Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
The Codex Leicester is a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci. The codex is named after Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, who purchased it in 1717. The codex provides an insight into the mind of the Renaissance artist, scientist and thinker, as well as an exceptional illustration of the link between art and science and the creativity of the scientific process.
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books and manuscripts. Some major acquisitions of complete libraries were the manuscripts of the Benedictine monastery of Bobbio (1606) and the library of the Paduan Vincenzo Pinelli, whose more than 800 manuscripts filled 70 cases when they were sent to Milan and included the famous Iliad, the Ilias Picta.
Francesco Melzi, or Francesco de Melzi (1491–1567), was an Italian painter born into a family of the Milanese nobility in Lombardy. He became a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci and remained as his closest friend and professional assistant throughout his career. After da Vinci’s death, Melzi became the literary executor of all da Vinci's papers and compiled them into a manuscript known as the Codex Urbinas. This compilation later served as the basis for the Trattato della Pittura, which was published posthumously by others based on Melzi’s organization of da Vinci’s notes.
The Portrait of a Musician is an unfinished painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1483–1487. Produced while Leonardo was in Milan, the work is painted in oils, and perhaps tempera, on a small panel of walnut wood. It is his only known male portrait painting, and the identity of its sitter has been closely debated among scholars.
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, sometimes called the Burlington House Cartoon, is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing is in charcoal and black and white chalk, on eight sheets of paper that are glued together. Because of its large size and format the drawing is presumed to be a cartoon for a painting. No painting by Leonardo exists that is based directly on this cartoon, although the drawing may have been in preparation for a now lost or unexecuted painting commissioned by Louis XII. The drawing is the only extant larger-scale drawing by the artist.
Saint John the Baptist is a High Renaissance oil painting on walnut wood by Leonardo da Vinci. Likely to have been completed between 1513 and 1516, it is believed to be his final painting. Its original size was 69 by 57 centimetres.
Giovanni Magenta was an Italian architect. He designed the cathedral of San Pietro at Bologna (1605). It was later modified by Alfonso Torreggiani (1765). He designed the church of San Salvatore in Bologna (1605–1623) and San Paolo.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was an Italian polymath, regarded as the epitome of the "Renaissance Man", displaying skills in numerous diverse areas of study. While most famous for his paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, Leonardo is also renowned in the fields of civil engineering, chemistry, geology, geometry, hydrodynamics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, optics, physics, pyrotechnics, and zoology.
Pompei Leoni was an Italian sculptor and medalist who was born in Milan in the early 1530s and died in Madrid in October 1608.
Divina proportione, later also called De divina proportione is a book on mathematics written by Luca Pacioli and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, completed by February 9th, 1498 in Milan and first printed in 1509. Its subject was mathematical proportions and their applications to geometry, to visual art through perspective, and to architecture. The clarity of the written material and Leonardo's excellent diagrams helped the book to achieve an impact beyond mathematical circles, popularizing contemporary geometric concepts and images.
A Treatise on Painting is a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's writings entered in his notebooks under the general heading "On Painting". The manuscripts were begun in Milan while Leonardo was under the service of Ludovico Sforza and gathered together by his heir Francesco Melzi. An abridged version of the treatise was first published in France in 1651. After Melzi's manuscript was rediscovered in the Vatican Library, the treatise was published in its modern form in 1817.
The harpsichord-viola is a hybrid musical instrument based on the designs of Leonardo da Vinci on folio 93r of the Codex Atlanticus. It's a different project from the viola organista. It is about the size of a child's toy piano. It weighs 33 pounds and straps to the musician's chest. It's unlike anything else in the orchestra. It has the strings of a violin but is played with a keyboard, and it's powered by the musician's legs as he walks. It's built with the materials that Leonardo would have had on hand, including wooden pegs and gears run by twine. In the folio of Leonardo, you can see that the instrument has a harness. So it was invented as a way to play a stringed instrument while marching. The leg pumps a wooden motor, which moves a long loop of horsehair through the instrument. When the player presses the keys, the strings move up against the loop.
Codex Arundel is a bound collection of pages of notes written by Leonardo da Vinci and dating mostly from between 1480 and 1518. The codex contains a number of treatises on a variety of subjects, including mechanics and geometry. The name of the codex came from the Earl of Arundel, who acquired it in Spain in the 1630s. It forms part of the British Library Arundel Manuscripts.
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, better known as Salaì was an Italian artist and pupil of Leonardo da Vinci from 1490 to 1518. Salaì entered Leonardo's household at the age of ten. Salai created paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì. He was described as one of Leonardo's students and lifelong companion and servant and was the model for Leonardo's St. John the Baptist, Bacchus, and Angelo incarnato.
The Madrid Codices I–II, are two manuscripts by Leonardo da Vinci which were discovered in the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid in 1965 by Dr. Jules Piccus, Language Professor at the University of Massachusetts. The Madrid Codices I was finished during 1490 and 1499, and II from 1503 to 1505.
Carlo Vecce is Professor of Italian Literature in the University of Naples "L'Orientale", he taught also in the University of Pavia, the D'Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara and the University of Macerata. Abroad he was visiting professor at Paris 3 (2001) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) (2009).
Horse and Rider is a beeswax sculpture depicting a rider on a horse. The history of the sculpture is unknown before the 20th century. The work has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by the Italian art historian Carlo Pedretti, though most other art historians disagree with the attribution.
The Codex Windsor is a collection of manuscript sheets with artistic drawings and anatomical studies by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.
