AP European History: Leonardo Da Vinci

AP European History
Period: E
Interpretive Biography

Leonardo Da Vinci is considered one of the greatest geniuses of all time. He was the epitome of the term "Renaissance Man", which means a person with many talents. During the Italian Renaissance Da Vinci's accomplishments ranged from many fields such as anatomy, engineering, mathematics, nature ,philosophy, painting, sculpting and architecture. His achievements in these fields stem from an early age, Da Vinci was an illegitimate child born of "Ser Piero, a notary, and Caterina, a peasant woman who were unmarried". At the age of 15 Da Vinci was sent to Florence to be an apprentice of an aspiring artist named Verrocchio. This is where Da Vinci's talent for painting was first seen it
He carried on the fifteenth- century experimental tradition by studying everything and even dissecting human bodies to see more clearly how nature worked. But Leonardo stressed the need to advance beyond such realism and initiated the High Renaissance’s preoccupation with the idealization of nature, or the attempt to generalize from realistic portrayal to an ideal form. "(Spielvogel, 2009) Leonardo exhibited a period of the Renaissance where artist tried to make a realistic portrayal to an ideal portrayal. A description given by Giorgio Vasari in his biography of Leonardo Da Vinci named The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci shows a firsthand source of how others thought of him “In the normal course of events many men and women are born with various remarkable qualities and talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvelously 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 art."(Vasari, 1550) shows the respect that Leonardo received from other artist during his lifetime. Leonardo's most famous work is the Mona Lisa which was commissioned by Francesco Del Giocondo to make a portrait his wife; and after toiling over it for four
He tried to understand the inner workings of nature. Majority of his inventions and scientific ideas were ahead of its time. Leonardo was one of the first people to study the flight of birds and make an invention that modeled after how they glided in the wind. He also made drawings, schematics and designs for tanks, helicopters, and a parachute. "Leonardo's importance to art was even greater than his importance to science. He had a strong influence on many leading artists, including Raphael and Michelangelo. Leonardo's balanced compositions and idealized figures became standard features of later Renaissance art. Painters also tried to imitate Leonardo's knowledge of perspective and anatomy, and his accurate observations of nature. What most impresses people today is the wide range of Leonardo's talent and achievements. He turned his attention to many subjects and mastered nearly all. His inventiveness, versatility, and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity have made Leonardo a symbol of the Renaissance spirit.” (Bnl) Leonardo's most important successes were the two techniques that he created which were sfumato and chiaroscuro. They are both painting techniques that deal with using shades of light and dark colors. Sfuamato in "painting or drawing, the fine shading that produces soft, imperceptible transitions between colors and tones."(Britannica) Chiaroscuro is a "technique employed in the visual arts to