, they found a diagram of an ornithopter aircraft, which the inventor did not have time to try.

Anatomy and medicine

Leonardo made thousands of medical notes and anatomical sketches. He sought to study the human body in detail. For this, the scientist even performed autopsies of corpses himself. He managed to almost exactly reproduce a person from the inside, only the female reproductive system turned out to be inaccurate.

The genius founded dynamic anatomy, invented a glass model for studying heart valves, was the first to determine the proportions of the skeleton and disproved many theories about medicine of that time. He was ahead of anatomical practice by 300 years.

Literature of the great thinker

The literary heritage of the Italian has reached the descendants in a chaotic form. After the death of the genius, his student and friend Francesco Melzi compiled a Treatise on Painting from passages on art, which was published in 1651.

In addition to these passages, many prose works can be found in Leonardo's notes:

• fables,
• facies (joking stories);
• aphorisms;
• allegories;
• prophecies.

Among the latter, half have already come true. So, the genius predicted the appearance telephone connection, two-handed saws, agricultural machines. Other prophecies that have not yet come true are more like biblical ones - they talk about demons and cataclysms.

Diaries of Leonardo

The great Leonardo kept 120 diaries, of which approximately 7,000 pages have survived to date. On them you can find drawings of various inventions, sketches of human anatomy, notes for young artists, architects, musicians, philosophical sayings, comic works, fables and prophecies.

Everything is written with the left hand and in mirror image - from left to right. Da Vinci's mirror code was solved only at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Priceless diaries after the death of the author were kept by Francesco Melzi, and then the manuscripts inexplicably disappeared. Only a few fragments were found with friends and relatives of Leonardo. For the first time, part of the diaries was published by Carlo Amoretti, the curator of the Ambrosian Library.

Students - young painters da Vinci

Having become a master, Leonardo da Vinci founded his own workshop, in which he taught others the art. Among young students, fame gained:

• Bernardino Luini;
• Ambrogio de Predis;
• Francesco Melzi;
• Andrea Solario;
• Giovanni Boltraffio;
• Cesare da Sesto;
• Giampetrino.

The master gave practical recommendations to young painters in his diaries. He advised developing memory and imagination, finding new and surprising things in ordinary forms, paying more attention to nature, studying paintings by famous artists, the history and theory of painting, and starting practice prepared.

Interesting facts, secrets and fictions of the artist

The personality of da Vinci is surrounded by mystery. He was considered a black magician, an alien or a time traveler. Close friends appreciated and loved him, jealously guarding secrets.

Nevertheless, some interesting facts are reliably known to contemporaries:

1. The genius was the first to understand. In his diaries, he wrote that the lighted particles of air located between the Earth and space are to blame. It is noteworthy that Leonardo called the cosmos "celestial blackness."
2. In his diaries, da Vinci referred to himself as "you", also speaking to potential readers. This indicates an unstable mental state.
3. The Italian slept for 15 minutes every four hours. This sleep technique has been used for many centuries. It helps to increase productivity, improve well-being, reduce the time spent on sleep.

Disputes about who Leonardo da Vinci was - a mystical or just a non-standard person are still ongoing. In any case, this was a unique multifaceted person who had the greatest impact on civilization. You can love or hate him, but it is impossible not to admire him.

Continuation. . .

(Leonardo da Vinci) (1452-1519) - the greatest figure, the multifaceted genius of the Renaissance, the founder of the High Renaissance. Known as an artist, scientist, engineer, inventor.

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the town of Anchiano near the town of Vinci, located near Florence. His father was Piero da Vinci, a notary who came from a prominent family in the city of Vinci. According to one version, the mother was a peasant woman, according to another - the owner of the tavern, known as Katerina. At about the age of 4.5 years, Leonardo was taken to his father's house, and in the documents of that time he is called the illegitimate son of Piero. In 1469 he entered the workshop of the famous artist, sculptor and jeweler Andrea del Verrocchio ( 1435/36–1488). Here Leonardo went the whole way of apprenticeship: from rubbing paints to working as an apprentice. According to contemporaries, he painted the left figure of an angel in a painting by Verrocchio Baptism(c. 1476, Uffizi Gallery, Florence), which immediately attracted attention. The naturalness of movement, the smoothness of lines, the softness of chiaroscuro - distinguishes the figure of an angel from the more rigid writing of Verrocchio. Leonardo lived in the house of the master and after in 1472 he was admitted to the Guild of St. Luke, the guild of painters.

One of the few dated drawings by Leonardo was created in August 1473. View of the Arno Valley from a height was made with a pen with quick strokes, transmitting vibrations of light, air, which indicates that the drawing was made from nature (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).

The first painting attributed to Leonardo, although its authorship is disputed by many experts, is Annunciation(c. 1472, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). Unfortunately, the unknown author made later corrections, which significantly worsened the quality of the work.

Portrait of Ginevra de Benci(1473-1474, National Gallery, Washington) is permeated with a melancholy mood. Part of the picture below is cut off: probably, the hands of the model were depicted there. The contours of the figure are softened with the help of the sfumato effect, created before Leonardo, but it was he who became the genius of this technique. Sfumato (it. sfumato - foggy, smoky) - a technique developed in the Renaissance in painting and graphics, which allows you to convey the softness of modeling, the elusiveness of object outlines, and the feeling of the air environment.

Madonna with a flower (Madonna Benois) (Madonna with child) 1478 - 1480 Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Between 1476 and 1478 Leonardo opens his workshop. To this period belongs Madonna with a flower, so-called Madonna Benois(c. 1478, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). The smiling Madonna addresses the baby Jesus sitting on her lap, the movements of the figures are natural and plastic. In this picture, there is a characteristic interest in the art of Leonardo to show the inner world.

An unfinished painting also belongs to the early works. Adoration of the Magi(1481-1482, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). The central place is occupied by a group of the Madonna and Child and the Magi placed in the foreground.

In 1482, Leonardo left for Milan, the richest city of that time, under the patronage of Lodovico Sforza (1452–1508), who supported the army, spent huge amounts of money on lavish festivities and the purchase of works of art. Introducing himself to his future patron, Leonardo speaks of himself as a musician, military expert, inventor of weapons, war chariots, machines, and only then speaks of himself as an artist. Leonardo lived in Milan until 1498, and this period of his life was the most fruitful.

The first commission received by Leonardo was the creation of an equestrian statue in honor of Francesco Sforza (1401–1466), father of Lodovico Sforza. Working on it for 16 years, Leonardo created many drawings, as well as an eight-meter clay model. In an effort to surpass all existing equestrian statues, Leonardo wanted to make a grandiose sculpture in size, to show a rearing horse. But faced with technical difficulties, Leonardo changed the idea and decided to depict a walking horse. In November 1493 model Horse without a rider was put on public display, and it was this event that made Leonardo da Vinci famous. It took about 90 tons of bronze to cast the sculpture. The metal collection that had begun was interrupted, and the equestrian statue was never cast. In 1499, Milan was captured by the French, who used the sculpture as a target. After a while, it collapsed. Horse- a grandiose, but never completed project - one of the significant works monumental sculpture of the 16th century. and, according to Vasari, "those who have seen the huge clay model ... claim that they have never seen a work more beautiful and majestic," called the monument "the great colossus."

At the court of Sforza, Leonardo also worked as a decorator for many festivities, creating hitherto unseen scenery and mechanisms, and made costumes for allegorical figures.

unfinished canvas Saint Jerome(1481, Vatican Museum, Rome) shows the saint at the moment of repentance in a complex turn with a lion at his feet. The picture was painted in black and white paints. But after coating it with varnish in the 19th century. the colors turned to olive and golden.

Madonna in the rocks(1483–1484, Louvre, Paris) - famous painting Leonardo, painted by him in Milan. The image of the Madonna, baby Jesus, little John the Baptist and an angel in a landscape is a new motif in Italian painting that time. In the opening of the rock, a landscape is visible, which has been given sublimely ideal features, and in which the achievements of linear and aerial perspective are shown. Although the cave is dimly lit, the picture is not dark, faces and figures gently emerge from the shadows. The thinnest chiaroscuro (sfumato) creates the impression of a dim diffused light, models faces and hands. Leonardo connects the figures not only with a common mood, but also with the unity of space.

LADY WITH ERMIN. 1485–1490. Czartoryski Museum

lady with ermine(1484, Czartoryski Museum, Krakow) - one of the first works of Leonardo as a court portrait painter. The painting depicts the mistress of Lodovik Cecilia Gallerani with the emblem of the Sforza family, an ermine. The complex turn of the head and the exquisite bend of the lady's hand, the curved pose of the animal - everything speaks of the authorship of Leonardo. The background was repainted by another artist.

Portrait of a musician(1484, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan). Finished face only young man, the rest of the picture is not spelled out. The type of face is close to the faces of Leonardo's angels, only executed more courageously.

Another unique work was created by Leonardo in one of the halls of the Sforza Palace, which is called the Donkey. On the vaults and walls of this hall, he painted willow crowns, whose branches are intricately intertwined, tied with decorative ropes. Subsequently, part of the paint layer crumbled, but a significant part was preserved and restored.

In 1495 Leonardo began work on last supper(area 4.5 × 8.6 m). The fresco is located on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, at a height of 3 m from the floor and occupies the entire end wall of the room. Leonardo oriented the perspective of the fresco to the viewer, thus it organically entered the interior of the refectory: the perspective reduction of the side walls depicted in the fresco continues the real space of the refectory. Thirteen people are seated at a table parallel to the wall. In the center is Jesus Christ, to the left and to the right of him are his disciples. The dramatic moment of exposure and condemnation of betrayal is shown, the moment when Christ just uttered the words: “One of you will betray Me”, and different emotional reactions of the apostles to these words. The composition is built on a strictly verified mathematical calculation: in the center is Christ, depicted against the background of the middle, largest opening of the back wall, the vanishing point of the perspective coincides with his head. The twelve apostles are divided into four groups of three figures each. Each is given a vivid characteristic by expressive gestures and movements. The main task was to show Judas, to separate him from the rest of the apostles. By placing him on the same line of the table as all the apostles, Leonardo psychologically separated him by loneliness. Creation last supper became a notable event in the artistic life of Italy at that time. As a true innovator and experimenter, Leonardo abandoned the fresco technique. He covered the wall with a special composition of resin and mastic, and painted in tempera. These experiments led to greatest tragedy: the refectory, which was hastily repaired by order of Sforza, the picturesque innovations of Leonardo, the lowland in which the refectory was located - all this served a sad service to safety last supper. The paint began to peel off, as already mentioned by Vasari in 1556. Secret supper it was repeatedly restored in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the restorations were unqualified (the paint layers were simply reapplied). By the middle of the 20th century, when The Last Supper came to a deplorable state, began a scientific restoration: first, the entire paint layer was fixed, then later layers were removed, and Leonardo's tempera painting was opened. And although the work was badly damaged, these restoration works made it possible to say that this Renaissance masterpiece was saved. Working on the fresco for three years, Leonardo created the greatest creation of the Renaissance.

After the fall of Sforza's power in 1499, Leonardo went to Florence, stopping by Mantua and Venice on the way. In Mantua he creates cardboard with Portrait of Isabella d "Este(1500, Louvre, Paris), executed in black crayon, charcoal and pastel.

In the spring of 1500, Leonardo arrived in Florence, where he soon received an order to paint an altar painting in the monastery of the Annunciation. The order was never completed, but one of the options is the so-called. Burlington House Cardboard(1499, National Gallery, London).

One of the significant commissions received by Leonardo in 1502 for the decoration of the wall of the Council Hall of the Signoria in Florence was Battle of Anghiari(not saved). Another wall for decoration was given to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), who painted a painting there. Battle of Kashin. Sketches by Leonardo, now lost, showed the panorama of the battle, in the center of which the battle for the banner took place. Cardboards by Leonardo and Michelangelo, exhibited in 1505, were a huge success. As in the case with last supper, Leonardo experimented with paints, as a result of which the paint layer gradually crumbled. But preparatory drawings, copies, have survived, which partly give an idea of ​​the scale of this work. In particular, a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) has been preserved, which shows the central scene of the composition (c. 1615, Louvre, Paris).
For the first time in the history of battle painting, Leonardo showed the drama and fury of the battle.

MONA LISA. Louvre, Paris Mona Lisa- most famous work Leonardo da Vinci (1503-1506, Louvre, Paris). Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the third wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo. Now the picture is slightly changed: columns were originally drawn on the left and right, now cut off. Small in size, the picture makes a monumental impression: Mona Lisa is shown against the backdrop of a landscape, where the depth of space, the air haze are conveyed with the greatest perfection. Leonardo's famous sfumato technique is brought here to unprecedented heights: the thinnest, as if melting, haze of chiaroscuro, enveloping the figure, softens the contours and shadows. There is something elusive, bewitching and attractive in a slight smile, in the liveliness of facial expression, in the stately calmness of the pose, in the stillness of the smooth lines of the hands.

In 1506 Leonardo received an invitation to Milan from Louis XII of France (1462-1515). Having given Leonardo complete freedom of action, regularly paying him, the new patrons did not demand certain jobs from him. Leonardo is fond of scientific research, sometimes turning to painting. Then the second version was written Madonnas in the rocks(1506-1508, British National Gallery, London).

MADONNA WITH CHILD AND ST. ANNO. OK. 1510. Louvre, Paris

St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child(1500-1510, Louvre, Paris) - one of the themes of Leonardo's work, to which he repeatedly addressed. The last development of this theme remained unfinished.

In 1513, Leonardo went to Rome, to the Vatican, to the court of Pope Leo X (1513–1521), but soon lost the pope's favor. He studies plants botanical garden, draws up plans for draining the Pontine Marshes, writes notes to a treatise on the structure of the human voice. At this time, he created the only self-portrait(1514, Reale Library, Turin), executed in sanguine, showing a gray-haired old man with a long beard and a fixed gaze.

Leonardo's last painting was also painted in Rome - Saint John the Baptist(1515, Louvre, Paris). St. John is shown pampered with a seductive smile and feminine gestures.

Again, Leonardo receives an offer from the French king, this time from Francis I (1494-1547), the successor of Louis XII: to move to France, to an estate near the royal castle of Amboise. In 1516 or 1517, Leonardo arrives in France, where he is assigned apartments in the Cloux estate. Surrounded by the respectful admiration of the king, he receives the title of "The first artist, engineer and architect of the king." Leonardo, despite his age and illness, is engaged in drawing canals in the Loire Valley, takes part in the preparation of court festivities.

Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519, bequeathing his drawings and papers to Francesco Melzi, a student who kept them all his life. But after his death, all countless papers were distributed all over the world, some were lost, some are stored in different cities, in museums around the world.

A scientist by vocation, Leonardo even now impresses with the breadth and diversity of his scientific interests. His research in the field of aircraft design is unique. He studied the flight, planning of birds, the structure of their wings, and created the so-called. ornithopter, an aircraft with flapping wings, and never realized. He created a pyramidal parachute, a model of a spiral propeller (a variant of the modern propeller). Observing nature, he became an expert in the field of botany: he was the first to describe the laws of phyllotaxy (the laws governing the arrangement of leaves on a stem), heliotropism and geotropism (the laws of the influence of the sun and gravity on plants), discovered a way to determine the age of trees by annual rings. He was an expert in the field of anatomy: he was the first to describe the valve of the right ventricle of the heart, demonstrated anatomy, etc. He created a system of drawings that still help students understand the structure human body: showed an object in four views in order to examine it from all sides, created a system for depicting organs and bodies in a cross section. His research in the field of geology is interesting: he gave descriptions of sedimentary rocks, explanations of marine deposits in the mountains of Italy. As an optical scientist, he knew that visual images on the cornea of ​​the eye are projected upside down. He was probably the first to use a camera obscura for sketching landscapes (from Latin camera - room, obscurus - dark) - a closed box with a small hole in one of the walls; rays of light are reflected on the frosted glass on the other side of the box and create an inverted color image, used by landscape painters of the 18th century. for accurate reproduction of views). In the drawings of Leonardo there is a project for an instrument for measuring the intensity of light, a photometer, brought to life only three centuries later. He designed canals, locks, dams. Among his ideas can be seen: light shoes for walking on water, a life buoy, webbed gloves for swimming, an underwater movement device similar to a modern spacesuit, machines for the production of rope, grinders and much more. Talking to mathematician Luca Pacioli, who wrote the textbook On Divine Proportion, Leonardo became interested in this science and created illustrations for this textbook.

Leonardo also acted as an architect, but none of his projects was ever brought to life. He participated in the competition for the design of the central dome of the Milan Cathedral, designed the mausoleum for members of the royal family in the Egyptian style, a project he proposed to the Turkish Sultan to build a huge bridge across the Bosphorus, under which ships could pass.

A large number of Leonardo's drawings remained, made with sanguine, colored crayons, pastels (it is Leonardo who is credited with the invention of pastels), silver pencil, and chalk.

In Milan, Leonardo begins to write Treatise on painting, work on which continued throughout his life, but was never completed. In this multi-volume reference book, Leonardo wrote about how to recreate the world around him on the canvas, about linear and aerial perspective, proportions, anatomy, geometry, mechanics, optics, about the interaction of colors, reflexes.

John the Baptist. 1513-16

Madonna Litta 1478-1482 Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Leda with a swan 1508 - 1515 Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

The life and work of Leonardo da Vinci left a colossal mark not only in art, but also in science and technology. Painter, sculptor, architect - he was a naturalist, mechanic, engineer, mathematician, made many discoveries for future generations. It was the greatest personality of the Renaissance.

"Vitruvian Man"- the common name for a graphic drawing by da Vinci, made in 1492. as an illustration to the entries in one of the diaries. The figure depicts a naked male figure. Strictly speaking, these are even two images of the same figure superimposed on each other, but in different poses. A circle and a square are described around the figure. The manuscript containing this drawing is sometimes also referred to as The Canon of Proportions or simply The Proportions of Man. Now this work is stored in one of the museums in Venice, but it is exhibited extremely rarely, since this exhibit is truly unique and valuable both as a work of art and as a subject of research.

Leonardo created his "Vitruvian Man" as an illustration of the geometric studies he carried out on the basis of a treatise by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius (hence the name of da Vinci's work). In the treatise of the philosopher and researcher, the proportions of the human body were taken as the basis of all architectural proportions. Da Vinci, on the other hand, applied the studies of the ancient Roman architect to painting, which once again clearly illustrates the principle of the unity of art and science, put forward by Leonardo. Besides, this work also reflects the master's attempt to correlate man with nature. It is known that da Vinci considered the human body as a reflection of the universe, i.e. was convinced that it functions according to the same laws. The author himself considered the Vitruvian Man as "the cosmography of the microcosm". In this picture, there is also a deep symbolic meaning. The square and circle in which the body is inscribed do not simply reflect physical, proportional characteristics. The square can be interpreted as the material existence of a person, and the circle represents its spiritual basis, and the points of contact geometric shapes between themselves and with the body inserted into them can be seen as a connection between these two foundations of human existence. For many centuries this drawing was considered as a symbol of the ideal symmetry of the human body and the universe as a whole.

By 1514 - 1515 refers to the creation of the masterpiece of the great master - "La Gioconda".
Until recently, they thought that this portrait was written much earlier, in Florence, around 1503. They believed the story of Vasari, who wrote: “Leonardo undertook to complete for Francesco del Gioconde a portrait of Monna Lisa, his wife, and after working on it for four years, left it unfinished. This work is now with the French king in Fontainebleau. By the way, Leonardo resorted to the following trick: since the Madonna Lisa was very beautiful, while painting the portrait, he kept people who played the lyre or sang, and there were always jesters who kept her cheerful and removed the melancholy that is usually reported painting to performed portraits.

This whole story is wrong from start to finish. According to Venturi, "Monna Lisa, later Gioconda, was the creation of the fantasy of the novelist, Aretin biographer, George Vasari." Venturi in 1925 suggested that the Gioconda is a portrait of the Duchess of Costanza d "Avalos, the widow of Federigo del Balzo, sung in a short poem by Eneo Irpino, which also mentions her portrait painted by Leonardo. Costanza was the mistress of Giuliano Medici, who, after marriage with Philibert of Savoy gave the portrait back to Leonardo.

Most recently, Pedretti put forward a new hypothesis: the Louvre portrait depicts the widow of Giovanni Antonio Brandano named Pacifica, who was also the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici and gave birth to his son Ippolito in 1511.
Be that as it may, the Vasarius version is doubtful because it does not explain in any way why the portrait of Francesco del Giocondo's wife remained in Leonardo's hands and was taken by him to France.

2. Lady with an ermine ca. 1488-1490

Oil on panel.
54.8 x 40.3 cm
Czartory Museum, Krakow, Poland

"Lady with an Ermine" is the immortal seventeen-year-old Cecilia Gallerani, the favorite of Lodovico Sforza. Daughter of the 15th century. Cunning enchantress. Favorite of the Milanese palace. Tender and wise, bashful and frivolous, she appears before us. Simple and complex. Mysteriously attractive, with an almost static face, she still has a magnetism of extraordinary, hidden movement. But what gives the appearance of a young lady this magical liveliness? Smile. She barely touched the corners of her chaste lips. She hid in the slightly swollen girlish dimples near her mouth and, like lightning, flashed in response in dark, dilated pupils, covered with rounded, onion-shaped eyelids. Take a closer look at the subtle, spiritual features of the “Lady with an Ermine”, her posture, full of dignity, her strict but elegant clothes, and the Renaissance will instantly appear before you with its magnificent creations of brilliant masters of art. Cecilia Gallerani. She, like a small planet, reflected the radiance of the cruel, ugly and beautiful, unique XV century.

3. Fresco The Last Supper 1494 -1498

Oil and tempera on plaster.
460 x 880 cm
Santa Maria del Grazia, Milan, Italy

From left to right, a table with food stretches across the entire width of the picture. At the table facing us in groups of three sit twelve characters with Christ in the center. The apostles are talking animatedly. What are they talking about and what is the picture about? From the testimony of Ammoreti, it should be concluded that the painting "The Last Supper" was completed in 1497. Unfortunately, Leonardo da Vinci painted it with paints, some of which turned out to be very fragile. Already fifty years after the end, the picture, according to Vasari, was in the most miserable state. However, if at that time it was possible to fulfill the desire of King Francis I, expressed sixteen years after the completion of the painting, and, breaking down the wall, transfer the painting to France, then perhaps it would have been preserved. But this could not be done. In 1500, the water that flooded the meal completely ruined the wall. In addition, in 1652 a door was broken in the wall under the face of the Savior, which destroyed the legs of this figure. The painting was unsuccessfully restored several times. In 1796, after the French crossed the Alps, Napoleon gave a strict order to spare the meal, but the generals who followed him, ignoring his order, turned this place into a stable, and later into a storage place for hay .

4. Portrait of Ginevra de Benci c. 1475 - 1478

Tempera and oil on panel
38.1 x 37 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington

This painting, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, depicts a young lady in a mountainous landscape, with reflections from the river playing on it. There are different points of view regarding the identification of the person being portrayed; opinions of experts on the dating of this work are also divided. Some attribute it to the first Florentine period of Leonardo's work, others, on the contrary, to the Milanese. Most researchers adhere to the hypothesis that Ginevra Benci is represented in the portrait (her name is hinted at by juniper branches, ginepro, which are visible in the background of the composition). It was made in the period when Leonardo freed himself from student dependence on the art of Verrocchio, that is, around 1475.

5. Portrait of a musician 1485-1490

Oil on panel.
43 x 31 cm
Ambrosiano Library, Milan, Italy

The portraits attributed to Leonardo contain common features: their background is darkened, the half-figured image of the model, usually in a three-quarter turn, helps to present her to the viewer in all her individuality. The names of those portrayed are unknown, despite the best efforts of art historians to reveal them, and despite documentary evidence of the master's activities. A number of Leonardo's portraits are associated with the atmosphere of the Sforza court, where the glorification of the individual, reflecting the glory of the court, played a decisive role. The purity of forms, the dignity of poses, combined with a sharp penetration into the character of the model, bring the artist's portraits closer to the most advanced achievements in this genre of art for that time - with the works of Antonello da Messina. They go far beyond the memorative formalism of the masters of the 15th century, developing a type of portrait that embodies the state of mind of a character and makes it possible to significantly deepen the characterization of the image. In the so-called Portrait of a Musician from Ambrosiana in Milan, his model is sometimes identified with the regent of the Milan Cathedral, Francino Gaffurio, but in fact it depicts just a young man with a sheet of music paper. We can also distinguish some geometrism in the transfer of plastic volumes that betray the Tuscan influence. A cap on the head and a mass of curly hair form two hemispheres on the sides of the face; the sharpness of the contours and chiaroscuro already testify to the master's acquaintance with the Lombard traditions and portraits of Antonello da Messina. Heavily restored, rewritten, and perhaps even left unfinished, albeit at a fairly advanced stage of work, this Leonardo's only male portrait - if indeed executed by the artist himself - depicts a man with an intelligent and hard look. Without being carried away by the rhetorical glorification of the individual, Leonardo conveys in the inner light of the face and gaze of the person being portrayed his inherent moral strength.

6. Madonna with a flower (Madonna Benois) 1478 - 1480

Oil transferred from board to canvas
48x31.5 cm
Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

The young painter Leonardo da Vinci, who had just completed his studies, painted this picture in Florence in the late seventies of the fifteenth century. She was accepted with enthusiasm, many copies were made, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century ... they were lost.
Three hundred years later, a troupe of itinerant actors toured in Astrakhan. One of the servants of Melpomene offered the local admirer of the muses and the richest of the merchants of the city, Alexander Sapozhnikov, to buy a picture darkened from old age, painted on a board. The deal went through.
Many years later, his granddaughter Maria got married. The creation of an unknown Italian was also attached to the luxurious addition, which at first few people paid attention to. It is not known what would have happened to him if the successful architect and future president of the Academy of Arts Leonty Benois (the son of an even more famous architect) had not become the husband of Maria Alexandrovna, and if his younger brother had not been famous artist, art critic and organizer of the association "World of Art" Alexander. “Hearing the persistent requests of Brother Leonty and his wife,” he recalls, “I had to stay in Berlin. The fact is that they instructed me to show the painting they own to the famous Bode. "(We note in parentheses that Bode is one of the main authorities on the history of European art, the director of the Berlin State Museums). He was absent, but several world-famous specialists turned out to be in the museum "Their sentence was severe: the painting is not a work of Leonardo, rather, it was painted by one of his fellow students in the workshop of Verrocchio. Later, Bode himself confirmed this conclusion."
For a whole year, "Madonna" from the Sapozhnikovs' house lay in Alexander Nikolayevich's Parisian apartment, and then he was taken back to St. Petersburg and returned to the owners. However, after eight years (this was already in 1914), when he was in the hustle and bustle associated with the preparation of the Russian exhibition in Paris, he was given a business card with the name of one of the Berlin specialists: "Professor Moller Walde."
“I didn’t have time to agree to accept it,” said Alexander Benois, “as his own persona flew at me with a cry: “Now I am firmly convinced that your Madonna is Leonardo!” Immediately, without sitting down, not letting me come to my senses, red with excitement, he began to pull out from a huge, tightly stuffed briefcase a pile of photographs of those undoubted drawings by Leonardo, which were in his eyes (and in fact) confirmation of his confidence in the authorship of the great master.
Benois refused the offer to sell the masterpiece to the museums of Berlin, transferring it to the collection of the Imperial Hermitage. There the picture is to this day, known to the whole world under the name "Madonna Benois".

7. Madonna in the grotto 1483-1486

Oil on panel (transferred to canvas)
199 x 122 cm
Louvre, Paris, France

The painting was intended to decorate the altar (the frame for the painting was a carved wooden altar) in the Immacolata Chapel of the Church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. On April 25, 1483, members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Conception commissioned paintings (the central composition is the Madonna and Child, the side compositions are Musical Angels) by Leonardo, who was entrusted with the execution of the most important part of the altar, as well as the brothers Ambrogio and Evangelista de Predis. Currently, art historians are of the opinion that both canvases on an identical subject, of which one is kept in the Louvre and the other in the National Gallery in London, are variants of a painting made for the same purpose. A signature Madonna on the Rocks from Paris (Louvre) originally adorned the altarpiece of the Church of San Francesco Grande; perhaps it was given by Leonardo himself to the French king Louis XII as a token of gratitude for mediating in the conflict between customers and artists over payment for paintings. It was replaced in the altar by a composition now in London. For the first time, Leonardo was able to solve the problem of merging human figures with the landscape, which gradually occupied a leading place in his artistic program.

8. John the Baptist 1512

Oil on panel
69 x 57 cm
Louvre, Paris

It can be thought that the artist's first idea was to portray the evangelizing angel, if only this is consistent with a strange figure that evokes in the viewer a feeling of embarrassment rather than enthusiastic amazement. It has the same spirit of irony that is characteristic of the Gioconda, but there is no landscape on which this irony could be projected, reflecting the more complex connections between man and nature. Because of this, John the Baptist makes a strange, even ambiguous impression on the viewer. Meanwhile, the picture certainly belongs to the circle of Leonardo's works, and in its design is one of the most innovative, since in the figure of St. John the master synthesized his search for means of expressing feelings and human nature as a whole. Overloaded with symbolism and illusions, this image seems to exist on the verge of mystery and reality.

9. Leda with a swan 1508 - 1515

Oil on panel.
130 x 77.5
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

Mona Lisa was created at a time when Leonardo Vinci was so absorbed in the study of the structure of the female body, anatomy and the problems associated with childbirth that it is almost impossible to separate his artistic and scientific interests. During these years, he sketched a human embryo in the uterus and created the last of several versions of the painting "Leda" on the plot of the ancient myth of the birth of Castor and Pollux from the union of the mortal girl Leda and Zeus, who took the form of a swan. Leonardo was engaged in comparative anatomy and was interested in analogies between all organic forms.

10. Self-portrait 1514 - 1516

Red sanguine (chalk).
33.3x21.3cm
National Gallery in Turin, Italy

Leonardo's Turin self-portrait belongs to the last years of his life.

And this self-portrait, apparently, also refers to the description of Lomazzo: “His head was covered long hair, eyebrows were so thick and a beard so long that he seemed to be a true personification of noble learning, which the druid Hermes and the ancient Prometheus had already been before.
Ancient biographers of Leonardo da Vinci describe his appearance in the most attractive features:
According to Vasari:
"With the brilliance of his appearance, which showed the highest beauty, he returned clarity to every saddened soul."
According to Anonymous:
“He was handsome, proportionately complex, graceful, with an attractive face. He wore a red cloak that reached to his knees, although long clothes were then in vogue. A beautiful beard fell down to the middle of the chest, curly and well combed.
BES Brockhaus and Efron:
"Vinci was handsome, beautifully built, had great physical strength, was well-versed in the arts of chivalry, horseback riding, dancing, fencing, etc."

Sourced from abc-people.com

Leonardo da Vinci is the most famous artist in the world. Which in itself is amazing. There are only 19 surviving paintings by the master. How is this possible? Two dozen works makes the artist the greatest?

It's all about Leonardo himself. He is one of the most unusual people ever born. Inventor of various mechanisms. The discoverer of many phenomena. Virtuoso musician. And also a cartographer, botanist and anatomist.

In his notes we find descriptions of a bicycle, a submarine, a helicopter and a tanker. Not to mention scissors, life jacket and contact lenses.

His innovations in painting were also incredible. He was one of the first to use oil paints. Sfumato effect and light and shade modulation. He was the first to inscribe figures in the landscape. His models in portraits became living people, not painted mannequins.

Here are just 5 masterpieces of the master. Which demonstrate all the genius of this man.

1. Madonna in the rocks. 1483-1486

Leonardo da Vinci. Madonna in the rocks. 1483-1486 Louvre, Paris. wikimedia.commons.org

Young Virgin Mary. A pretty angel in a red cloak. And two fat kids. holy family they were returning from Egypt with the baby Jesus. Along the way, meeting little John the Baptist.

This is the first painting in the history of painting when people are depicted not in front of the landscape, but inside it. Heroes sit by the water. Behind the rocks. So old that they look more like stalactites.

The "Madonna in the Rocks" was ordered by the monks of the brotherhood of St. Francis for one of the churches in Milan. But the customers were not happy. Leonardo delayed the deadlines. They also didn't like the lack of halos. They were also embarrassed by the gesture of the angel. Why is his index finger pointing at John the Baptist? After all, the baby Jesus is the most important.

Leonardo sold the painting on the side. The monks got angry and sued. The artist was obliged to paint a new picture for the monks. Only with halos and without the pointing gesture of an angel.

According to the official version, this is how the second “Madonna in the Rocks” appeared. Almost identical to the first. But there is something strange about her.

Leonardo da Vinci. Madonna in the rocks. 1508 National Gallery of London.

Leonardo carefully studied plants. Even made a number of discoveries in the field of botany. It was he who realized that tree sap plays the same role as blood in a person's veins. I also guessed to determine the age of trees by rings.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the vegetation in the Louvre painting is realistic. It is these plants that grow in a humid, dark place. But in the second picture, the flora is fictional.

How did Leonardo, so truthful in depicting nature, suddenly decide to dream up? In a single picture? Unthinkable.

I think Leonardo was not interested in painting the second picture. And he instructed his student to make a copy. Who clearly did not understand botany.

2. Lady with an ermine. 1489-1490

Leonardo da Vinci. Lady with an ermine. 1489-1490 Chertoryski Museum, Krakow. wikimedia.commons.org

Before us is young Cecilia Gallerani. She was the mistress of the ruler of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. At the court of which Leonardo also served.

Smiling, kind and smart girl. She was an interesting conversationalist. Often and for a long time they talked with Leonardo.

The portrait is very unusual. Leonardo's contemporaries painted people in profile. Here Cecilia stands in three quarters. Turning his head to the opposite side. As if she looked back at someone's words. This turn makes the line of the shoulders and neck especially beautiful.

Alas, we see the portrait in a modified form. Someone from the owners of the portrait darkened the background. Leonardo's was lighter. With a window over the girl's left shoulder. The two lower fingers of her hand are also rewritten. Therefore, they are curved unnaturally.

It is worth talking about the ermine. Such an animal seems to us a curiosity. Modern man it would be more accustomed to see a fluffy cat in the hands of a girl.

But for the 15th century, it was the ermine that was an ordinary animal. They were kept to catch mice. And the cats were just exotic.

3. The Last Supper. 1495-1598

Leonardo da Vinci. The Last Supper. 1495-1498 Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazia, Milan

The fresco "The Last Supper" was ordered by the same Ludovico Sforza at the request of his wife, Beatrice d'Este. Alas, she died quite young in childbirth. Never saw the finished painting.

The Duke was beside himself with grief. Realizing how dear to him was a cheerful and beautiful wife. The more he was grateful to Leonardo for the work done.

He generously paid off the artist. By handing him 2,000 ducats (with our money, this is about 800 thousand dollars), and also by transferring to him a large plot of land.

When the inhabitants of Milan could see the fresco, there was no limit to amazement. The apostles differed not only in appearance, but also in their emotions and gestures. Each of them reacted in their own way to the words of Christ, “One of you will betray me.” Never before has the individuality of the characters been as pronounced as in Leonardo's.

The painting has another amazing detail. The restorers found that Leonardo painted the shadows not in gray or black, but in blue! This was unthinkable until the middle of the 19th century. When colored shadows began to write.

Leonardo da Vinci. Fragment of the Last Supper. 1495-1498 Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazia, Milan

This is not so clearly visible on the reproduction, but the composition of the paint speaks for itself (blue crystals of copper acetate).

Read about other unusual details of the painting in the article.

4. Mona Lisa. 1503-1519

Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Lisa. 1503-1519 . wikimedia.commons.org

In the portrait we see Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant. This version is official, but doubtful.

One curious description of this portrait has come down to us. It was left by Leonardo's student, Francesco Melzi. And under this description, the Louvre lady does not fit at all. I wrote about this in detail in the article. .

Now another version of the woman's personality is being considered. It may be a portrait of Giuliano de' Medici's mistress from Florence. She bore him a son. And she died shortly after giving birth.

Giuliano commissioned a portrait of Leonardo especially for the boy. In the image of the ideal mother-Madonna. Leonardo painted a portrait from the words of the customer. Adding to them the features of his student Salai.

Therefore, the Florentine lady is so similar to "John the Baptist" (see the next picture). For which the same Salai posed.

In this portrait, the sfumato method is revealed to the maximum. A barely perceptible haze, creating the effect of feathered lines, makes the Mona Lisa almost alive. It looks like her lips are about to part. She will sigh. The chest will rise.

The portrait was never given to the customer. Since in 1516 Giuliano died. Leonardo took him to France, where he was invited by King Francis I. He continued to work on him until the last day. Why so long?

Leonardo had a completely different perception of time. He was the first to claim that the Earth is much older than commonly thought. He did not believe that the biblical flood brought shells to the mountains. Realizing that in place of the mountains there was once a sea.

Therefore, it was common for him to paint a picture for decades. What is 15-20 years compared to the age of the Earth!

5. John the Baptist. 1514-1516

Leonardo da Vinci. Saint John the Baptist. 1513-1516 Louvre, Paris. wga.hu

"John the Baptist" puzzled Leonardo's contemporaries. Silent dark background. Whereas even Leonardo himself liked to arrange the figures against the backdrop of nature.

The figure of a saint emerges from the darkness. And it is difficult to call him a saint. Everyone is used to the elderly John. And then the pretty young man pointedly bowed his head. Gentle touch of the hand on the chest. Well-groomed curls of hair.

The last thing you think about is holiness when you look at this effeminate man in the skin of a leopard.

Don't you think that this picture does not seem to belong at all? It's more like the 17th century. Hero's mannerisms. theatrical gestures. Contrast of light and shadow. All this comes from the Baroque era.

Leonardo looked into the future? Predicting the style and manner of painting of the next century.

Who was Leonardo? Most know him as an artist. But his genius is not limited to this vocation.

After all, he was the first to explain why the sky is blue. He believed in the unity of all life in the world. Anticipating the theorists of quantum physics with their “butterfly effect”. He realized such a phenomenon as turbulence. 400 years before its official opening.

It is a pity that mankind could not take full advantage of his genius.

I wonder if Leonardo is an exception, whose equals will not appear on Earth again? Or is it a superman of the future, who was accidentally born ahead of time?

Read about another masterpiece of Leonardo, which is stored in, in the article

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Leonardo da Vinci Born April 15, 1452 in the town of Vinci, located west of Florence on top of a picturesque hill. He was the illegitimate son of a young notary, Piero da Vinci, and a certain Katerina, either a peasant woman or a tavern owner. We know practically nothing about her, although Piero's life is fairly well documented. After the birth of Leonardo, he made successful career in Florence and married four times, producing, in addition to his first child, 11 more children. Leonardo was brought up in his father's house.

We also do not know anything about how Leonardo's childhood passed. It is known that the young Leonardo was distinguished by a strong physique, beauty and inquisitive mind. At the same time, he received a rather superficial education - later the artist regretted that he had not learned Latin, and this language was the basis of education in those days. However, even then Leonardo showed outstanding mathematical abilities, sang beautifully and played the lyre, and drew wonderfully.

According to one of the legends, da Vinci learned to write on his own, so all his life he used a special way of writing: with his left hand, from right to left and in mirror image. From childhood, Leonardo knew that he had many talents, but at the same time he was quite cautious and secretive. This secrecy only intensified and for some time even turned into unsociableness after the artist was accused of sodomy in 1476. Although da Vinci escaped punishment, the litigation scandal nearly cost him his career. Perhaps this unpleasant story was one of the reasons that there is practically no information about his personal life in the artist's notes.

The only thing that can be deduced from these records with firm certainty is Leonardo's attitude towards animals. The artist's childhood passed in the countryside, and in all his biographies it is unequivocally stated that da Vinci loved animals more than many people.

And if he developed effective weapons for people and created drawings of military equipment, then even the thought of harming animals seemed unbearable to him. Leonardo did not eat meat, preferred cotton clothes and bought birds in the markets, then releasing them to freedom. The artist once said: "The time will come when people, like me, will begin to perceive the killing of animals in the same way that they perceive the killing of a person."

At the age of 15, Leonardo became an apprentice with one of the famous Florentine artists - Andrea del Verrocchio (c. 1435-1488).

TWIST OF DESTINY

Verrocchio was not only famous artist Italian Renaissance, but also a talented teacher. He started as a master jeweler, but his sculpture and paintings brought him fame. In addition, Verrocchio was revered as an outstanding engineer. He was happy to study with his new student, rejoicing at the coincidence of their interests. Unfortunately, their shortcomings also coincided.

So, neither the teacher nor the student wanted to deeply study the fresco technique. If Leonardo painted frescoes in the traditional way, then his great works "The Last Supper" and "The Battle of Anghiari" would have come down to us in their original form.

Leonardo received the title of master of painting in 1472, but until 1476 he remained with Verrocchi. Perhaps it was due to some kind of joint work.

1481 dates from the first large order of Leonardo. He was commissioned to paint the painting "The Adoration of the Magi" - for the altar of the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto near Florence.

He never finished it, which, however, is typical of his entire artistic career. But, while working on the image, Leonardo managed to move far enough to talk about him as an unsurpassed master in the transfer of gestures and emotions.

MORO

One of the reasons that forced Leonardo to quit this job was his move from Florence to Milan to serve at the court of Duke Lodovico Sforza, the despotic ruler of the city, who received the nickname "Moro" (that is, "Moor") because of his swarthy skin.

Here Leonardo spent almost twenty years. From the letter he addressed to the duke, one can understand that he was not only and not so much a court painter, but, above all, a military consultant to Sforza. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the artist was engaged in something other than painting, it was a common practice in those days. Another thing is striking - the incredible horizons of Leonardo and the insight of his thought. Among his military projects, we note a multi-charged firearm on an intervening turret (the prototype of a machine gun), "closed carts, safe and impregnable" (the prototype of modern tanks) and "self-propelled carts" (the prototype of modern cars).

But the technical projects of Leonardo were too ahead of their time, not inspiring confidence in contemporaries. Sforza did not consider it necessary to spend money on dubious, in his opinion, experiments. However, he highly appreciated the talent of Leonardo as an inventor of all kinds of stage devices and a skilled master of fireworks arranged in honor of various holidays. At all times of the Renaissance, such events were taken very seriously, and each ruler sought to ensure that the holiday he arranged would overshadow the holidays of competitors with its splendor.

Sforza did Leonardo and artistic commissions. One of them was a large equestrian statue of Lodovico's father. Leonardo created a clay model, three times the natural size, but abandoned the work, and later destroyed the model. However, in modern times, the horse has been restored and installed at the San Siro Hippodrome in Milan.

The fresco "The Last Supper" was supposed to decorate the wall of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. While working on it, Leonardo experimented with the composition, designed, in his opinion, to protect the painting from moisture. The experiment ended in disaster - a few years after the creation, the fresco began to crumble, and now, after a series of restorations, it is the most famous ruin in the history of art.

Already in 1517, the paint of the painting began to peel off due to moisture. In 1556, biographer Leonardo Vasari described the mural as badly damaged and so deteriorated that the figures were almost unrecognisable. In 1652, a doorway was made through the painting, later bricked up; it is still visible in the middle of the base of the mural. Early copies give reason to believe that Jesus' feet were in a position that symbolized the upcoming crucifixion. In 1668, a curtain was hung over the painting for protection. Instead, it blocked the evaporation of moisture from the surface, and when the curtain was pulled back, it scratched the peeling paint.

Today, at most, 30% of Leonardo's work on the wall of the former refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie remains. And if during the last restoration, which lasted from 1978 to 1999, everything had been left as it is, then the fresco would have looked like a kind of patchwork quilt with a mass of empty fragments, the original painting of which has been completely lost over the past centuries. In the end, the following decision was made: to rewrite the fragments of the fresco, which cannot be restored, with watercolors of more muted colors, thereby, without misleading the audience, let them know that these darker fragments are not the original work of Leonardo da Vinci .

TRAVEL AND TRIUMPH

In 1499, the power of Lodovico came to an end - Milan was captured by the French, and Leonardo left the city. After visiting Mantua and Venice, where he spent several months in the service of Cesare Borgia as a military engineer, Leonardo returned to Florence and worked there until 1506. It is believed that it was during this period that he wrote (or, in any case, began to write) his famous Mona Lisa. In addition, he received a prestigious commission from the city authorities for a large fresco "The Battle of Anghiari" for the Palazzo Vecchio. As in the case of The Last Supper, Leonardo decided to resort to an experimental technique of writing, and the result was again depressing.

The fresco was never finished, and what Leonardo managed to write was covered on top with another painting in the 16th century.

In 1506 Leonardo was again in Milan. In 1512, under the onslaught of the combined forces of Switzerland, Spain, Venice and the papacy, French troops left the city - these events caused a series of unrest, and Leonardo left Milan, heading for Rome. In Rome, he hoped to get a job at the papal court. Pope Julius II, who died in 1513, was a well-known patron of the arts of his time. Pope Leo X, the son of Lorenzo Medici, was in no way inferior to his predecessor. But with the work of Leonardo did not work out. He was 60 years old and had a reputation as an artist who never completed his work. This is one of the reasons. The other was that by this time Michelangelo and Raphael had already appeared on the art scene, clearly surpassing Leonardo in their speed of work. At the papal court, Leonardo was respectfully received, but they never offered him a single order.

THE LAST PATRON

But Leonardo was already a living legend whose presence could grace any royal court. The French king Francis I, who was a great lover of Italian art, invited the artist to France. Leonardo accepted the invitation in 1516 or 1517 and spent the rest of his days as an honored royal guest. He received the official title of "the first royal painter, engineer and architect", but in reality he devoted the last years of his life to arranging magnificent court holidays and working on diaries and manuscripts that he dreamed of publishing. Francis highly valued Leonardo as an interlocutor. The king was well aware that one of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind was at his court. The deep respect that Francis I had for Leonardo is beautifully conveyed by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and other artists who painted canvases depicting the old artist dying in the arms of his young patron.

The artist died there on May 2, 1519 at the age of 67. Leonardo's body was buried in the local cemetery. Subsequently, the cemetery was destroyed, and the artist's grave was lost.