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Mona Lisa
painting by Leonardo da Vinci
Also known as: “La Gioconda”, “La Joconde”, “Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo”
Written and fact-checked by
Last Updated: Oct 21, 2023 • Article History
Category: Arts & Culture
Also Called: Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Italian: La Gioconda, or French: La Joconde
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Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa, also called Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Italian La Gioconda, or French La Joconde, oil painting on a poplar wood panel by Leonardo da Vinci, probably the world’s most famous painting. It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre Museum, Paris, where it remained an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven identity have made the painting a source of ongoing investigation and fascination.
Subject
Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci: Mona LisaSee all videos for this article
The painting presents a woman in half-body portrait, which has as a backdrop a distant landscape. Yet this simple description of a seemingly standard composition gives little sense of Leonardo’s achievement. The three-quarter view, in which the sitter’s position mostly turns toward the viewer, broke from the standard profile pose used in Italian art and quickly became the convention for all portraits, one used well into the 21st century. The subject’s softly sculptural face shows Leonardo’s skillful handling of sfumato (use of fine shading) and reveals his understanding of the musculature and the skull beneath the skin. The delicately painted veil, the finely wrought tresses, and the careful rendering of folded fabric demonstrate Leonardo’s studied observations and inexhaustible patience. Moreover, the sensuous curves of the sitter’s hair and clothing are echoed in the shapes of the valleys and rivers behind her. The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting—especially apparent in the sitter’s faint smile—reflects Leonardo’s idea of the cosmic link connecting humanity and nature, making this painting an enduring record of Leonardo’s vision. In its exquisite synthesis of sitter and landscape, the Mona Lisa set the standard for all future portraits.
Examine efforts to identify the subject of Leonardo's Mona Lisa
Examine efforts to identify the subject of Leonardo's Mona LisaSee all videos for this article
There has been much speculation and debate regarding the identity of the portrait’s sitter. Scholars and historians have posited numerous interpretations, including that she is Lisa del Giocondo (née Gherardini), the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, hence the alternative title to the work, La Gioconda. That identity was first suggested in 1550 by artist biographer Giorgio Vasari. Another theory was that the model may have been Leonardo’s mother, Caterina. That interpretation was put forth by, among others, Sigmund Freud, who seemed to think that the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile emerged from a—perhaps unconscious—memory of Caterina’s smile. A third suggestion was that the painting was, in fact, Leonardo’s self-portrait, given the resemblance between the sitter’s and the artist’s facial features. Some scholars suggested that disguising himself as a woman was the artist’s riddle. The sitter’s identity has not been definitively proven. Numerous attempts in the 21st century to settle the debate by seeking Lisa del Giocondo’s remains to test her DNA and recreate an image of her face were inconclusive.
A ranking of the most famous paintings, from Jan van Eyck’s portrait to Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece.
Painting is an ancient medium and even with the introduction of photography, film and digital technology, it still has remained a persistent mode of expression. So many paintings have been limned over dozens of millennia that only a relatively small percentage of them could be construed as "timeless classics" that have become familiar to the public—and not coincidentally produced by some of the most famous artists of all time.
It leaves open the question of what mix of talent, genius and circumstance leads to the creation of a masterpiece. Perhaps the simplest answer is that you know one when you see one, whatever part of the world it's being held in. We, of course, have our opinion of what makes the grade, and we present them here, in our list of the best paintings of all time. Argue amongst yourselves.
Top famous paintings
Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503–19
Photograph: Courtesy CC/FlickrDystopos
1. Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503–19
Painted between 1503 and 1517, Da Vinci’s alluring portrait has been dogged by two questions since the day it was made: Who’s the subject and why is she smiling? A number of theories for the former have been proffered over the years: That she’s the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo (ergo, the work’s alternative title, La Gioconda); that she's Leonardo’s mother, Caterina, conjured from Leonardo's boyhood memories of her; and finally, that it's a self-portrait in drag. As for that famous smile, its enigmatic quality has driven people crazy for centuries. Whatever the reason, Mona Lisa’s look of preternatural calm comports with the idealized landscape behind her, which dissolves into the distance through Leonardo’s use of atmospheric perspective.
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Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Flickr/Nat507
2. Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665
Johannes Vermeer’s 1665 study of a young woman is startlingly real and startlingly modern, almost as if it were a photograph. This gets into the debate over whether or not Vermeer employed a pre-photographic device called a camera obscura to create the image. Leaving that aside, the sitter is unknown, though it’s been speculated that she might have been Vermeer's maid. He portrays her looking over her shoulder, locking her eyes with the viewer as if attempting to establish an intimate connection across the centuries. Technically speaking, Girl isn’t a portrait, but rather an example of the Dutch genre called a tronie—a headshot meant more as still life of facial features than as an attempt to capture a likeness.
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Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Flickr/Wally Gobetz
3. Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889
Vincent Van Gogh’s most popular painting, The Starry Night was created by Van Gogh at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, where he’d committed himself in 1889. Indeed, The Starry Night seems to reflect his turbulent state of mind at the time, as the night sky comes alive with swirls and orbs of frenetically applied brush marks springing from the yin and yang of his personal demons and awe of nature.
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907–1908
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Flickr/Jessica Epstein
4. Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907–1908
Opulently gilded and extravagantly patterned, The Kiss, Gustav Klimt’s fin-de-siècle portrayal of intimacy, is a mix of Symbolism and Vienna Jugendstil, the Austrian variant of Art Nouveau. Klimt depicts his subjects as mythical figures made modern by luxuriant surfaces of up-to-the moment graphic motifs. The work is a highpoint of the artist’s Golden Phase between 1899 and 1910 when he often used gold leaf—a technique inspired by a 1903 trip to the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, where he saw the church’s famed Byzantine mosaics.
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Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1484–1486
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Flickr/arselectronica
5. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1484–1486
Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus was the first full-length, non-religious nude since antiquity, and was made for Lorenzo de Medici. It’s claimed that the figure of the Goddess of Love is modeled after one Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, whose favors were allegedly shared by Lorenzo and his younger brother, Giuliano. Venus is seen being blown ashore on a giant clamshell by the wind gods Zephyrus and Aura as the personification of spring awaits on land with a cloak. Unsurprisingly, Venus attracted the ire of Savonarola, the Dominican monk who led a fundamentalist crackdown on the secular tastes of the Florentines. His campaign included the infamous “Bonfire of the Vanities” of 1497, in which “profane” objects—cosmetics, artworks, books—were burned on a pyre. The Birth of Venus was itself scheduled for incineration, but somehow escaped destruction. Botticelli, though, was so freaked out by the incident that he gave up painting for a while.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871
Photograph: REX/Shutterstock/Universal History Archive
6. James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871
Whistler’s Mother, or Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, as it’s actually titled, speaks to the artist’s ambition to pursue art for art’s sake. James Abbott McNeill Whistler painted the work in his London studio in 1871, and in it, the formality of portraiture becomes an essay in form. Whistler’s mother Anna is pictured as one of several elements locked into an arrangement of right angles. Her severe expression fits in with the rigidity of the composition, and it’s somewhat ironic to note that despite Whistler’s formalist intentions, the painting became a symbol of motherhood.
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Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Flickr/Centralasian
7. Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
One of the most significant works produced during the Northern Renaissance, this composition is believed to be one of the first paintings executed in oils. A full-length double portrait, it reputedly portrays an Italian merchant and a woman who may or may not be his bride. In 1934, the celebrated art historian Erwin Panofsky proposed that the painting is actually a wedding contract. What can be reliably said is that the piece is one of the first depictions of an interior using orthogonal perspective to create a sense of space that seems contiguous with the viewer’s own; it feels like a painting you could step into.
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1503–1515
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Flickr/Centralasian
8. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1503–1515
This fantastical triptych is generally considered a distant forerunner to Surrealism. In truth, it’s the expression of a late medieval artist who believed that God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell were real. Of the three scenes depicted, the left panel shows Christ presenting Eve to Adam, while the right one features the depredations of Hell; less clear is whether the center panel depicts Heaven. In Bosch’s perfervid vision of Hell, an enormous set of ears wielding a phallic knife attacks the damned, while a bird-beaked bug king with a chamber pot for a crown sits on its throne, devouring the doomed before promptly defecating them out again. This riot of symbolism has been largely impervious to interpretation, which may account for its widespread appeal.
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Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884–1886
Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago/Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection
9. Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884–1886
Georges Seurat’s masterpiece, evoking the Paris of La Belle Epoque, is actually depicting a working-class suburban scene well outside the city’s center. Seurat often made this milieu his subject, which differed from the bourgeois portrayals of his Impressionist contemporaries. Seurat abjured the capture-the-moment approach of Manet, Monet and Degas, going instead for the sense of timeless permanence found in Greek sculpture. And that is exactly what you get in this frieze-like processional of figures whose stillness is in keeping with Seurat’s aim of creating a classical landscape in modern form.
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Flickr/Wally Gobetz
10. Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907
The ur-canvas of 20th-century art, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon ushered in the modern era by decisively breaking with the representational tradition of Western painting, incorporating allusions to the African masks that Picasso had seen in Paris's ethnographic museum at the Palais du Trocadro. Its compositional DNA also includes El Greco’s The Vision of Saint John (1608–14), now hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The women being depicted are actually prostitutes in a brothel in the artist's native Barcelona.
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565
Photograph: Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art
11. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565
Bruegel’s fanfare for the common man is considered one of the defining works of Western art. This composition was one of six created on the theme of the seasons. The time is probably early September. A group of peasants on the left cut and bundle ripened wheat, while the on the right, another group takes their midday meal. One figure is sacked out under a tree with his pants unbuttoned. This attention to detail continues throughout the painting as a procession of ever-granular observations receding into space. It was extraordinary for a time when landscapes served mostly as backdrops for religious paintings.
Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Wikimedia Commons/RMN (Musee d'Orsay)/Herve Lewandowski
12. Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863
Manet’s scene of picnicking Parisians caused a scandal when it debuted at the Salon des Refusés, the alternative exhibition made up of works rejected by the jurors of the annual Salon—the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts that set artistic standards in France. The most vociferous objections to Manet’s work centered on the depiction of a nude woman in the company of men dressed in contemporary clothes. Based on motifs borrowed from such Renaissance greats as Raphael and Giorgione, Le Déjeuner was a cheeky send up of classical figuration—an insolent mash-up of modern life and painting tradition.
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Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red Blue and Yellow, 1930
Photograph: Courtesy Kunsthaus Zürich/Geschenk Alfred Roth/1987
13. Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red Blue and Yellow, 1930
A small painting (18 inches by 18 inches) that packs a big art-historical punch, Mondrian’s work represents a radical distillation of form, color and composition to their basic components. Limiting his palette to the primary triad (red, yellow and blue), plus black and white, Mondrian applied pigment in flat unmixed patches in an arrangement of squares and rectangles that anticipated Minimalism.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Las Meninas, or The Family of King Philip IV
Photograph: Courtesy Museo Nacional Del Prado
14. Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Las Meninas, or The Family of King Philip IV
A painting of a painting within a painting, Velázquez masterpiece consists of different themes rolled into one: A portrait of Spain’s royal family and retinue in Velázquez’s studio; a self-portrait; an almost art-for-art’s-sake display of bravura brush work; and an interior scene, offering glimpses into Velázquez’s working life. Las Meninas is also a treatise on the nature of seeing, as well as a riddle confounding viewers about what exactly they’re looking at. It’s the visual art equivalent of breaking the fourth wall—or in this case, the studio’s far wall on which there hangs a mirror reflecting the faces of the Spanish King and Queen. Immediately this suggests that the royal couple is on our side of the picture plane, raising the question of where we are in relationship to them. Meanwhile, Velázquez’s full length rendering of himself at his easel begs the question of whether he’s looking in a mirror to paint the picture. In other words, are the subjects of Las Meninas (all of whom are fixing their gaze outside of the frame), looking at us, or looking at themselves?
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Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937
Photograph: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia/Sucesion Pablo Picasso/VEGAP/2017
15. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937
Perhaps Picasso’s best-known painting, Guernica is an antiwar cris de coeur occasioned by the 1937 bombing of the eponymous Basque city during the Spanish Civil War by German and Italian aircraft allied with Fascist leader Francisco Franco. The leftist government that opposed him commissioned Picasso to created the painting for the Spanish Pavillion at 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. When it closed, Guernica went on an international tour, before winding up at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Picasso loaned the painting to MoMA with the stipulation that it be returned to his native Spain once democracy was restored—which it was in 1981, six years after Franco's death in 1975 (Picasso himself died two years before that.) Today, the painting is housed at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Naked Maja, circa 1797–1800
Photograph: Courtesy Museo Nacional Del Prado
16. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Naked Maja, circa 1797–1800
Definitely comfortable in her own skin, this female nude staring unashamedly at the viewer caused quite a stir when it was painted, and even got Goya into hot water with the Spanish Inquisition. Among other things, it features one of the first depictions of public hair in Western art. Commissioned by Manuel de Godoy, Spain’s Prime Minister, The Naked Maja was accompanied by another version with the sitter clothed. The identity of the woman remains a mystery, though she is most thought to be Godoy’s young mistress, Pepita Tudó.
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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Wikimedia Commons/Web Gallery of Art
17. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814
Commissioned by Napoleon’s sister, Queen Caroline Murat of Naples, Grande Odalisque represented the artist’s break with the Neo-classical style he’d been identified with for much of his career. The work could be described as Mannerist, though it’s generally thought of as a transition to Romanticism, a movement that abjured Neo-classicalism’s precision, formality and equipoise in favor of eliciting emotional reactions from the viewer. This depiction of a concubine languidly posed on a couch is notable for her strange proportions. Anatomically incorrect, this enigmatic, uncanny figure was greeted with jeers by critics at the time, though it eventually became one of Ingres most enduring works.
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Wikimedia Commons/Erich Lessing/Art Resource NY/Artres
18. Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830
Commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France, Liberty Leading the People has become synonymous with the revolutionary spirit all over the world. Combining allegory with contemporary elements, the painting is a thrilling example of the Romantic style, going for the gut with its titular character brandishing the French Tricolor as members of different classes unite behind her to storm a barricade strewn with the bodies of fallen comrades. The image has inspired other works of art and literature, including the Statue of Liberty and Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables.
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Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1874
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Wikimedia Commons/Art Database
19. Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1874
The defining figure of Impressionism, Monet virtually gave the movement its name with his painting of daybreak over the port of Le Havre, the artist’s hometown. Monet was known for his studies of light and color, and this canvas offers a splendid example with its flurry of brush strokes depicting the sun as an orange orb breaking through a hazy blue melding of water and sky.
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1819
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Wikimedia Commons/Cybershot800i
20. Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1819
The worship of nature, or more precisely, the feeling of awe it inspired, was a signature of the Romantic style in art, and there is no better example on that score than this image of a hiker in the mountains, pausing on a rocky outcrop to take in his surroundings. His back is turned towards the viewer as if he were too enthralled with the landscape to turn around, but his pose offers a kind of over-the-shoulder view that draws us into vista as if we were seeing it through his eyes.
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Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–1819
Photograph: Courtesy CC/Wikimedia Commons
21. Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–1819
For sheer impact, it’s hard to top The Raft of the Medusa, in which Géricault took a contemporary news event and transformed it into a timeless icon. The backstory begins with the 1818 sinking of the French naval vessel off the coast of Africa, which left 147 sailors adrift on a hastily constructed raft. Of that number, only 15 remained after a 13-day ordeal at sea that included incidents of cannibalism among the desperate men. The larger-than-life-size painting, distinguished by a dramatic pyramidal composition, captures the moment the raft’s emaciated crew spots a rescue ship. Géricault undertook the massive canvas on his own, without anyone paying for it, and approached it much like an investigative reporter, interviewing survivors and making numerous detailed studies based on their testimony.
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942
Photograph: Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago/Friends of American Art Collection
22. Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942
An iconic depiction of urban isolation, Nighthawks depicts a quarter of characters at night inside a greasy spoon with an expansive wraparound window that almost takes up the entire facade of the diner. Its brightly lit interior—the only source of illumination for the scene—floods the sidewalk and the surrounding buildings, which are otherwise dark. The restaurant's glass exterior creates a display-case effect that heightens the sense that the subjects (three customers and a counterman) are alone together. It's a study of alienation as the figures studiously ignore each other while losing themselves in a state of reverie or exhaustion. The diner was based on a long-demolished one in Hopper's Greenwich Village neighborhood, and some art historians have suggested that the painting as a whole may have been inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night, which was on exhibit at a gallery Hopper frequented at same time he painted Nighthawks Also of note: The redheaded woman on the far right is the artist's wife Jo, who frequently modeled for him.
History
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa about 1503, and it was in his studio when he died in 1519. He likely worked on it intermittently over several years, adding multiple layers of thin oil glazes at different times. Small cracks in the paint, called craquelure, appear throughout the whole piece, but they are finer on the hands, where the thinner glazes correspond to Leonardo’s late period.
French King Francis I, in whose court Leonardo spent the last years of his life, acquired the work after the artist’s death, and it became part of the royal collection. For centuries the portrait was secluded in French palaces, until insurgents claimed the royal collection as the property of the people during the French Revolution (1787–99). Following a period hanging in Napoleon’s bedroom, the Mona Lisa was installed in the Louvre Museum at the turn of the 19th century.
In 1911 the painting was stolen, causing an immediate media sensation. People flocked to the Louvre to view the empty space where the painting had once hung, the museum’s director of paintings resigned, and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and artist Pablo Picasso were even arrested as suspects. Two years later an art dealer in Florence alerted local authorities that a man had tried to sell him the painting. Police found the portrait stashed in the false bottom of a trunk belonging to Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian immigrant who had briefly worked at the Louvre fitting glass on a selection of paintings, including the Mona Lisa. He and possibly two other workers had hidden in a closet overnight, taken the portrait from the wall the morning of August 21, 1911, and run off without suspicion. Peruggia was arrested, tried, and imprisoned, while the Mona Lisa took a tour of Italy before making its triumphant return to France.
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During World War II the Mona Lisa, singled out as the most-endangered artwork in the Louvre, was evacuated to various locations in France’s countryside, returning to the museum in 1945 after peace had been declared. It later traveled to the United States in 1963, drawing about 40,000 people per day during its six-week stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It also toured to Tokyo and Moscow in 1974.
Condition
Scholars have noted that the Mona Lisa is in fairly good condition for its age. The poplar panel shows some evidence of warping from resistance to its original frame and to braces added by early restorers. To prevent the widening of a small crack, visible near the centre of the upper edge of the painting, dovetails were added to the back of the painting. Restorers later pasted heavy canvas over the crack and replaced the top dovetail.
The glass protecting the Mona Lisa was replaced with a bulletproof case after several attacks in 1956, one of which damaged an area near the subject’s left elbow. The Mona Lisa thus escaped harm from acts of vandalism in 1974 during the work’s visit to Tokyo and in 2009 when a museumgoer threw a ceramic mug at it.
The Mona Lisa and its influence
The influence of the Mona Lisa on the Renaissance and later times has been enormous, revolutionizing contemporary portrait painting. Not only did the three-quarter pose become the standard, but also Leonardo’s preliminary drawings encouraged other artists to make more and freer studies for their paintings and stimulated connoisseurs to collect those drawings. Through the drawings, his Milanese works were made known to the Florentines. Also, his reputation and stature as an artist and thinker spread to his fellow artists and assured for them a freedom of action and thought similar to his own. One such painter was the young Raphael, who sketched Leonardo’s work in progress and adopted the Mona Lisa format for his portraits; it served as a clear model for his Portrait of Maddalena Doni (c. 1506).
Leonardo even influenced the fashion in which artists dressed their subjects. In his Treatise on Painting, published long after his death, he wrote that art should avoid the fashion:
As far as possible avoid the costumes of your own day.…Costumes of our period should not be depicted unless it be on tombstones, so that we may be spared being laughed at by our successors for the mad fashions of men and leave behind only things that may be admired for their dignity and beauty.
The Mona Lisa demonstrates this aspect of his treatise perfectly in that La Giaconda is dressed in a coloured shift, loosely pleated at the neck, instead of the tight clothes that were then popular.
Other Mona Lisas
At least a dozen excellent replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, many of them by Leonardo’s students. One such copy at the Prado Museum in Madrid was thought to have been painted years after the original. However, during restoration of the painting in the early 2010s, which included using infrared reflectology to examine the work beneath the surface, conservators discovered that the painting had changes that mirrored those of the original. The findings suggested that the artist—likely one of the master’s assistants—painted the copy as Leonardo worked on the Mona Lisa in his studio. Thus, the Prado version became the only known copy completed during Leonardo’s lifetime. Conservators cleaned the entire painting and removed its black background, revealing a detailed landscape resembling Leonardo’s version and vibrant colours, possibly evoking those of the original before the varnish applied by early restorers darkened over time.
Other copies of the Mona Lisa include the so-called Isleworth Mona Lisa, which some commentators asserted was Leonardo’s first version of the famed portrait. The claim was a controversial one, with several leading Leonardo scholars flatly denying it. Numerous seminude interpretations, often referred to as Monna Vanna, also exist and were likely completed by Leonardo’s students with occasional input from their master. The proliferation of Mona Lisas reflects, at least in part, the subject’s almost immediate embodiment of the ideal woman—beautiful, enigmatic, receptive, and still just out of reach.
Over the centuries, this quintessential woman has taken on a new life in popular culture. In the 20th century alone, her iconic status was mocked in schoolboy fashion—the addition of a mustache and goatee to a postcard reproduction—in Marcel Duchamp’s readymade L.H.O.O.Q. (1919). His irreverent defacing of this best known of iconic paintings expressed the Dadaists’ rejection of the art of the past, which in their eyes was part of the infamy of a civilization that had produced the horrors of the First World War just ended. Andy Warhol too took aim at the painting’s status, in such serigraphs as Thirty Are Better than One (1963).
Mona Lisa off the wall
References in the visual arts have been complemented by musical examinations. La Giaconda’s personality and quirks were examined in a 1915 opera by Max von Schillings. Leonardo’s portrait is also the inspiration for the classic song “Mona Lisa” by American lyricist Ray Evans and songwriter Jay Harold Livingston:
Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa
Men have named you
You’re so like the lady with the mystic smile
Is it only ’cause you’re lonely
They have blamed you
For that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile
Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa
Or is this your way to hide a broken heart
Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep
They just lie there, and they die there
Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa
Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art
It was famously recorded in 1950 by the jazz pianist and vocalist Nat King Cole and later by his daughter Natalie, as well as many others.
There have been films, notably Mona Lisa (1986), and several novels, including William Gibson’s cyberpunk Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) and Canadian novelist Rachel Wyatt’s Mona Lisa Smiled a Little (1999), linked to the painting. The Argentine writer Martín Caparrós’s novel Valfierno (2004) brings to life the man who masterminded the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.
Both fine art and kitsch continue to refer to Leonardo’s portrait. Bath towels, tapestries, umbrellas, and many other household items bear her image, and that image is reproduced using everything from train tickets to rice plants. Five centuries after its creation, the Mona Lisa remains a touchstone for people around the world.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Alicja Zelazko.
Renaissance art
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Giotto: LamentationGhiberti, Lorenzo: Gates of Paradisecopy of Donatello's St. GeorgeMedici, VillaThe Adoration of the ShepherdsRaphael: Saint Michael Overwhelming the DemonLeonardo da Vinci: The Virgin of the RocksMichelangelo: The Creation of AdamRaphael: School of AthensRome: Tempietto
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When and where did Renaissance art start and end?
How did humanism and religion affect Renaissance art?
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Giotto: Lamentation
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Key People: François Clouet Charles Bordes Master of Flémalle Jacob Burckhardt Giorgio Vasari
Related Topics: Renaissance Renaissance architecture Late Renaissance Renaissance revival Early Renaissance
Top Questions
What are the characteristics of Renaissance art, and how does it differ from the art of the Middle Ages?
When and where did Renaissance art start and end?
How did humanism and religion affect Renaissance art?
What made Renaissance art revolutionary?
What are some famous Renaissance artworks?
Renaissance art, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature produced during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe under the combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man. Scholars no longer believe that the Renaissance marked an abrupt break with medieval values, as is suggested by the French word renaissance, literally “rebirth.” Rather, historical sources suggest that interest in nature, humanistic learning, and individualism were already present in the late medieval period and became dominant in 15th- and 16th-century Italy concurrently with social and economic changes such as the secularization of daily life, the rise of a rational money-credit economy, and greatly increased social mobility.
In Italy the Renaissance proper was preceded by an important “proto-renaissance” in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, which drew inspiration from Franciscan radicalism. St. Francis had rejected the formal Scholasticism of the prevailing Christian theology and gone out among the poor praising the beauties and spiritual value of nature. His example inspired Italian artists and poets to take pleasure in the world around them. The most famous artist of the proto-renaissance period, Giotto di Bondone (1266/67 or 1276–1337), reveals a new pictorial style that depends on clear, simple structure and great psychological penetration rather than on the flat, linear decorativeness and hierarchical compositions of his predecessors and contemporaries, such as the Florentine painter Cimabue and the Siennese painters Duccio and Simone Martini. The great poet Dante lived at about the same time as Giotto, and his poetry shows a similar concern with inward experience and the subtle shades and variations of human nature. Although his Divine Comedy belongs to the Middle Ages in its plan and ideas, its subjective spirit and power of expression look forward to the Renaissance. Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio also belong to this proto-renaissance period, both through their extensive studies of Latin literature and through their writings in the vernacular. Unfortunately, the terrible plague of 1348 and subsequent civil wars submerged both the revival of humanistic studies and the growing interest in individualism and naturalism revealed in the works of Giotto and Dante. The spirit of the Renaissance did not surface again until the beginning of the 15th century.
Petrarch
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Renaissance: Artistic developments and the emergence of Florence
Ghiberti, Lorenzo: Gates of Paradise
Ghiberti, Lorenzo: Gates of Paradise
In 1401 a competition was held at Florence to award the commission for bronze doors to be placed on the Baptistery of San Giovanni. Defeated by the goldsmith and painter Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello left for Rome, where they immersed themselves in the study of ancient architecture and sculpture. When they returned to Florence and began to put their knowledge into practice, the rationalized art of the ancient world was reborn. The founder of Renaissance painting was Masaccio (1404–28). The intellectuality of his conceptions, the monumentality of his compositions, and the high degree of naturalism in his works mark Masaccio as a pivotal figure in Renaissance painting. The succeeding generation of artists—Piero della Francesca, Pollaiuolo, and Andrea del Verrocchio—pressed forward with researches into linear and aerial perspective and anatomy, developing a style of scientific naturalism.
copy of Donatello's St. George
copy of Donatello's St. George
The situation in Florence was uniquely favourable to the arts. The civic pride of Florentines found expression in statues of the patron saints commissioned from Ghiberti and Donatello for niches in the grain-market guildhall known as Or San Michele, and in the largest dome built since antiquity, placed by Brunelleschi on the Florence cathedral. The cost of construction and decoration of palaces, churches, and monasteries was underwritten by wealthy merchant families.
Medici, Villa
Medici, Villa
Principal among these were the Medici, who dominated Florence from 1434, when the first pro-Medici government was elected, until 1492, when Lorenzo de Medici died. During their ascendancy the Medici subsidized virtually the entire range of humanistic and artistic activities associated with the Renaissance. Cosimo (1389–1464), made wealthy by his trading profits as the papal banker, was a scholar who founded the Neoplatonic academy and collected an extensive library. He gathered around him the foremost writers and classical scholars of his day, among them Marsilio Ficino, the Neoplatonist who served as the tutor of Lorenzo de Medici, Cosimo’s grandson. Lorenzo (1449–92) became the centre of a group of artists, poets, scholars, and musicians who believed in the Neoplatonic ideal of a mystical union with God through the contemplation of beauty. Less naturalistic and more courtly than the prevailing spirit of the first half of the Quattrocento, this aesthetic philosophy was elucidated by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, incarnated in painting by Sandro Botticelli, and expressed in poetry by Lorenzo himself. Lorenzo also collaborated with the organist and choirmaster of the Florence cathedral, Heinrich Isaac, in the composition of lively secular choral music which anticipated the madrigal, a characteristic form of the High Renaissance.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
The Adoration of the Shepherds
The Medici traded in all of the major cities in Europe, and one of the most famous masterpieces of Northern Renaissance art, the Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes (c. 1476; Uffizi, Florence), was commissioned by their agent, Tommaso Portinari. Instead of being painted with the customary tempera of the period, the work is painted with translucent oil glazes that produce brilliant jewel-like colour and a glossy surface. Early Northern Renaissance painters were more concerned with the detailed reproduction of objects and their symbolic meaning than with the study of scientific perspective and anatomy even after these achievements became widely known. On the other hand, central Italian painters began to adopt the oil painting medium soon after the Portinari Altarpiece was brought to Florence in 1476.
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Raphael: Saint Michael Overwhelming the Demon
Raphael: Saint Michael Overwhelming the Demon
High Renaissance art, which flourished for about 35 years, from the early 1490s to 1527, when Rome was sacked by imperial troops, revolves around three towering figures: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), and Raphael (1483–1520). Each of the three embodies an important aspect of the period: Leonardo was the ultimate Renaissance man, a solitary genius to whom no branch of study was foreign; Michelangelo emanated creative power, conceiving vast projects that drew for inspiration on the human body as the ultimate vehicle for emotional expression; Raphael created works that perfectly expressed the classical spirit—harmonious, beautiful, and serene.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Virgin of the Rocks
Leonardo da Vinci: The Virgin of the Rocks
Although Leonardo was recognized in his own time as a great artist, his restless researches into anatomy, the nature of flight, and the structure of plant and animal life left him little time to paint. His fame rests mainly on a few completed paintings; among them are the Mona Lisa (1503–05, Louvre), The Virgin of the Rocks (1483–86, Louvre), and the sadly deteriorated fresco The Last Supper (1495–98; restored 1978–99; Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan).
Michelangelo: The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo: The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo’s early sculpture, such as the Pietà (1499; St. Peter’s, Rome) and the David (1501–04; Accademia, Florence), reveals a breathtaking technical ability in concert with a disposition to bend rules of anatomy and proportion in the service of greater expressive power. Although Michelangelo thought of himself first as a sculptor, his best known work is the giant ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Rome. It was completed in four years, from 1508 to 1512, and presents an incredibly complex but philosophically unified composition that fuses traditional Christian theology with Neoplatonic thought.
Raphael: School of Athens
Raphael: School of Athens
Raphael’s greatest work, School of Athens (1508–11), was painted in the Vatican at the same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel. In this large fresco Raphael brings together representatives of the Aristotelian and Platonic schools of thought. Instead of the densely packed, turbulent surface of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, Raphael places his groups of calmly conversing philosophers and artists in a vast court with vaults receding into the distance. Raphael was initially influenced by Leonardo, and he incorporated the pyramidal composition and beautifully modelled faces of The Virgin of the Rocks into many of his own paintings of the Madonna. He differed from Leonardo, however, in his prodigious output, his even temperament, and his preference for classical harmony and clarity.
Rome: Tempietto
Rome: Tempietto
The creator of High Renaissance architecture was Donato Bramante (1444–1514), who came to Rome in 1499 when he was 55. His first Roman masterpiece, the Tempietto (1502) at S. Pietro in Montorio, is a centralized dome structure that recalls classical temple architecture. Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–13) chose Bramante to be papal architect, and together they devised a plan to replace the 4th-century Old St. Peter’s with a new church of gigantic dimensions. The project was not completed, however, until long after Bramante’s death.
Humanistic studies continued under the powerful popes of the High Renaissance, Julius II and Leo X, as did the development of polyphonic music. The Sistine Choir, which performed at services when the pope officiated, drew musicians and singers from all of Italy and northern Europe. Among the most famous composers who became members were Josquin des Prez (c. 1450–1521) and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–94).
The Renaissance as a unified historical period ended with the fall of Rome in 1527. The strains between Christian faith and classical humanism led to Mannerism in the latter part of the 16th century. Great works of art animated by the Renaissance spirit, however, continued to be made in northern Italy and in northern Europe.
Titian: Adam and Eve
Titian: Adam and Eve
Seemingly unaffected by the Mannerist crisis, northern Italian painters such as Correggio (1494–1534) and Titian (1488/90–1576) continued to celebrate both Venus and the Virgin Mary without apparent conflict. The oil medium, introduced to northern Italy by Antonello da Messina and quickly adopted by Venetian painters who could not use fresco because of the damp climate, seemed particularly adapted to the sanguine, pleasure-loving culture of Venice. A succession of brilliant painters—Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese—developed the lyrical Venetian painting style that combined pagan subject matter, sensuous handling of colour and paint surface, and a love of extravagant settings. Closer in spirit to the more intellectual Florentines of the Quattrocento was the German painter Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), who experimented with optics, studied nature assiduously, and disseminated his powerful synthesis of Renaissance and Northern Gothic styles through the Western world by means of his engravings and woodcuts.
Leonardo da Vinci
Francesco Melzi - Portrait of Leonardo - WGA14795.jpg
Born Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci[1]
15 April 1452
Vinci, Republic of Florence (present-day Italy)
Died 2 May 1519 (aged 67)
Amboise, Kingdom of France
Nationality Italian
Known for Art, science
Works
Mona Lisa
The Last Supper
Salvator Mundi
The Vitruvian Man
Lady with an Ermine
Movement High Renaissance
Signature
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Italian: [leoˈnardo di ˌsɛr ˈpjɛːro da (v)ˈvintʃi] (About this soundlisten); 15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519), more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and he is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank,[2][3][4] he epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal.
Many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the "Universal Genius" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination",[5] and he is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived.[6] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote".[5] Marco Rosci notes that, while there is much speculation regarding his life and personality, his view of the world was logical rather than mysterious, although the empirical methods he employed were unorthodox for his time.[7]
Leonardo was born out of wedlock to notary Piero da Vinci and a peasant woman named Caterina in Vinci in the region of Florence, and he was educated in the studio of Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna, and Venice, and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded to him by Francis I of France.
Leonardo is renowned primarily as a painter. The Mona Lisa is the most famous of his works and the most parodied portrait,[8] and The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time.[5] His drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,[9] being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. His painting Salvator Mundi sold for $450.3 million at a Christie's auction in New York on 15 November 2017, the highest price ever paid for a work of art.[10] Perhaps 15 of his paintings have survived.[a] Nevertheless, these few works compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary Michelangelo, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, an adding machine,[11] and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. A number of his most practical inventions are displayed as working models at the Museum of Vinci. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science.[12]
Life
Childhood, 1452–1466
Photo of a building of rough stone with small windows, surrounded by olive trees
Leonardo's childhood home in Anchiano
Pen drawing of a landscape with mountains, a river in a deep valley, and a small castle
Leonardo's earliest known drawing, the Arno Valley (1473), Uffizi
Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 (Old Style) "at the third hour of the night"[b] in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno river in the territory of the Medici-ruled Republic of Florence.[14] He was the out-of-wedlock son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant.[13][15][c] Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense – "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci"; his full birth name was "Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci",[1][16] meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci".[14] The inclusion of the title "ser" indicated that Leonardo's father was a gentleman.
Little is known about Leonardo's early life. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother, and from 1457 lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera Amadori, who loved Leonardo but died young[17] in 1465 without children. When Leonardo was sixteen (1468), his father married again to twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini, who also died without children. Piero's legitimate heirs were born from his third wife Margherita di Guglielmo (who gave birth to six children:[18] Antonio, Giulian, Maddalena, Lorenzo, Violante and Domenico) and his fourth and final wife, Lucrezia Cortigiani (who bore him another six children:[19] Margherita, Benedetto, Pandolfo, Guglielmo, Bartolomeo and Giovanni).[20][21]
In all, Leonardo had twelve half-siblings, who were much younger than he was (the last was born when Leonardo was forty years old) and with whom he had very few contacts, but they caused him difficulty after his father's death in the dispute over the inheritance.[21]
Leonardo received an informal education in Latin, geometry and mathematics. In later life, Leonardo recorded only two childhood incidents. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face.[22] The second occurred while he was exploring in the mountains: he discovered a cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.[17]
Leonardo's early life has been the subject of historical conjecture.[23] Vasari, the 16th-century biographer of Renaissance painters, tells a story of Leonardo as a very young man: A local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo responded with a painting of a monster spitting fire that 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 shield decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow, which he gave to the peasant.[24]
Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476
Painting showing Jesus, naked except for a loin-cloth, standing in a shallow stream in a rocky landscape, while to the right, John the Baptist, identifiable by the cross that he carries, tips water over Jesus' head. Two angels kneel at the left. Above Jesus are the hands of God, and a dove descending
The Baptism of Christ (1472–75), Uffizi, by Verrocchio and Leonardo
In 1466, at the age of 14, Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio, whose bottega (workshop) was "one of the finest in Florence".[25] He apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day (and would do so for 7 years).[26] Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.[17][27] Leonardo would have been exposed to both theoretical training and a vast range of technical skills,[28] including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.[29][d]
Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus' robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again, although this is believed to be apocryphal.[30] Close examination reveals areas that have been painted or touched-up over the tempera, using the new technique of oil paint, including the landscape, the rocks seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.[31] Leonardo may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the Archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel.[15]
By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,[e] but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him.[17] Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473.[f][27]
Professional life, 1476–1513
Donato Bramante's Heraclitus and Democritus is thought by some to portray Leonardo as Heraclitus (left) and Bramante as Democritus (right).[32] It would be the only portrait made of Leonardo in his young adulthood.[33]
Florentine court records of 1476 show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy but acquitted; homosexual acts were illegal in Renaissance Florence.[15] From that date until 1478, there is no record of his work or even of his whereabouts.[34] In 1478, he left Verrocchio's studio and was no longer a resident at his father's house. One writer, called the Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and working in the Garden of the Piazza San Marco in Florence, a Neo-Platonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers that the Medici had established.[15] In January 1478, he received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St. Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio; in March 1481, he received a second independent commission for The Adoration of the Magi for the monks of San Donato a Scopeto.[35] Neither commission was completed, the second being interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.
In 1482, Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a talented musician,[36] created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de' Medici sent Leonardo to Milan, bearing the lyre as a gift, to secure peace with Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.[37] At this time, Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing Ludovico that he could also paint.[27][38]
Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.[39] In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to Hungary on behalf of Ludovico to meet Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.[40] Between 1493 and 1495, Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditures suggests that she was his mother.[41]
A page with two drawings of a war-horse, one from the side, and the other showing the chest and right leg
Study of horse from Leonardo's journals, Royal Library, Windsor Castle
Leonardo was employed on many different projects for Ludovico, including 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. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492, the clay model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the "Gran Cavallo".[27][g] Leonardo began making detailed plans for its casting;[27] however, Michelangelo insulted Leonardo by implying that he was unable to cast it.[17] In November 1494, Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannon to defend the city from invasion by Charles VIII.[27]
At the start of the Second Italian War in 1499, the invading French troops used the life-size clay model for the Gran Cavallo for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice,[42] where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.[17] On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".[43][h]
In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.[42] Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan of Imola in order to win his patronage. Maps were extremely rare at the time and it would have seemed like a new concept. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley, Tuscany, so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. He created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a dam from the sea to Florence, in order to allow a supply of water to sustain the canal during all seasons.
Leonardo's very accurate map of Imola, created for Cesare Borgia
Leonardo returned to Florence, where he rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke on 18 October 1503. He spent two years designing and painting a mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria,[42] with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina.[i] In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of David.[47]
In 1506, Leonardo returned to Milan. Many of his most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan,[17] including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco d'Oggiono.[j] At this time he may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of Charles II d'Amboise, the acting French governor of Milan.[48] A wax model survives and, if genuine, is the only extant example of Leonardo's sculpture.
Leonardo did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508, Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.[49]
Burial site of Leonardo da Vinci in Amboise
Old age and death, 1513–1519
From September 1513 to 1516, under Pope Leo X, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time.[49] In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan.[35] On 19 December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna.[17][50][51] Leonardo was commissioned to make for Francis a mechanical lion that could walk forward then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.[52][k] In 1516, he entered Francis' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé, now a public museum, near the king's residence at the royal Château d'Amboise. He spent the last three years of his life here, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, and supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi.[49]
Photo of a large medieval house, built of brick with many windows and gables and a circular tower with a conical roof
Clos Lucé in France, where Leonardo died in 1519
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67. The cause is generally stated to be recurrent stroke; this diagnosis is consistent with accounts of the state of Leonardo's alleged remains as described in 1863.[54] Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the king held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story, portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, as well as by Angelica Kauffman, may be legend rather than fact.[l] Vasari states that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament.[55] In accordance with his will, sixty beggars followed his casket.[m] Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving, as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai, and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards. His brothers received land, and his serving woman received a black cloak "of good stuff" with a fur edge.[n][56] Leonardo da Vinci was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in Château d'Amboise in France.
Some 20 years after Leonardo's death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."[57]
Location of remains
Leonardo's remains were originally interred in the chapel of Saint-Florentin at the Chateau d'Amboise in the Loire Valley. However, following the chapel's destruction in 1802, the whereabouts of Leonardo's remains became subject to dispute. While excavating the site in 1863, the poet Arsène Houssaye found a partially-complete skeleton and stone fragments bearing the inscription 'EO [...] DUS VINC'. The unusually large skull led Houssaye to conclude he had located the remains of Leonardo, which were re-interred in their present location of the chapel of Saint-Hubert, also at the Chateau d'Amboise.[58] Reflecting doubts about the attribution, a plaque above the tomb states that the remains are only "presumed" to be those of Leonardo. In 2016, it was announced that DNA tests were to be conducted to investigate the veracity of the attribution, with results expected in 2019.[59]
Relationships and influences
Florence: Leonardo's artistic and social background
Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise (1425–1452) were a source of communal pride. Many artists assisted in their creation.
Florence at the time of Leonardo's youth was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture.[25] Leonardo commenced his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor Donatello, died. The painter Uccello, whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters Piero della Francesca and Filippo Lippi, sculptor Luca della Robbia, and architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, and the portrait sculptor Mino da Fiesole. The latter's lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni.[60][61][62][63]
Leonardo's youth was spent in a Florence that was ornamented by the works of these artists and by Donatello's contemporaries, Masaccio, whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion; and Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective,[64] and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Alberti's treatise De Pictura[65] were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.[60][62][63]
Massaccio's "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden" depicting the naked and distraught Adam and Eve created a powerfully expressive image of the human form, cast into three dimensions by the use of light and shade, which was to be developed in the works of Leonardo in a way that was to be influential in the course of painting. The humanist influence of Donatello's "David" can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly John the Baptist.[60][61]
Small devotional picture by Verrocchio, c. 1470
A prevalent tradition in Florence was the small altarpiece of the Virgin and Child. Many of these were created in tempera or glazed terracotta by the workshops of Filippo Lippi, Verrocchio and the prolific della Robbia family.[60] Leonardo's early Madonnas such as The Madonna with a carnation and the Benois Madonna followed this tradition while showing idiosyncratic departures, particularly in the case of the Benois Madonna in which the Virgin is set at an oblique angle to the picture space with the Christ Child at the opposite angle. This compositional theme was to emerge in Leonardo's later paintings such as The Virgin and Child with St. Anne.[17]
Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was.[61] He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the Academy of the Medici.[17] Botticelli was a particular favourite of the Medici family, and thus his success as a painter was assured. Ghirlandaio and Perugino were both prolific and ran large workshops. They competently delivered commissions to well-satisfied patrons who appreciated Ghirlandaio's ability to portray the wealthy citizens of Florence within large religious frescoes, and Perugino's ability to deliver a multitude of saints and angels of unfailing sweetness and innocence.[60]
The Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes for a Florentine family
These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel, the work commencing with Perugino's employment in 1479. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. His first significant commission, The Adoration of the Magi for the Monks of Scopeto, was never completed.[17]
In 1476, during the time of Leonardo's association with Verrocchio's workshop, the Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes arrived in Florence, bringing from Northern Europe new painterly techniques that were to profoundly affect Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others.[61] In 1479, the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, who worked exclusively in oils, travelled north on his way to Venice, where the leading painter Giovanni Bellini adopted the technique of oil painting, quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo was also later to visit Venice.[61][63]
Like the two contemporary architects Bramante and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.[61][66]
Lorenzo de' Medici between Antonio Pucci and Francesco Sassetti, with Giulio de' Medici, fresco by Ghirlandaio
Leonardo's political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his younger brother Giuliano, who was slain in the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478. Leonardo was sent as an ambassador by the Medici court to Ludovico il Moro, who ruled Milan between 1479 and 1499.[61]
With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neo Platonism; Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator of Aristotle were the foremost. Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.[61][63][67] Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal, "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo received his employment at the court of Milan, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment.[17]
Although usually named together as the three giants of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were not of the same generation. Leonardo was twenty-three when Michelangelo was born and thirty-one when Raphael was born.[61] Raphael lived until the age of only 37 and died in 1520, the year after Leonardo died, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45 years.[62][63]
Personal life
Main article: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci
Study for a portrait of Isabella d'Este (1500) Louvre
Within Leonardo's lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his "outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind", as described by Vasari,[68] as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect was his respect for life, evidenced by his vegetarianism and his habit, according to Vasari, of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.[69][70]
Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned either in their fields or for their historical significance. They included the mathematician Luca Pacioli,[71] with whom he collaborated on the book De divina proportione in the 1490s. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Cecilia Gallerani and the two Este sisters, Beatrice and Isabella.[72] While on a journey that took him through Mantua, he drew a portrait of Isabella that appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.[17]
Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud.[73] Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo's brothers of his death, described Leonardo's feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy in an incident involving a well-known male prostitute. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de' Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the dismissal.[74] Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.[75]
John the Baptist (c. 1513–16), Louvre. Leonardo is thought to have used Salai as the model.
Assistants and pupils
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed Salai or Il Salaino ("The Little Unclean One" i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo's household in 1490. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton", after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions and spent a fortune on clothes.[76] Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence, and he remained in Leonardo's household for the next thirty years.[77] Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him a great deal about painting",[78] his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils, such as Marco d'Oggiono and Boltraffio. In 1515, he painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, known as Monna Vanna.[79] Salai owned the Mona Lisa at the time of his death in 1524, and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.[80]
In 1506, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count Francesco Melzi, the son of a Lombard aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo and remained with him until Leonardo's death.[17] Melzi inherited the artistic and scientific works, manuscripts, and collections of Leonardo and administered the estate.
Painting
See also: List of works by Leonardo da Vinci
Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his fame rested on his achievements as a painter. A handful of works that are either authenticated or attributed to him have been regarded as among the great masterpieces. These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities that have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. By the 1490s Leonardo had already been described as a "Divine" painter.[81]
Among the qualities that make Leonardo's work unique are his innovative techniques for laying on the paint; his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology; his interest in physiognomy and the way humans register emotion in expression and gesture; his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition; and his use of subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks.[82]
Early works
Annunciation (1475–1480), Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo's earliest complete work
Leonardo first gained notoriety for his work on the Baptism of Christ, painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at Verrocchio's workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 centimetres (23 in) long and 14 centimetres (5.5 in) high. It is a "predella" to go at the base of a larger composition, a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 centimetres (85 in) long.[83] In both Annunciations, Leonardo used a formal arrangement, like two well-known pictures by Fra Angelico of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with a rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now generally attributed to Leonardo.[84]
In the smaller painting, Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God's will. Mary is not submissive, however, in the larger piece. The girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise.[60] This calm young woman appears to accept 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, recognising humanity's role in God's incarnation.[o]
Paintings of the 1480s
In the 1480s, Leonardo received two very important commissions and commenced another work that was of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Two of the three were never finished, and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment.
Unfinished painting of Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (1480), Vatican
One of these paintings was Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, which Bortolon associates with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, as evidenced in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die."[17] Although the painting is barely begun, the composition can be seen and is very unusual.[p] 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. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo's anatomical studies.[86] 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 also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a complex composition, of about 250 x 250 centimetres. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined classical architecture that forms part of the background. In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de' Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro, and the painting was abandoned.[15][84]
The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks, 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.[87] 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. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.[88] While the painting is quite large, about 200×120 centimetres, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished: one remained at the chapel of the Confraternity, while Leonardo took the other to France. The Brothers did not get their painting, however, nor the de Predis their payment, until the next century.[27][42]
Paintings of the 1490s
The Last Supper (1498), Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, commissioned for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. It represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death, and shows the moment when Jesus has just said "one of you will betray me", and the consternation that this statement caused.[27]
The novelist Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat and then not paint for three or four days at a time.[89] This was beyond the comprehension of the prior of the convent, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the Duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.[90]
When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation,[91] but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined".[92] Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface subject to mould and to flaking.[93] Despite this, the painting remains one of the most reproduced works of art; countless copies have been made in every medium from carpets to cameos.
Paintings of the 16th century
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–05/07), Louvre, Paris, France
Among the works created by Leonardo in the 16th century is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or "la Gioconda", the laughing one. In the present era, it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman's face, its mysterious quality perhaps due to the subtly shadowed corners of the mouth and eyes such 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. Vasari, who is generally thought to have known the painting only by repute, said that "the smile was so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original".[94][q]
Other characteristics of the painting are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and 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 laid on much like tempera, and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.[r] Vasari expressed the opinion that the manner of painting would make even "the most confident master ... despair and lose heart."[97] The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is rare in a panel painting of this date.[98]
In the painting Virgin and Child with St. Anne, the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape, which Wasserman describes as "breathtakingly beautiful"[99] and harkens back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice.[27] This painting, which was copied many times, influenced Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto,[100] and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese.
Murals
Leonardo's The Battle of Anghiara was a fresco commissioned in 1505 for the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Its central scene depicted four men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. At the same time his rival Michelangelo, who had just finished his David, was assigned the opposite wall. All that remains of Leonardo's work is a copy by Rubens, but Maurizio Seracini is convinced it can still be found and has spent a lifetime searching for it. He was allowed to drill some pilot holes in a mural in the Salone dei Cinquecento, and his team did find evidence of an oil painting underneath.[101][102] In the Sforza Castle in Milan, there is a room decorated with the fresco technique by Leonardo and his assistants: Sala delle Asse (in English 'room of the wooden boards'). The room was decorated with a trompe-l'œil depicting trees, with an intricate labyrinth of leaves and knots on the ceiling. The red fruits of mulberry ("moroni" in local dialect) were an allusion to the name of "Ludovico il Moro", duke of Milan at that time. The first document about the room and Leonardo's work dates back to 1498: on 21 April, the secretary confirms to the duke that "magistro Leonardo" will complete the decoration by September.
Two restorations were accomplished, in 1902 and 1956. Another restoration is currently under way,[103] thanks to which beautiful preparatory drawings have been uncovered on the walls: roots of trees penetrating the stones of the foundations.
Drawings
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510), Louvre Museum
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (c. 1499–1500), National Gallery, London
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.[104] 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.[17][104]
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 Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London.[104] 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.[105]
Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that if Leonardo saw a person with an interesting face he would follow them around all day observing them.[106] There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salai, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile".[s] These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior.[104] Salai 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 Leonardo'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 Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de' Medici, in the Pazzi conspiracy.[104] With dispassionate integrity Leonardo has registered in neat mirror writing the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.
Observation and invention
Main article: Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci
Journals and notes
See also: List of works by Leonardo da Vinci § Manuscripts
The Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice
Renaissance humanism recognised no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are sometimes considered as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.[27] These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science). They were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.[27]
Most of Leonardo's writings are in mirror-image cursive. While secrecy is often suggested as the reason for this style of writing, it may have been more of a practical expediency. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it was probably easier for him to write from right to left.[t]
A page showing Leonardo's study of a foetus in the womb (c. 1510) Royal Library, Windsor Castle
Leonardo's 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, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.[27]
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 Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which holds the twelve-volume Codex Atlanticus, and British Library in London, which has put a selection from the Codex Arundel (BL Arundel MS 263) online.[107] The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo in private hands; it is owned by Bill Gates and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world.
Leonardo's notes appear to have been intended for publication because many of the sheets have a form and order that would facilitate this. In many cases a single topic, for example, the heart or the human fetus, is covered in detail in both words and pictures on a single sheet.[108][u] Why they were not published during Leonardo's lifetime is unknown.[27]
Scientific studies
Rhombicuboctahedron as published in Pacioli's
De divina proportione
Leonardo's approach to science was observational: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasise 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 De divina proportione, published in 1509.[27]
The content of his journals suggest that he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on anatomy was said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis 'D' Aragon's secretary in 1517.[109] Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by his pupil Francesco Melzi and eventually published as Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci in France and Italy in 1651 and Germany in 1724,[110] with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicolas Poussin.[111] According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into 62 editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art".[27]
While Leonardo's experimentation followed clear scientific methods, a recent and exhaustive analysis of Leonardo as a scientist by Fritjof Capra argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him in that, as a Renaissance Man, his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting.[112]
Anatomy and physiology
Anatomical study of the arm (1510)
Leonardo started his study in the anatomy of the human body under the apprenticeship of Andrea del Verrocchio, who demanded that his students develop a deep knowledge of the subject.[113] As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.
As a successful artist, Leonardo was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of 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. Leonardo made over 240 detailed drawings and wrote about 13,000 words towards a treatise on anatomy.[114] These papers were left to his heir, Francesco Melzi, for publication, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo's idiosyncratic writing.[115] The project was left incomplete at the time of Melzi's death more than 50 years later, with only a small amount of the material on anatomy included in Leonardo's Treatise on painting, published in France in 1632.[27][115] During the time that Melzi was ordering the material into chapters for publication, they were examined by a number of anatomists and artists, including Vasari, Cellini and Albrecht Dürer, who made a number of drawings from them.[115]
Leonardo's physiological sketch of the human brain and skull (1510)
Leonardo's anatomical drawings include many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, and of muscles and sinews. He studied the mechanical functions of the skeleton and the muscular forces that are applied to it in a manner that prefigured the modern science of biomechanics.[116] He drew the heart and vascular system, the sex organs and other internal organs, making one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero.[104] The drawings and notation are far ahead of their time, and if published would undoubtedly have made a major contribution to medical science.[114]
Leonardo also closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.[27][104] Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many animals, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses.[104]
Leonardo's dissections and documentation of muscles, nerves, and vessels helped to describe the physiology and mechanics of movement. He attempted to identify the source of 'emotions' and their expression. He found it difficult to incorporate the prevailing system and theories of bodily humours, but eventually he abandoned these physiological explanations of bodily functions. He made the observations that humours were not located in cerebral spaces or ventricles. He documented that the humours were not contained in the heart or the liver, and that it was the heart that defined the circulatory system. He was the first to define atherosclerosis and liver cirrhosis. He created models of the cerebral ventricles with the use of melted wax and constructed a glass aorta to observe the circulation of blood through the aortic valve by using water and grass seed to watch flow patterns. Vesalius published his work on anatomy and physiology in De humani corporis fabrica in 1543.[117]
Engineering and inventions
A design for a flying machine (1488), Institut de France, Paris
During his lifetime, Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro, he wrote that he could 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, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked.[118][119] Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, a mechanical knight, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.[17][27]
In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (220 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Constantinople. 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.[120][121]
Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight for much of his life, producing many studies, including Codex on the Flight of Birds (c. 1505), as well as plans for several flying machines such as a flapping ornithopter and a machine with a helical rotor.[27] The British television station Channel Four commissioned a 2003 documentary, Leonardo's Dream Machines, in which various designs by Leonardo, such as a parachute and a giant crossbow, were interpreted, constructed and tested.[122][123] Some of those designs proved successful, whilst others fared less well when practically tested.
Francis I of France receiving the last breath of Leonardo da Vinci, by Ingres, 1818
Fame and reputation
Main article: Cultural references to Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo's fame within his own lifetime was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Interest in Leonardo and his work has never diminished. Crowds still queue to see his best-known artworks, T-shirts still bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to hail him as a genius while speculating about his private life, as well as about what one so intelligent actually believed in.[27]
Statue of Leonardo in Amboise
Giorgio Vasari, in the enlarged edition of Lives of the Artists, 1568,[124] introduced his chapter on Leonardo 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.
— Giorgio Vasari
The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano ("The Courtier"), wrote in 1528: "... Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled ..."[125] while the biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote, c. 1540: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf ...".[126]
Statue outside the Uffizi, Florence, created by Luigi Pampaloni
The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius ..."[127] This is echoed by A.E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."[128]
By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo's notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."[129] Art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896: "Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values."[130]
The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.[131] Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: "Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge ... Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe."[17]
21st-century author Walter Isaacson in his biography of Leonardo[74] based much of his book on the thousands of notebook entries, studying the personal notes, sketches, budget notations, and musings of the man whom he considers the greatest of innovators. Isaacson was surprised to discover a "fun, joyous" side of Leonardo in addition to his limitless curiosity and creative genius.[132]
Leonardo da Vinci, c.1500, Salvator Mundi, oil on walnut
Art market
A painting by Leonardo, Salvator Mundi, depicting Jesus Christ holding an orb sold for a world record $450.3 million at a Christie's auction in New York, 15 November 2017.[10] The highest price previously paid for a work of art at auction was for Pablo Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger, which sold for $179.4 million in May 2015 at Christie's New York. The highest known sale price for any artwork was $300 million, for Willem de Kooning's Interchange, sold privately in September 2015 by the David Geffen Foundation to hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin.[133]
There are 15 significant artworks which are ascribed to Leonardo by most art historians, either in whole or in large part. This number is made up principally of paintings on panel but includes a mural, a large drawing on paper, and two works which are in the early stages of preparation. There are a number of other works that have also been variously attributed to him.
His birth is recorded in the diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio, as cited by Angela Ottino della Chiesa in Leonardo da Vinci, and Reynal & Co., Leonardo da Vinci (William Morrow and Company, 1956): "A grandson of mine was born April 15, Saturday, three hours into the night". The date was recorded in the Julian calendar; as it was Florentine time and sunset was 6:40 pm, three hours after sunset would be sometime around 9:40 pm which was still 14 April by modern reckoning. The conversion to the New Style calendar adds nine days; hence Leonardo was born 23 April according to the modern calendar.[13]
It has been suggested that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East "or at least, from the Mediterranean". According to Alessandro Vezzosi, head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, there is evidence that Piero owned a Middle Eastern slave called Caterina. That Leonardo had Middle Eastern blood is claimed to be supported by the reconstruction of a fingerprint as reported by Falconi, Marta (12 December 2006) [1 December 2006]. "Experts Reconstruct Leonardo Fingerprint" (News ed.). Washington Post. Associated Press. Retrieved 6 May 2013. The evidence, as stated in the article, is that 60% of people of Middle Eastern origin share the pattern of whirls found on the reconstructed fingerprint. The article also states that the claim is refuted by Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine: "You can't predict one person's race from these kinds of incidences, especially if looking at only one finger." See also Hooper, John (12 April 2008). "Da Vinci's mother was a slave, Italian study claims". The Guardian (News ed.). Retrieved 16 August 2015.
The "diverse arts" and technical skills of Medieval and Renaissance workshops are described in detail in the 12th-century text On Divers Arts by Theophilus Presbyter and in the early 15th-century text Il Libro Dell'arte O Trattato Della Pittui by Cennino Cennini.
That Leonardo joined the guild before this time is deduced from the record of payment made to the Compagnia di San Luca in the company's register, Libro Rosso A, 1472–1520, Accademia di Belle Arti.[15]
This work is now in the collection of the Uffizi, Drawing No. 8P.
Verrocchio's statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni was not cast until 1488, after his death, and after Leonardo had already begun work on the statue for Ludovico.
In 2005, the studio was rediscovered during the restoration of part of a building occupied for 100 years by the Department of Military Geography.[44]
Both works are lost. The entire composition of Michelangelo's painting is known from a copy by Aristotole da Sangallo, 1542.[45] Leonardo's painting is known only from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate, is by Peter Paul Rubens.[46]
D'Oggiono is known in part for his contemporary copies of the Last Supper.
It is unknown for what occasion the mechanical lion was made, but it is believed to have greeted the king at his entry into Lyon and perhaps was used for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. A conjectural recreation of the lion has been made and is on display in the Museum of Bologna.[53]
On the day of Leonardo's death, a royal edict was issued by the king at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a two-day journey from Clos Lucé. This has been taken as evidence that King Francis cannot have been present at Leonardo's deathbed. However, White in Leonardo: The First Scientist points out that the edict was not signed by the king.
This was a charitable legacy as each of the sixty paupers would have been awarded an established mourner's fee in the terms of Leonardo's will.
The black cloak, of good quality material, was a ready-made item from a clothier, with the fur trim being an additional luxury. The possession of this garment meant that Leonardo's house keeper could attend his funeral "respectably" attired at no expense to herself.
Michael Baxandall lists 5 "laudable conditions" or reactions of Mary to the presence and announcement of the angel. These are: Disquiet, Reflection, Inquiry, Submission and Merit. In this painting Mary's attitude does not comply with any of the accepted traditions.[85]
The painting, which in the 18th century belonged to Angelica Kauffman, was later cut up. The two main sections were found in a junk shop and cobbler's shop and were reunited.[86] It is probable that outer parts of the composition are missing.
Whether or not Vasari had seen the Mona Lisa is the subject of debate. The opinion that he had not seen the painting is based mainly on the fact that he describes the Mona Lisa as having eyebrows. Daniel Arasse in Leonardo da Vinci discusses the possibility that Leonardo may have painted the figure with eyebrows that were subsequently removed. (They were not fashionable in the mid-16th century.)[27] Pascal Cotte said in 2007 that, according to his analysis of high-resolution scans, the Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes that have been subsequently removed.[95]
Jack Wasserman writes of "the inimitable treatment of the surfaces" of the painting.[96]
The "Grecian profile" has a continuous straight line from forehead to nose-tip, the bridge of the nose being exceptionally high. It is a feature of many Classical Greek statues.
Left-handed writers using a split nib or quill pen experience difficulty pushing the pen from left to right across the page.
This method of organisation minimises of loss of data in the case of pages being mixed up or destroyed.
Citations
David Alan Brown, Leonardo (da Vinci), Leonardo Da Vinci: Origins of a Genius, Yale University Press, 1998, p. 7, ISBN 0300072465
White 1968, p. 466
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"Leonardo da Vinci's Helical Air Screw". Pilotfriend.com.
Gardner, Helen (1970). Art through the Ages. pp. 450–56.
See the quotations from the following authors, in section "Fame and reputation": Vasari, Boltraffio, Castiglione, "Anonimo" Gaddiano, Berensen, Taine, Fuseli, Rio, Bortolon.
Rosci, Marco (1977). Leonardo. p. 8.
John Lichfield, "The Moving of the Mona Lisa", The Independent, 2 April 2005 (accessed 2012-03-09)
Vitruvian Man is referred to as "iconic" at the following websites and many others:Vitruvian Man, Fine Art Classics, Key Images in the History of Science; Curiosity and difference Archived 30 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine.; "The Guardian: The Real da Vinci Code"
Crow, Kelly (2017-11-16). "Leonardo da Vinci Painting 'Salvator Mundi' Sells for $450.3 Million". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2017-11-16.
Kaplan, Erez (1996). "Roberto Guatelli's Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Adding Machine". Archived from the original on 29 May 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
Capra, pp. 5–6
Vezzosi, Alessandro (1997). Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man. 'New Horizons' series.
His birth is recorded in the diary of his paternal grandfather Ser Antonio, as cited by Angela Ottino della Chiesa in Leonardo da Vinci, p. 83
della Chiesa, Angela Ottino (1967). The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. p. 83.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Volume 1, 1967, p. 720, ISBN 1105310167
Bortolon, Liana (1967). The Life and Times of Leonardo. London: Paul Hamlyn.
Margherita (da Vinci) in: geni.com [retrieved 15 June 2016].
Lucrezia Cortigiani in: geni.com [retrieved 15 June 2016].
Rosci, p. 20.
Magnano, p. 138.
Rosci, p. 21.
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Rosci, p. 13
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Rosci, p. 27
Martindale, Andrew (1972). The Rise of the Artist.
Vasari, p. 258
della Chiesa, p. 88
Nicholl, Charles (2005). Leonardo Da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind. Penguin Books. p. 425. ISBN 978-0141944241.
"Leonardo: The Man Who Saved Science". Secrets of the Dead. Season 16. Episode 5. 5 April 2017. 32 minutes in. PBS.
Priwer, Shana; Phillips, Cynthia (2006). The Everything Da Vinci Book. p. 245.
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Kemp, Martin (2004). Leonardo.
Franz-Joachim Verspohl [de], Michelangelo Buonarroti und Leonardo Da Vinci: Republikanischer Alltag und Künstlerkonkurrenz in Florenz zwischen 1501 und 1505 (Wallstein Verlag, 2007), p. 151.
Codex II, 95 r, Victoria and Albert Museum, as cited by della Chiesa p. 85
della Chiesa, p. 85
Vasari, p. 256
Owen, Richard (12 January 2005). "Found: the studio where Leonardo met Mona Lisa". London: The Times. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
Goldscheider, Ludwig (1967). Michelangelo: paintings, sculptures, architecture. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0714813141.
della Chiesa, pp. 106–07
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Masters, Roger (1998). Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0452280908.
Müntz, Eugène (1898). Leonardo da Vinci. Artist, Thinker, and Man of Science. Volume 1. London: William Heinemann.
Müntz, Eugène (1898). Leonardo da Vinci. Artist, Thinker, and Man of Science. Volume 2. London: William Heinemann.
O'Malley, Charles D.; Sounders, J.B. de C.M. (1952). Leonardo on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. With Translations, Emendations and a Biographical Introduction. New York: Henry Schuman.
Nicholl, Charles (2005). Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind. Penguin. ISBN 978-0140296815.
Nuland, Sherwin B. (2001). Leonardo Da Vinci. Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-0753812693.
Popham, A.E. (1946). The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0224604628.
Priwer, Shana; Phillips, Cynthia (2006). The Everything Da Vinci Book: Explore the Life and Times of the Ultimate Renaissance Man. Adams Media. ISBN 978-1598691016.
Rachum, Ilan (1979). The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia. Octopus. ISBN 978-0706408577.
Richter, Jean Paul (1970). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Dover. ISBN 978-0486225722. volume 2: ISBN 0486225739. A reprint of the original 1883 edition.
Rosci, Marco (1977). Leonardo. Bay Books Pty Ltd. ISBN 978-0858351769.
Rossi, Paolo (2001). The Birth of Modern Science. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0631227113.
Santi, Bruno (1990). Leonardo da Vinci. Scala / Riverside.
Theophilus (1963). On Divers Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226794822.
Wasserman, Jack (1975). Leonardo da Vinci. Abrams. ISBN 978-0810902626.
Vasari, Giorgio (1568). Lives of the Artists. Penguin Classics, trans. George Bull 1965. ISBN 978-0140441642.
Williamson, Hugh Ross (1974). Lorenzo the Magnificent. Michael Joseph. ISBN 978-0718112042.
Winternitz, Emanuel (1982). Leonardo Da Vinci As a Musician. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300026313.
Vezzosi, Alessandro (1997). Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man. 'New Horizons' series. Translated by Bonfante-Warren, Alexandra (English translation ed.). London: Thames & Hudson Ltd}. ISBN 978-0500300817.
Zollner, Frank (2003). Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings. Taschen. ISBN 978-3822817346. [The chapter "The Graphic Works" is by Frank Zollner & Johannes Nathan].
Leonardo da Vinci
List of works Science and inventions Personal life
Paintings
Medusa The Annunciation The Baptism of Christ The Madonna of the Carnation Ginevra de' Benci Benois Madonna The Adoration of the Magi Saint Jerome in the Wilderness Madonna Litta Virgin of the Rocks Portrait of a Musician Lady with an Ermine The Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist The Holy Infants Embracing La Belle Ferronnière Salvator Mundi Madonna of the Yarnwinder The Virgin and Child with St. Anne Mona Lisa Head of a Woman (La Scapigliata) Leda and the Swan St. John the Baptist
Works on walls
The Last Supper Sala delle Asse The Battle of Anghiari
Sculptures
Sforza monument (unexecuted) Horse and Rider Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior
Works on paper
Vitruvian Man Portrait of a Young Fiancée The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist Head of Christ The Martyrdom of St Sebastian Self-portrait in red chalk Studies of the Fetus in the Womb
Manuscripts
Codex Arundel Codex Atlanticus Codex on the Flight of Birds Codex Leicester Codex Madrid Codex Trivulzianus A Treatise on Painting
Museums
Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (Milan) Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci)
Other projects
De divina proportione Architonnerre Leonardo's crossbow Leonardo's fighting vehicle Leonardo's robot Leonardo's self-propelled cart Octant projection Viola organista
Leonardeschi
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio Cesare da Sesto Giampietrino Giovanni Agostino da Lodi Bernardino Luini Cesare Magni Marco d'Oggiono Francesco Melzi Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis Salaì Andrea Solari
Related
Cultural references Conservation-restoration of The Last Supper Mona Lisa replicas and reinterpretations Things named after Leonardo
Category Category
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Mathematics and art
Concepts
Algorithm Catenary Fractal Golden ratio Plastic number Hyperboloid structure Minimal surface Paraboloid Perspective Camera lucida Camera obscura Projective geometry Proportion Architecture Human Symmetry Tessellation Wallpaper group
Fibonacci word: detail of artwork by Samuel Monnier, 2009
Forms
Algorithmic art Anamorphic art Computer art 4D art Fractal art Islamic geometric patterns Girih Jali Muqarnas Zellige Knotting Architecture Geodesic dome Islamic Mughal Pyramid Vastu shastra Music Origami Textiles String art Sculpture Tiling
Artworks
List of works designed with the golden ratio Continuum Octacube Pi Pi in the Sky
Buildings
Hagia Sophia Pantheon Parthenon Pyramid of Khufu Sagrada Família St Mary's Cathedral Sydney Opera House Taj Mahal
Artists
Renaissance
Paolo Uccello Piero della Francesca Albrecht Dürer Leonardo da Vinci Vitruvian Man Parmigianino Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
19th–20th Century
William Blake The Ancient of Days Newton Jean Metzinger Danseuse au café L'Oiseau bleu Man Ray René Magritte La condition humaine Salvador Dalí Crucifixion The Swallow's Tail Giorgio de Chirico M. C. Escher Circle Limit III Print Gallery Relativity Reptiles Waterfall
Contemporary
Max Bill Martin and Erik Demaine Scott Draves Jan Dibbets John Ernest Helaman Ferguson Peter Forakis Bathsheba Grossman George W. Hart Desmond Paul Henry John A. Hiigli Anthony Hill Charles Jencks Garden of Cosmic Speculation Robert Longhurst István Orosz Hinke Osinga Hamid Naderi Yeganeh A Bird in Flight Boat Tony Robbin Oliver Sin Hiroshi Sugimoto Daina Taimina Roman Verostko
Theorists
Ancient
Polykleitos Canon Vitruvius De architectura
Renaissance
Luca Pacioli De divina proportione Piero della Francesca De prospectiva pingendi Leon Battista Alberti De pictura De re aedificatoria Sebastiano Serlio Regole generali d'architettura Andrea Palladio I quattro libri dell'architettura Albrecht Dürer Vier Bücher von Menschlicher Proportion
Romantic
Frederik Macody Lund "Ad Quadratum" Jay Hambidge "The Greek Vase" Samuel Colman "Nature's Harmonic Unity"
Modern
Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament Ernest Hanbury Hankin The Drawing of Geometric Patterns in Saracenic Art G. H. Hardy A Mathematician's Apology George David Birkhoff Aesthetic Measure Douglas Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach Nikos Salingaros The 'Life' of a Carpet
Publications
Journal of Mathematics and the Arts
Organizations
Ars Mathematica The Bridges Organization European Society for Mathematics and the Arts Goudreau Museum of Mathematics in Art and Science Institute For Figuring Museum of Mathematics
Related topics
Droste effect Mathematical beauty Patterns in nature Sacred geometry
Category Category
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Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa
Subject
Lisa del Giocondo
Replicas
Isleworth Mona Lisa (16th century) Mona Lisa (Prado, c. 1503–1516) L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) Mini Lisa (2013)
Related
Mona Lisa replicas and reinterpretations Speculations about Mona Lisa Timeline of fictional stories about the Mona Lisa
1911 theft
Eduardo de Valfierno Yves Chaudron Vincenzo Peruggia
On screen
The Theft of the Mona Lisa (1931) The Mona Lisa Has Been Stolen (1966) City of Death (1979) Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase (1992) Mona Lisa's Revenge (2009)
Music
Mona Lisa (1915 opera) "Mona Lisa" (1950 song) "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile" (1984 song) "Lisa Mona Lisa" (1988 song) "The Ballad of Mona Lisa" (2011 song) "The Mona Lisa" (2013 song)
Literature
The Second Mrs. Giaconda (1975) I, Mona Lisa (2006) The Smile (2008) this coin is silver plated