10 best work himself famous artist of all times. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) Italian artist, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, anatomist, geologist, botanist and writer of the Renaissance.
10. Portrait of Ginevra de Benci (1474-1476)
The portrait of Ginevra de Benci now belongs to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and is currently the only painting by Leonardo in the United States. Unlike Leonardo's other portraits of women, this lady looks cold and arrogant. This is emphasized by the direction of the gaze: one eye seems to glide over the viewer, and the other looks intently.
9. Lady with an ermine (1489-1490)
Presumably, the painting depicts Ludovico Sforza's favorite, Cecilia Gallerani.
Cecilia Gallerani is depicted in a three-quarter turn. Such a portrait was one of Leonardo's inventions.
The girl has an ermine in her arms. One version interprets that the ermine symbolizes the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, whom his mistress held in her arms for a long time.
The woman’s forehead is covered with a thin braid, she has a transparent cap on her head, secured under her chin, and her hairstyle is in the Spanish fashion of that time.
8. Saint Anne with Madonna and Child Christ (1510)
The Virgin and Child of Saint Anne was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in 1510. This work is made in oil on wood, measuring 168 x 130 cm. Currently located in the Louvre, Paris.
7. John the Baptist (1513-1516)
6. Madonna of the Carnation (1478-1480)
"Madonna of the Carnation" is one of early works Leonardo da Vinci.
The painting was found in 1889 at the sale of the property of a widow from the town of Günzburg on the Danube. The painting was bought for only 22 marks; a few months later the businessman resold it to the museum for 800 marks as a work by Verrocchio. It was immediately announced that the museum had received a work by Leonardo da Vinci with a real value of 8,000 marks.
Oil on wood 42 × 67 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
5. Madonna of the Rocks
“Madonna of the Rocks” is the name of two almost identical paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. One is in the Louvre, Paris, the other is in the London National Gallery.
Both paintings depict the Madonna and Christ Child with the Child John the Baptist and an angel, in a rock setting. Significant compositional differences in the angel's gaze and right hand.
4. Baptism of Christ (1472)
The painting “The Baptism of Christ” was painted by Andrea Verrocchio together with his student Leonardo da Vinci. Legend has it that the teacher was so shocked by his student’s skill that he stopped painting.
Wood, oil. 177 × 151 cm. Located in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
3. Adoration of the Magi (1481)
Leonardo was commissioned to carry out work for the high altar of the monastery of San Donato Scopeto in 1480, near Florence. He was supposed to complete it within thirty months, but it is still not finished. Leonardo went to Milan a year after work began. Board, oil. 246 × 243 cm. Uffizi, Florence.
Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Anchiato near the city of Vinci (hence the prefix to his surname). The boy's father and mother were not married, so Leonardo spent his first years with his mother. Soon his father, who served as a notary, took him into his family.
In 1466, da Vinci entered as an apprentice in the studio of the artist Verrocchio in Florence, where Perugino, Agnolo di Polo, Lorenzo di Credi also studied, Botticelli worked, Ghirlandaio and others visited. At this time, Leonardo became interested in drawing, sculpture and modeling, studied metallurgy, chemistry , drawing, mastered working with plaster, leather, and metal. In 1473, da Vinci qualified as a master at the Guild of St. Luke.
Early creativity and scientific activity
At first creative path Leonardo devoted almost all his time to working on paintings. In 1472 - 1477 the artist created the paintings “The Baptism of Christ”, “The Annunciation”, “Madonna with a Vase”. At the end of the 70s he completed Madonna with a Flower (Benois Madonna). In 1481 the first big job in the works of Leonardo da Vinci - “The Adoration of the Magi.”
In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan. Since 1487, da Vinci has been developing a flying machine that was based on bird flight. Leonardo first created a simple apparatus based on wings, and then developed an airplane mechanism with full control. However, it was not possible to bring the idea to life, since the researcher did not have a motor. In addition, Leonardo studied anatomy and architecture, and discovered botany as an independent discipline.
Mature period of creativity
In 1490, da Vinci created the painting “Lady with an Ermine”, as well as the famous drawing “Vitruvian Man”, which is sometimes called “ canonical proportions" In 1495 - 1498 Leonardo worked on one of his most important works - the fresco " last supper"in Milan in the monastery of Santa Maria del Grazie.
In 1502, da Vinci entered the service of Cesare Borgia as a military engineer and architect. In 1503, the artist created the painting “Mona Lisa” (“La Gioconda”). Since 1506, Leonardo has served under King Louis XII of France.
Last years
In 1512, the artist, under the patronage of Pope Leo X, moved to Rome.
From 1513 to 1516 Leonardo da Vinci lived in the Belvedere, working on the painting “John the Baptist”. In 1516, Leonardo, at the invitation of the French king, settled in the castle of Clos Lucé. Two years before his death, the artist became numb right hand, it was difficult for him to move independently. Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his short biography in bed.
Died great artist and the scientist Leonardo da Vinci on May 2, 1519 at the castle of Clos Luce near the city of Amboise in France.
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Biography test
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Selected art trends High Renaissance were anticipated in the works of outstanding artists of the 15th century and were expressed in the desire for grandeur, monumentalization and generalization of the image. However, the true founder of the High Renaissance style was Leonardo da Vinci, a genius whose work marked a grandiose qualitative shift in art. The significance of his comprehensive activities, scientific and artistic, became clear only when Leonardo's scattered manuscripts were examined. His notes and drawings contain brilliant insights in various fields of science and technology. He was, as Engels put it, “not only a great painter, but also a great mathematician, mechanic and engineer, to whom we owe important discoveries the most diverse branches of physics."
For the Italian artist, art was a means of understanding the world. Many of his sketches serve as illustrations scientific work, and at the same time these are works high art. Leonardo embodied new type an artist - a scientist, a thinker, striking in his breadth of views and versatility of talent. Leonardo was born in the village of Anchiano, near the city of Vinci. He was illegitimate son a notary and a simple peasant woman. He studied in Florence, in the studio of the sculptor and painter Andrea Verrocchio. One of the early works of the young artist - the figure of an angel in Verrocchio's painting "Baptism" (Florence, Uffizi) - stands out among the frozen characters with its subtle spirituality and testifies to the maturity of its creator.
To the number early works Leonardo also refers to the “Madonna with a Flower” stored in the Hermitage (the so-called “ Madonna Benoit", c. 1478), decidedly different from the numerous Madonnas of the 15th century. Refusing the genre and meticulous detail inherent in the creations of masters early Renaissance, Leonardo deepens the characteristics, generalizes the forms. The figures of a young mother and baby, subtly modeled by side light, fill almost the entire space of the picture. The movements of the figures, organically connected with each other, are natural and plastic. They stand out clearly dark background walls. Opening window is clean blue sky connects the figures with nature, with the vast world dominated by man. In the balanced construction of the composition, an internal pattern is felt. But it does not exclude the warmth, the naive charm observed in life.
Madonna with the Infants Christ and John
Baptist, around 1490, private collection
Savior of the world
around 1500, private collection
In 1480, Leonardo already had his own workshop and received orders. However, his passion for science often distracted him from his studies in art. The large altar composition “Adoration of the Magi” (Florence, Uffizi) and “Saint Jerome” (Rome, Uffizi) remained unfinished. Vatican Pinakothek). In the first, the artist sought to transform the complex monumental composition of the altar image into a pyramid-shaped, easily visible group, to convey the depth of human feelings. In the second - to a truthful depiction of complex angles of the human body, the space of the landscape. Not finding proper appreciation of his talent at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, with his cult of exquisite sophistication, Leonardo entered the service of the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Moro. The Milan period of Leonardo's work (1482–1499) turned out to be the most fruitful. Here the versatility of his talent as a scientist, inventor and artist was revealed in full force.
He began his activity with the execution of a sculptural monument - an equestrian statue of the father of Duke Ludovico Moro, Francesco Sforza. The large model of the monument, which was unanimously praised by contemporaries, was destroyed during the capture of Milan by the French in 1499. Only drawings and sketches have survived various options a monument, an image of either a rearing horse, full of dynamics, or a solemnly performing horse, reminiscent of the compositional solutions of Donatello and Verrocchio. Apparently, this last option was turned into a model of the statue. It was significantly larger in size than the monuments to Gattamelata and Colleoni, which gave contemporaries and Leonardo himself a reason to call the monument “the great colossus.” This work allows us to consider Leonardo one of major sculptors that time.
Not a single completed architectural project by Leonardo has reached us. And yet his drawings and designs of buildings, plans for creating an ideal city speak of his gift outstanding architect. The Milanese period includes paintings mature style - “Madonna in the Grotto” and “The Last Supper”. “Madonna in the Grotto” (1483–1494, Paris, Louvre) is the first monumental altar composition of the High Renaissance. Her characters Mary, John, Christ and the angel acquired features of greatness, poetic spirituality and fullness of life expressiveness. United by a mood of thoughtfulness and action - the infant Christ blesses John - in a harmonious pyramidal group, as if fanned by a light haze of chiaroscuro, the characters of the gospel legend seem to be the embodiment ideal images peaceful happiness.
(attribution to Carlo Pedretti), 1505,
Museum ancient people Lucania,
Vallo Basilicata, Italy
The most significant of Leonardo’s monumental paintings, “The Last Supper,” executed in 1495–1497 for the monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan, takes you into the world of real passions and dramatic feelings. Stepping away from traditional interpretation Gospel episode, Leonardo gives an innovative solution to the theme, a composition that deeply reveals human feelings and experiences. Having minimized the outline of the refectory furnishings, deliberately reducing the size of the table and pushing it to the foreground, he focuses attention on the dramatic climax of the event, on the contrasting characteristics of people of different temperaments, the manifestation of a complex range of feelings, expressed in both facial expressions and gestures, with which the apostles respond to the words of Christ: “One of you will betray me.” A decisive contrast to the apostles is provided by the images of an outwardly calm, but sadly pensive Christ, located in the center of the composition, and the traitor Judas, leaning on the edge of the table, whose rough, predatory profile is immersed in shadow. Confusion, emphasized by the gesture of his hand frantically clutching his wallet, and his gloomy appearance distinguish him from the other apostles, on whose illuminated faces one can read an expression of surprise, compassion, and indignation. Leonardo does not separate the figure of Judas from the other apostles, as the early Renaissance masters did. And yet the repulsive appearance of Judas reveals the idea of betrayal more sharply and deeply. All twelve disciples of Christ are located in groups of three, on either side of the teacher. Some of them jump up from their seats in excitement, turning to Christ. The artist subordinates the various internal movements of the apostles to a strict order. The composition of the fresco amazes with its unity and integrity; it is strictly balanced and centric in construction. The monumentalization of the images and the scale of the painting contribute to the impression of the deep significance of the image, subjugating the entire large space of the refectory. Leonardo brilliantly solves the problem of the synthesis of painting and architecture. By placing the table parallel to the wall that the fresco adorns, he asserts its plane. The perspective reduction of the side walls depicted on the fresco seems to continue the real space of the refectory.
The fresco is badly damaged. Leonardo's experiments using new materials did not stand the test of time; later recordings and restorations almost hid the original, which was cleared only in 1954. But the surviving engravings and preparatory drawings allow you to fill in all the details of the composition.
After Milan was captured by French troops, Leonardo left the city. Years of wandering began. Commissioned by the Florentine Republic, he made cardboard for the fresco “The Battle of Anghiari”, which was to decorate one of the walls of the Council Chamber in the Palazzo Vecchio (city government building). When creating this cardboard, Leonardo entered into competition with the young Michelangelo, who was executing an order for the fresco “The Battle of Cascina” for another wall of the same hall. However, these cardboards, which received universal recognition from their contemporaries, have not survived to this day. Only old copies and engravings allow us to judge the innovation of the geniuses of the High Renaissance in the field of battle painting.
In Leonardo’s composition, full of drama and dynamics, the episode of the battle for the banner, the moment of the highest tension of the forces of the combatants is given, the cruel truth of the war is revealed. The creation of a portrait of Mona Lisa (“La Gioconda”, circa 1504, Paris, Louvre), one of the most famous works of world painting, dates back to this time. The depth and significance of the created image is extraordinary, in which individual features are combined with great generalization. Leonardo's innovation was also evident in the development portrait painting Renaissance.
Plastically detailed, closed in silhouette, the majestic figure of a young woman dominates a distant landscape shrouded in a bluish haze with rocks and water channels winding among them. The complex, semi-fantastic landscape subtly harmonizes with the character and intelligence of the person being portrayed. It seems that the unsteady variability of life itself is felt in the expression of her face, enlivened by a subtle smile, in her calmly confident, penetrating gaze. The face and sleek hands of the patrician are painted with amazing care and gentleness. The thinnest, as if melting, haze of chiaroscuro (the so-called sfumato), enveloping the figure, softens the contours and shadows; There is not a single sharp stroke or angular contour in the picture.
IN last years Leonardo devoted most of his life to scientific research. He died in France, where he came at the invitation of the French King Francis I and where he lived for only two years. His art, scientific and theoretical research, his very personality had a tremendous impact on the development of world culture. His manuscripts contain countless notes and drawings that testify to the universality of Leonardo's genius. There are carefully drawn flowers and trees, sketches of unknown tools, machines and apparatus. Along with analytically accurate images, there are drawings that are distinguished by their extraordinary scope, epicness or subtle lyricism. A passionate admirer of experimental knowledge, Leonardo strove for its critical understanding and search for generalizing laws. “Experience is the only source of knowledge,” said the artist. “The Book of Painting” reveals his views as a theorist of realistic art, for whom painting is both “science and the legitimate daughter of nature.” The treatise contains Leonardo's statements on anatomy and perspective; he looks for patterns in the construction of a harmonious human figure, writes about the interaction of colors, and reflexes. Among Leonardo's followers and students, however, there was not a single one approaching the teacher in terms of talent; deprived of an independent view of art, they only externally assimilated his artistic style.
Leonardo da Vinci defines art as “cosa mentale” - literally: “mind-thing”, conventionally: “the essence of the mind.” In his opinion, through painting, thought takes on perfect form.
Self-portrait
OK. 1515; 33x21 cm; sanguine drawing
Royal Library, Turin
***
During the creation of this self-portrait
Leonardo da Vinci
was already more than sixty years old
The author of “La Gioconda” already belongs to the second generation of Italian artists of the Renaissance. From a chronological point of view, he is the heir of Masaccio (1401-1428) and the same age as Botticelli (1445-1510), but his work goes beyond the art of the Quattrocento rather than being its logical continuation.
Already the first paintings Leonardo discover the scope of his interests relating to the depiction of nature. This is, first of all, a formidable element - waves beating against coastal rocks, various atmospheric phenomena, a rapidly changing sky before a thunderstorm and reflections sunlight after her...
The artist is very impressionable; nature equally delights him both in its powerful manifestations and in the most insignificant - in a drop of water or in a blade of grass. In his opinion, nature is a dynamic phenomenon; it changes due to the constant evolution of all living things. Therefore, Leonardo’s attraction to naturalism is caused by the desire to demonstrate both obvious and hidden forces and natural phenomena.
Leonardo da Vinci was, perhaps, the only one of the entire brilliant cohort of great painters Italian Renaissance, who paid the most attention in his work to the depiction of nature. Leonardo's landscape played the same important role in the compositional space as the characters surrounded or shaded by it.
The famous sfumato, characteristic of the background of some of his paintings, symbolizes the secret forces of nature - those forces on which human life depends and the existence of which man himself, due to his imperfections, is not even aware of. This ignorance is embodied by the characters placed by Leonardo against a “smoky” background - most often, they are devoid of any kind of illusions regarding their fate, are submissive to it and therefore can afford ironic smiles...
Leonardo's contemporaries considered the establishment of such a relationship between the represented characters and nature unacceptable. For example, in Botticelli’s paintings, nature, being a secondary element in relation to the Characters, carries virtually no functional load.
Embryo drawing
1510-1513; 30x22 cm; pen drawing
Royal Library, Windsor
The contribution is truly invaluable Leonardo da Vinci into the science that studies the structure of the human body - anatomy. Moreover, he was interested in the characteristics of the body not only from the position of a scientist, but also from the position of an artist, striving to represent a person in his canvases as accurately as possible, about which he himself wrote more than once:
„In order for an artist to convey the pose and gestures of a naked person as reliably as possible, he must carefully study the structure of bones and muscles. Only then will he be sure that it is those and not other muscles that are responsible for this or that movement or effort. And only these he will emphasize and make visible, instead of showing them all together, en masse, as is done by those who, claiming to be great artists, present naked figures as hard - almost wooden, and therefore ugly. Forms made in this way are more reminiscent of sacks of nuts than muscular human bodies...”
This statement contains an allusion to the work of Pollaiuolo (c. 1432-1498), with whom Leonardo more than once debated over the representation of human bodies and whose sculptures he sarcastically called “bags of nuts” or “sacks of turnips”... On the other hand , Leonardo highly appreciated from this point of view the characters from the paintings of Ghirlandaio (1449-1494), with their refined movements and generalized body shapes, reminiscent of harmonious spirals.
A talented master of depicting the human body Leonardo da Vinci Verrocchio also believed, although the teacher considered himself defeated by his student - and this recognition does him honor. It is enough to look at the “Baptism of Christ” to appreciate the difference between the impeccably modeled figure of an angel with exquisitely curling curls, painted by Leonardo, and the rest of the characters belonging to the brush of Verrocchio.
Ambiguity of feelings
Portrait of a musician
OK. 1484; 43x31 cm;
Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan
***
Leonardo plays music beautifully.
He even creates his own instrument -
lute to play
for Lodovico Sforza
Art Leonardo da Vinci Stendhal highly appreciated, noting that “Leonardo’s style, sublime and melancholic, is marked by a special gift - exceptional expressiveness.” After all, before Leonardo, the outlines of objects acquired decisive importance, the line reigned in painting (especially in Florence) - that’s why the works of Leonardo’s predecessors and contemporaries often resemble painted drawings.
Leonardo's discovery was that "light and shadow should not be sharply differentiated, for their boundaries are in most cases vague." The master wrote: “If a line, as well as a mathematical point, are invisible things, then the boundaries of things, being lines, are invisible... Therefore, you, painter, do not limit things...” For Leonardo, blurred contours and sfumato symbolized instability “ the fluidity" of the visible world and the power of time - this "destroyer of things" that has power over everything.
During the Renaissance there were many brilliant sculptors, artists, musicians, and inventors. Leonardo da Vinci stands out against their background. He created musical instruments, he owned many engineering inventions, painted paintings, sculptures and much more.
His external data is also amazing: high growth, angelic appearance and extraordinary strength. Let's meet the genius Leonardo da Vinci, short biography will tell you his main achievements.
Biography facts
He was born near Florence in the small town of Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci was the illegitimate son of a famous and wealthy notary. His mother is an ordinary peasant woman. Since the father had no other children, at the age of 4 he took little Leonardo to live with him. The boy demonstrated his extraordinary intelligence and friendly character from a very early age, and he quickly became a favorite in the family.
To understand how the genius of Leonardo da Vinci developed, a brief biography can be presented as follows:
- At the age of 14, he entered Verrocchio's workshop, where he studied drawing and sculpture.
- In 1480 he moved to Milan, where he founded the Academy of Arts.
- In 1499, he left Milan and began moving from city to city, where he built defensive structures. During this same period, his famous rivalry with Michelangelo began.
- Since 1513 he has been working in Rome. Under Francis I, he becomes a court sage.
Leonardo died in 1519. As he believed, nothing he started was ever completed.
Creative path
The work of Leonardo da Vinci, whose brief biography was outlined above, can be divided into three stages.
- Early period. Many works of the great painter were unfinished, such as the “Adoration of the Magi” for the monastery of San Donato. During this period, the paintings “Benois Madonna” and “Annunciation” were painted. Despite his young age, the painter has already demonstrated high skill in his paintings.
- Leonardo's mature period of creativity took place in Milan, where he planned to make a career as an engineer. Most popular work, written at this time, was “The Last Supper”, at the same time he began work on “Mona Lisa”.
- In the late period of creativity, the painting “John the Baptist” and a series of drawings “The Flood” were created.
Painting always complemented science for Leonardo da Vinci, as he sought to capture reality.
Inventions
A short biography cannot fully convey Leonardo da Vinci's contribution to science. However, we can note the most famous and valuable discoveries of the scientist.
- He made his greatest contribution to mechanics, as can be seen from his many drawings. Leonardo da Vinci studied the fall of a body, the centers of gravity of pyramids and much more.
- He invented a car made of wood, which was driven by two springs. The car mechanism was equipped with a brake.
- He came up with a spacesuit, fins and a submarine, as well as a way to dive to depth without using a spacesuit with a special gas mixture.
- The study of dragonfly flight has led to the creation of several variants of wings for humans. The experiments were unsuccessful. However, then the scientist came up with a parachute.
- He was involved in developments in the military industry. One of his proposals was chariots with cannons. He came up with a prototype of an armadillo and a tank.
- Leonardo da Vinci made many developments in construction. Arch bridges, drainage machines and cranes are all his inventions.
There is no man like Leonardo da Vinci in history. That is why many consider him an alien from other worlds.
Five secrets of da Vinci
Today, many scientists are still puzzling over the legacy left by the great man past era. Although it’s not worth calling Leonardo da Vinci that way, he predicted a lot, and foresaw even more, creating his unique masterpieces and amazing with his breadth of knowledge and thought. We offer you five secrets of the great Master that help lift the veil of secrecy over his works.
Encryption
The master encrypted a lot in order not to present ideas openly, but to wait a little until humanity “ripened and grew up” to them. Equally good with both hands, da Vinci wrote with his left hand, in the smallest font, and even from right to left, and often in mirror image. Riddles, metaphors, puzzles - this is what is found on every line, in every work. Never signing his works, the Master left his marks, visible only to an attentive researcher. For example, after many centuries, scientists discovered that by looking closely at his paintings, you can find a symbol of a bird taking off. Or the famous “Benois Madonna,” found among traveling actors who carried the canvas as a home icon.
Sfumato
The idea of dispersion also belongs to the great mystifier. Take a closer look at the canvases, all the objects do not reveal clear edges, just like in life: the smooth flow of one image into another, blurriness, dispersion - everything breathes, lives, awakening fantasies and thoughts. By the way, the Master often advised practicing such vision, peering into water stains, mud deposits or piles of ash. Often he deliberately fumigated his work areas with smoke in order to see in the clubs what was hidden beyond the reasonable eye.
Look at famous painting– the smile of “Mona Lisa” from different angles is sometimes tender, sometimes slightly arrogant and even predatory. The knowledge gained through the study of many sciences gave the Master the opportunity to invent perfect mechanisms that are becoming available only now. For example, this is the effect of wave propagation, the penetrating power of light, oscillatory motion... and many things still need to be analyzed not even by us, but by our descendants.
Analogies
Analogies are the main thing in all the works of the Master. The advantage over accuracy, when a third follows from two conclusions of the mind, is the inevitability of any analogy. And Da Vinci still has no equal in his whimsicality and drawing absolutely mind-blowing parallels. One way or another, all his works have some ideas that are not consistent with each other: the famous illustration “ golden ratio" - one of them. With limbs spread and apart, a person fits into a circle, with his arms closed into a square, and with his arms slightly raised into a cross. It was this kind of “mill” that gave the Florentine magician the idea of creating churches, where the altar was placed exactly in the middle, and the worshipers stood in a circle. By the way, engineers liked this same idea - this is how the ball bearing was born.
Contrapposto
The definition denotes the opposition of opposites and the creation of a certain type of movement. An example is the sculpture of a huge horse in Corte Vecchio. There, the animal’s legs are positioned precisely in the contrapposto style, forming a visual understanding of the movement.
Incompleteness
This is perhaps one of the Master’s favorite “tricks”. None of his works are finite. To complete is to kill, and da Vinci loved every one of his creations. Slow and meticulous, the hoaxer of all times could take a couple of brush strokes and go to the valleys of Lombardy to improve the landscapes there, switch to creating the next masterpiece device, or something else. Many works turned out to be spoiled by time, fire or water, but each of the creations, at least meaning something, was and is “unfinished”. By the way, it is interesting that even after the damage, Leonardo da Vinci never corrected his paintings. Having created his own paint, the artist even deliberately left a “window of incompleteness,” believing that life itself would make the necessary adjustments.
What was art before Leonardo da Vinci? Born among the rich, it fully reflected their interests, their worldview, their views on man and the world. The works of art were based on religious ideas and themes: affirmation of those views on the world that the church taught, depiction of scenes from sacred history, instilling in people a sense of reverence, admiration for the “divine” and consciousness of their own insignificance. The dominant theme also determined the form. Naturally, the image of the “saints” was very far from the images of real living people, therefore, schemes, artificiality, and staticity dominated in art. The people in these paintings were a kind of caricature of living people, the landscape is fantastic, the colors are pale and inexpressive. True, even before Leonardo, his predecessors, including his teacher Andrea Verrocchio, were no longer satisfied with the template and tried to create new images. They had already begun the search for new methods of depiction, began to study the laws of perspective, and thought a lot about the problems of achieving expressiveness in the image.
However, these searches for something new did not yield great results, primarily because these artists did not have a sufficiently clear idea of the essence and tasks of art and knowledge of the laws of painting. That is why they fell again into schematism, then into naturalism, which is equally dangerous for genuine art, copying individual phenomena of reality. The significance of the revolution made by Leonardo da Vinci in art and in particular in painting is determined primarily by the fact that he was the first to clearly, clearly and definitely establish the essence and tasks of art. Art should be deeply life-like and realistic. It must come from a deep, careful study of reality and nature. It must be deeply truthful, must depict reality as it is, without any artificiality or falsehood. Reality, nature is beautiful in itself and does not need any embellishment. The artist must carefully study nature, but not to blindly imitate it, not to simply copy it, but in order to create works, having understood the laws of nature, the laws of reality; strictly comply with these laws. Create new values, values real world- this is the purpose of art. This explains Leonardo's desire to connect art and science. Instead of simple, casual observation, he considered it necessary to systematically, persistently study the subject. It is known that Leonardo never parted with the album and wrote drawings and sketches in it.
They say that he loved to walk through the streets, squares, markets, noting everything interesting - people’s poses, faces, their expressions. Leonardo's second requirement for painting is the requirement for the truthfulness of the image, its vitality. The artist must strive for the most accurate representation of reality in all its richness. At the center of the world stands a living, thinking, feeling person. It is he who must be depicted in all the richness of his feelings, experiences and actions. For this purpose, it was Leonardo who studied human anatomy and physiology; for this purpose, as they say, he gathered peasants he knew in his workshop and, treating them, told them funny stories in order to see how people laugh, how the same event causes people have different impressions. If before Leonardo there was no real man in painting, now he has become dominant in the art of the Renaissance. Hundreds of Leonardo's drawings provide a gigantic gallery of types of people, their faces, and parts of their bodies. Man in all the diversity of his feelings and actions is the task artistic image. And this is the strength and charm of Leonardo’s painting. Forced by the conditions of the time to paint pictures mainly on religious subjects, because his customers were the church, feudal lords and rich merchants, Leonardo powerfully subordinates these traditional subjects to his genius and creates works of universal significance. The Madonnas painted by Leonardo are, first of all, an image of one of the deeply human feelings - the feeling of motherhood, the boundless love of a mother for her baby, admiration and admiration for him. All his Madonnas are young, blooming, full of life women, all the babies in his paintings are healthy, full-cheeked, playful boys, in whom there is not an ounce of “holiness”.
His apostles in The Last Supper are living people of various ages, social status, of various nature; in appearance they are Milanese artisans, peasants, and intellectuals. Striving for truth, the artist must be able to generalize what he finds individual and must create the typical. Therefore, even when painting portraits of certain people, historically we famous people, like, for example, Mona Lisa Gioconda - the wife of a bankrupt aristocrat, Florentine merchant Francesco del Gioconda, Leonardo gives in them, along with individual portrait features, a typical feature common to many people. That is why the portraits he painted survived the people depicted in them for many centuries. Leonardo was the first who not only carefully and carefully studied the laws of painting, but also formulated them. He deeply, like no one before him, studied the laws of perspective, the placement of light and shadow. He needed all this to achieve the highest expressiveness of the picture, in order to, as he said, “become equal to nature.” For the first time, it was in the works of Leonardo that the painting as such lost its static character and became a window into the world. When you look at his painting, the feeling of what was painted, enclosed in a frame, is lost and it seems that you are looking through an open window, revealing to the viewer something new, something they have never seen. Demanding the expressiveness of the painting, Leonardo resolutely opposed the formal play of colors, against the enthusiasm for form at the expense of content, against what so clearly characterizes decadent art.
For Leonardo, form is only the shell of the idea that the artist must convey to the viewer. Leonardo pays a lot of attention to the problems of the composition of the picture, the problems of placement of figures, and individual details. Hence his favorite composition of placing figures in a triangle - the simplest geometric harmonic figure - a composition that allows the viewer to embrace the whole picture as a whole. Expressiveness, truthfulness, accessibility - these are the laws of the present, truly folk art, formulated by Leonardo da Vinci, laws that he himself embodied in his brilliant works. Already in his first major painting, “Madonna with a Flower,” Leonardo showed in practice what the principles of art he professed meant. What is striking about this picture is, first of all, its composition, the surprisingly harmonious distribution of all the elements of the picture that make up a single whole. Image of a young mother with a cheerful child deeply realistic in the hands. The directly felt deep blue of the Italian sky through the window slot is incredibly skillfully conveyed. Already in this picture, Leonardo demonstrated the principle of his art - realism, the depiction of a person in the deepest accordance with his true nature, the depiction of not an abstract scheme, which was what medieval ascetic art taught and did, namely a living, feeling person.
These principles are even more clearly expressed in Leonardo’s second major painting, “The Adoration of the Magi” from 1481, in which what is significant is not the religious plot, but the masterful depiction of people, each of whom has his own, individual face, his own pose, expresses his own feeling and mood. Life truth is the law of Leonardo’s painting. The fullest possible disclosure of a person’s inner life is its goal. In “The Last Supper” the composition is brought to perfection: despite the large number of figures - 13, their placement is strictly calculated so that they all as a whole represent a kind of unity, full of great internal content. The picture is very dynamic: some terrible news communicated by Jesus struck his disciples, each of them reacts to it in their own way, hence the huge variety of expressions of inner feelings on the faces of the apostles. Compositional perfection is complemented by an unusually masterful use of colors, harmony of light and shadows. The expressiveness of the painting reaches its perfection thanks to the extraordinary variety of not only facial expressions, but the position of each of the twenty-six hands drawn in the picture.
This recording by Leonardo himself tells us about that careful preliminary work which he conducted before painting. Everything in it is thought out to the smallest detail: poses, facial expressions; even details such as an overturned bowl or knife; all this in its sum forms a single whole. The richness of colors in this painting is combined with a subtle use of chiaroscuro, which emphasizes the significance of the event depicted in the painting. The subtlety of perspective, the transmission of air and color make this painting a masterpiece of world art. Leonardo successfully solved many problems facing artists at that time and opened the way further development art. With the power of his genius, Leonardo overcame the burdens of art. medieval traditions, broke them and threw them away; he was able to push the narrow boundaries that limited the creative power of the artist by the then ruling clique of churchmen, and show, instead of the hackneyed gospel stencil scene, a huge, purely human drama, show living people with their passions, feelings, experiences. And in this picture the great, life-affirming optimism of the artist and thinker Leonardo again manifested itself.
Over the years of his wanderings, Leonardo painted many more paintings that received well-deserved world fame and recognition. In "La Gioconda" a deeply vital and typical image is given. It is this deep vitality, the unusually relief rendering of facial features, individual details, and costume, combined with a masterfully painted landscape, that gives this picture special expressiveness. Everything about her—from the mysterious half-smile playing on her face to her calmly folded hands—speaks of great inner content, of the great spiritual life of this woman. Leonardo's desire to convey inner world in external manifestations emotional movements expressed here especially fully. An interesting painting by Leonardo is “The Battle of Anghiari”, depicting the battle of cavalry and infantry. As in his other paintings, Leonardo sought here to show a variety of faces, figures and poses. Dozens of people depicted by the artist create a complete impression of the picture precisely because they are all subordinated to a single idea underlying it. It was a desire to show the rise of all man’s strength in battle, the tension of all his feelings, brought together to achieve victory.
