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Posts Tagged ‘Leonardo da Vinci’

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This is what we talked about on The invisible Mentor Blog this week: Review of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki, Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Man and Interview with Runa Magnusdottir.

Mondays at the Salon

After reading The Way of the Samurai by Inazo Nitobe, I extracted seven interesting quotes.

Seven Quotations from the Way of the Samurai

Booked on Tuesdays

This week we reviewed Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki. The book demonstrates how to enchant others by becoming likeable and trustworthy.

Review: Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki

Wisdom Wednesdays

Leonardo da Vinci’s talent spread multiple disciplines. Though he did not complete many of the projects he started, he cemented his place in history because he was very curious and experimented a lot. Artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo adopted some of da Vinci’s techniques to improve their work. Da Vinci studied nature and human form which brought a lifelike quality to his work. Each figure in his paintings was very distinct and had its own personality. He is best remembered for his paintings The Last Supper and Mona Lisa.

Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Man

Perspective Thursdays and Workshop Fridays

This week we featured Runa Magnusdottir, founder of Connected Women.  Runa shares her wisdom and reminds us to keep focused and to find our passions. Here are Part One and Part Two of Runa Magnusdottir’s interview.

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Dubbed a “Renaissance Man,” Leonardo da Vinci’s talents spanned multiple disciplines – artist, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist and inventor. He did not complete a lot of the artistic projects that he started. In fact, during his lifetime, da Vinci only finished 30 paintings, which included two of his best known – The Last Supper and Mona Lisa.  During 1500 – 1506, he completed more work than in any other period of his life. Da Vinci also placed a greater emphasis on his scientific rather than his artistic endeavors. His genius lay in his insatiable curiosity for how stuff worked.

Name: Leonardo da Vinci

Birth Date: April 1452 – May 1519

Job Functions: Artist, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist and inventor

Fields: Art and Science

Known For: The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa

Born the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s education was somewhat restricted because his parents were not married and his mother was a peasant girl from a much lower class than his father who was a notary. Despite this, da Vinci’s father recognized his son’s genius and ensured that he was schooled in reading writing and arithmetic. Leonardo da Vinci was a poor and distracted student. Looking back at what he accomplished and how he did it, he may have been a poor and distracted student because he was a kinesthetic learner – he learned best by doing, he learned through experience.

At age 15, Leonardo da Vinci embarked on an apprenticeship with Andre del Verrocchio the leading artist in Florence at the time. This period was an important one in da Vinci’s development. Verrocchio was concerned with bringing out the vitality of the human form, which was later reflected in da Vinci’s artistic style. As an apprentice of Verrocchio, da Vinci practiced sculpting, metal casting, drawing and nature study. He became absorbed in science, and great technical and mechanical abilities allowed him to sketch various machines. His mentor was instrumental in helping da Vinci to create sfumato or “smudged” his famous shading technique. Verrocchio also encouraged da Vinci to use drawing as the main medium for painting, sculpting, architecture and mechanics.

Da Vinci worked on Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ contributing the face of one of the angels, the distant landscape, and adding the final touches to the figure of Christ, determining the texture of the flesh. This was not just a mentor-protégé project, da Vinci used an original approach which changed the surface effects from hard to soft effecting the slight changes of light and shade.

Da Vinci was very innovative, and loved to experiment because that’s how he learned best. When he was commissioned to do the altarpiece, Adoration of the Magi – a popular subject that many artists painted at the time, he approached the project very differently. Adoration of the Magi depicts the biblical story where the three wise men followed the star traveling from the east to pay homage to the newborn Jesus.

In most of the paintings that had been done on the subject, Mary and Jesus were on one side while the three wise men were on the other. Da Vinci placed Mary and Jesus in the centre, departing from tradition, and had a crowd of spectators with varied faces looking at Mother Mary and child.

He used a technique called the linear perspective, also known as one-point perspective, to depict the ruins in the background. Derived from mathematics and invented by architect Filippo Brunelleschi, with linear perspective, “all elements of a composition are measured and arranged from a single point of view, or perspective.” Unfortunately, da Vinci relocated before he completed this painting. Despite this, with the unusual composition, there was a group of individuals in the foreground with a circle of onlookers. Because da Vinci understood human form, every gesture and expression in the painting made every figure distinct.

For another altarpiece Virgin on the Rocks, da Vinci experimented with dimmed lights coming from the back of the cave as well as the front. The painting is pyramidal, which groups the figures to focus the eye of the viewer on the central scene. And when painting the Last Supper, da Vinci experimented with oil-based paint, which was more easily blended. His efforts were unsuccessful because the paint didn’t stick very well to the wall.

When da Vinci painted Battle of Anghiara, once again he experimented, using oil-based paints on a primed surface. This experiment failed because the paint would not dry. In the composition, “Leonardo depicted the extreme physical exertion of men and horses engaged in furious battle. The group of central figures displays faces distorted by rage or pain.”

While working on Battle of Anghiara da Vinci started working on one of his most famous painting – the Mona Lisa, which is a portrait of Lisa di Anton Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo a prominent Florentine. Viewers are fascinated by Lisa’s mysterious smile which was either appearing or disappearing. Da Vinci ended up abandoning the Battle of Anghiara project.

Da Vinci influenced other well known Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and Raphael who incorporated some of his techniques into their work. Specifically, they learned from his insights into the arrangement of figures, the use of light and shade, and the distinct personalities of people in paintings, which da Vinci mastered through observation and experimentation.

Inventions

Leonardo da Vinci had many inventions, which he designed in his notebooks, but no one knew about them until they were invented by other people. He was ahead of his time and his inventions came into being at least a century after him. His inventions include:

• Screw jack
• Two-wheeled hoist
• Armored car
• Submarine
• Gun with three racks of barrels
• Flying machine (designed after he observed birds in flight and air movement)
• Parachute
• Telescope
• Mechanical calculator

Why Leonardo da Vinci Was Wise

• The more he failed, the more he tried.
• He dissected cadavers to understand human form and to examine the function of muscles and determine how the vocal cords work. He took extensive notes on his observations and included analytical drawings.
• Because he studied the human form and nature so closely, his paintings have a lifelike feel to them.
• He applied geometry and proportion to create a sense of order in his drawings and paintings.
• He translated his study of optics and many of his theories of vision into mathematical terms.
• He used his knowledge of geography to investigate the origin of fossils and the utilization of water power.
• Through experimentation, da Vinci concluded that velocity of a falling object is proportional to the time of its fall, predating Sir Isacc Newton.
• For a poor and distracted student, he became proficient in science and math.

Leonardo da Vinci left behind many notebooks – 4,000 pages – filled with his notes on his scientific observations and illustration. Included in his notebooks:

• Notes and jottings on mechanics, physics, anatomy, physiology, literature, and philosophy.
• Plans and designs for machines of war and peace, a helicopter, parachute and tools and gadgets of all kinds.
• References to sedimentation occurring in the Arno riverbed and its flood plain.
• Numerous designs for flying machines based on carefully studied birds in flight and air movement.
• Methodological notations on the procedures of scientific inquiry and philosophical conditions about the processes of nature.
• Thoughts and ideas as they came to him.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Sources Cited/Referenced

Art and Humanities Through the Eras: Renaissance Europe (1300 – 1600) pp424-426

Science and its Times, Volume 3, pp470-472

World of Earth Science, pp611-612

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, pp281-282

Renaissance and Reformation: Biographies pp195-203

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography pp1136-1139

The Renaissance, pp13-16

Mathematics, pp156-157

Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Marie Curie and Alexander Fleming, a few of the great thinkers who made discoveries that influenced/changed the world, displayed many of the following traits and characteristics.

How many of the above traits and characteristics do you possess? Are there any missing from the list?