Biography
The Italian renaissance artist, inventor, engineer, sculptor and painter was truly
a universal genius. He invented engines of war and built bridges and chariots as an
engineer in the science of artillery and sieges. Leonardo experimented in oft-repeated
attempts to build an airplane. He left examples of his talents as a scientist,
architect, musician, mathematician, teacher and businessman. He designed sewers and
palaces, built stables and chapels, dug latrines and raised fountains, dissected
corpses and painted angels, identified ten different varieties of noses in profile
and envisioned a utopian bordello. In his "Notebooks," he drew cartoonist prototypes
of not only the airplane but the submarine, helicopter, machine gun and tank. As a
sculptor and painter, he was unparalleled in his brilliance. Though he rarely finished
a work of art, his work embodied beauty, grace and might.
The son of a wealthy notary and a peasant mother, he was stigmatized by his
illegitimate birth. As a teenager, he joined his dad in Florence but his status as
a bastard barred him from joining guilds that would have led him into a conventional
career. The Renaissance had begun, fueled by a new merchant class anxious to patronize
the arts, as well as a desire to repair the damage from centuries of war and the
decimation of the plague. Leonardo was apprenticed as a studio boy to the painter
Verrocchio, who was a leading metal smith, painter and sculptor in Florence. There
Leonardo became familiar with the production of religious and more secular paintings
as well as sculpture. In 1472, he joined the painter’s guild of Florence, and by
age 26 he had become an independent master. A homosexual, he was charged with sodomy
on April 9, 1476 OS in Florence. The humiliation of this public denouncement was a
factor in his decision to leave Florence, beginning his celebrated career shuttling
back and forth between various eminent patrons. In 1482, he earned the attention of
the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, when he wrote that he could build portable bridges
and bombardments, make cannons and other war machines of the day, build ships,
and sculpt using a variety of materials. In the Duke’s service, he became a principal
engineer and architect for many of the Duke’s military operations and, in 1502, after
the Sforzas were driven out of Milan, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia
as his chief architect and engineer, overseeing work on the fortresses of the papal
territories in central Italy. In 1503, he was one of a commission of artists to
choose the proper location for the magnificent statue by Michelangelo, simply
entitled “David.” These were some of his glorious years when he painted
his “Mona Lisa.” In 1507 he was named court painter to King Louis XII of France,
then residing in Milan, and over the next six years, Leonardo traveled frequently
between Milan and Florence, continuing his engineering projects. In 1509 became
associated with mathematician Luca Pacioli in proving the Divine Proportion. From 1514
to 1516, Leonardo lived in Rome in service to Pope Leo X, conducting many scientific
experiments. In 1516, he journeyed to France where, for the rest of his life, he
remained in the service of King Francis I.
With his boundless curiosity, Leonardo anticipated many discoveries of modern
times and was responsible for innovations in geology, meteorology and hydraulics. He
left a number of homoerotic drawings and surrounded himself with a seraglio of
androgynous protégés. It has been said that Leonardo encoded his paintings with
symbols of his heretical beliefs and that one of the reasons so few paintings remain
is that he destroyed them or did not complete them for fear that his heresy would be
uncovered. With his reputation as a trickster, the famous Shroud of Turin has been
sometimes attributed to his hand. All in all, he produced a relatively small number
of paintings, among them such masterpieces as "The Last Supper," a mural now in a
Milan monastery, "The Adoration of the Magi," unfinished, in the Uffizi Museum in
Florence, and "The Mona Lisa," the enigmatic portrait hanging in the Louvre in Paris.
The great genius died on May 2, 1519 OS in Castle Cloux, France.
Top
For More Information on the Web:
|
Top
What Do You Think?
The popularity of The Da Vinci Code novel has led many of us to
wonder about the life of the real da Vinci. We all know him as a genius of
art, science and engineering. Did you also know, though, that he was illegitimate,
left-handed, vegetarian, homosexual?
His childhood was stigmatized by illegitimacy. Just as his physical
beauty and artistic genius began to counter the illegitimacy stigma, he was
hit with an accusation of sodomy. This seemed to have set him on a paranoid,
misanthropic track. My favorite quote: “How many people there are who could
be described as mere channels for food, producers of excrement, fillers of
latrines.”
Leonardo seems to have been destined to live outside of societal
norms, although this may have served him well as he probed deeply into how things actually
worked at a time when tradition obscured true vision. His boundless
curiosity led him into all-night vigils, dissecting decomposing criminal
cadavers in search of the truth about human physiology. As a result, he
discovered blood circulation and was able to reach new heights in realism.
(He compared Michelangelo’s overly-musculatured painting to bags of nuts.)
- Where is his destiny to live outside of convention written in the
chart?
- Where is his keen precise observation of nature?
- Can one see genius in a chart?
View Others'
Answers
Fill out this form or, if you'd prefer, include your comments in an email
message. Be sure to let us know if you would rather not have
your name and/or email address published.
|
|
AstroDatabank offers this
privately-funded forum for astrologers who want to share
astrological insights in a respectful and educational way.
AstroDatabank does not condone or support comments that are
profane, obscene or discriminatory against anyone’s race, color,
religious creed, national origin, ancestry, gender, disability,
sexual orientation, veteran status or any other similar
category. While we make an effort to remove as soon as we can
any comments that we deem inappropriate for these or other
discretionary reasons, we cannot guarantee that we are always
able to do so in a timely way given the nature of the Internet.
However, we reserve the right to remove comments or to block
participation at our sole discretion and at any time. Please
understand that users’ comments are their own and do not reflect
the views, techniques or interpretations of anyone at
AstroDatabank. We hope that you will use this forum to share
your astrological insights with your colleagues in a respectful
manner and that you will enjoy reading others’ comments on the
chart under discussion. For more information, please read our
legal disclaimer and terms of service.
Where do you want to go now?
|
