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Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)
Leonardo da Vinci was a celebrated Italian Renaissance architect, inventor, engineer, sculptor and painter. He can be seen as the archetype of the Renaissance Man and has been defined as a genius. His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's "Vite". Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy. This was before modern naming conventions developed in Europe. Therefore, his full name was 'Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci,' which means "Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci". Leonardo himself simply signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo"). Presumably he did not use his father's name because he was an illegitimate child. The son of a wealthy landowner and a peasant girl, Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence. He became a painter's apprentice and later an independent painter in Florence. From 1482 to 1499 he worked for the Duke of Milan and maintained his own workshop with apprentices there. He returned to Florence, entered the services of Cesare Borgia (also called "Duca Valentino" and son of Pope Alexander VI) as military architect and engineer, and eventually (1506) returned to Milan. From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome, where painters like Raphael and Michelangelo were active at the time; he did not have much contact with these artists however. In 1516, he entered the services of king Francois I of France at the Royal Chateau at Amboise. He died on May 2, 1519 in Cloux, France and is buried in the Chapel of St. Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Leonardo appears to never have had intimate relations with women. In 1476 he was anonymously accused of homosexual contact with a 17-year-old model, Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute. He was, together with three other young men, charged with homosexual conduct and acquitted because of lack of evidence. For a time Leonardo and the others were under the watchful eye of Florence's "Officers of the Night" - a kind of renaissance vice squad.
Works
Leonardo is well known for his paintings, such as Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, now at the Louvre in Paris, France) and the Last Supper (Ultima Cena or Cenacolo, in Milan). Only seventeen of his paintings, and none of his statues, survive. He spent many years making plans and models for a monumental 8m high horse statue in bronze, to be erected in Milan. Because of war with France, the project was never finished. Based on private initiative, a similar statue was completed according to his plans in 1999 in New York, given to Milan and erected there. Maybe even more impressive than his artistic work are his detailed studies in anatomy, engineering, bird flight and many other areas. He recorded his results in detailed notebooks which combine art and science. He was left-handed and used mirror writing, indicating that his notes were intended for his own reference. His approach to science was an observatory one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations. Throughout his life, he planned a grand encyclopedia based on detailed drawings of everything. His notebooks contain drawings of several innovative machines, among them various flying machines, machine guns and a cog-wheeled device that has been interpreted as a mechanical calculator. Leonardo did not publish or otherwise distribute the contents of these notebooks. The notebooks remained obscure until the 19th century, and were not directly of value to the development of science and technology until that time. On this basis, L. Sprague de Camp, in his book, The Ancient Engineers, considered Leonardo not the first modern engineer, but "the last of the ancient ones", pointing out that after Leonardo's time the practice of disseminating and publishing scientific discoveries began in earnest. In 1994, one of da Vinci's notebooks was purchased by American entrepreneur, Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, for US$25 million.
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