LEONARDO
DA VINCI
MACHINES
COLLECTION
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, Florence, April 15, 1452 – Cloux castle near Amboise May 2, 1519) has been one of the most distinguished representatives of the Italian Renaissance and one of the most versatile intellects of all time: he was in fact a painter, sculptor, architect, scholar of engineering and mechanics, mathematician, anatomist and writer.
experiences stories
Natural son of a notary and a peasant, he never knew his mother from whom he was separated from the birth.
Even as a child Leonardo showed signs of great intelligence and great skills in painting, for this reason his father entrusted him to Andrea del Verrocchio, the most important Florentine master of that time.
Verrocchio was a well-known painter, sculptor, carver, architect, and, in addition to this, he managed the most successful workshop in Florence, on the banks of the Arno, where many talents passed through, including Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio.
For Leonardo da Vinci, this activity is a forge, where his curiosity is constantly satisfied, where the young Leonardo can practice different techniques, where he has the opportunity to study the geometry, perspective and anatomy of both men and animals, where he develops an interest in urban planning and landscape, where above all where he can practice his first great passion: drawing.
From 1482 in Milan at the court of Ludovico il Moro, in Venice, in Florence (1500), in Romagna, military engineer of Cesare Borgia (1501-1503), again in Florence (1503-1506), again in Milan (1508- 13), in Rome (1513-16) and finally in France at the court of Francis I.
Among the works of painting, often not totally completed, there are: the Cenacle, a magnificent affresco in the refectory of the friars of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, very damaged because of humidity and perhaps due to the technique itself and the colors used by him; the Virgin of the Rocks (in the Louvre; replica, with the collaboration of students, in the National Gallery in London); the Mona Lisa (in the Louvre).
Leonardo da Vinci’s career headed not only towards painting, but also always developing other interests such as music, building instruments, studying natural phenomena.
He studies animals and their behaviors, studies canalization works of waterways, fortifications and war machines, always through a single denominator which is the drawing, where he finds the best expressive method of his thoughts.
The constant need for research, study, experimentation mean that his works are often incomplete due to the need to dedicate himself and develop other activities.
He directed hydraulic reclamations, built fortified works, planned the arrangement of the Adda and the Martesana canal; he built or only designed countless instruments, often with a truly divinatory sense of the developments of science and technology; he demonstrated the function of muscles and the mechanism of the eye; he proved that the heart is a hydraulic pump and that the pulse is synchronized with the heartbeat; he studied the flight of birds and designed a flying machine. He left innumerable observations and aphorisms in his numerous manuscripts, often drawn, for his left-handedness, with writing from right to left and which must be read in the mirror. This is probably an attitude adopted by the artist, to show his ability or a method to hide his notes.
The richest documentation of Leonardo’s contributions to mechanical and mathematical science, astronomy, physical geography, botany, chemistry and anatomy is contained in the “Codex Atlanticus”.
There are drawings of war instruments, machines for flying or for descending to the bottom of the seas, mechanical devices and machine tools, architectural and urban planning projects. The codex contains a collection of writings and drawings made by Leonardo between 1478 and 1519.
In 1506 Leonardo is again in Milan, guest of the French governor Charles d’Amboise, then spends a period in Rome following Pope Leo X, the Florentine Giovanni de ‘Medici, but here the star of Raphael has now risen.
Together with the pope he left for Bologna to meet the new king of France Francis I who immediately invited him to his court and made Cloux castle in Amboise available to him. It is 1516 and Leonardo da Vinci will never return to Italy. He died on 2 May 1519 surrounded by his drawings and by the three paintings that he held dearest to the end.
The reproduction of Leonardo's projects
War machines
The young Leonardo takes from the Greco-Roman tradition the main techniques applied in naval battles and reworks them with improvements. Some Wartime Inventions.
The bridges
Bridges fascinated Leonardo for the design variants they offer: in fact, they must consider the available materials, the knowledge acquired and the destination of the construction.
The machines
If the seventeenth century is the season of “enlightenment”, the Renaissance represents the change. Leonardo participates in this renewal with surprising technical insights and anticipates the “civilization of machines”.
The mechanisms
For Leonardo not only the “mechanical elements” must be specifically studied and tested but at the same time they contribute to the best functioning of the whole.
Unfinished works
Selection of works that the author of the reproductions Renato Catto didn’t complete, giving more importance to other executions. The incomplete works have never been finalized.
