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Read Ebook: Leonardo Da Vinci by Brockwell Maurice W
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Ebook has 78 lines and 9435 words, and 2 pages
IN ROME
IN FRANCE
On October 10, 1516, when he was resident at the Manor House of Cloux near Amboise in Touraine with Francesco Melzi, his friend and assistant, he showed three of his pictures to the Cardinal of Aragon, but his right hand was now paralysed, and he could "no longer colour with that sweetness with which he was wont, although still able to make drawings and to teach others."
It was no doubt in these closing years of his life that he drew the "Portrait of Himself" in red chalk, now at Turin, which is probably the only authentic portrait of him in existence.
HIS DEATH
On April 23, 1519--Easter Eve--exactly forty-five years before the birth of Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci made his will, and on May 2 of the same year he passed away.
Thus died "Mr. Lionard de Vincy, the noble Milanese, painter, engineer, and architect to the King, State Mechanician" and "former Professor of Painting to the Duke of Milan."
"May God Almighty grant him His eternal peace," wrote his friend and assistant Francesco Melzi. "Every one laments the loss of a man whose like Nature cannot produce a second time."
HIS ART
Leonardo, whose birth antedates that of Michelangelo and Raphael by twenty three and thirty-one years respectively, was thus in the forefront of the Florentine Renaissance, his life coinciding almost exactly with the best period of Tuscan painting.
Leonardo was the first to investigate scientifically and to apply to art the laws of light and shade, though the preliminary investigations of Piero della Francesca deserve to be recorded.
He observed with strict accuracy the subtleties of chiaroscuro--light and shade apart from colour; but, as one critic has pointed out, his gift of chiaroscuro cost the colour-life of many a noble picture. Leonardo was "a tonist, not a colourist," before whom the whole book of nature lay open.
It was not instability of character but versatility of mind which caused him to undertake many things that having commenced he afterwards abandoned, and the probability is that as soon as he saw exactly how he could solve any difficulty which presented itself, he put on one side the merely perfunctory execution of such a task.
In the Forster collection in the Victoria and Albert museum three of Leonardo's note-books with sketches are preserved, and it is stated that it was his practice to carry about with him, attached to his girdle, a little book for making sketches. They prove that he was left-handed and wrote from right to left.
HIS MIND
Leonardo anticipated many eminent scientists and inventors in the methods of investigation which they adopted to solve the many problems with which their names are coupled. Among these may be cited Copernicus' theory of the earth's movement, Lamarck's classification of vertebrate and invertebrate animals, the laws of friction, the laws of combustion and respiration, the elevation of the continents, the laws of gravitation, the undulatory theory of light and heat, steam as a motive power in navigation, flying machines, the invention of the camera obscura, magnetic attraction, the use of the stone saw, the system of canalisation, breech loading cannon, the construction of fortifications, the circulation of the blood, the swimming belt, the wheelbarrow, the composition of explosives, the invention of paddle wheels, the smoke stack, the mincing machine! It is, therefore, easy to see why he called "Mechanics the Paradise of the Sciences."
Leonardo was a SUPERMAN.
The eye is the window of the soul.
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.
The natural desire of good men is knowledge.
A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.
Every difficulty can be overcome by effort.
Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.
Miserable men, how often do you enslave yourselves to gain money!
HIS SPELL
The influence of Leonardo was strongly felt in Milan, where he spent so many of the best years of his life and founded a School of painting. He was a close observer of the gradation and reflex of light, and was capable of giving to his discoveries a practical and aesthetic form. His strong personal character and the fascination of his genius enthralled his followers, who were satisfied to repeat his types, to perpetuate the "grey-hound eye," and to make use of his little devices. Among this group of painters may be mentioned Boltraffio, who perhaps painted the "Presumed Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli" , which is officially attributed in the Louvre to the great master himself.
HIS DESCENDANTS
Signor Uzielli has shown that one Tommaso da Vinci, a descendant of Domenico , was a few years ago a peasant at Bottinacio near Montespertoli, and had then in his possession the family papers, which now form part of the archives of the Accademia dei Lincei at Rome. It was proved also that Tommaso had given his eldest son "the glorious name of Leonardo."
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