The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Vinci, Leonardo da
VINCI, vēn'chē, Leonardo da, Italian painter and sculptor: b. Vinci, Tuscany, 1452; d. Castle Cloux, France, 1519. He was the illegitimate son of Piero da Vinci, a prominent notary of Florence, and a woman of the lower class. By his father he was turned over to his grandparents at Vinci, who seem to have taken a great interest in him and to have attended to his education. When he grew older his father took him to his own house and there he lived with the other children, apparently on an equality with them and received, with them, an excellent education. He proved a good student and gradually developed an ardent desire for knowledge of every kind. But he was not a bookworm. His wonderfully keen intellect enabled him to acquire information with very little effort; and his remarkable musical and social gifts made him one of the most popular young men in Florence, then the intellectual centre of Italy and the peculiar home of art. There was nothing more natural, given his remarkable talents in so many directions, than that he should have learned to paint, an art which was then taught to children as music is to-day. Among his first teachers was Andrea de Verrocchio. Little is known about his early studies in pointing and sculpture, at which he seems to have worked with as much earnest endeavor and interest as at his studies in the natural sciences, in the latter of which he excelled all his companions. At the age of 20 he became a member of the Painter's Guild of Florence, then one of the most notable organizations of the age. The dates and facts concerning his early work are as few and as doubtful as the information respecting his youthful studies. It is certain that he was already a master painter in 1478 and that he was then employing others in the business of producing pictures. Much legend and tradition have collected about this period of his career and numerous existing pictures, some of them completed and others unfinished, and others of them parts of larger works, have been attributed to him without sufficient evidence of a really trustworthy character. It is known that on this latter date he was requested by the Signorina of Florence to paint a certain picture for the Saint Bernard Chapel, in the Public Palace, but what this picture was or whether any of those put forward as it are really the picture in question, or his work at all, is very doubtful. That Da Vinci had advanced well in his art and made the most of his social talents seems certain for we find him in 1482 acting as the specially commissioned bearer of a present from the famous Lorenzo de'Medici, to another character of the age, now famous in history and tradition, Lodovico il Moro, ruler of Milan. The present itself indicates the favor in which Da Vinci was regarded at court. It was a strangely-constructed, yet beautifully-sounding instrument which the young ambassador had himself invented and upon which he played with great skill and wondrous sweetness. This mission proved one of the most eventful undertakings in his life, since it was destined to connect him most intimately, for over a quarter of a century, with the city of “il Moro.” But it seems it was not as a painter that the ruler of Milan valued him, so much as for his talents as an engineer and general manager. While in Milan Da Vinci seems to have been tireless. He was, on all occasions, representative and manager for the duke, and acted as the ducal engineer not only in the city but on that ruler's numerous military expeditions and undertakings; and he appears to have had a higher reputation in his day in this activity of his life than in painting and to have prized it higher himself. Among his other activities, at this period, he planned and constructed the Martesana Canal. He was also one of the most notable figures at the ducal court, where he managed the most brilliant state affairs and public functions and festivals with consummate skill. He seems to have been also a sort of director of public works and, in this capacity, to have himself acted as architect of various public buildings. He is said to have had a hand in the construction of the very handsome Milan Cathedral, but what his part was is not known definitely. Notwithstanding all these wide and varied activities, he was carrying on painting on a very extensive scale and employing numerous talented painters to execute his designs or to do the less important parts of paintings which he was executing. About this time he wrote an important work on painting, which showed a wonderful knowledge of the art. This, it is said, was intended as a guide and mentor for his own numerous pupils. Thus occupied with so many and important activities he continued in Milan until the duke was driven out of the city in 1599. After the departure of the duke Da Vinci went to Venice, where he remained two years, which were devoted mainly to art. Then be returned to Florence, where he seems to have been received with great favor by the Church and the artist fraternity. He secured numerous important commissions from churches and monasteries; and some of the work that he executed in this connection, and the designs he drew for others to paint from created a great impression upon the artists of his days. They were consequently copied and imitated extensively not only in Italy, but a little later on throughout all the Latin countries. One of the most remarkable of these was a Madonna, the design for which was worked over by Da Vinci several times afterward, notably in his famous Madonna and Saint Catharine in the Louvre.
In the midst of his triumphs in art Da Vinci became military engineer to Cesare Borgia (1502), a position which he probably retained for some considerable time, as it enabled him to move about through central Italy, and when occasion required to make visits to other parts of the peninsula, one of which he made the following year to Florence, where he served on artistic commissions and did additional military engineering. It was about this time that he painted the famous ‘Mona Lisa’ (Louvre), a portrait that has probably been more written about than any other in the world, especially during the second decade of the present century. Da Vinci spent four years on this portrait, and it is said that even then (l503-06) he was not satisfied with it. But notwithstanding his own opinion in the matter, the art judgment of the world is inclined to pronounce it his greatest triumph. About the time of the conclusion of this latter painting Da Vinci was appointed painter to the king (Louis XII). This was perhaps the busiest period in his life. He maintained studios for painting and carried on engineering projects and studies in natural sciences in Florence and Milan, in both of which places he had numerous pupils of surpassing worth who executed his designs for him to supply the incessant demands for his art work from churches and individuals. The art work done by his pupils in Milan was especially notable, and much of it was, at one time, believed to be altogether the work of the master himself. One of the most remarkable canvases of this period is the ‘Madonna of the Grotto,’ of which two copies exist, one in the Louvre and the other in the National Gallery. Much discussion has taken place as to which of these is the original. It is probable that both are, though many critics pretend to see in the copy in the Louvre the more direct embodiment of Da Vinci's style and peculiar artistic qualities. However, both copies are truly worthy of the master; and if one of them was painted by a hand other than his it must have been some one who was able to enter fully into all his moods and who had worked under him so long as to have completely absorbed his atmosphere. From 1513 to 1515 Da Vinci seems to have resided in Rome, having gone there on the departure of the French; but he returned to Milan in the latter year to take charge of the decorations and festivities attendant upon the entry of the French king, Francis I, who rewarded him by appointing him court painter with an annual allowance of 700 scudi in gold. The king also commissioned him to buy up all his own pictures. This he did, and with them he accompanied the French sovereign to France the following year, where he seems to have remained for the rest of his life, giving his time to the study of art and sciences.
Da Vinci, in a sense, revolutionized the art of painting and drawing. His technique was masterly and really wonderful for his age. It enabled him to work with the greatest freedom and speed and with a sureness of touch and a mastery of design, of drawing and coloring until his day unknown. His portraits, his figures and his designs were always wonderfully true to life; and they led the artists of his age to seek for a fuller and truer expression of all the manifestations of life. This is perhaps the greatest of the many great qualities of the art expression of Da Vinci. Undoubtedly his studies in the natural sciences and, especially in physiology and anatomy, helped him solve many questions that his predecessors had not been able to; and the perfection of his drawing and the representation of the human and other forms seems to have quickened his already keen sense of coloring and of contrast of light and shade and of the blending of the two. He surpassed all his predecessors in the mastery he attained in the depicting of the mystical, the poetical, the sympathetic and the attractive in the human face. It is said that his several years spent in the painting of ‘Mona Lisa’ were constant strivings to catch the fleeting manifestations of the secret soul of his attractive and winsome subject. But he was not satisfied with mastering the atmosphere of the human face; he turned his attention to the atmosphere of landscape; and here again he succeeded so well that he was very fond of introducing landscape backgrounds into his pictures and portraits, which he did with telling effect. His strange genius is manifested in the perfect unity, form and artistic sense of the human and the landscape elements in his pictures. They seem to have been made for one another, to have grown up together. Insensibly the Italian artists of his day and of the following generation felt his power and recognized his superior genius; and among his numerous pupils were several who understood him so well that, as we have seen, their work has been frequently taken for his. There was not a great painter in Italy for the generation following his death who did not owe much to him. Not the least of these was Raphael; and among them were also such masters of the graphic art as Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, who in turn influenced hundreds of art students in favor of the High Rennaissance whose great master was Da Vinci.
Da Vinci was an inventor of note, one of the greatest and most successful engineers of his time and perhaps the deepest thinker and most profound investigator into all the known branches of science of his age. In many of his investigations he went far beyond his contemporaries.
Bibliography. — For a list of pictures consult any good history of Italian art; Da Vinci's own manuscripts, published in facsimile (Paris 1881-91; Milan 1891-95); and his ‘Trattato della pittura,’ which has been published numerous times (London 1802; Vienna 1882; and Rome 1890). An English edition, with original text, of his literary works, was published by J. P. Richter (London 1883). Consult biographies by Amoretti (Milan 1803) and Paul Müller-Walde (Munich 1889-90); the biographies by Rosenberg (Bielefeld 1898; English translation 1903); by E. Müntz (Paris 1899; English translation, London 1899); Volynsky (Saint Petersburg 1900; English translation by Heaton and Black, London 1904); Horne (London 1908); McCurdy (London 1904); Séailles (Paris 1912) and Gronau (New York 1903); also Uzzielli, ‘Ricerche intorno a Leonardo da Vinci’ (2d ed., Turin 1896 et seq.); and the critical works of Dr. Jens Thüs (London s.d.) and Oswald Sirén (New Haven, rev. ed., 1916); Lomazzo, G. P., ‘Trattato dell' arte della pittura’ (Milan 1585); id., ‘Idea del tempio della pittura’ (ib., 1591); Venturi, J. B., ‘Essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de Leonardo da Vinci’ (Paris 1797); Bossi, Giuseppe, ‘Del Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci’ (Milan 1810); Calvi, C. L., ‘Notizie dei principali professori di belle arti’ (ib., 1869); Houssaye, Arsène, ‘Histoire de Leonardo da Vinci’ (Paris 1876); Grothe, Hermann, ‘Leonardo da Vinci als Ingenieur und Philosoph’ (Berlin 1874); Berenson, Bernhard, ‘The Drawings of the Florentine Painters’ (London 1903); Solmi, Edmondo, ‘Studi sulla filosofia naturale di Leonardo da Vinci’ (Modena 1898); id., ‘Leonardo’ (2d ed, Florence 1907), the best critical biography; Von Seidlitz, Woldemar, ‘Leonardo da Vinci, der Wendepunkt der Renaissance’ (2 vols., 1909).