UNKNOWNS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

Leonardo da Vinci is best remembered as the painter of the Mona Lisa (1503-1506) and The Last Supper (1495). But he's almost equally famous for his astonishing multiplicity of talents: he dabbled in architecture, sculpture, engineering, geology, hydraulics and the military arts, all with success, and in his spare time doodled parachutes and flying machines that resembled inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries. He made detailed drawings of human anatomy which are still highly regarded today. Leonardo also was quirky enough to write notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick which kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death.

Birth name- Leonardo di Ser Piero

Born- April 15, 1452(1452-04-15) Vinci, Florence, in present-day Italy

Died- May 2, 1519 (aged 67)Amboise, Indre-et-Loire, in present-day France

Nationality- Tuscan, Italian

Field- Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences

Movement- High Renaissance

Famous works- Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man

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, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.[1] Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. Perhaps fifteen paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.[b] Nevertheless these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualising a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime,but 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. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Virgin and Child with St Anne, return None of Leonardo's paintings are signed. Certain works still in existence are cited by Vasari or are referred to in contracts. All notes in this section are drawn from the analysis of opinions of various scholars by Angela Ottino della Chiesa.

Entirely by Leonardo -

The Last Supper (1498)—Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1505/1507)—Louvre, Paris, France
Adoration of the Magi unfinished painting (1481)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510)—Louvre, Paris, France
Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre, Paris, considered by most historians to be the earlier of two versions and to therefore date from 1483–1486.
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist large drawing (c. 1499–1500)—National Gallery, London, UK.
St. Jerome in the Wilderness, (c.1480), Vatican, unfinished painting.

The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475)—Uffizi, by Verrocchio and Leonardo

Leonardo with other hands -

The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Cited by Vasari as by Verrocchio, with the angel on the left-hand side by Leonardo.[8] It is generally considered that Leonardo also painted the background landscape and the torso of Christ. One of Leornardo's earliest extant works.[x]
Virgin of the Rocks, National Gallery, London, generally accepted as postdating the version in the Louvre, possibly 1505–1508, with collaboration of de Predis and perhaps others.[y]

Virgin of the Rocks, National Gallery, London, possibly 1505–

1508, demonstrates Leonardo's interest in nature.

Extra credit: Leonardo da Vinci means "Leonardo from the town of Vinci," and thus he is generally referred to in short as "Leonardo" rather than as "da Vinci"... He received a fresh burst of public interest in 2003 with the publication of The Da Vinci Code, the bestselling thriller by author Dan Brown.