Astrology of Leonardo da Vinci with horoscope chart, quotes, biography, and images

In the first place, sculpture is dependent on certain lights, namely those from above, while a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade; light and shade therefore are essential to sculpture. In this respect, the sculptor is aided by the nature of the relief, which produces these of its own accord, but the painter artificially creates them by art in places where nature would normally do the like. The sculptor cannot render the difference in the varying natures of the colors of objects; painting does not fail to do so in any particular. The lines of perspective of sculptors do not seem in any way true; those of painters may appear to extend a hundred miles beyond the work itself. The effects of aerial perspective are outside the scope of sculptors’ work; they can neither represent transparent bodies nor luminous bodies nor angles of reflection nor shining bodies such as mirrors and like things of glittering surface, nor mists, nor dull weather, nor an infinite number of things which I forbear to mention lest they should prove wearisome.

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

He turns not back who is bound to a star.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
(Venus in Taurus.)

Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.

Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated.

The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses.
(Neptune in Libra sesqui-square Mars & trine Venus.)

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
(Venus in Taurus?)

Inequality is the cause of all local movements.
(Saturn in Libra.)

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
(Pisces Moon!)

Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.
(Venus in 6^th house?)

No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.
(Venus in Taurus?)

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
(Sagittarius Ascendant.)

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
(Mercury in Aries opposition Saturn?)

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is.
(Venus in Taurus & Saturn in Libra.)

He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done....

The smallest feline is a masterpiece....

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
(Venus in Taurus)

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
(Sagittarius Ascendant)

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
(Sagittarius Ascendant)

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
(Saturn in Libra.)

Our life is made by the death of others.

People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
(Mercury in Aries.)

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other.
Water is the driving force of all nature.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
(Pluto in 8^th house square Sun?)

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
(Pisces Moon conjunct Jupiter in 3^rd house.)

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure what you do not understand.

[Three classes of people]: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.

Nothing can be love or hated unless it is first known.

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter."

You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another... noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you.

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

The painter's mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places.

When you paint look at your work in a mirror; when you see it reversed, it will appear to you like some other painter's work and you will be a better judge of its faults.
(Mercury square Pluto in 8^th house.)

Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgement of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.

The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which... you may find really marvellous ideas.

Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature.

Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

If anyone wishes to see how the soul dwells in its body, let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation; that is to say, if this is devoid of order and confused, the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul...

The painter or draftsman ought to be solitary, in order that the well-being of the body not sap the vigour of the mind.
(Pluto in Leo?)

If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself.

An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it.

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.

Life well spent is long.

Not to anticipate is already to moan."

"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory."

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

"He turns not back who is bound to a star."

"Savage is he who saves himself."

"Necessity is the mistress and guardian of Nature."

"Wisdom is the daughter of experience."
(Venus in Taurus.)

"Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication."

"Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated."

"The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses."
(Neptune in Libra sesqui-square Mars & trine Venus.)

"Intellectual passion drives out sensuality."
(Venus in Taurus??)

"Inequality is the cause of all local movements."
(Saturn in Libra.)

"It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end."

"Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art."

"The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."
(Pisces Moon!)

"Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose."

"He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year."

"The desire to know is natural to good men."

"Experience does not err; only your judgment errs by expecting from her what is not in her power."

"I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have."
(Venus in 6th house?)

"Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences, because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics."

"No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically."
(Venus in Taurus?)

"Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labor."

"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death."

"The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard."

"Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind."
(Sagittarius Ascendant.)

"Human subtlety . . . will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous."

"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."
(Mercury in Aries opposition Saturn?)

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."

"Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: We are burial places!"

"Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption."

"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast."

"Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is."
(Venus in Taurus & Saturn in Libra.)

"One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."

"O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold."

"Those who are enamoured of practice without science are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass and never has any certainty of where he is going. Practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory."

"You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. . . . the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. . . . And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others."

"O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments."

He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done....

The smallest feline is a masterpiece....

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
(Saturn in Libra.)

Our life is made by the death of others.

People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
(Mercury in Aries.)

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

(Pluto in 8th house square Sun?)

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
(Pisces Moon conjunct Jupiter in 3rd house.)

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why thunder lasts longer than that which causes it, and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.
(Venus in Taurus)

Time stays long enough for those who use it.

Nothing can be love or hated unless it is first known.

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

The painter's mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places.

Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgement of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.

The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which... you may find really marvellous ideas.

Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature.

Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

The painter or draftsman ought to be solitary, in order that the well-being of the body not sap the vigour of the mind.
(Pluto in Leo?)
If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself.

An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it.

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.

	Leonardo da Vinci Copyright Michael D. Robbins 2005
	Astro-Rayological Interpretation & Charts Quotes Biography Images and Physiognomic Interpretation to Volume 3 Table of Contents
	Leonardo da Vinci—Painter, Architect, Inventor, Engineer, Genius: April 14, 1452, OS, April 23, 1452 NS, 9:40 (estimated) PM, LMT, Vinci, Italy. Times of 9:46 PM, 10:00 PM and 10:30 PM are also given, all with a Sagittarius Ascendant. the MC in some is Virgo and in others Libra. Died, May 2, 1519, Castle Cloux, France. “LMR quotes "Leonardo da Vinci," Reynal & Co., which cites a family diary, "A grandson of mine was born April 15, Saturday, three hours into the night." As it was Florentine time and sunset was 6:40 PM, three hours after sunset would be c. 9:40 PM which was still April 14 by modern reckoning. The conversion to NS adds nine days = April 23 NS. PC gives 10:00 PM. Blackwell gives 9:46 PM. Noel Tyl rectifies to 10:30 PM” (Ascendant Sagittarius, Sun and Venus in Taurus; Moon conjunct Jupiter in Pisces; Mercury in Aries; Mars in Aquarius; Saturn in Libra; Uranus in Cancer; Neptune in Libra; Pluto in Leo) The Tibetan suggests that Leonardo was on the fourth ray calling him the “inspired artist” (EXH 260) and mentioning him in the same breath with Shakespeare (EXH 297). The Tibetan even suggests that Leonardo was a “pure ray type” just as were the Christ, Buddha, Alexander and Julius Caesar. Clearly, the Tibetan is suggesting a “pure ray type” along the fourth ray. (cf. EP I 73) The Tibetan also suggests that in such a case as a Leonardo (or a Shakespeare) the soul or personality may be found along the fourth ray line as well as the mind. (cf. EP II 292) It is to be noted that Taurus and Sagittarius both transmit the fourth ray, and are thus excellent reinforcements for the fourth ray which is to be found qualifying the soul of Leonardo and probably his mind as well. Leonardo was an illuminated being with the power to work through many kinds of media or materials (conferred by Taurus).Moon conjunct Jupiter in Pisces bestows imagination. Sagittarius Ascending confers the power to envision the future, and Neptune on the Midheaven is an open source to inspiration.
	In the first place, sculpture is dependent on certain lights, namely those from above, while a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade; light and shade therefore are essential to sculpture. In this respect, the sculptor is aided by the nature of the relief, which produces these of its own accord, but the painter artificially creates them by art in places where nature would normally do the like. The sculptor cannot render the difference in the varying natures of the colors of objects; painting does not fail to do so in any particular. The lines of perspective of sculptors do not seem in any way true; those of painters may appear to extend a hundred miles beyond the work itself. The effects of aerial perspective are outside the scope of sculptors’ work; they can neither represent transparent bodies nor luminous bodies nor angles of reflection nor shining bodies such as mirrors and like things of glittering surface, nor mists, nor dull weather, nor an infinite number of things which I forbear to mention lest they should prove wearisome. Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory. Art is never finished, only abandoned. He turns not back who is bound to a star. Wisdom is the daughter of experience. (Venus in Taurus.) Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication. Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated. The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses. (Neptune in Libra sesqui-square Mars & trine Venus.) Intellectual passion drives out sensuality. (Venus in Taurus?) Inequality is the cause of all local movements. (Saturn in Libra.) The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. (Pisces Moon!) Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose. (Venus in 6^th house?) No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically. (Venus in Taurus?) Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind. (Sagittarius Ascendant.) Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. (Mercury in Aries opposition Saturn?) He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast. Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is. (Venus in Taurus & Saturn in Libra.) He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.... The smallest feline is a masterpiece.... Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason. (Venus in Taurus) Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses. Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen. For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. (Sagittarius Ascendant) In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time. It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it. Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else. (Sagittarius Ascendant) Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel. Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. (Saturn in Libra.) Our life is made by the death of others. People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true. The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species. The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding. (Mercury in Aries.) The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things. There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other. Water is the driving force of all nature. While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. (Pluto in 8^th house square Sun?) Who sows virtue reaps honor. Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? (Pisces Moon conjunct Jupiter in 3^rd house.) You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure what you do not understand. [Three classes of people]: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see. As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself. A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind. Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind. Nothing can be love or hated unless it is first known. It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter." You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another... noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you. Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom. The painter's mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places. When you paint look at your work in a mirror; when you see it reversed, it will appear to you like some other painter's work and you will be a better judge of its faults. (Mercury square Pluto in 8^th house.) Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgement of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends. The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor. Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which... you may find really marvellous ideas. Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature. Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in. If anyone wishes to see how the soul dwells in its body, let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation; that is to say, if this is devoid of order and confused, the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul... The painter or draftsman ought to be solitary, in order that the well-being of the body not sap the vigour of the mind. (Pluto in Leo?) If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it. The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance. Life well spent is long. Not to anticipate is already to moan." "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." "Art is never finished, only abandoned." "He turns not back who is bound to a star." "Savage is he who saves himself." "Necessity is the mistress and guardian of Nature." "Wisdom is the daughter of experience." (Venus in Taurus.) "Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication." "Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated." "The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses." (Neptune in Libra sesqui-square Mars & trine Venus.) "Intellectual passion drives out sensuality." (Venus in Taurus??) "Inequality is the cause of all local movements." (Saturn in Libra.) "It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." "Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art." "The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art." (Pisces Moon!) "Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose." "He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year." "The desire to know is natural to good men." "Experience does not err; only your judgment errs by expecting from her what is not in her power." "I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have." (Venus in 6th house?) "Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences, because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics." "No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically." (Venus in Taurus?) "Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labor." "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death." "The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard." "Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind." (Sagittarius Ascendant.) "Human subtlety . . . will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous." "Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." (Mercury in Aries opposition Saturn?) "I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men." "Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: We are burial places!" "Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption." "He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast." "Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is." (Venus in Taurus & Saturn in Libra.) "One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself." "O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold." "Those who are enamoured of practice without science are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass and never has any certainty of where he is going. Practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory." "You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. . . . the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. . . . And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others." "O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments." He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.... The smallest feline is a masterpiece.... Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason. (Venus in Taurus) Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses. Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen. For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. (Sagittarius Ascendant) In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time. It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it. Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else. (Sagittarius Ascendant) Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel. Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. (Saturn in Libra.) Our life is made by the death of others. People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true. The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species. The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding. (Mercury in Aries.) The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things. There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other. Water is the driving force of all nature. While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. (Pluto in 8th house square Sun?) Who sows virtue reaps honor. Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? (Pisces Moon conjunct Jupiter in 3rd house.) As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself. A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind. Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind. I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why thunder lasts longer than that which causes it, and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life. (Venus in Taurus) Time stays long enough for those who use it. Nothing can be love or hated unless it is first known. It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter." You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another... noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you. Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom. The painter's mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places. When you paint look at your work in a mirror; when you see it reversed, it will appear to you like some other painter's work and you will be a better judge of its faults. (Mercury square Pluto in 8th house.) Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgement of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends. The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor. Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which... you may find really marvellous ideas. Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature. Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in. If anyone wishes to see how the soul dwells in its body, let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation; that is to say, if this is devoid of order and confused, the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul. The painter or draftsman ought to be solitary, in order that the well-being of the body not sap the vigour of the mind. (Pluto in Leo?) If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it. The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.
	Leonardo da Vinci Birth name Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci Born April 15, 1452 Died May 2, 1519 Amboise, Indre-et-Loire, France Nationality Italian Field Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences Movement High Renaissance The Mona LisaLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and writer. He was born and raised near Vinci, Italy, the illegitimate son of a notary, Messer Piero, and a peasant woman, Caterina. He had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci". His full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci." Leonardo has been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time, and the man with the most diversely prodigious talent ever to have lived.[2] It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, the most illustrated and most imitated portrait and religious painting of all time, only approached in fame by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptually inventing a helicopter, a tank, the use of concentrated solar power, a calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics, the double hull, and many others. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were feasible during his lifetime.[3] Some of his smaller inventions such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. He greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, astronomy, civil engineering, optics, and the study of water (hydrodynamics). Of his works, only a few paintings survive, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and notes. Early life, 1452-1466 Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in Anchiano, a hamlet near the town of Vinci in the lower valley of the Arno, within the territories of Florence.[4] Leonardo was later to record only two incidents of his childhood. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a hawk dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face.[5] Leonardo's earliest known drawing, the Arno Valley, 1473.The second incident occurred while he was exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and recorded his emotions at being, on one hand, terrified that some great monster might lurk there and on the other, driven by curiosity to find out what was inside. At the age of five, he went to live in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci, where his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but unfortunately died young. Vasari tells the story of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque. Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a plaque decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow which he gave to the peasant. Verrocchio's workshop, 1466-76 The Baptism of Christ by Verrocchio and LeonardoIn 1466 Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most proficient artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. The workshop of this famous master was at the centre of the intellectual currents of the day. Among those apprenticed or associated with the workshop were Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi, assuring the young Leonardo of an advanced education in all branches of the humanities. As a fourteen-year-old apprentice Leonardo would have been trained in all the countless skills that were employed in a traditional workshop in which the artists were regarded primarily as craftsmen and only a master such as Verrocchio had social standing. The products of Verrochio’s workshop would have included decorated tournament shields, painted dowry chests, christening platters, votive plaques, small portraits, and devotional pictures. Major commissions included altarpieces for churches, and commemorative statues. Although many craftsmen specialised in tasks such as frame-making, gilding and bronze casting, Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the obvious artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling. Although Verrocchio appears to have run an efficient and prolific workshop, few paintings can be ascertained as coming from his hand. And on one of those, Vasari tells us, Leonardo collaborated. By tradition, Leonardo posed for Verrocchio's David.The painting is the Baptism of Christ. According to Vasari, Leonardo painted the young angel holding Jesus’ robe and Verrocchio, overwhelmed by the sweetness of the angel’s expression, its moist eyes and lustrous curls, put down his brush and never painted again. This is probably an exaggeration. The truth is that on close examination the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint. The landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bears witness to the hand of Leonardo.[6] The other creation of Verrocchio’s which is particularly pertinent to the young Leonardo is the bronze statue of David, now in the Bargello Museum.[7] Apart from the exquisite quality of this work of art, it is significant in holding the claim to be a portrait of the apprentice, Leonardo. If this is the case, then in the figure of David we see Leonardo as a thin muscular boy, quite different to the rounded androgynous figure made by Verrocchio’s teacher, Donatello.[8] It is also suggested that the Archangel Michael in Verrocchio's Tobias and the Angels is a portrait of Leonardo.[7] When Leonardo was twenty he joined the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to work with him. Section references: Bortolon,[5] Vasari,[6] della Chiesa,[7] Martindale[9] Professional life, 1476-1519 The Adoration of the Magi. This important commission was interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.The earliest known dated work of Leonardo's is a drawing done in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August, 1473. It is assumed that Leonardo had his own workshop in Florence between 1476 and 1481. He was commissioned in 1478 to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard and in 1481 by the Monks at Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi. In 1482 Leonardo, whom Vasari tells us was a most talented musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici was so impressed with this that he decided to send both the lyre and its maker to Milan, in order to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan [1],. At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint. Between 1482 and 1499, when Louis XII of France occupied Milan, much of Leonardo’s work was in that city. It was here that he was commissioned to paint two of his most famous works, the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina as among his dependants in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the detailed list of expenditure on her funeral suggests that she was his mother rather than a servant girl. Study of horse from Leonardo's journals.For Ludovico, he worked on many different projects which included the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico’s predecessor. Leonardo modelled a huge horse in clay. Known as the “Gran Cavallo”, seventy tons of metal were set aside for casting it in bronze. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello’s statue of Gattemelata in Padova and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not in the least unusual for Leonardo. Michelangelo rudely implied that he was unable to cast it.[5] In 1495 the bronze was used for cannons to defend the city from invasion under Charles VIII. The French returned to invade Milan in 1498 under Louis XII and the invading French used the “Gran Cavallo” for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salaino and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice. In Venice he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack. Returning to Florence in 1500, he entered the services of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. In Forlì he met Caterina Sforza, of whom it is speculated by some that the Mona Lisa may be a portrait. At Cesenatico he designed the port. In 1506 he returned to Milan, which was in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries had driven out the French. Many of Leonardo’s most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione[10] Clos Lucé, in France where Leonardo died in 1519.From 1513 to 1516, Leonardo lived in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. In Florence, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist’s will, Michelangelo’s statue of David. In 1515, François I of France retook Milan. Leonardo was commissioned to make a centrepiece (a mechanical lion) for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé[11] next to the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life. The King granted Leonardo and his entourage generous pensions: the surviving document lists 1,000 écus for the artist, 400 for Count Francesco Melzi, (his pupil, named as "apprentice"), and 100 for Salaino ("servant"). In 1518 Salaino left Leonardo and returned to Milan, where he eventually perished in a duel. Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died. According to his wish, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Although Melzi was his principal heir and executor, Salaino was not forgotten, receiving half of Leonardo's vineyards and the Mona Lisa. Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, François was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying: “ No man ever lived who had learned as much about sculpture, painting, and architecture, but still more that he was a very great philosopher. ” Relationships and influences Florence — Leonardo's artistic and social background statue outside the Uffizi, FlorenceLeonardo commenced his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio’s master, the great Donatello, died. Uccello, was a very old man. The painters Piero della Francesca and Fra Filippo Lippi, sculptor, Luca della Robbia, and architect and writer Alberti were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were his teacher Verrocchio, Antonio Pollaiuolo and the portrait sculptor, Mino da Fiesole. Leonardo was the contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino who were all slightly older than he was. He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the Academy of the Medici, Botticelli being a particular favourite of the family. These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. Leonardo was also the contemporary of the two architects, Bramante and Sangallo. In 1476, during the time of Leonardo’s association with Verrocchio’s workshop, Hugo van der Goes arrived in Florence, bringing the “Portinari Altarpiece” and the new painterly techniques from Northern Europe which were to profoundly effect Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others. In 1479, the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, who worked exclusively in oils, travelled north on his way to Venice, where an older painter, Giovanni Bellini adopted the media of oil painting, quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo’s political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478. Ludovico il Moro who ruled Milan between 1479–99 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo’s age. Through the Medici, Leonardo came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neo Platonism and Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, were foremost. Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Although usually named together as the three giants of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were not of the same generation. Leonardo was 23 when Michelangelo was born and 31 when Raphael was born. The short-lived Raphael died in 1520, the year after Leonardo, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45 years. Assistants and pupils Salai as John the BaptistGian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno,[14] nicknamed Salai or il Salaino ("The little devil), was described by Giorgio Vasari as "a graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair, in which Leonardo greatly delighted." Il Salaino entered Leonardo's household in 1490 at the age of ten. The relationship was not an easy one. A year later Leonardo made a list of the boy’s misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton." The "Little Devil" had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on apparel, among which were twenty-four pairs of shoes. Nevertheless, Leonardo’s notebooks during their early years contain many pictures of the handsome, curly-haired adolescent. Il Salaino remained his companion, servant, and assistant for the next thirty years.[15] As a painter, Salaino’s work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils such as Marco d'Oggione and Boltraffio. In 1515 he painted, under the name of Andrea Salai, a nude portrait of "Lisa del Giocondo", based upon the Mona Lisa and known as Monna Vanna.[2] The Mona Lisa was bequeathed to Salaino by Leonardo, and in Salaino's own will it was assessed at the high value of £200,000. In 1506, Leonardo took as a pupil Count Francesco Melzi, the fifteen-year-old son of a Lombard aristocrat. Salaino, at first jealous of Melzi, eventually accepted his continued presence and the three undertook journeys throughout Italy. Melzi became Leonardo's life companion, and is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo and was with him until his death. Study for a painting of Isabella d'Este Personal life Main article: Leonardo da Vinci's relationships Leonardo had many friends who are figures now renowned in their fields, or for their influence on history. These included the mathematician Luca Pacioli with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s and Cesare Borgia, in whose service he spent the years 1502 and 1503. During that time he also met Niccolò Machiavelli, with whom later he was to develop a close friendship. Also among his friends are counted Franchinus Gaffurius and Isabella d'Este. Isabella was probably his closest female friend. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through Mantua which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost. Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. He commented "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".[16] Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women beyond his friendship with Isabella d'Este. His most intimate relationships were with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi writing that Leonardo's feelings for him were both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of an erotic nature and since that date much has written about this aspect of Leonardo's life.[17] Leonardo’s painting Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his enormous fame rested on his achievements as a painter and on a handful of works, either authenticated or attributed to him that have been regarded as among the supreme masterpieces ever created. These painting are famous for a variety of qualities which were to be interminably discussed and speculated about by connoisseurs and critics, imitated by students, and gazed at day after day by the public in thousands. Among the qualities that make Leonardo’s work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the Virgin of the Rocks. Early works AnnunciationLeonardo’s early works begin with the Baptism of Christ in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at the workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 cms long and only 14 cms high. It is a “predella” to go at the base of a larger composition, in this case a painting by Lorenzo Di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm long. In both these Annunciations Leonardo has used the very formal arrangement of Fra Angelico’s two well known pictures of the same subject, the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. In the smaller picture Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God’s will. In the larger picture, however, Mary is not in the least submissive. The beautiful girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in greeting. This calm young woman accepts her role as the Mother of God not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting the young Leonardo presents the Humanist face of the Virgin Mary, a woman who recognises humanity’s role in God’s incarnation. St Jerome Paintings of the 1480s In the 1480s Leonardo received two very important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of ground-breaking importance in terms of compositon. Unfortunately two of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One of these paintings is that of St Jerome in the wilderness. Although the painting is barely begun the entire composition can be seen and it is very unusual. Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted. The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama were to reappear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of St Donato a Scopeto. It is a very complex composition about 250cm square. For it Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined Classical architecture which makes part of the backdrop to the scene. But in 1482 Leonardo went off to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro and the painting was abandoned. Virgin of the Rocks, London.The third important work of this period is the Madonna of the Rocks which was commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers was to fill a large complex altarpiece, already constructed. Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the Infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene, as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild and rocky landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water. While the painting is quite large, about 200 x 120 cms, it is nowhere as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about 50 and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de Predis their payment until both were long over due. Paintings of the 1490s The most famous painting the 1490s is Last Supper, also painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his desciples before his capture and death. It shows, specifically the moment when Jesus has said “one of you will betray me.” See painting reproduced further down this page. Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement caused to the twelve followers of Jesus. Vasari[6] describes in detail how he worked on it, how some days he would paint like fury, how other days he would spend hours just looking at it, and how he walked the streets of the city looking for the face of Judas, the traitor. When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation. But its artist was also denounced for the fact that it was no sooner finished than it began to fall off the wall. Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco had experimented with different paint-binding agents, which were subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos. Virgin and Child with St. Anne Paintings of the 1500s Among the works created by Leonardo in the 1500s is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or “la Gioconda”, the laughing one. The painting is famous, in particular, for the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called “sfumato” or Leonardo’s smoke. Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and beautiful hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils, but laid on much like tempera and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable. In the Virgin and Child with St. Anne the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape. It harks back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. The thing that makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely-set figures, superimposed, because Mary, is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne, and leaning forward to support the Christ Child as he plays (rather roughly) with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice. In the composition of this painting, Leonardo is showing trends which would be adopted in particular by the Venetian painters, Titian and Tintoretto as well as by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Correggio. Leonardo's drawings The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist.Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks' and The Last Supper. His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail. Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body, the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre, a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of the The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London. This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to The Virgin and Child with St. Anne in the Louvre. A study for Leda and the Swan.Other drawings of interest include numerous studies of facial deformities which are frequently referred to as "caricatures", while close examination of the skeletal proportions indicates that the majority are based directly on live models. There are numerous studies of the beautiful young man, Salaino, with his rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile".[20] He is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leornardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernado Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de'Medici, in the Pazzi Conspiracy. With dispassionate integrity Leonardo has registered in neat mirror writing the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died. Renaissance humanism saw no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science). These notes were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him. The journals are written mostly in mirror-image cursive, the reason probably his left-handedness which makes it difficult to push a quill pen from left to right across a page. His notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirl pools, war machines, helicopters and architecture. A page from Leonardo's journal showing his study of a foetus in the womb.These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes, distributed by friends after his death—have found their way into major collections such as the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Library in London. The British Library has put a selection from its notebook (BL Arundel MS 263) on the web in the Turning the Pages section. [3] The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands. It is owned by Bill Gates, and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world. Why Leonardo did not publish or otherwise distribute the contents of his notebooks remains a mystery to those who believe that Leonardo wanted to make his observations public knowledge. Technological historian Lewis Mumford suggests that Leonardo kept notebooks as a private journal, intentionally censoring his work from those who might irresponsibly use it (the tank, for instance). They remained obscure until the 19th century, and were not directly of value to the development of science and technology. In January 2005, researchers discovered what some believe to be a hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence.[4] Scientific studies Leonardo's approach to science was an observational one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book Divina Proportione, published in 1509. It has also been said that he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects though none survives; it appears he did complete a coherent treatise on anatomy, which was observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis D'Aragon's secretary in 1517.[22] Anatomy Leonardo's formal training in the anatomy of the human body began with his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features. Anatomical study of the arm.As a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the hospital Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting. Leonardo drew many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, as well as muscles and sinews, the heart and vascular system, the sex organs, and other internal organs. He made one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero. He also studied and drew the anatomy of many other animals as well. He dissected cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses. As an artist, Leonardo closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He also drew many models among those who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness. A design for flying machine. Engineering and inventions Fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, Leonardo produced detailed studies of the flight of birds, and plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter powered by four men (which would not have worked since the body of the craft would have rotated) and a light hang glider which could have flown.[23] On January 3, 1496 he unsuccessfully tested a flying machine he had constructed. During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River in order to flood Pisa. In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. Leonardo, the "Legend" Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Vasari, in his "Lives of the Artists" written about thirty years after Leonardo's death, described him as having talents that "transcended nature". The interest in Leonardo has never slackened. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, T-shirts bear his most famous drawing and writers, like Vasari, continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in. Vasari's "Lives" tomb in Saint Hubert Chapel (Amboise).Giorgio Vasari, in his "Lives of the Artists", in its enlarged edition of 1568 introduces his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words: "In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease." Leonardo da Vinci was a Florentine artist, one of the great masters of the High Renaissance, who was also celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavors. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies—particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics—anticipated many of the developments of modern science. Life Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the small Tuscan town of Vinci, near Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. In the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best education that Florence, the intellectual and artistic center of Italy, could offer. He rapidly advanced socially and intellectually. He was handsome, persuasive in conversation, and a fine musician and improviser. About 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo was introduced to many activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze. In 1472 he was entered in the painter's guild of Florence, and in 1476 he is still mentioned as Verrocchio's assistant. In Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (circa 1470, Uffizi, Florence), the kneeling angel at the left of the painting is by Leonardo. In 1478 Leonardo became an independent master. His first commission, to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall, was never executed. His first large painting, The Adoration of the Magi (begun 1481, Uffizi), left unfinished, was ordered in 1481 for the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, Florence. Other works ascribed to his youth are the so-called Benois Madonna (c. 1478, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg), the portrait Ginerva de' Benci (c. 1474, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), and the unfinished Saint Jerome (c. 1481, Pinacoteca, Vatican). About 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, having written the duke an astonishing letter in which he stated that he could build portable bridges; that he knew the techniques of constructing bombardments and of making cannons; that he could build ships as well as armored vehicles, catapults, and other war machines; and that he could execute sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. He served as principal engineer in the duke's numerous military enterprises and was active also as an architect. In addition, he assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated work Divina Proportione (1509). Evidence indicates that Leonardo had apprentices and pupils in Milan, for whom he probably wrote the various texts later compiled as Treatise on Painting (1651; trans. 1956). The most important of his own paintings during the early Milan period was The Virgin of the Rocks, two versions of which exist (1483-85, Louvre, Paris; 1490s to 1506-08, National Gallery, London); he worked on the compositions for a long time, as was his custom, seemingly unwilling to finish what he had begun. From 1495 to 1497 Leonardo labored on his masterpiece, The Last Supper, a mural in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Unfortunately, his experimental use of oil on dry plaster (on what was the thin outer wall of a space designed for serving food) was technically unsound, and by 1500 its deterioration had begun. Since 1726 attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, to restore it; a concerted restoration and conservation program, making use of the latest technology, was begun in 1977 and is reversing some of the damage. Although much of the original surface is gone, the majesty of the composition and the penetrating characterization of the figures give a fleeting vision of its vanished splendor. During his long stay in Milan, Leonardo also produced other paintings and drawings (most of which have been lost), theater designs, architectural drawings, and models for the dome of Milan Cathedral. His largest commission was for a colossal bronze monument to Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico, in the courtyard of Castello Sforzesco. In December 1499, however, the Sforza family was driven from Milan by French forces; Leonardo left the statue unfinished (it was destroyed by French archers, who used it as a target) and he returned to Florence in 1500. In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna and son and chief general of Pope Alexander VI; in his capacity as the duke's chief architect and engineer, Leonardo supervised work on the fortresses of the papal territories in central Italy. In 1503 he was a member of a commission of artists who were to decide on the proper location for the David (1501-04, Accademia, Florence), the famous colossal marble statue by the Italian sculptor Michelangelo, and he also served as an engineer in the war against Pisa. Toward the end of the year Leonardo began to design a decoration for the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The subject was the Battle of Anghiari, a Florentine victory in its war with Pisa. He made many drawings for it and completed a full-size cartoon, or sketch, in 1505, but he never finished the wall painting. The cartoon itself was destroyed in the 17th century, and the composition survives only in copies, of which the most famous is the one by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1615, Louvre). During this second Florentine period, Leonardo painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous Mona Lisa (1503-06, Louvre). One of the most celebrated portraits ever painted, it is also known as La Gioconda, after the presumed name of the woman's husband. Leonardo seems to have had a special affection for the picture, for he took it with him on all of his subsequent travels. In 1506 Leonardo went again to Milan, at the summons of its French governor, Charles d'Amboise. The following year he was named court painter to King Louis XII of France, who was then residing in Milan. For the next six years Leonardo divided his time between Milan and Florence, where he often visited his half brothers and half sisters and looked after his inheritance. In Milan he continued his engineering projects and worked on an equestrian figure for a monument to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commander of the French forces in the city; although the project was not completed, drawings and studies have been preserved. From 1514 to 1516 Leonardo lived in Rome under the patronage of Pope Leo X: he was housed in the Palazzo Belvedere in the Vatican and seems to have been occupied principally with scientific experimentation. In 1516 he traveled to France to enter the service of King Francis I. He spent his last years at the Château de Cloux (later called Clos-Lucé), near the King's summer palace at Amboise on the Loire, where he died on May 2, 1519. Works Although Leonardo produced a relatively small number of paintings, many of which remained unfinished, he was nevertheless an extraordinarily innovative and influential artist. During his early years, his style closely paralleled that of Verrocchio, but he gradually moved away from his teacher's stiff, tight, and somewhat rigid treatment of figures to develop a more evocative and atmospheric handling of composition. The early The Adoration of the Magi introduced a new approach to composition, in which the main figures are grouped in the foreground, while the background consists of distant views of imaginary ruins and battle scenes. Leonardo's stylistic innovations are even more apparent in The Last Supper, in which he re-created a traditional theme in an entirely new way. Instead of showing the 12 apostles as individual figures, he grouped them in dynamic compositional units of three, framing the figure of Christ, who is isolated in the center of the picture. Seated before a pale distant landscape seen through a rectangular opening in the wall, Christ—who is about to announce that one of those present will betray him—represents a calm nucleus while the others respond with animated gestures. In the monumentality of the scene and the weightiness of the figures, Leonardo reintroduced a style pioneered more than a generation earlier by Masaccio, the father of Florentine painting. The Mona Lisa, Leonardo's most famous work, is as well known for its mastery of technical innovations as for the mysteriousness of its legendary smiling subject. This work is a consummate example of two techniques—sfumato and chiaroscuro—of which Leonardo was one of the first great masters. Sfumato is characterized by subtle, almost infinitesimal transitions between color areas, creating a delicately atmospheric haze or smoky effect; it is especially evident in the delicate gauzy robes worn by the sitter and in her enigmatic smile. Chiaroscuro is the technique of modeling and defining forms through contrasts of light and shadow; the sensitive hands of the sitter are portrayed with a luminous modulation of light and shade, while color contrast is used only sparingly. An especially notable characteristic of Leonardo's paintings is his landscape backgrounds, into which he was among the first to introduce atmospheric perspective. The chief masters of the High Renaissance in Florence, including Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, and Fra Bartolommeo, all learned from Leonardo; he completely transformed the school of Milan; and at Parma, Correggio's artistic development was given direction by Leonardo's work. Leonardo's many extant drawings, which reveal his brilliant draftsmanship and his mastery of the anatomy of humans, animals, and plant life, may be found in the principal European collections; the largest group is at Windsor Castle in England. Probably his most famous drawing is the magnificent Self-Portrait (c. 1510-13, Biblioteca Reale, Turin). Because none of Leonardo's sculptural projects was brought to completion, his approach to three-dimensional art can only be judged from his drawings. The same strictures apply to his architecture; none of his building projects was actually carried out as he devised them. In his architectural drawings, however, he demonstrates mastery in the use of massive forms, a clarity of expression, and especially a deep understanding of ancient Roman sources. As a scientist Leonardo towered above all his contemporaries. His scientific theories, like his artistic innovations, were based on careful observation and precise documentation. He understood, better than anyone of his century or the next, the importance of precise scientific observation. Unfortunately, just as he frequently failed to bring to conclusion artistic projects, he never completed his planned treatises on a variety of scientific subjects. His theories are contained in numerous notebooks, most of which were written in mirror script. Because they were not easily decipherable, Leonardo's findings were not disseminated in his own lifetime; had they been published, they would have revolutionized the science of the 16th century. Leonardo actually anticipated many discoveries of modern times. In anatomy he studied the circulation of the blood and the action of the eye. He made discoveries in meteorology and geology, learned the effect of the moon on the tides, foreshadowed modern conceptions of continent formation, and surmised the nature of fossil shells. He was among the originators of the science of hydraulics and probably devised the hydrometer; his scheme for the canalization of rivers still has practical value. He invented a large number of ingenious machines, many potentially useful, among them an underwater diving suit. His flying devices, although not practicable, embodied sound principles of aerodynamics. A creator in all branches of art, a discoverer in most branches of science, and an inventor in branches of technology, Leonardo deserves, perhaps more than anyone, the title of Homo Universalis, Universal Man.