More Important Topics of Cylinder

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer.

Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Indeed it was said that a true Renaissance man needed to have all these talents and also to have been a diplomat and that Michelangelo was the only person to have ever embodied these criteria.

Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches and reminiscences that survive is also taken into

account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and the David, were sculpted before he turned thirty.

Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Later in life he designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the same city and revolutionised classical architecture with his invention of the giant order of pilasters.

In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, two biographies were published of him during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries.

In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one"), an appropriate sobriquet given his intense spirituality. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance, Mannerism.

Early life

Michelangelo was born in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany, the second of five sons. His father, Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarotti di Simoni, was the resident magistrate in Caprese and podestà of Chiusi. His mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarroti claimed to descend from Countess Mathilde of Canossa; this claim was probably false, but Michelangelo himself believed it.

However, Michelangelo was raised in Florence and later, during the prolonged illness and after the death of his mother, lived with a stonecutter and his wife and family in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. Michelangelo once said to the biographer of artists Giorgio Vasari, "What little good I have within me came from the pure air of your native Arezzo and the chisels and hammers."

Against his father's wishes and after a period of grammatics studies with the humanist Francesco da Urbino, Michelangelo continued his apprenticeship in painting with Domenico Ghirlandaio and in sculpture with Bertoldo di Giovanni.

Michelangelo's father was able to get Ghirlandaio to pay the young artist, which was unheard of at the time. In fact, most apprentices paid their masters for the education. Impressed, Domenico recommended him to the ruler of the city, Lorenzo de' Medici, and Michelangelo left his workshop in 1489.

From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended Lorenzo's school and was influenced by many prominent people who modified and expanded his ideas on art, following the dominant Platonic view of that age, and even his feelings about sexuality. It was during this period that Michelangelo met literary personalities like Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino.

In this period Michelangelo finished Madonna of the Steps (1490–1492) and Battle of the Centaurs (1491–1492). The latter was based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici. After the death of Lorenzo on April 8, 1492, for whom Michelangelo had become a kind of son, Michelangelo quit the Medici court.

In the following months he produced a Wooden crucifix (1493), as a thanksgiving gift to the prior of the church of Santa Maria del Santo Spirito who had permitted him some studies of anatomy on the corpses of the church's Hospital. Between 1493 and 1494 he bought the marble for a larger than life statue of Hercules, which was sent to France and disappeared sometime in the 1700s.

He could again enter the court on January 20, 1494, Piero de Medici commissioned a snow statue from him. But that year the Medici were expelled from Florence after the Savonarola rise, and Michelangelo also left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna.

He did stay in Florence for a while hiding in a small room underneath San Lorenzo that can still be visited to this day. There are still some charcoal sketches on the walls which Michelangelo drew from his memory.

Here he was commissioned to finish the carving of the last small figures of the tomb and shrine of St. Dominic, in the church with the same name. He returned to Florence at the end of 1494, but soon he fled again, scared by the turmoils and by the menace of the French invasion.

He was again in his city between the end of 1495 and the June of 1496: whereas Leonardo da Vinci considered the ruling Savonarola a fanatic and left the city, Michelangelo was touched by the friar's preaching, by the associated moral severity and by the hope of renovation of the Roman Church.

In that year a marble Cupid by Michelangelo was treacherously sold to Cardinal Raffaele Riario as an ancient piece: the prelate found out that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome, where he arrived on June 26, 1496.

On July 4 Michelangelo started to carve an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god, Bacchus, commissioned by Cardinal Raffaele Riario; the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden.

Subsequently, in November of 1497, the French ambassador in the Holy See commissioned one of his most famous works, the Pietà. The contemporary opinion about this work — "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture" — was summarised by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh."

The contract was stipulated in the August of the following year. Though he devoted himself only to sculpture, during his first stay in Rome Michelangelo never stopped his daily practice of drawing. In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto: here, according to the legends, he fell in love (probably a Platonic love) with Vittoria Colonna, marquise of Pescara and poet.

His house was demolished in 1874, and the remaining architectural elements saved by new proprietors were destroyed in 1930. Today a modern reconstruction of Michelangelo's house can be seen on the Gianicolo hill.

Michelangelo's David

Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499–1501. Things were changing in the city after the fall of Savonarola and the rise of the gonfaloniere Pier Soderini. He was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom, to be placed in the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.

Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, David in 1504. This masterwork, created out of marble from the quarries at Carrara, definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination.

Also during this period, Michelangelo painted the Holy Family and St John, also known as the Doni Tondo or the Holy Family of the Tribune: it was commissioned for the marriage of Angelo Doni and Maddalena Strozzi and in the 17th Century hung in the room known as the Tribune in the Uffizi. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the Manchester Madonna and now in the National Gallery, London.

Under Pope Julius II in Rome: the Sistine Chapel ceiling

In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. Under the patronage of the Pope, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. Because of these interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years. The tomb, of which the central feature is Michelangelo's statue of Moses, was never finished to Michelangelo's satisfaction. It is located in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.

The major interruption on the tomb was the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took four years to complete (1508 – 1512).

According to Michelangelo's own account, reproduced in contemporary biographies, Bramante and Raphael convinced the Pope to commission Michelangelo in a medium not familiar to the artist, in order that he might be diverted from his preference for sculpture into fresco painting, and thus suffer from unfavorable comparisons with his rival Raphael. However, this story is discounted by modern historians on the grounds of contemporary evidence, and may be merely a reflection of the artist's own perspective.

Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the 12 Apostles, but protested for a different and more complex scheme, representing Creation, the Downfall of Man and the Promise of Salvation through the prophets and Genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church

The composition eventually contained over 300 figures and had at its centre nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups:- God's Creation of the Earth, God's Creation of Humankind and their fall from God's grace, and lastly, the state of Humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of the Jesus. They are seven prophets of Israel and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world.

Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are the Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the Prophet Isaiah and the Cumaean Sibyl. Around the windows are painted the ancestors of Christ.

Under Medici Popes in Florence

In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the façade of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly. The three years he spent in creating drawings and models for the facade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project, were among the most frustrating in his career, as work was abruptly cancelled by his financially-strapped patrons before any real progress had been made.

The basilica lacks a facade to this day.
Apparently not the least embarrassed by this turnabout, the Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the basilica of San Lorenzo. Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized.

Though still incomplete, it is the best example we have of the integration of the artist's sculptural and architectural vision, since Michelangelo created both the major sculptures as well as the interior plan. Ironically the most prominent tombs are those of two rather obscure Medici who died young, a son and grandson of Lorenzo. Il Magnifico himself is buried in an unfinished and comparatively unimpressive tomb on one of the side walls of the chapel, not given a free-standing monument, as originally intended.

In 1527, the Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530 and the Medici were restored to power.

Completely out of sympathy with the repressive reign of the ducal Medici, Michelangelo left Florence for good in the mid-1530s, leaving assistants to complete the Medici chapel. Years later his body was brought back from Rome for interment at the Basilica di Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Tuscany.

Last works in Rome

The fresco of The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Clement VII, who died shortly after assigning the commission. Paul III was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project. Michelangelo labored on the project from 1534 to October 1541.

The work is massive and spans the entire wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The Last Judgment is a depiction of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse; where the souls of humanity rise and are assigned to their various fates, as judged by Christ, surrounded by the Saints.

Once completed, the depictions of nakedness in the papal chapel was considered obscene and sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. After Michelangelo's death, it was decided to obscure the genitals ("Pictura in Cappella Ap.ca coopriantur").

So Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to cover with perizomas (briefs) the genitals, leaving unaltered the complex of bodies (see details). When the work was restored in 1993, the conservators chose not to remove all the perizomas of Daniele, leaving some of them as a historical document, and because some of Michelangelo’s work was previously scraped away by the touch-up artist's application of “decency” to the masterpiece.

A faithful uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, can be seen at the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.

Censorship always followed Michelangelo, once described as "inventor delle porcherie" ("inventor of obscenities", in the original Italian language referring to "pork things"). The infamous "fig-leaf campaign" of the Counter-Reformation, aiming to cover all representations of human genitals in paintings and sculptures, started with Michelangelo's works.

To give two examples, the marble statue of Cristo della Minerva (church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome) was covered by a pan, as it remains today, and the statue of the naked child Jesus in Madonna of Bruges (The Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium) remained covered for several decades.

In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, and designed its dome. As St. Peter's was progressing there was concern that Michelangelo would pass away before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable.

Michelangelo the architect

Michelangelo worked on many projects that had been conceived by other men, most notably in his work at St Peter's Basilica, Rome. The Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo during the same period, rationalized the structures and spaces of Rome's Capitoline Hill. Its shape, more a rhomboid than a square, was intended to counteract the effects of perspective.

The major Florentine architectural projects by Micelangelo are the unexecuted façade for the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence and the Medici Chapel (Capella Medicea) and Laurentian Library there, and the fortifications of Florence.
The major Roman projects are St. Peter's, Palazzo Farnese, San Giovanni de' Fiorentini and the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforzesca), Porta Pia and Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Laurentian Library

Around 1530 Michelangelo designed the Laurentian Library in Florence, attached to the church of San Lorenzo. He produced new styles such as pilasters tapering thinner at the bottom, and a staircase with contrasting rectangular and curving forms.

Medici Chapel

Michelangelo designed the Medici Chapel. The Medici Chapel has monuments in it dedicated to certain members of the Medici family. Michelangelo never finished it, so his pupils later completed it. Lorenzo the Magnificent was buried at the entrance wall of the Medici Chapel. Sculptures of the "Madonna and Child" and the Medici patron saints Cosmas and Damian were set over his burial. The "madonna and child" was Michelangelo's own work.

Michelangelo the man

Michelangelo, who was often arrogant with others and constantly dissatisfied with himself, saw art as originating from inner inspiration and from culture. In contradiction to the ideas of his rival, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo saw nature as an enemy that had to be overcome.

The figures that he created are forceful and dynamic; each in its own space apart from the outside world. For Michelangelo, the job of the sculptor was to free the forms that were already inside the stone. He believed that every stone had a sculpture within it, and that the work of sculpting was simply a matter of chipping away all that was not a part of the statue.

Several anecdotes reveal that Michelangelo's skill, especially in sculpture, was greatly admired in his own time. It is said that when still a young apprentice, he had made a pastiche of a Roman statue (Il Putto Dormiente, the sleeping child or Cupid) of such beauty and perfection, that it was later sold in Rome as an ancient Roman original. In fact, he damaged the statue and buried it in order to fool the buyer, Cardinal Raffaele Riario.

After the truth was revealed, the Cardinal later took this as proof of his skill and commissioned his Bacchus. Another better-known anecdote claims that when finishing the Moses (San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome), Michelangelo violently hit the knee of the statue with a hammer, shouting, "Why don't you speak to me?"
In his personal life, Michelangelo was abstemious. He told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: "However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man."

Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating "more out of necessity than of pleasure" and that he "often slept in his clothes and ... boots." These habits may have made him unpopular; his biographer Paolo Giovio says "His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him."

He may not have minded, since he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person; he had a reputation for being bizzarro e fantastico because he "withdrew himself from the company of men."

Relationships

Fundamental to Michelangelo's art is his love of male beauty, which attracted him both aesthetically and emotionally. In part, this was an expression of the Renaissance idealization of masculinity.

But in Michelangelo's art there is clearly a sensual response to this aesthetic. Such feelings caused him great anguish, and he expressed the struggle between Platonic ideals and carnal desire in his sculpture, drawing and his poetry, too, for among his other accomplishments Michelangelo was also a great Italian lyric poet of the 16th century.

The sculptor's expressions of love have been characterized as both Neoplatonic and openly homoerotic; recent scholarship seeks an interpretation which respects both readings, yet is wary of drawing absolute conclusions. One example of the conundrum is the story of the sixteen year old Cecchino dei Bracci, whose death, only a year after their meeting in 1543, inspired the writing of forty eight funeral epigrams, which by some accounts allude to a relationship that was not only romantic but physical as well:

La carne terra, e qui l'ossa mia, prive
de' lor begli occhi, e del leggiadro aspetto
fan fede a quel ch'i' fu grazia nel letto,
che abbracciava, e' n che l'anima vive.
or

The flesh now earth, and here my bones,
Bereft of handsome eyes, and jaunty air,
Still loyal are to him I joyed in bed,
Whom I embraced, in whom my soul now lives.

According to others, they represent an emotionless and elegant re-imagining of Platonic dialogue, whereby erotic poetry was seen as an expression of refined sensibilities (Indeed, it must be remembered that professions of love in 16th century Italy were given a far wider application than now).

Some youths were street wise and took advantage of the sculptor. Febbo di Poggio, in 1532, peddled his charms — in answer to Michelangelo's love poem he asks for money. Earlier, Gherardo Perini, in 1522, had stolen from him shamelessly. Michelangelo defended his privacy above all.

When an employee of his friend Niccolò Quaratesi offered his son as apprentice suggesting that he would be good even in bed, Michelangelo refused indignantly, suggesting Quaratesi fire the man.
The greatest written expression of his love was given to Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c. 1509–1587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo met him in 1532, at the age of 57. Cavalieri was open to the older man's affection: I swear to return your love.

Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours. Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo till his death.
Michelangelo dedicated to him over three hundred sonnets and madrigals, constituting the largest sequence of poems composed by him. Some modern commentators assert that the relationship was merely a Platonic affection, even suggesting that Michelangelo was seeking a surrogate son.

However, their homoerotic nature was recognized in his own time, so that a decorous veil was drawn across them by his grand nephew, Michelangelo the Younger, who published an edition of the poetry in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed. John Addington Symonds, the early British homosexual activist, undid this change by translating the original sonnets into English and writing a two-volume biography, published in 1893.

The sonnets are the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another, predating Shakespeare's sonnets to his young friend by a good fifty years.

I feel as lit by fire a cold countenance
That burns me from afar and keeps itself ice-chill;
A strength I feel two shapely arms to fill
Which without motion moves every balance.
— (Michael Sullivan, translation)

Late in life he nurtured a great love for the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died, though many scholars note the intellectualized or spiritual quality of this passion.

It is impossible to know for certain whether Michelangelo had physical relationships (Condivi ascribed to him a "monk-like chastity"), but through his poetry and visual art we may at least glimpse the arc of his imagination.

A pietà (pl. same; Italian for compassion) is an artwork depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Christ. As such, it is a particular form of the devotional theme of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Examples
The most famous pietà is Michelangelo's Pietà in St Peter's Basilica. This is considered by some to be one of Michelangelo's greatest works of art, completed when he was 24 years old in 1499 AD. It is the only work signed by Michelangelo (on a diagonal ribbon carved across Mary's

breast) possibly indicating his satisfaction with his work. Another account states the artist chiseled his name out of rage for a false attribution to one of his contemporaries. When it was unveiled in 1500, Michelangelo overheard a crowd admiring it. Going closer, he soon discovered that another artist was stealing his glory.

The people could not believe that a previously unknown young artist had produced something of such staggering beauty. That night, out of a caustic combination of injured pride and jealousy he chiseled a message to all future viewers on the sash across Mary's chest: MICHAELA[N]GELUS BONAROTUS FLORENTIN[US] FACIEBAT (Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this).

However, he later regretted this action. In 1972 the statue was vandalised by Laszlo Toth wielding a hammer; he was later declared insane.
Michelangelo's last work was another Pietà, this one featuring not the Virgin Mary holding Christ, but rather Joseph of Arimathea. Michaelangelo carved Joseph's face as a self-portrait, a final act of piety wherein the scupltor placed himself in the biblical account.

Sculptor Luis Jiménez, reversing the gender of the figures involved, used the popular Mexican and Chicano image and myth of the Aztec warrior holding his dead lover to create the monumental Southwest Pietà, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

The American Pietà was the name given to a famous Reuters photograph of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, depicting a policeman and four firemen carrying the body of fire department chaplain Mychal F. Judge out of the World Trade Center rubble.

The term "pietà" (Latin: pietas) originated from a custom of the Roman Empire around the time of 64 AD, referring to the act of prostrating oneself, and putting forth an "Emotion...of great love accompanied with revering fear....of the [Roman] Gods."
A rare leather pietà is in the church St. Peter und Paul in Eschweiler, Germany.

Aesthetics

Mary and Christ are formally and psychologically inter-related so that one hardly notices Christ's relatively small size compared with Mary's massive form. The zigzag of Christ's body blends harmoniously with Mary's legs and voluminous drapery folds. Mary's left hand repeats the movement of Christ's left leg.

She inclines her head forward as Christ's tilts back, and the slow curve of her drapery on the left is repeated by Christ's limp right arm. His right hand falls so that his fingers enclose and continue the prominent drapery curve between Mary's legs. In addition to the formal rhythms uniting Mary and Christ, Michelangelo makes them appear to be about the same age.

He thus creates a powerful emotional and formal bond between the two figures who, though separated by death, will eventually be reunited, in Christian tradition, as King and Queen of Heaven. According to one report, when Michelangelo was asked about the age of the Virgin, he replied that her youthfulness was the result of her chaste character.

Michelangelo's David, sculpted from 1501 to 1504, is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture and one of Michelangelo's two greatest works of sculpture, along with the Pietà.

It is the David alone that almost certainly holds the title of the most recognizable statue in the history of art. It has become regarded as a symbol both of strength and youthful human beauty. The 5.17 meter (17 ft) marble statue portrays the Biblical King David at the moment that he decides to do battle with Goliath.

It came to symbolise the Florentine Republic, an independent city state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states.

This interpretation was also encouraged by the original setting of the sculpture outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence. The completed sculpture was unveiled on 8 September 1504.

History

The history of Michelangelo's David precedes his work on it from 1501-1504, as far back as 1464. At that time the Overseers of the Office of Works of the Duomo (Operai), comprised mostly of members of the influential woolen cloth guild, the Arte della Lana, had plans to commission a series of twelve large Old Testament sculptures for the buttresses of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Until then only two had been created independently by Donatello and his assistant, Agostino di Duccio. Eager to continue their project, in 1464 they again contracted Agostino to create a sculpture of David.

He only got as far as beginning to shape the legs, feet and chest of the figure, roughing out some drapery and probably gouging a hole between the legs. His association with the project, for reasons unknown, ceased with the death of his master Donatello in 1466, and Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to take up where Agostino had left off.

Rossellino's contract was terminated, soon thereafter, and the block of marble originally from a quarry in Carrara, a town in the Apuan Alps in northern Italy, remained neglected for twenty-five years, all the while exposed to the elements in the yard of the cathedral workshop. This was of great concern to the Operai authorities, as such a large piece of marble was both costly, and represented a large amount of labor and difficulty in its transportation to Florence.

In 1500, an inventory of the cathedral workshops described the piece as, "a certain figure of marble called David, badly blocked out and supine." A year later, documents showed that the Operai were determined to find an artist who could take this large piece of marble and turn it into a finished work of art. They ordered the block of stone, which they called The Giant, "raised on its feet" so that a master experienced in this kind of work might examine it and express an opinion.

Though Leonardo da Vinci and others were consulted, it was young Michelangelo, only twenty-six years old, who convinced the Operai that he deserved the commission. On August 16, 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this challenging new task. He began carving the statue early in the morning on Monday, September 13, a month after he was awarded the contract. He would work on the massive biblical hero for a little more than three years.

Since Michelangelo's David differs from previous representations of the subject in that David is not depicted with the slain Goliath (as he is in Donatello's and Verrocchio's versions, produced earlier), a common interpretation is that David is depicted before his battle with Goliath. Instead of being shown victorious over a foe much larger than he, David looks tense and ready for combat.

His veins bulge out of his lowered right hand and the twist of his body effectively conveys to the viewer the feeling that he is in motion. The statue is meant to show David after he has made the decision to fight Goliath but before the battle has actually taken place. It is a representation of the moment between conscious choice and conscious action.

However, other experts (including Giuseppe Andreani, the current director of Accademia Gallery) consider the depiction to represent the moment immediately after battle, as David serenely contemplates his victory.
On January 25, 1504, when the sculpture was nearing completion, a committee of Florentine artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli met to decide on an appropriate site for the David.

The majority, led by Giuliano da Sangallo and supported by Leonardo and Piero di Cosimo, among others, believed that due to the imperfections in the marble the sculpture should be placed under the roof of the Loggia dei Lanzi on Piazza della Signoria. Only a rather minor view, supported by Botticelli, believed that the sculpture should be situated on or near the cathedral.

Eventually the David was placed in front of the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, also on Piazza della Signoria, replacing Donatello's bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, which embodied a comparable theme of heroic resistance. It took four days to move the statue from Michelangelo's workshop onto the Piazza della Signoria. In 1504, the Florentines added a gilded wreath to his head and a gilt-bronze belt to cover his nudity. At that time the supporting tree stump was also gilded.

To protect it from damage, the sculpture was moved in 1873 to the Accademia Gallery in Florence, where it attracts many visitors. A replica was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in 1910.
In 1991 a vandal attacked the statue with a hammer, damaging the toes of the left foot before being restrained. The samples obtained from that incident allowed scientists to determine that the marble used was obtained from the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia, the central of three small valleys in Carrara.

The marble in question contains many microscopic holes that cause it to deteriorate faster than other marbles. Because of the marble's degradation, a controversy occurred in 2003, when the statue underwent its first major cleaning since 1843. Some experts opposed the use of water to clean the statue, fearing further deterioration.

Style and detail

Michelangelo's David is based on the artistic discipline of of disegno, which is built on knowledge of the male human form. Under this discipline, sculpture is considered to be the finest form of art because it mimics divine creation.

Because Michelangelo adhered to the concepts of disegno, he worked under the premise that the image of David was already in the block of stone he was working on — in much the same way as the human soul is found within the physical body. It is also an example of the contrapposto style of posing the human figure.

The proportions are not quite true to the human form; the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the proportions of the lower body. While some have suggested that this is of the mannerist style, the most commonly accepted explanation is that the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade or high pedestal, and that the proportions would appear correct when the statue was viewed from some distance below.

There was controversy over the statue's supposed Biblical reference, since the statue seemed to portray an uncircumcised male, whereas the historical King David was undoubtedly circumcised. It was also suggested that this was a conscious decision in Michelangelo's endeavor to emulate the ancient Greek aesthetic ideals, which regarded the circumcised penis as mutilated.

Replicas

A replica of the David was offered as a gift by the municipality of Florence to the municipality of Jerusalem to mark the 3,000th anniversary of David's conquest of the city. The proposed gift evoked a storm in Jerusalem, where religious factions urged the gift be declined, because the naked figure was considered pornographic. Finally, a compromise was reached and another, fully-clad replica of a different statue was donated instead.

There are many full-size replicas of the statue around the world, from a plaster cast copy at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to the centerpiece of a shopping mall in Surfers Paradise, Queensland. There is another replica in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. One resident of Los Angeles, California, has decorated his house and grounds with twenty-three reduced scale replicas of the statue.

There is a life-size replica at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California. There is a copy gracing the "Appian Way Shops" at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. A bronze casting from the original marble statue stands in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. Another bronze casting is the centerpiece in the courtyard of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a replica, albeit quite a rough one. Another full-size replica can be found in the open air Middelheim Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.
Surprisingly there is also a replica placed in Pune, India. It is installed at the Administrative Building of the University of Pune on Aundh Road.

It is erected next to a statue of a half naked woman, that seems to depict Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. That replica is part of the legacy that the British left when India gained its independence.
In 2007, Märklin produced a Z scale (1:220) bronze replica of David, which stood approximately 1.6 inches (41 mm) tall. The statue accompanied the "museumswagen" for that year, a collector car offered in the Märklin museum in Göppingen to celebrate the German foundry, Strassacker.

The Doni Tondo or Doni Madonna is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo Buonarroti (c. 1503), the only known preserved panel picture by the Florentine artist.

It is preserved in the Uffizi of Florence in its original frame, designed by Michelangelo himself. The painting was most likely commissioned by Angelo Doni, a wealthy weaver, to commemorate his marriage to Alex Cecala, the daughter of a famous banking family.

The painting is in the form of a tondo, or round frame, which is frequently associated with marriage in the Renaissance.
Michelangelo employed two media for this work, tempera and oil. By applying the oils in successive glazes from intense color to the lightest value, in the manner of tempera painting taught to him as an apprentice, Michelangelo created a quite different coloristic effect to that of Flemish painters at the time.

Flemish painters used the opposite oil painting technique of shading from highlights down to darker tones of pigment. Michelangelo’s changing coloristic effect is called cangianti and is typical of his painting style.

The painting depicts the Christ child being presented to the viewer by his mother Mary and father Joseph. This composition of presentation may be referring to the patron of the piece’s name Doni, in Italian "gifts", and helps to solidify its patronage.

Behind the main figures, several nude male figures are painted in the background. The meaning of this addition of nude male figures is debated for it has no obvious relation or biblical precedents to the scene in the foreground.

The inclusion of these nude figures is by no means unusual in Michelangelo’s work, however, as can be seen in his other works, including the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Although Michelangelo did not consider himself a painter (and often it appears he complained of the medium), the Doni Tondo is a beautifully rendered work. The drapery is sharply modeled with brilliant colors. The monumental figures appear to be sculpted with paint rather than marble, his preferred medium, and as such they appear to have true weight.

The Creation of Adam is a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti circa 1511. It illustrates the Biblical story from the Book of Genesis in which God the Father breathes life into Adam, the first man.

Chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis on the Sistine ceiling, it was among the last to be completed. It is arguably one of the most

famous and most appreciated images in the world.

Composition

God is depicted as an elderly bearded man laying on a kidney which he shares with some cherubim. The kidney was considered to be the organ that is essential for the body to stay alive in Michaelangelo's time, so it often represented life in art. His left arm is wrapped around a female figure, normally interpreted as Eve, who is not yet created and, figuratively, waits in heaven to be given an earthly form.

God's right arm is outstretched to impart the spark of life from his own finger into that of Adam, whose left arm is extended in a pose mirroring God's. Famously, Adam's finger and God's finger are separated by a slight distance.
The composition is obviously artistic and not literal, as Adam is capable of reaching out to God even before he has actually been given "life".

For this same reason, Eve is visually depicted prior to her own creation. The inclusion of Eve has led some people to believe the female figure must be Adam's mythical first wife, Lilith, although Lilith was also created after Adam.
The similar poses of God and Adam – the positions of God's right leg and Adam's right leg are, for instance, nearly identical – reflect the fact that, according to Genesis 1:27, God created man in His own image.

At the same time God, who is airborne and appears against ovoid drapery, is contrasted with earthbound Adam, lying on a stable triangle of barren ground (Adam's name comes from a Hebrew word meaning "earth").
The inspiration for Michelangelo's treatment of the subject may come from a medieval hymn called Veni Creator Spiritus, which asks the 'finger of the paternal right hand' (digitus paternae dexterae) to give the faithful speech, love and strength.

Adam's index finger, the most famous in Western art alongside God's, is in fact not wholly the work of Michelangelo. It was damaged by a crack that appeared in the ceiling in the mid-16th century and was restored by the papacy.

Anatomical theories

Several hypotheses have been put forward about the meaning of The Creation of Adam's highly original composition, many of them taking Michelangelo's well-documented expertise in human anatomy as their starting point.

In 1990 a physician named Frank Lynn Meshberger noted in the medical publication the Journal of the American Medical Association that the background figures and shapes portrayed behind the figure of God appeared to be an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain, including the frontal lobe, optic chiasm, brain stem, pituitary gland, and the major sulci of the cerebrum.

Alternatively, it has been observed that the red cloth around God has the shape of a human uterus (one art historian has called it a "uterine mantle"[1]), and that the scarf hanging out, coloured green, could be a newly cut umbilical cord.

scheme of decoration within the Sistine Chapel which includes the large fresco of the Last Judgement on the sanctuary wall, also by Michelangelo, wall paintings by several other artists and a set of large tapestries by Raphael, the whole illustrating much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Central to the ceiling decoration are nine scenes from the Book of Genesis of which the Creation of Adam is the best known, having an iconic standing equalled only by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the hands of God and Adam being reproduced in countless imitations.

History

Michelangelo was commissioned in 1508 by Pope Julius II to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Around the central area of the walls of the chapel there already existed a complex scheme of paintings illustrating the Life of Christ and the Life of Moses. It had been carried out by some of the most renowned Renaissance painters including Perugino, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio.

Michelangelo, who was not primarily a painter but a sculptor, was reluctant to take on the work. Also, he was occupied with a very large sculptural commission for the Pope's own tomb.

The Pope was adamant, leaving Michelangelo no choice but to accept. But a war with the French broke out, diverting the attention of the Pope who was a powerful military leader, and Michelangelo fled from Rome to continue sculpting. The tomb sculptures, however, were never to be finished because in 1508 the Pope returned to Rome victorious and summoned Michelangelo to begin work on the ceiling.

The proposed scheme was for twelve large figures of the Apostles. But Michelangelo changed the scheme for a much more complex design which eventually comprised some three hundred figures and took four years, being completed in 1512.
Contrary to popular belief, he painted in a standing position, not lying on his back.

According to Vasari, "The work was carried out in extremely uncomfortable conditions, from his having to work with his head tilted upwards". Michelangelo described his physical discomfort in a humorous sonnet accompanied by a little sketch.

“ Here like a cat in a Lombardy sewer! Swelter and toil!
With my neck puffed out like a pigeon,
belly hanging like an empty sack,
beard pointing at the ceiling, and my brain
fallen backwards in my head!
Breastbone bulging like a harpy’s
and my face, from drips and droplets,
patterned like a marble pavement.
Ribs are poking in my guts; the only way
to counterweight my shoulders is to stick
my butt out. Don’t know where my feet are-
they’re just dancing by themselves!
In front I’ve sagged and stretched; behind,
my back is tauter than an archer’s bow!”

Method

In order to reach the chapel's ceiling, Michelangelo designed his own scaffold, a flat wooden platform on brackets built out from holes in the wall near the top of the windows, rather than being built up from the floor which would have involved a massive structure. The scaffolding did not occupy the entire area of the ceiling. The painting was done in two stages.

The reports of Michelangelo's pupil and biographer Condivi, indicate that the brackets and frame which supported the steps and flooring were all put in place at the beginning and some sort of light-weight screen, possibly of cloth, was suspended beneath them to catch plaster drips, dust and splashes of paint, but only half the building was scaffolded at a time.

The painting technique employed was fresco, in which the paint is applied to damp plaster. Michelangelo was experienced with this method of painting, having been trained in the workshop of Ghirlandaio, one of the most competent and prolific of Florentine fresco painters, who completed several important fresco cycles in churches in Florence and whose work was represented on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

At the outset, the plaster began to grow mold because it was too wet. Michelangelo had to remove it and start again. He then tried a new formula created by one of his assistants, Jacopo l'Indaco. This resisted mold, and entering the Italian building tradition as intonaco is still in use today.

It was customary for fresco painters to use a full-sized detailed drawing, a cartoon, to transfer a design onto a plaster surface -- many frescoes show little holes made with a stiletto, outlining the figures. Here Michelangelo broke with convention; once confident in the application of fresco, he drew directly onto the ceiling.

His energetic sweeping outlines can be seen scraped into some of the surfaces, while on others a grid is evident, indicating that he enlarged directly onto the ceiling from a small drawing. Because he was painting fresco, the plaster was laid in a new section every day, called a giornata. At the beginning of each session, the edges would be scraped away and a new area laid down.

This is more apparent in the Last Judgement than on the ceiling. The reason that Michelangelo employed the fresco technique is that if the artist worked onto completely dry plaster, then every brushstroke sank in immediately and the pigment could not be manipulated without removal of the plaster. The disadvantage of fresco painting is that the plaster becomes very hot while it is setting and gives off fumes.

Michelangelo painted onto the damp plaster using a wash technique to apply broad areas of colour, then as the surface became drier, he revisited these areas with a more linear approach, adding shade and detail with a variety of brushes. For some textured surfaces, such as facial hair and woodgrain, he used a broad brush with bristles as sparse as a comb.

Altogether, Michelangelo's techniques show the skill that one would expect of Ghirlandaio's greatest pupil. He employed all the finest workshop methods and best innovations, combining them with a diversity of brushwork and breadth of skill of which the meticulous and accurate Ghirlandaio was not capable.

The work commenced at the end of the building furthest from the altar and coinciding with the latest of the narrative scenes, rather than the earliest. The first three scenes, from the story of Noah, contain a much larger number of small figures than the later panels.

This is partly because of the subject matter, which deals with the fate of Humanity, but also because all the figures at that end of the ceiling, including the prophets and ignudi, are smaller than in the central section. The scale further increased in the third section.

As the scale got larger, so did Michelangelo's style become broader, the final narrative scene of God in the act of Creation was painted in a single day.
The bright colours and broad, cleanly-defined outlines make each subject easily visible from the floor. Despite the height of the ceiling the proportions of the Creation of Adam are such that when standing beneath it, "it appears as if the viewer could simply raise a finger and meet those of God and Adam".

The colours, which now appear so fresh and spring-like with pale pink, apple green, vivid yellow and sky blue against a background of warm pearly grey, were so discoloured by candlesmoke as to make the pictures seem almost monochrome. The long restoration (1981 through 1994) has removed the filter of grime to reveal the colours again.

Vasari tells us that the ceiling is "unfinished", that its unveiling occurred before it could be reworked with gold leaf and vivid blue lapis lazuli as was customary with frescoes and in order to better link the ceiling with the walls below it which were highlighted with a great deal of gold.

But this never took place, in part because Michelangelo was reluctant to set up the scaffolding again, and probably also because the gold and particularly the intense blue would have distracted from his painterly conception.
Some areas were, in fact, decorated with gold:- the shields between the ignudi and the columns between the prophets and sybils.

It seems very likely that the gilding of the shields was part of Michelangelo's original scheme since they are painted to resemble a certain type of processional shield a number of which still exist.

Content

The subject matter of the ceiling is the doctrine of humanity's need for Salvation as offered by God through Jesus.
In other words, the ceiling illustrates that God made the World as a perfect creation and put humanity into it, humanity fell into disgrace and was punished by death, and by separation from God.

God sent Prophets and Sybils to tell humanity that the Saviour or Christ, Jesus, would bring them redemption. God prepared a lineage of people, all the way from Adam, through various characters written of in the Old Testament, such as King David, to the Virgin Mary through whom the Saviour of humanity, Jesus, would come. The various components of the ceiling are linked to this doctrine.

But there was another factor. During the 15th century in Italy, and in Florence in particular, there was a strong interest in Classical literature and the philosophy of Humanism. Michelangelo, as a young man, had spent time at the Humanist academy established by the Medici family in Florence.

He was familiar with early Humanist-inspired sculptural works such as Donatello's bronze David, and had himself responded by carving the enormous nude marble David which was placed in the piazza near the Palazzo Vecchio, the home of Florence's council.

The Humanist vision of humanity was one in which people responded to other people, to social responsibility and to God in a direct way, not through intermediaries, such as the Church. This conflicted with the Church's emphasis. While the Church emphasised humanity as essentially sinful and flawed, Humanism emphasised humanity as potentially noble and beautiful.

These two views were not necessarily irreconcilable to the Church, but only through a recognition that the unique way to achieve this "elevation of spirit, mind and body" was through the Church as the agent of God. To be outside the Church was to be beyond Salvation.

In the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo has presented both Catholic and Humanist elements in a way that does not appear visually conflicting, but the inclusion of "non-Christian" figures can appear as an ideological conflict to those more familiar with the intensely "religious" works of the Counter Reformation and unfamiliar with the rationalising of Humanist and Christian thought of the Renaissance.

The main components of the design are nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, of which five smaller ones are each framed and supported by four naked youths or "ignudi". At either end, and beneath the scenes are the figures of twelve men and women who prophesied the birth of Jesus. On the cresent-shaped areas, or "lunettes", above each of the chapel's windows are the Ancestors of Christ, identified by name.

In the triangular spandrels above them are a further eight groups of figures, the identity of which is not known and which is subject to speculation. The scheme is completed by four large corner pendentives each showing a dramatic Biblical story.

The iconography of the ceiling has had various interpretations in the past, some elements of which have been contradicted by modern scholarship and others of which continue to defy interpretation. Of interest to some modern scholars is the question of how Michelangelo's own spiritual and psychological state is reflected in the iconography and the artistic expression of the ceiling.

Architectural scheme

Real

The Sistine Chapel is 40.5 metres long and 14 metres wide. The ceiling rises to 20 metres above the main floor of the chapel. The vault is of quite a complex nature and it is unlikely that it was originally intended to have such complex decoration. Pier Matteo d'Amelia provided a plan for its decoration with the architectural elements picked out and the ceiling painted blue and dotted with gold stars, similar to that of the Arena Chapel decorated by Giotto at Padua.

The chapel walls have three horizontal tiers with six windows in the upper tier down each side. There were also two windows at each end, but these have been closed up above the altar when Michelangelo's Last Judgement was painted. Between the windows are large pendentives which support the vault.

Between the pendentives are triangularly shaped arches or spandrels cut into the vault above each window. Above the height of the pendentives, the ceiling slopes gently without much deviation from the horizontal. This is the real architecture. Michelangelo has elaborated it with illusionary or fictive architecture.

Illusionary

The first element in the scheme of painted architecture is the defining of the real architectural elements by painted decorative courses that look like stone moldings. The decorative courses have two repeating motifs, a formula common to such decorations in Classical Roman buildings. In this case one motif is the acorn, the symbol of the Pope's family, the Rovere.

The other motif is the scallop shell, one of the symbols of the Blessed Virgin Mary to whom the chapel is dedicated.
Part of Michelangelo's painted design are broad architectural ribs of travertine which appear to cross the ceiling from one pendentive to another, further supported by similar architectural bands at either end of the chapel.

The ten painted cross-ribs divide the ceiling into alternately wide and narrow pictorial spaces. Above the level of the spandrels, where the ceiling flattens, is painted a strongly-projecting cornice that runs right around the ceiling, enclosing the main pictorial areas. These fictive architectural elements form a grid in which all the figures have defined spaces.

Integrated with the painted architecture are a great number of small figures the purpose of which appears to be purely decorative. These include two seemingly-marble putti below the cornice on each rib, stone rams-heads above the spandrels, figures like animated book-ends hiding in the shadows of the ribs and little putti, both clothed and unclothed who strike a variey of poses as they support the name-plates of the prophets and sybils.

Above the cornice and to either side of the smaller scenes are an array of round shields. They are in part supported by twenty more figures, not part of the architecture, but sitting on inlaid plinths, their feet planted convincingly on the fictive cornice. They are the so-called ignudi.

Pictorial scheme

Nine scenes from the Book of Genesis

Along the central section of the ceiling, Michelangelo depicted nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The pictures fall into three groups of three.
The first group shows God creating the Heavens and the Earth.

The second group shows God creating the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, and their disobedience of God and consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden where they have lived and where they walked with God. The third group of three pictures shows the plight of Humanity, and in particular the family of Noah.

The pictures are not in strictly chronological order. If they are perceived as three groups, then the pictures in each of the three units inform upon each other, in the same way as was usual in Medieval paintings and stained glass.
The scenes are painted so as to be viewed looking from the altar towards the main door and are ordered accordingly, as follows:

The Separation of Light and Darkness
The Creation of the Sun, Moon and Earth
The Separation of Land and Water
The Creation of Adam
The Creation of Eve
The Temptation and Expulsion
The Sacrifice of Noah
The Great Flood
The Drunkenness of Noah

Creation

The three Creation pictures show scenes from the first chapter of Genesis, which relates that God created the Earth and all that is in it in six days, resting on the seventh day. In the first scene, the First Day of Creation, God creates light and separates light from darkness. Chronologically, the next scene takes place in the third panel, in which, on the Second Day, God divides the waters from the heavens.

In the central panel, the largest of the three, there are two representations of God. On the Third Day, God creates the Earth and makes it sprout plants. On the Fourth Day, God puts the Sun and the Moon in place to govern the night and the day, the time and the seasons of the year. On the Fifth Day, God created the birds of the air and fish and creatures of the deep, but we are not shown this. Neither do we see God's creation of the creatures of the earth on the Sixth Day.

These three scenes, completed in the third stage of painting, are the most broadly conceived, the most broadly painted and the most dynamic of all the pictures. Of the first scene Vasari says "...Michelangelo depicted God dividing Light from Darkness, showing him in all his majesty as he rests self-sustained with arms outstretched, in a revelation of love and creative power."

Adam and Eve

For the central section of the ceiling, Michelangelo has taken four episodes from the story of Adam and Eve as told in the first, second and third chapters of Genesis. In this sequence of three, two of the panels are large and one small.

In the first of the pictures, and one of the most widely recognised images in the history of painting, Michelangelo shows God reaching out to touch Adam, who, in the words of Vasari, is "a figure whose beauty, pose and contours are such that it seems to have been fashioned that very moment by the first and supreme creator rather than by the drawing and brush of a mortal man."

The central scene, of God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam has been taken in its composition directly from another Creation sequence familiar to Michelangelo from his youth, the relief panels by Jacopo della Quercia that surround the door of the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna.

In the final panel of this sequence Michelangelo shows two contrasting scenes, that of Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree, Eve trustingly taking it from the hand of the Serpent and Adam eagerly picking it for himself; and their banishment from the Garden of Eden, where they have lived in the company of God, to the world outside where they have to fend for themselves and experience death.

Story of Noah

As with the first sequence of pictures, the three panels concerning Noah, taken from the sixth to ninth chapters of Genesis are thematic rather than chronological. In the first scene is shown the sacrifice of a sheep.

There are two significant sacrifices written of in Genesis, and Vasari, in writing about this scene mistakes it for the sacrifices by Cain and Abel, in which Abel's sacrifice was acceptable to God and Cain's was not. What this image almost certainly depicts is the sacrifice made by the family of Noah, after their safe deliverance from the Great Flood which destroyed the rest of Humankind.

However, blood sacrifice was instigated at the sacrifice of Abel. Christ was called the "Lamb of God" with reference to his sacrificial death. So this episode has far greater doctrinal significance than a family thanksgiving.

The central, larger, scene shows the Great Flood. The Ark in which Noah's family escaped floats at the rear of the picture while the rest of humanity tries frantically to scramble to some point of safety. This picture, which has a large number of figures, conforms the most closely to the format of the paintings that had been done around the walls.

The final scene of Humankind's degredation is the story of Noah's drunkenness. After the Flood, Noah tills the soil and grows vines. He is shown doing so, in the background of the picture. He becomes drunk and inadvertently exposes himself. His youngest son, Ham, brings his two brothers Shem and Japheth to see the sight but they discreetly cover their father with a cloak. Ham is later cursed by Noah and told that he will serve his brothers forever.

Taken together, these three pictures of death, destruction and degredation serve to show that Humankind, represented by Noah's family, had moved a long way from God's perfect creation.

Shields

Adjacent to the smaller Biblical scenes and supported by the ignudi are ten circular pageant shields, painted to resemble bronze or leather and with their details picked out in gold leaf. Each is decorated with a picture drawn from the Old Testament or the Book of Maccabees.

The subject in almost every case is one of the more gruesome or shameful of Biblical episodes, the only exception being that of Elijah being swept up to Heaven in a Chariot of Fire, leaving Elisha in a state of despair. In four of the five most highly finished medallions the space is crowded with figures in violent action, similar to Michelangelo's cartoon for the Battle of Cascina.

The technique that Michelangelo has employed is unusual in fresco, and may be original in its employment on this scale, but is not unique. He has utilised the same technique that was employed for decorating shields used in pageants and is similar to that used when drawing in metal point and white chalk on a coloured ground.

The ground colour (in this case red ochre streaked with black) makes the background and all the mid tones in the composition. The shadowed edges are then painted or rather, drawn with a brush and the shadows drawn in a highly linear manner that defines the contours of the forms.

On coloured paper, the highlights and brightly lit contours would usually be drawn with white chalk or finely painted in white paint. But in this case, gold leaf entirely replaces the white and has been applied exactly as if it had been drawn on, using the same method of defining contour as the black lines.

This application of gold serves to link the ceiling frescoes to some extent with those around the walls. In the latter, gold leaf has been applied lavishly to many details and in some of the frescoes, notable those by Perugino, has been most expertly used not just to detail the robes but to highlight the folds by subtle graduation in the density of golden flecks.

It is this technique that Michelangelo has picked up on and carried a step further, inspired also perhaps by the medallions that appear on a Roman triumphal arch in Botticelli's episode from the Life of Moses, showing the punishment of the Sons of Corah.

The medalions represent:-

Abraham about to sacrifice his son Isaac
The Destruction of the Statue of Baal
The worshippers of Baal being brutally slaughtered.
Uriah being beaten to death.
Nathan the priest condemning King David for murder and corruption.
King David's traitorous son Absalom caught by his hair in a tree while trying to escape and beheaded by David's troops.
Abner sneaking up on Joab to murder him
Joram being hurled from a chariot onto his head.
Elijah being carried up to Heaven
On one medalion the subject is either obliterated or incomplete.
Twelve prophetic figures

On the five pendentives along each side and the two at either, Michelangelo painted the largest figures on the ceiling: twelve people who prophesied or represented some aspect of the Coming of Christ. Of those twelve, seven were Prophets of Israel and were male. The remaining five were prophets of the Classical World, called Sibyls and were female.

The prophet Jonah is placed above the altar and Zechariah at the further end. The other male and female figures alternate down each side, each being identified by an inscription on a painted marble panel supported by a putto.

Jonah (IONAS) - above the altar
Jeremiah (HIEREMIAS)
Persian Sibyl (PERSICHA)
Ezekiel (EZECHIEL)
Erythraean Sibyl. (ERITHRAEA)
Joel (IOEL)
Zechariah (ZACHERIAS) - above the main door of the chapel
Delphic Sibyl. (DELPHICA)
Isaiah (ESAIAS)
Cumaean Sibyl. (CVMAEA)
Daniel (DANIEL)
Libyan Sibyl (LIBICA)

Prophets

The seven prophets of Israel chosen for depiction on the ceiling include the four so-called Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. Of the remaining twelve possibilities among the Minor Prophets, the three represented are Joel, Zechariah and Jonah.

Although the prophets Joel and Zechariah are considered "minor" because of the comparatively small number of pages that their prophecy occupies in the Bible, each one produced prophesies of profound significance.

They are often quoted, Joel for his "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your elderly shall dream dreams and your youth shall see visions". These words are significant for Michelangelo's decorative scheme, where women take their place among men and the youthful Daniel sits across from the brooding Jeremiah with his long white beard.

Zechariah prophesied "Behold! Your King comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey". His place in the chapel is directly above the door through which the Pope is carried in procession on Palm Sunday, the day on which Jesus fulfilled the prophecy by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and being proclaimed King. Jonah's main prophesy concerned the downfall of the city of Nineveh.

This alone does not seem to warrant him a place above the High Altar. But there is another factor involved. It is the person of Jonah himself that is of symbolic and prophetic significance, a significance which was commonly understood and had been represented in countless works of art including manuscripts and stained glass windows.

Jonah, through his reluctance to obey God, was swallowed by a "mighty fish". He spent three days in its belly and was eventually spewed up on dry land where he went about God's business. Because of this, Jonah was seen as a forerunner of Jesus, who having died by crucifixion, spent a time which spanned part of three days in a tomb, and was resurrected on the third day.

So, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Jonah, with the "great fish" beside him and his eyes turned towards God the Creator, represents a "portent" of the Resurrection of Christ.

In Vasari's description of the prophets and sibyls he is particularly high in his praise of the portrayal of Isaiah: "Anyone who studies this figure, copied so faithfully from nature, the true mother of the art of painting, will find a beautifully composed work capable of teaching in full measure all the precepts to be followed by a good painter."

Sibyls

The sibyls were prophetic women who were resident at shrines or temples throughout the Classical World. The five depicted here are each said to have prophesied the birth of Christ. The Cumaean Sibyl, for example, is quoted by Virgil as declaring that "a new progeny of Heaven" would bring about a return of the "Golden Age". This was interpreted as referring to Jesus.

In Christian doctrine, Christ came not just to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. It was understood that, prior to the Birth of Christ, God prepared the world for his coming. To this purpose, God used Jews and Gentiles alike. Jesus would not have been born in Bethlehem (where it had been prophesied that his birth would take place), except for the fact that the pagan Roman Emperor Augustus decreed that there should be a census.

Likewise, when Jesus was born, the announcement of his birth was made to rich and to poor, to mighty and to humble, to Jew and to Gentile. The wise men or so-called "Magi" who sought out the infant King with precious gifts were pagan foreigners.
In the Church of Rome, where there was an increasing interest in the remains of the city's pagan past, where scholars turned from reading Medieval Church Latin to Classical Latin and the philosophies of the Classical world were studied along with the writings of St Augustine, the presence, in the Sistine Chapel of five pagan prophets is not surprising.

It is not known why Michelangelo selected the five particular sibyls that were depicted, given that, as with the Minor Prophets, there were ten or twelve possibilities. It is suggested by John O'Malley that the choice was made for a wide geographic coverage, with the sibyls coming from Africa, Asia, Greece and Ionia.

Vasari says of the Erythraean sibyl "Many aspects of this figure are of exceptional loveliness: the expression of her face, her headdress and the arrangement of her draperies: and her arms, which are bared, are as beautiful as the rest."

Pendentives

In each corner of the chapel is a triangular pendentive filling the space between the walls and the arch of the vault and forming the spandrel above the windows nearest the corners. On these curving shapes Michelangelo has painted four scenes from Biblical stories that are associated with the salvation of the Jewish people.

The Brazen Serpent
The Punishment of Haman
David and Goliath
Judith and Holofernes

The first two stories were both seen in Medieval and Renaissance theology as prefiguring the Crucifixion of Jesus. In the story of the Brazen Serpent, the people of Israel become dissatisfied and grumble at God. As punishment they receive a plague of poisonous snakes. God offers the people relief by instructing Moses to make a snake of brass, set up on a pole, the sight of which gives miraculous healing.

In the book of Esther it is related that Haman, a public servant, plots to get Esther's husband, the King of Persia, to slay all the Jewish people in his land. The King, who is going over his books during a sleepless night, realises something is amiss. Esther, discovering the plot, denounces Haman and her husband orders his execution on a scaffold he has built.

The King's Eunuchs promptly carry this out.
The other stories, those of David and Judith, while showing the Salvation of Israel, were both portrayed with great frequency in the art of Florence as they demonstrated the overthrow of tyrants, a popular subject in the Republic.

In this image, the shepherd boy, David, has brought down the towering Goliath with his sling, but the giant is alive and is trying to rise as David forces his head down to chop it off. The depiction of Judith and Holofernes has an equally gruesome detail. As Judith loads the enemy's head onto a basket carried by her maid and covers it with a cloth, she is distracted by the limbs of the decapitated body threshing around.

There are obvious connections in the design of the Slaying of Holofernes and the Slaying of Haman at the opposite end of the chapel. Although in the Holofernes picture the figures are smaller and the space less filled, both have the triangular space divided into two zones by a vertical wall, allowing us to see what is happening on both sides of it.

There are actually three scenes in the Haman picture because as well as seeing Haman punished, we see him at the table with Esther and the King and get a view of the King on his bed. The servants who have done the ghastly deed are on the steps, making a link between the scenes.

While the Slaying of Goliath is a relatively simple composition with the two protagonists centrally placed, the only other figures being dimly-seen observers, the Brazen Serpent picture is crowded with figures and separate incidents as the various individuals who have been attacked by snakes struggle and die or turn towards the icon that will save them.

This is the most Mannerist of Michelangelo's earlier compositions at the Sistine Chapel, picking up the theme of human distress begun in the Great Flood scene and carrying it forward into the torment of lost souls in the Last Judgement which was later to be painted below.

Ancestors of Christ
Subject

Between the large pendentives that support the vault are windows, six on each side of the chapel. There were two more windows in each end of the chapel, now closed, and those above the High Altar covered by the Last Judgement.

Above each window is an arched shaped, referred to as a lunette and above eight of the lunettes at the sides of the chapel are triangular spandrels filling the spaces between the side pendentives and the vault, the other eight lunettes each being below one of the corner pendentives. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint these areas, as part of the work on the ceiling.

The structures form visual bridges between the walls and the ceiling, and the figures that are painted on them are midway in size (approximately 2 metres high) between the very large prophets and the much smaller figures of Popes which had been painted to either side of each window in the 15th century. The subject of the pictures is the Genealogy of Christ.

Centrally placed above each window is a painted marble tablet with a decorative frame. On each is painted the names of the male line by which Jesus, through his Earthly father, Joseph, is descended from Abraham, according to the Gospel of Matthew.
The arrangement seems a little erratic as one plaque has four names, most have three or two, and two plaques have only one.

Moreover, the progression moves from one side of the building to the other, but not consistently. On either side of each plaque and occupying the greater part of each lunette, are figures. In each case they seem to comprise some sort of a family, but it is extremely difficult to determine who the painted characters represent, as they do not coincide closely with the listed names. There are babies in most of the pictures suggesting a parental relationship between the males and females depicted, but not in every case.

There is also an indeterminate relationship between the figures in the spandrels, which are predominantly women with babies, and the lunettes beneath them. Because of the constraints of the triangular shape in each picture the figures are seated on the ground. In six of the eight spandrels the compositions resemble traditional depictions of the Flight into Egypt.

Of the two remaining, one shows a woman with shears trimming the neck of a garment she is making while her toddler looks on. The Biblical woman who is recorded as making a new garmet for her child is Hannah, the mother of Samuel, whose child went to live in the temple, and indeed, the male figure behind is wearing a distinctive hat that might suggest that of a priest. But the actual identity is unknown, and is possibly associated with the family on the lunette.

The other figure who differs from the rest is a young woman who sits staring out of the picture with prophetic intensity. It may be that she represents the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her position is directly above the tablet on which are engraved the name of Jesse of whom it was prophesied "There shall come forth a rod out of the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots".

Jesse is in fact the key to understanding the tradition behind these paintings. While the depiction of the Ancestors of Christ in fresco are rare, the subject was a common one in stained glass. It is often shown as a Jesse Tree with Jesse lying prone and a tree growing from his side with the ancestors on each branch.

Treatment

The figures in the lunettes appear to be families, but in every case they are families that are divided. The figures in them are physically divided by a name plate but they are also divided by a range of human emotions that turn them outward or in on themselves and sometimes towards their partner with jealousy, suspicion, rage. In them Michelangelo has portrayed the anger and unhappiness of the human condition.

Michelangelo uses these families to indicate to the viewer the problems that are inherent to humanity's nature and shows clearly the reason why Humankind was in need of the saviour, Christ Jesus. In their constraining niches, the ancestors "sit and squat and wait".

Of the fourteen remaining lunettes, the two that were probably painted first, the families of Eleazar and Mathan and of Jacob and Joseph are the most detailed. They become progressively broader towards the altar end, one of the last being painted in only two days. The Eleazar and Mathan picture has two figures with a wealth of costume detail that is not present in any other scene.

The female to the left has had as much care taken with her clothing as any of the sibyls. Her skirt is turned back showing her linen petticoat and the garter that holds up her mauve stockings and cuts into the flesh. She has a reticule and her dress is laced up under the arms. On the other side of the tablet sits the only male figure among those on the lunettes who is intrinsically beautiful. This blonde young man, elegantly dressed in white shirt and pale green hose, with no jerkin but a red cloak, postures with an insipid and vain gesture, in contrast to the ignudi which he closely resembles.

Prior to restoration, of all the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, the lunettes and spandrels were the dirtiest. Added to this, there has always been a problem of poor daytime visibility of the panels nearest the windows because of halination. Consequently, they were the least well known of all Michelangelo's publicly accessible works. The recent restoration has made these masterly studies of human nature and inventive depiction of the human form known once more.

Ignudi

The Ignudi are the 20 athletic, nude males that Michelangelo painted as supporting figures at the four corners of the five smaller narrative scenes of central part of the ceiling. The figures hold or are draped with or lean on a variety of things which include pink ribbons, green bolsters and enormous garlands of acorns. The acorns are the symbol of the family of Michelangelo's patron, Pope Julius, and can also be seen as the finials on his chair in Raphael's portrait.

The Ignudi, although all seated, are less physically constrained than the Ancestors of Christ. While the pairs of the monochrome male and female figures above the spandrels are mirrors of each other, these ignudi are all different. In the earliest paintings, they are paired, their poses being similar but with variation.

These variations become greater with each pair until the postures of final four bear no relation to each other whatsoever. Their painting demonstrates, more than any other figures on the ceiling, Michelangelo's mastery of anatomy and foreshortening and his enormous powers of invention.

The meaning of these figures has never been clear. They are certainly in keeping with the Humanist acceptance of the classical Greek view that “the man is the measure of all things”. Their presence and nudity angered a number of critics, including Pope Hadrian VI who described the ceiling as "a stew of naked bodies" and wanted it stripped. But Michelangelo knew the Bible well.

He would have been well aware of the fact that although seraphim and cherubim are described as being winged creatures, angels are not. They are described as looking like men. When Michelangelo later painted the altar wall of the chapel, he included a great number of angels, particularly in the lunettes which are decorated with scenes of angels carrying the symbols of the Passion.

Other angels are employed sounding the trumpets which call forth the dead, displaying books in which the names of the saved and the damned are written and casting sinners down to Hell. In all, the Last Judgement contains more than forty angels, all closely resembling the ignudi.

It is reasonable to conclude that the ignudi represent angels, rather than "Human perfection", since the message of the ceiling is, overwhelmingly, one of human misery and degredation. It is about Humankind's need for a covenant with God. The old covenant of the Children of Israel through Moses and the new covenant through Christ Jesus had already been represented around the walls of the chapel.

If the ignudi are indeed angels, they are the ever-present attendants and messengers of God, impassively watching and waiting on the fate of Humankind.

Artistic legacy

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was to have a profound effect upon other artists, even before it was completed. Vasari, in his Life of Raphael, tells us that Bramante, who had the keys to the chapel, let Raphael in to examine the paintings in Michelangelo's absence.

On seeing Michelangelo's prophets, Raphael went back to the picture of the Prophet Isaiah that he was painting on a column in the Church of Sant'Agostino and, according to Vasari, although it was finished, he scraped it off the wall and repainted it in a much more powerful manner, in imitation of Michelangelo.

There was hardly a design element on the ceiling that was not subsequently imitated: the fictive architecture, the muscular anatomy, the foreshortening, the dynamic motion, the luminous colouration, the haunting expressions of the figures in the lunettes, the abundance of putti.

Gabriele Bartz and Eberhard König have said of the ignudi "There is no image that has had a more lasting effect on following generations than this. Henceforth similar figures disported themselves in innumerable decorative works, be they painted, formed in stucco or even sculpted."

Within Michelangelo's own work, the chapel ceiling led to the later and more Mannerist painting of the Last Judgement in which the crowded compositions gave full rein to his inventiveness in painting contorted and foreshortened figures expressing despair or jubilation. Among the artists in whose work can be seen the direct influence of Michelangelo are Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Tintoretto, Annibale Carracci, Paolo Veronese and El Greco.

In January 2007, it was claimed that as many as 10,000 visitors passed through the Vatican Museums in a day and that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is the biggest attraction. The Vatican, anxious at the possibility that the newly-restored frescoes will suffer damage, announced plans to reduce visiting hours and raise the price in an attempt to discourage visitors.

Five hundred years earlier Vasari had said "The whole world came running when the vault was revealed, and the sight of it was enough to reduce them to stunned silence."

Quotations: Vasari

“The work has proved a veritable beacon to our art, of inestimable benefit to all painters, restoring light to a world that for centuries had been plunged into darkness. Indeed, painters no longer need to seek for new inventions, novel attitudes, clothed figures, fresh ways of expression, different arrangements, or sublime subjects, for this work contains every perfection possible under those headings.”
Waldemar Januszczak

The art critic and television producer Waldemar Januszczak wrote that when the Sistine Chapel ceiling was recently cleaned, he "was able to persuade the man at the Vatican who was in charge of Japanese TV access to let me climb the scaffold while the cleaning was in progress.

"I sneaked up there a few times. And under the bright, unforgiving lights of television, I was able to encounter the real Michelangelo. I was so close to him I could see the bristles from his brushes caught in the paint; and the mucky thumbprints he’d left along his margins. The first thing that impressed me was his speed. Michelangelo worked at Schumacher pace.

Adam’s famous little penis was captured with a single brushstroke: a flick of the wrist, and the first man had his manhood. I also enjoyed his sense of humour, which, from close up, turned out to be refreshingly puerile. If you look closely at the angels who attend the scary prophetess on the Sistine ceiling known as the Cumaean Sibyl, you will see that one of them has stuck his thumb between his fingers in that mysteriously obscene gesture that visiting fans are still treated to today at Italian football matches."
Gabriel Bartz and Eberhard König

"In a world where all experience was based in the glorious lost past of Antiquity, he made a new beginning. Michelangelo, more even than Raphael or Leonardo, embodies a standard of artistic genius which reveals a radically changed image of human beings and their potential..."
Pope John Paul II

“It seems that Michelangelo, in his own way, allowed himself to be guided by the evocative words of the Book of Genesis which, as regards the creation of the human being, male and female, reveals: "The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame".

The Sistine Chapel is precisely - if one may say so - the sanctuary of the theology of the human body. In witnessing to the beauty of man created by God as male and female, it also expresses in a certain way, the hope of a world transfigured, the world inaugurated by the Risen Christ……”
Michelangelo

"Whatever beauty here on earth is seen,
To meet the longing and perceptive eye,
Is semblance of that source divine,
From whence we all are come.
In this alone we catch a glimpse of Heaven."

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli ("little barrels"; March 1, 1444/45 – May 17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento).

Less than a hundred years later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli.

His posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting, and The Birth of Venus and Primavera rank now among the most familiar masterpieces of Florentine art.

Biography

Youth

Details of Botticelli's life are sparse, but we know that he did not become an apprentice until he was about fourteen years old, which would indicate that he received a fuller education than did other Renaissance artists. Vasari reported that he was initially trained as a goldsmith by his brother Antonio.

He then was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi; many of his early works have been attributed to the elder master, and attributions continue to be uncertain. Influenced also by the monumentality of Masaccio's painting, it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate and detailed manner.

During this time, Botticelli could have traveled to Hungary, participating in the creation of the recently discovered fresco ordered in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi by János Vitéz, a Hungarian bishop.
By 1470 Botticelli had his own workshop. Even at this early date his work was characterized by a conception of the figure as if seen in low relief, drawn with clear contours, and minimizing strong contrasts of light and shadow which would indicate fully modeled forms.

Masterworks

The masterworks Primavera (c. 1478) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) were both seen by Vasari at the villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello in the mid-16th century, and until recently it was assumed that both works were painted specifically for the villa. Recent scholarship suggests otherwise: the Primavera was painted for Lorenzo's townhouse in Florence, and The Birth of Venus was commissioned by someone else for a different site.

By 1499 both had been installed at Castello.
In these works the influence of Gothic realism is tempered by Botticelli's study of the antique. But if the painterly means may be understood, the subjects themselves remain fascinating for their ambiguity.

The complex meanings of these paintings continue to receive scholarly attention, mainly focusing on the poetry and philosophy of humanists who were the artist's contemporaries. The works do not illustrate particular texts; rather, each relies upon several texts for its significance. Of their beauty, characterized by Vasari as exemplifying "grace", and by John Ruskin as possessing linear rhythm, there can be no doubt.

Maturity and later life

The Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella (c. 1475-1476, now at the Uffizi) contains the portraits of Cosimo de' Medici ("the finest of all that are now extant for its life and vigour"), his grandson Giuliano de' Medici, and Cosimo's son Giovanni. The quality of the scene was hailed by Vasari as one of Botticelli's pinnacles.

In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli and other prominent Florentine and Umbrian artists to fresco the walls of the Sistine Chapel. The iconological program was the supremacy of the Papacy.

Sandro's contribution was moderately successful. He returned to Florence, and "being of a sophistical turn of mind, he there wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante and illustrated the Inferno which he printed, spending much time over it, and this abstension from work led to serious disorders in his living."

Thus Vasari characterized the first printed Dante (1481) with Botticelli's decorations; he could not imagine that the new art of printing might occupy an artist.
In the mid-1480s Botticelli worked on a major fresco cycle with Perugino, Ghirlandaio, and Filippino Lippi, for Lorenzo the Magnificent's villa near Volterra; in addition he painted many frescoes in Florentine churches.

In 1491 Botticelli served on a committee to decide upon a facade for the Florence Duomo. In 1502 he was accused of sodomy, charges which were later dropped. In 1504 he was a member of the committee appointed to decide where Michelangelo's David would be placed. His later work, especially as seen in a series on the life of St. Zenobius, witnessed a diminution of scale, expressively distorted figures, and a non-naturalistic use of color reminiscent of the work of Fra Angelico nearly a century earlier.

Religion

In later life, Botticelli was one of Savonarola's followers, and burnt his own paintings on pagan themes in the notorious "Bonfire of the Vanities". Botticelli biographer Ernst Steinman searched for the artist's psychological development through his Madonnas. In the deepening of insight and expression in the rendering of Mary's physiognomy, Steinman discerns proof of Savonarola's influence over Botticelli.

This means that the biographer needed to alter the dates of a number of Madonnas to substantiate his theory; specifically, they are dated ten years later than before. Steinman disagrees with Vasari's assertion that Botticelli produced nothing after coming under the influence of Girolamo Savonarola. Steinman believes the spiritual and emotional Virgins rendered by Sandro follow directly from the teachings of the Dominican monk.

Earlier, Botticelli had painted an Assumption of the Virgin for Matteo Palmieri in a chapel at San Pietro Maggiore in which, it was rumored, both the patron who dictated the iconic scheme and the painter who painted it, were guilty of unidentified heresy, a delicate requirement in such a subject.

The heretical notions seem to be gnostic in character:
By the side door of San Piero Maggiore he did a panel for Matteo Palmieri, with a large number of figures representing the Assumption of Our Lady with zones of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the orders of angels, the whole from a design given to him by Matteo, who was a worthy and educated man.

He executed this work with the greatest mastery and diligence, introducing the portraits of Matteo and his wife on their knees. But although the great beauty of this work could find no other fault with it, said that Matteo and Sandro were guilty of grave heresy. Whether this be true or not, I cannot say. (Giorgio Vasari)

This is a common misconception based on a mistake by Vasari. The painting referred to here, now in the National Gallery in London, is by the artist Botticini. Vasari confused their similar sounding names.

Recent discovery

Recently, one of four female figures on a fresco in the ruins of the Archbishop's workshop in the castle of Esztergom, Hungary, was recognized as possibly the first independent creation by Botticelli. The figures representing four cardinal virtues were ordered from the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi by Johannes Vaillant of Zredna, then Archbishop of Hungary. The figure attributed to Botticelli - the temperance - has many traits of his later works.

Anthology of works

Madonna and Child with an Angel (1465-1467) -Tempera on panel, 87 x 60 cm, Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Madonna and Child with an Angel (1465-67) - Tempera on panel, 110 x 70 cm, Musée Fesch, Ajaccio

Madonna della Loggia (c. 1467) - Tempera on panel, 72 x 50 cm, Uffizi, Florence

The Virgin and Child with Two Angels and the Young St. John the Baptist (1465-1470) - Tempera on panel, 85 x 62 cm, Galleria dell Accademia, Florence

The Annunciation (c. 1479) - Tempera on panel, 19 x 30 cm. Hyde Collection, Glens Falls

The Virgin and Child, St. John and an Angel (c. 1488) - Warsaw National Museum, Poland
Adoration of the Magi (1465-1467) -Tempera on panel, 50 x 136 cm, National Gallery, London

Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1469) - Tempera on panel, 51 x 33,7 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Madonna in Glory with Seraphim (1469-1470) - Tempera on panel, 120 x 65 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Madonna of the Rosegarden (Madonna del Roseto) (1469-1470) - Tempera on panel, 124 x 65 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Madonna and Child and Two Angels (c. 1468-1470) - Tempera on panel, 100 x 71 cm, Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

Portrait of Esmeralda Brandini (1470-1475) - Tempera on panel, 65,7 x 41 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Fortitude (c. 1470) - Tempera on panel, 167 x 87 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Madonna and Child with Six Saints (Sant'Ambrogio Altarpiece) (c. 1470) - Tempera on panel, 170 x 194 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Madonna and Child with an Angel (c. 1470) - Tempera on wood, 84 x 65 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

The Return of Judith to Bethulia (1470- 1472) - Oil on panel, 31 x 24 cm, Uffizi, Florence

The Discovery of the Murder of Holofernes (1470-1472) - Tempera on wood, 31 x 25 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Adoration of the Magi (1465-1467) -Tempera on panel, diameter 131,5 cm, National Gallery, London

Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1475) - Tempera on panel, 61 x 40 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Adoration of the Magi (1465-1467) -Tempera on panel, 111 x 134 cm, Uffizi, Florence

St. Sebastian (1474) - Tempera on panel, 195 x 175 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder (c. 1474-1475) - Tempera on panel, 57,5 x 44 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici (c. 1475) - Tempera on panel, 54 x 36 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Madonna and Child (c. 1475) - Tempera on panel, Art Institute, Chicago

Catherine of Alexandria, portrait of Caterina Sforza (c. 1475) - Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg

Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici (1476-1477) - Tempera on panel, 75,6 x 36 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Birth of Christ, (1476-1477) - Fresco, 200 x 300 cm, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici (1478) - Panel, 54 x 36 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Madonna and Child with Eight Angels (c. 1478) - Tempera on panel, diameter 135 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

St. Augustine (1480) - Fresco, 152 x 112 cm, church of Ognissanti, Florence

Madonna of the Magnificat (Madonna del Magnificat) (1480-1483) - Tempera on panel, diameter 118 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Madonna of the Book (Madonna del Libro) (c. 1480-1483) - Tempera on panel, 58 x 39,5 cm, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Portrait of a Young Woman (1480-85) - Tempera on wood, 82 x 54 cm, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

Portrait of a Young Woman (after 1480) - Oil on panel, 47,5 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Annunciation (1481) - Fresco, 243 x 550 cm, Uffizi, Florence

St. Sixtus II (1481) - Fresco, 210 x 80 cm, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

Adoration of the Magi (1481-1482) - Tempera on panel, 70 x 103 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Pallas and the Centaur (1482-1483) - Tempera on canvas, 207 x 148 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Venus and Mars (1483) - Tempera on panel, 69 x 173 cm, National Gallery, London

Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1483) - Tempera on panel, 37,5 x 28,2 cm, National Gallery, London

Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1482-1483) - Tempera on panel, 41 x 31 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (c. 1483) - Tempera on panel, 83 x 138 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Virgin and Child Enthroned (Bardi Altarpiece) (1484) - Tempera on panel, 185 x 180 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

The Birth of Venus (1484-1486) - Tempera on canvas, 184,5 x 285,5 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Annunciation (1485) - Tempera and gold on wood, 19,1 x 31,4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Madonna of the Pomegranate (Madonna della Melagrana) (c. 1487) - Tempera on panel, diameter 143,5 cm, Uffizi, Florence

The Virgin and Child with Four Angels and Six Saints (Pala di San Barnaba) (c. 1487-1488) - Tempera on panel, 268 x 280 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Vision of St. Augustine (c. 1488) - Tempera on panel, 20 x 38 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Christ in the Sepulcre (c. 1488) - Tempera on panel, 21 x 41 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (c. 1488) - Tempera on panel, 21 x 40,5 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Extraction of St. Ignatius' Heart (c. 1488) - Tempera on panel, 21 x 40,5 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Cestello Annunciation (1489-1490) - Tempera on panel, 150 x 156 cm, Uffizi, Florence

The Virgin Adoring the Child (c. 1490) - Tempera on panel, diameter 59,6 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Lamentation over the Dead Christ (c. 1490) - Tempera on panel, 140 x 207 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Portrait of a Man (c. 1490) - Tempera on canvas transferred from wood, 49 x 35 cm, Private collection

San Marco Altarpiece (1490-1492) - Tempera on panel, 378 x 258 cm (pala) and 21 x 269 cm (entire predella) Uffizi, Florence

St. Augustine in His Cell (1490-1494) - Tempera on panel, 41 x 27 cm cm, Uffizi, Florence

Madonna and Child and the Young St John the Baptist (1490-1495) - Tempera on canvas, 134 x 92 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Portrait of Lorenzo di Ser Piero Lorenzi (1490-1495) - Tempera on panel, 50 x 36,5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist (1490-1500) - Tempera on wood, diameter 74 cm, São Paulo Art Museum, São Paulo, Brazil

Holy Trinity (Pala delle Convertite) (1491-1493) - Tempera on panel, 215 x192 cm, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London

The Virgin and Child with Three Angels (Madonna del Padiglione) (c. 1493) - Tempera on panel, diameter 65 cm, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

Calumny of Apelles (1494-1495) - Tempera on panel, 62 x 91 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Lamentation over the Dead Christ with Saints (c. 1495) - Tempera on panel, 107 x 71 cm, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Last Communion of St. Jerome (c. 1495) - Tempera on panel, 34,5 x 25,4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Portrait of Dante (c. 1495) - Tempera on canvas, 54,7 x 47,5 cm, Private collection

The Story of Virginia (1496-1504) - Tempera on panel, 85 x 165 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

The Story of Lucretia (1496-1504) - Tempera on panel, 83,5 x 180 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Crucifixion (c. 1497) - Tempera on canvas, 73,5 x 50,8 cm, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge

Christ Crowned with Thorns (c. 1500) - Tempera on panel, 47,6 x 32,3 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, Italy

Transfiguration, St Jerome, St Augustine (c. 1500) - Tempera on panel, 27,5 x 35,5 cm, Galleria Pallavicini, Rome

Judith Leaving the Tent of Holofernes (1495-1500) - Tempera on panel, 36,5 x 20 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Agony in the Garden (c. 1500) - Tempera on panel, 53 x 35 cm]], Capilla Real, Granada

The Mystical Nativity (c. 1500) - Tempera on canvas, 108,5 x 75 cm, National Gallery, London

Baptism of St. Zenobius and His Appointment as Bishop (1500-1505) - Tempera on panel, 66,5 x 149,5 cm, National Gallery, London

Three Miracles of St. Zenobius (1500-1505) - Tempera on panel, 65 x 139,5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Three Miracles of St. Zenobius (1500-1505) - Tempera on panel, 67 x 150,5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Last Miracle and the Death of St. Zenobius (1500-1505) - Tempera on panel, 66 x 182 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore (Venus Anadyomene motif). The painting is currently in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Origins

This large picture by Botticelli may have been, like the Primavera, painted for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici's Villa di Castello, around 1483, or even before. Some scholars suggest that the Venus painted for Lorenzo and mentioned by Giorgio Vasari may have been a different work, now lost.

Some experts believe it to be a celebration of the love of Giuliano di Piero de' Medici (who died in the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478) for Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, who lived in Portovenere, a town by the sea with a local tradition of being the birthplace of Venus. It must be noted that Botticelli himself also privately loved the beautiful Simonetta, who was de' Medici's mistress.

Whatever inspired the artist, there are clear similarities to Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti, as well as to Poliziano's Verses. Simonetta is also believed to have been the model for Venus in this painting, as well as for several other women in other Botticelli works, such as Primavera.

The classical goddess Venus emerges from the water on a shell, blown towards shore by the Zephyrs, symbols of spiritual passions. She is joined by one of the Horae, goddesses of the seasons, who hands her a flowered cloak.

The effect, nonetheless, is distinctly pagan, considering it was made at a time and place when most artworks depicted Roman Catholic themes. It is somewhat surprising that this canvas escaped the flames of Savonarola's bonfires, where a number of Botticelli's other alleged pagan influenced works perished. Botticelli was very close to Lorenzo de Medici. Because of their friendship and Lorenzo's power, this work was spared from Savonarola's fires and the disapproval of the church.

The anatomy of Venus and various subsidiary details do not display the strict classical realism of Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael. Most obviously, Venus has an improbably long neck, and her left shoulder slopes at an anatomically unlikely angle. Such details only enhance the great beauty of the painting, and some have suggested it prefigures mannerism.

Classical inspiration

The painting was one of a series which Botticelli produced, taking as inspiration written descriptions by the 2nd century historian Lucian of masterpieces of Ancient Greece which had long since disappeared.

The ancient painting by Apelles was called Venus Anadyomene, "Anadyomene" meaning "rising from the sea"; this title was also used for Botticelli's painting, The Birth of Venus only becoming its better known title in the 19th century. 'The Birth of Venus' is very similar to Praxiteles' Aphrodite, a statue.

A mural from Pompeii was never seen by Botticelli, but may have been a Roman copy of the then famous painting by Apelles which Lucian mentioned.
In classical antiquity, the sea shell was a metaphor for a woman's vulva.
The pose of Botticelli's Venus is reminiscent of the Venus de Medici, a marble sculpture from classical antiquity in the Medici collection which Botticelli had opportunity to study.

each other on a meadow. Venus is clothed and is attentively keeping watch over Mars as he sleeps. The god of war has taken off his armor and is lying naked on his red cloak; all he is wearing is a white loin cloth.

The goddess of love, who is clothed in a costly gown, is watching over the sleeping naked Mars, while little satyrs are playing mischievously with the weapons and armor of the god of war. Botticelli's theme is that the power of love can defeat the warrior's strength. The boisterous little fauns that form part of the retinue of Bacchus, the god of wine, are depicted by Botticelli, in accordance with ancient tradition, with little goats' legs, horns and tails.

The Triton's shell with which one of the fauns is blowing into Mars' ear was used in classical times as a hunting horn.
The overall layout of the composition is probably inspired by an ancient sarcophagus now in the Vatican Museum. Art from classical antiquity was a major source of inspiration for Renaissance painters.

As paintings did not survive, they used relief sculptures and Ecphrasis, detailed textual descriptions of lost paintings made by classical authors. Relief sculptures tended towards dense figurative compositions in which the characters were all placed in the foreground picture plane, as with the composition of Venus and Mars.

The mischievous little satyrs playing practical jokes nearby were probably suggested by an ecphrasis written by the Greek poet Lucian describing the famous classical painting Wedding of Alexander the Great to the Persian princess Roxane. In the passage, Lucian describes how "two are carrying his spear, as porters do a heavy beam ... another has got into the breast plate, which lies hollow part upwards; he is in ambush".

Botticelli replaced the amoretti which Lucian describes playing with Alexander's weapons with little satyrs. His painting is one of the earliest examples in Renaissance painting to depict these boisterous and lusty hybrids in this form. They are playing with the war god's helmet, lance and cuirass. One of them is cheekily blowing into his ear through a sea shell. But he has as little chance of disturbing the sleeping god as the wasps nest to the right of his head.

The wasps may be a reference to the clients who commissioned the painting. They are part of the coat of arms of the Vespucci family, whose name derives from vespa, Italian for wasp. The dimensions of the painting suggest that it formed part of a cassone, a chest with a painted panel at the back, found in the main bedroom of married couples.
Given that its theme is love, this painting was possibly also commissioned on the occasion of a wedding.

In this way it should exemplify the theories of the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, according to whom the exhortations to virtues are more welcomed if expressed through pleasant images. Ficino was the tutor of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de'Medici, cousin of the more famous Lorenzo de' Medici: a major patron of Botticelli, and part of a humanist circle including the Vespucci family.

As such, he may well have contributed to the composition and the choice of source material in Botticelli's mythological paintings, including this one. In particular, Ficino had an astrological perspective, within which the goddess Venus was associated with the influence of the planet Venus on an individual's character, standing for the qualities of love and humanitas in Renaissnce humanism. I his Commentary on the Symposium: De Amore of Plato, Ficino describes how "Mars stands foremost in strength for he makes men stronger.

Yet Venus masters him ... in conjunction with him, in opposition to him ... often restrains his malignance ... Wherefore she seems to tame and placate Mars. But Mars never masters Venus." If this passage echoes views of Ficino's that influenced the composition of Botticelli's Venus and Mars, it would explain why the character of Venus is depicted as alert and watchfull, whilst that of Mars is in deep slumber, a feature not found in the sarcophagus relief sculpture that may have served as a model for the composition.

An alternative source for the image is the Stanze of Poliziano. Stanze 122 describes how the hero found Venus "seated on the edge of her couch, just then released from the embrace of Mars, who lay on his back in her lap, still feeding his eyes on her face".

Poliziano was in one of the humanist scholars in the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, and his stanze are a famous poem alluding to the prowess of Lorenzo's younger brother Giuliano di Piero de' Medici in the jousting tournament Lorenzo had organized to celebrate a treatise with Venice. However, the description, with Mars in Venus' lap, gazing up at her, is a poor fit to the painting.

The Madonna and Child with an Angel is a panting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, c. 1465-1467. It is housed in Spedale degli Innocenti of Florence.

It is possible that this somewhat awkward painting of the Madonna was produced while Botticelli was still working in the workshop of his teacher, Filippo Lippi. The initial inspiration for the painting came from the latter's famous Madonna in the Uffizi.

Botticelli replaced the landscape with an arched architecture which frames the heads of the mother and child and emphasizes the two main figures as the centre of the devotional scene.

Raphael Sanzio or Raffaello (April 6, 1483 – April 6, 1520) was an Italian master painter and architect of the Florentine school in High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings. He was also called Raffaello Sanzio, Raffaello Santi, Raffaello da Urbino or Rafael Sanzio da Urbino.

Early life and work

Raphael was born in Urbino. The surname Sanzio derives from the latinization of the Italian, Santi, into Santius (also, when signing solely using his baptismal name, "Raphael"). His father, Giovanni Santi, was also a painter in the court of Urbino.
In 1491, his mother Màgia died; his father died on August 1, 1494, having already remarried. Thus orphaned at eleven,

Raphael was entrusted to his uncle Bartolomeo, a priest. He had already shown talent, according to Giorgio Vasari - he tells that since childhood Raphael had been "a great help to his father". His father's workshop continued and probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. He is described as a "master" in 1501.

In Urbino he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello and Luca Signorelli. According to Vasari, his father placed him in Umbrian master Pietro Perugino's workshop as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother"; the subsequent influence of Perugino on Raphael's early work is most obvious. The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari, and has been disputed.

But most modern historians agree that Raphael worked as an assistant to Perugino around 1500.
His first documented work was an altarpiece for the church of San Nicola of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. It was ordered in 1500 and finished in 1501 (it was later seriously damaged during an earthquake in 1789 and today only fragments of it remain). In the following years he painted works for other churches there (like the Wedding of the Virgin, today in the Brera) and for Perugia.

Florentine period

Moving to Florence when he was around 20, he was exposed to Leonardo da Vinci, "whom he never ceased to admire as a mentor and father figure", and to Michelangelo, just eight years his senior, "with whom he later had a stormy and competitive relationship." (Leonardo died in 1519, one year before Raphael, but Michelangelo lived until 1564.) Raphael learned from both men, but while he made use of their exploration of human anatomy, he added sentiment to his paintings.

Raphael's time in Florence was very productive and the influences of Leonardo and Michelangelo (who were working on the Mona Lisa and David, respectively, at the time) is unmistakeable. At the time, Raphael's paintings bore "a strong Da Vinci influence with its pyramidal composition, contour, balance and interplay of light and dark (chiaroscuro) and sfumato (extremely fine, soft shading instead of line to delineate forms and features)," while others reveal a Michelangelic inspiration.

Roman period
At the end of 1508, he moved to Rome (at the urging of Donato Bramante, the architect of St. Peter's) and was immediately commissioned by Julius II to paint some of the rooms at his palace at the Vatican. This marked a turning point - he was only twenty-five years old, an artist in formation, and had not received commissions of such importance and prestige.

He well exploited the situation, and remained almost exclusively in the service of Julius and his successor Leo X. At the time, he painted "a series of frescoes in the papal apartments" as well as those of the "Stanza della Segnatura, which include his vast School of Athens." Similar to Michelangelo, Raphael also included the likeness of his peers in his frescos.

So much so that Michelangelo (who was working on the Sistine Chapel at the time) accused Raphael of perceived plagarism and years after Raphael's death, complained in a letter that "everything he knew about art he got from me."

In 1514 (following Bramante's death), he was named architect of the new St Peter's . Much of his work there was altered or demolished after his death, but he designed other buildings, and for a short time was both the most important architect and painter in Rome. In 1515 he was entrusted with the preservation and recording of the Vatican collections of ancient sculpture.

After his arrival in Rome, he devoted his efforts to the great Vatican projects, although he still painted portraits of his two main patrons, the popes Julius II and his successor Leo X, the latter portrait considered one of his finest.

One of his most important papal commissions was the Raphael Cartoons (now Victoria and Albert Museum), a series of 10 cartoons for tapestries with scenes of the lives of Saint Paul and Saint Peter, intended as wall decoration for the Sistine Chapel. The cartoons were sent to Bruxelles to be sewn in the workshop of Pier van Aelst; the first three tapestries were sent to Rome in 1519. It is possible that Raphael saw the finished series before his death — they were completed in 1520 for Leo X.

Raphael, who in Rome lived in Borgo, never married, but it appears that in 1514 he was engaged to Maria Bibbiena (cardinal Medici Bibbiena's niece); she died in 1520. The other woman in his life was La Fornarina, a beauty named Margherita, the daughter of a baker (fornaro) named Francesco Luti from Siena who lived at via del Governo Vecchio. Art historians and doctors debate whether the right hand on the left breast in La Fornarina reveal a cancerous breast tumour detailed and disguised in a classic pose of love.

According to Vasari, his premature death on Good Friday (April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday) was caused by a night of excessive sex with her, after which he fell into a fever and, not telling his doctors that this was its cause, was given the wrong cure, which killed him. Whatever the cause, in his acute illness Raphael had the wit to receive the last rites, and put his affairs in order.

He took the care to dictate his will, in which he left sufficient funds for her care, entrusted to his loyal servant Bavera. Vasari underlines that Raphael was also born on a Good Friday, in 1483, on 27 or 28 March. At his request, he was buried in the Pantheon.

Printmaking

Raphael made no prints himself, but entered into a collaboration with Marcantonio Raimondi to produce engravings to Raphael's designs, which created many of the most famous Italian prints of the century, and was important in the rise of the reproductive print. A total of about fifty prints were made; some were copies of Raphael's paintings, but other designs were apparently created only to be made into prints.

Raphael made preparatory drawings, many of which survive, for Raimondi to translate into engraving. The two most famous original prints to result from the collaboration were Lucretia and The Massacre of the Innocents. Outside Italy, reproductive prints by Raimondi and others were the main way that Raphael's art was experienced until the twentieth century.

Legacy

The inscription in his marble sarcophagus, a distichon written by Pietro Bembo, reads: "Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori." Meaning: "Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be outdone while he lived, and when he died, feared herself to die."

Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries. When compared to Michelangelo and Titian, he was sometimes considered inferior; at the same time, it was maintained that none of them shared all the qualities possessed by Raphael, "ease" in particular.

Chronology of main works
Early works

Resurrection of Christ (The Kinnaird Resurrection) (1499-1502) - Oil on wood, 52 x 44 cm, São Paulo Art Museum, São Paulo, Brazil

Angel (fragment of the Baronci Altarpiece) (1500-1501) - Oil on wood, 31 x 27 cm, Pinacoteca Civica Tosio Martinengo, Brescia, Italy

Angel (fragment of the Baronci Altarpiece) (1500-1501) - Oil on wood, 57 x 36 cm, Louvre, Paris

Holy Family with Madonna of the Veil (1500-1510) - Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

St. Sebastian (1501-1502) - Oil on wood, 43 x 34 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
The Crowning of the Virgin (Oddi Altar) (c. 1501-1503) - Oil on canvas, 267 x 163 cm, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican, Rome

The Annunciation (Oddi Altar, predella) (c. 1501-1503) - Oil on canvas, 27 x 50 cm, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican, Rome

The Adoration of the Magi (Oddi Altar) (c. 1501-1503) - Oil on canvas, 27 x 150 cm, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican, Rome

The Presentation in the Temple (Oddi Altar, predella) (c. 1501-1503) - Oil on canvas, 27 x 50 cm, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican, Rome

Madonna Solly (Madonna with the Child) (1500-1504) - Oil on tablet, 53 x 38 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Mond Crucifixion (Città di Castello Altarpiece) (1501-1503) - Oil on wood, 281 x 165 cm, National Gallery, London

Three Graces (c. 1501-1505) - Musée Condé, Chantilly, France

St. Michael (c. 1501) - Louvre, Paris

Portrait of a Man (c. 1502) - Oil on wood, 45 x 31 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome

Connestabile Madonna (1502-1503) - Tempera on wood, 17,5 x 18 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Madonna and Child (1503) - Oil on wood, 55 x 40 cm, Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena

The Marriage of the Virgin (1504) - Oil on roundheaded panel, 174 x 121 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Vision of a Knight (1504) - Egg tempera on poplar, 17.1 x 17.1 cm, National Gallery, London

St. George (1504) - Oil on tablet, 31 x 27 cm, Louvre, Paris

Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints (Colonna Altarpiece), (1504-1505) - Tempera and gold on wood, 172,4 x 172,4 cm (main panel), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Portrait of Perugino (c. 1504) - Tempera on wood, 57 x 42 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Florentine period

Portrait of Elisabetta Gonzaga (c. 1504) - Oil on wood, 52,9 x 37,4 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Portrait of Pietro Bembo (c. 1504) - Oil on wood, 54 x 69 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Self-portrait (1504-1506) -

Madonna of the Grand Duke (c. 1505) - Oil on wood, 84 x 55 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

The Ansidei Madonna (The Madonna between St. John Baptist and St. Nicholas of Bari) (c. 1505-1506) - Oil on poplar, 274 x 152 cm, National Gallery, London

Young Man with an Apple (1505) - Oil on wood, 47 x 35 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Christ Blessing (1505) - Oil on wood, 30 x 25 cm, Pinacoteca Civica Tosio Martinengo, Brescia, Italy

Madonna Terranova (1504-1505) - Oil on wood, 87 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1505) - Uffizi, Florence

Madonna del Prato (The Madonna of the Meadow) (c. 1505) – Oil on wood, 113 x 88 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

St. George and the Dragon (1505-1506) - Oil on wood, 28.5 x 21.5 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

La Donna Gravida (1505-1506) - Oil on wood, 66 x 52 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Portrait of Agnolo Doni (1505-1507) - Oil on wood, 63 x 45 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Portrait of Maddalena Doni (1505-1507) - Oil on wood, 63 x 45 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Madonna of the Pinks (1506)

Young Woman with Unicorn (1506, disputed) - Oil on canvas, 65 x 51 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome

Madonna with Beardless St. Joseph (1506) - Tempera on canvas transferred from wood, 74 x 57 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Saint Catherine of Alexandria (1507) - Oil on wood, 72 x 55 cm, National Gallery, London

Canigiani Holy Family (1507) - Oil on wood, 132 x98 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

La belle jardinière (1507) - Louvre, Paris

The Deposition of Christ (The Entombment) (1507-1508) - Oil on wood, 184 x 176 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome

The Three Theological Virtues (tryptic) (1507) - Oil on wood, 16 x 44 cm (each), Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican, Rome

Portrait of a Young Woman (La Muta) (1507-1508) - Oil on wood, 64 x 48 cm, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino

The Tempi Madonna (Madonna with the Child) (1508) - Alte Pinakothek, Munich

La Madonna de Bogota (Madonna with the Child) (1507) - NY Bank Volt, New York
Roman period

Portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1509-1511) - Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

La disputa (1509-1510) - Fresco, width at base 770 cm, Vatican, Rome

The School of Athens (1509-1510) - Fresco, width at base 770 cm, Vatican, Rome

Madonna of Loreto (Madonna del Velo) (1509-1510) - Oil on wood, 120 x 90 cm, Musée Condé, Chantilly, France

Aldobrandini Madonna (1510) - Oil on wood, 38,7 x 32,7 cm, National Gallery, London

Madonna with the Blue Diadem (1510-1511) - Oil on wood, 68 x 44 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Portrait of a Cardinal (1510-1511) - Oil on wood, 79 x 61 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Alba Madonna (1511) - Oil on canvas, diameter 98 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Parnassus (1511) - Fresco, width at base 670 cm, Vatican, Rome

The Cardinal Virtues (1511) - Fresco, width at base 660 cm, Vatican, Rome

Portrait of Pope Julius II (1511-1512) - Oil on wood, 108 x 80,7 cm, National Gallery, London

The Prophet Isaiah (1511-1512) - Fresco, 250 x 155 cm, Sant'Agostino, Rome

The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple (1511-1512) - Fresco, width at base 750 cm, Vatican, Rome

Portrait of Pope Julius II (1512) - Oil on wood, 108,5 x 80 cm, Uffizi, Florence

The Madonna of Foligno (1511-1512) - Oil on wood, 320 x 194 cm, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican, Rome

The Triumph of Galatea (1511-1513) - Fresco, 295 x 224 cm, Villa Farnesina, Rome

Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami (1512-1514) - Boston

Sistine Madonna (c. 1513-1516) - Oil on canvas, 265 x 196 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Madonna della seggiola (Madonna with the Child and Young St. John) (1513-1514) - Oil on wood, diameter 71 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Madonna dell'Impannata (1513-1514) - Oil on wood, 158 x 125 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Madonna della tenda (1514) - Oil on wood, 65,8 x 51,2 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The Fire in the Borgo (1514) - Fresco, width at base 670 cm, Vatican, Rome

The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila (1514) - Fresco, width at base 750 cm, Vatican, Rome

Deliverance of Saint Peter (1514) - Fresco, width at base 660 cm, Vatican, Rome

Portrait of Bindo Altoviti (c. 1514) - Oil on tablet, 60 x 44 cm - National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Sibyls (1514) - Fresco, width at base 615 cm,Santa Maria della Pace, Rome

The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia (1514-1516) - Oil on wood, 220 x 136 cm, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna

Portrait of Balthasar Castiglione (c. 1515) - Oil on canvas, 82 x 67 cm, Louvre, Paris

Woman with a Veil (La Donna Velata) (1515-1516) - Oil on canvas, 82 x 60,5 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami (1515-1516) - Oil on wood, 91 x 61 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila in Borgo (c. 1515-1517) - Destroyed

Portrait of Andrea Navagero and Agostino Beazzano (1516) -

Portrait of Cardinal Bibbiena (c. 1516) - Oil on canvas, 85 x 66,3 cm , Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Double Portrait (c. 1516) - Oil on canvas, 77 x 111 cm , Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome

Church of Sant'Eligio degli Orefici near Via Giulia (c. 1516)

Creation of the World (1516) - Mosaic in the Chigi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo

Transfiguration (1517-c. 1520) - Oil on wood, 405 x 278 cm, Vatican Museum, Rome

Portrait of Pope Leo X with two Cardinals (1517-1518) - Oil on wood, 155 x 118 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary (1516-1517) - Oil on panel transferred to canvas, 318 x 229 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Holy Family of Francis I (1518) - Louvre, Paris

Ezechiel’s Vision (1518) – Oil on wood, 40 x 29 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

St. Michael Vanquishing Satan (1518) - Louvre, Paris

Madonna of the Rose (1518) - Oil on wood, Luke Brugnara Collection

Self-portrait with a Friend (1518-1519) - Oil on canvas, 99 x 83 cm, Louvre, Paris

Portrait of a Young Woman (La fornarina) (1518-1519) - Oil on wood, 85 x 60 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

Visitation - Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Three Graces (c. 1501-1505) is a small picture by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. It is housed in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.

The figurative powers which Raphael developed in Florence led to a more synthetic conception of form, a refinement of intellectual expression, which are visible in the paintings of Knight's Dream and the Three Graces.

Critics believe that the two panels may have formed a single diptych presented to Scipione di Tommaso Borghese at his birth, in 1493. The theme of the paintings may by

drawn from the Latin poem Punica by Silius Italicus, which was well known in antiquity and which humanistic culture restored to fame. In the first panel, Scipio, the sleeping knight, must choose between Venus (pleasure) and Minerva (virtue); in the second, the Graces reward his choice of virtue with the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. Classical themes were treasured by contemporary Florentine patrons. The composition, which is dominated by a sense of great harmony.

Three Graces are the personification of grace and beauty and the attendants of several goddesses. In art they are often the handmaidens of Venus, sharing several of her attributes such as the rose, myrtle, apple and dice. Their names according to Hesiod (Theogony 905) were Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia. They are typically grouped so that the two outer figures face the spectator, the one in the middle facing away. This was their antique form, known and copied by the Renaissance.

The group has been the subject of much allegorising in different ages. Seneca (De Beneficiis, l.3:2) described them as smiling maidens, nude or transparently clothed, who stood for the threefold aspect of generosity, the giving, receiving and returning of gifts, or benefits: ut una sit quae det beneficium, altera quae accipiat, tertia quae reddat.

The Florentine humanist philosophers of the 15th century saw them as three phases of love: beauty, arousing desire, leading to fulfillment; alternatively as the personification of Chastity, Beauty and Love, perhaps with the inscription "Castitas, Pulchritudo, Amor."

The Three Graces is Raphael's first study of the female nude in both front and back views. It was probably not based on living models, however, but either directly, or indirectly, on the classical sculpture group of the Three Graces in the Piccolomini Library of the Duomo of Siena.

Also see three other versions:
Francesco Cossa's panel in Allegory of April (c 1450)
Botticelli's classic evocation (1482) in Primavera
Jacopo Pontormo's later mid 16th century mannerist treatment.

St. George or St. George and the Dragon is a small painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It is housed in the Louvre in Paris. A later version of the same subject is the St. George in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

St. George and the Dragon

Is a small cabinet painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael, 1504-1506.
The St. Michael and St. George and the Dragon in the Louvre, and this St. George of the National Gallery of Washington, are bound together both by their subject - an

armed youth fighting a dragon - and by stylistic elements. All three are assigned to the Florentine period of Raphael and echo those stimuli which the Urbinate received from the great masters who worked in Florence or whose paintings were visible there.

The influence of Leonardo - whose fighting warriors from the Battle of Anghiari (1505) in the Palazzo della Signoria provided an extraordinary example of martial art (the painting deteriorated very rapidly because of shortcomings in Leonardo's experimental technique and so is no longer visible) - predominates in these works.

But references to Flemish painting - particularly that of Hieronymus Bosch (the glaring light and humanoid monsters which populate the St. Michael are characteristic of Bosch) - suggest the environment of Urbino, where Northern influences were still quite vivid.

These small panels are indicative of a moment in which the painter gathers the stylistic fruits of what he has assimilated so far and, at the same time, poses pictorial problems which will be developed in the future.

The painting used to be a highlight of the Pierre Crozat collection which was acquired through Diderot's mediation by Catherine II of Russia in 1772. For a century and a half, the panel hang in the Imperial Hermitage Museum. It was one of the most popular paintings in the entire collection of the Tsars. In March 1931 the Bolsheviks sold the painting to Andrew Mellon, who ceded it to the Washington gallery.

Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi; c. 1386 – December 13, 1466) was a famous early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence. He became well recognized for his creation of the shallow relief style of sculpting, which made the sculpture seem much deeper than it actually was.

Early years

Donatello was the son of Niccolo di Betto Bardi, who was a member of the Florentine Wool Combers Guild, and was born in Florence, most likely in 1386.

Donatello was educated in the house of the Martelli family. He received his first training (according to the custom of the period) in a goldsmith's workshop, and then he worked for a brief time in Lorenzo Ghiberti's studio.

While doing studies and excavations with Filippo Brunelleschi in Rome (1404-1407), which gained them the reputation of treasure seekers, the two men made a living by working at the goldsmiths' shops.

This Roman sojourn was decisive for the entire development of Italian art in the 15th century, for it was during this period that Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome and of other Roman buildings. Brunelleschi's buildings and Donatello's monuments are considered the supreme expressions of the spirit of this era in architecture and sculpture, and exercised a potent influence upon the painters of the age.

Work in Florence

In Florence, Donatello assisted Lorenzo Ghiberti with the statues of prophets for the north door of the Battistero di San Giovanni, for which he received payment in November 1406 and early 1408. In 1409-1411 he executed the colossal seated figure of Saint John the Evangelist, which until 1588 occupied a niche of the old cathedral facade, and is now placed in a dark chapel of the Duomo.

This work marks a decisive step forward from late-Gothic Mannerism in the search for naturalism and the rendering of human feelings. The face, the shoulders and the bust are still idealized, while the hands and the pannings over the legs are more realistic.
In 1411-1413 Donatello worked on a statue of St. Mark for the church of Orsanmichele. In 1417 he completed a St. George for the confraternity of the Cuirass-makers. The bas-relief on the statue's base, in stiacciato, or low relief, is one of the first examples of central perspective.

From 1423 is the St. Louis of Toulouse, now in the Museum of the Basilica di Santa Croce. Donatello had also sculpted a tabernacle for the work, but it was sold in 1460 to house the Incredulity of St. Thomas by Verrocchio.

From 1415 and 1426 he executed five statues for the campanile of Florence's Duomo. These are the Beardless Prophet, Bearded Prophet (both from 1415), the Sacrifice of Isaac (1421), Habacuc (1423-1425) and Jeremy (1423-1426), which follow the classic model for orators, and are characterized by a strong portrait detail. From 1422 is the Madonna Pazi, now in Berlin.

In 1425 he executed the notable Crucifix for Santa Croce, which portrays Christ in the exact moment of the agony, eyes and mouth partially opened, the body contracted in an ungraceful posture.

In 1425-1427 Donatello collaborated with Michelozzo on the funerary monument of Antipope John XXIII for the Battistero. Surely by Donatello is the bronze figure of the lying dead, under a shell. In 1427, he finished in Pisa a marble panel for the funerary monument of cardinal Rainaldo Brancacci at the church of Sant'Angelo a Nilo in Naples.

In the same period he executed the relief of the Feast of Herod and the statues of Faith and Hope for the Baptistry of Siena. The relief is mostly in stiacciato, while the foreground figures are done in bas-relief.

Major commissions in Florence

Around 1430 Cosimo de' Medici, the greatest art patron of his time, commissioned from him the bronze David (now in the Bargello) for the court of his Palazzo Medici, which is his most famous work. At the time of its creation, it was the first free-standing nude statue since ancient times.

Conceived fully in the round and independent of any architectural surroundings, and largely an allegory of the civic virtues triumphing over brutality and irrationality, it was the first major work of Renaissance sculpture. Also from this period is the disquietingly small Love-Atys, housed in the Bargello.

When Cosimo was exiled from Florence, Donatello went to Rome to drink for the second time at the source of classical art, remaining until 1433. The two works which still testify to his presence in this city, the Tomb of Giovanni Crivelli at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and the Ciborium at St. Peter's Basilica, bear the stamp of classic influence.

Donatello's return to Florence almost coincides with Cosimo's. In May 1434, he signed a contract for the marble pulpit on the facade of Prato cathedral, the last work executed in collaboration with Michelozzo, a veritable bacchanalian dance of half-nude putti, pagan in spirit, passionate in its wonderful rhythmic movement, the forerunner of the (cantoria) singing tribune for Florence cathedral, at which he worked intermittently from 1433 to 1440.

This work was inspired to ancient sarcophagi and ivory Byzantine chests. In 1435 he executed the Annunciation for the Cavalcanti altar in Santa Croce, inspired to 14th century iconography. In 1437-1443 he worked to the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence, with two doors and lunettes portraying saints, as well as eight stucco tondoes.

From 1438 is the wooden statue of St. John the Evangelist for Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. Around 1440 he executed a bust of Young with Cameo now in the Bargello, the first example of lay bust from Classic times.

In Padua

In 1443 Donatello was called to Padua by the heirs of the famous condottiero Erasmo da Narni, who had died that year. Completed in 1450 and placed in the square facing the Basilica of St. Anthony, his statue of Erasmo (better known as Gattamelata) is the first example of such an equestrian monument since ancient times (other similar statues from the 14th century were not in bronze and were placed over tombs); this work became the prototype for equestrian monuments executed in Italy and Europe in the following centuries.

For the Basilica of St. Anthony Donatello realized the Choir precinct and a bronze Crucifix. From 1446 to 1450 he also executed seven statues for the high altar area, portraying the Madonna with Child and six saints, constituting a Holy Conversation which is no longer visible since the recomposition by Camillo Boito in 1895.

The Madonna with Child portrays the Child being displayed to the faithful, on a throne flanked by two sphinxes, allegorical figures of knowledge. On the throne's back is a relief of Adam and Eve. Donatello also executed four reliefs with scenes from the life of St. Anthony.

Last years in Florence

Donatello returned to Florence in 1453.
Until 1456 he worked at a wooden Mary Magdalene now the in the Duomo's museum, a piece of espressionistic rendering, characterized by meagerness of the body, the face marked by fatigue and pain.

From 1455-1460 dates the group with Judith and Holofernes, begun for the Duomo di Siena but later acquired by the Medici.
Until 1461 he remained in Siena, where he realized a St. John the Baptist, also for the Duomo, and models for its gates, now lost.

For his last commission in Florence Donatello produced the bronze pulpits for San Lorenzo, with help from Bartolomeo Bellano and Bertoldo di Giovanni (Donatello provided the gobal design, and excuted personally the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence and the Deposition from the Cross, and the relief with Christ next to Pilatus and Christus next to Caifa, with Bellano).

It is characterized by a renovated religious spirit, which heightens the dramatic appearance of the figures. Donatello used the non finito technique to enhance this effect.
He died in Florence in 1466, and was buried in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, next to Cosimo the Elder.

Habakkuk or Havakuk (Hebrew: ?????????, Standard ?avaqquq Tiberian ?a?aqqûq) was a prophet in the Hebrew Bible. The etymology of the name of Habakkuk is not clear. The name is possibly related to the Akkadian khabbaququ, the name of a fragrant plant, or the Hebrew root ???, meaning "embrace".

He was the eighth of the twelve minor prophets and likely the author of the Book of Habakkuk, which bears his name.
Practically nothing is known about Habakkuk's personal history, except for what can be inferred from the text of his book, which consists of five oracles about the Chaldeans (Babylonians) and a song of praise to God.

Since the Chaldean rise to power is dated c. 612 BC, it is assumed he was active about that time, making him an early contemporary of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. Jewish sources, however, do not group him with those two prophets, who are often placed together, so it is possible that he was slightly earlier than they.

Because the final chapter of his book is a song, it is sometimes assumed in Jewish tradition that he was a member of the tribe of Levi, which served as musicians in Solomon's Temple.

Habakkuk is unique among the prophets in that he openly questions the wisdom of God. In the first part of the first chapter, the Prophet sees the injustice among his people and asks why God does not take action: "1:2 Yahweh, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you

'Violence!' and will you not save?" - (World English Bible).
A mausoleum in the city of Toyserkan in the west of Iran is believed to be Habakkuk's burial place.

It is protected by Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization. The Organization's guide to the Hamedan Province states that Habakkuk was believed to be a guardian to the Temple of Solomon, and that he was captured by the Babylonians and remained in their prison for some years.

After being freed by Cyrus the Great, he went to Ecbatana and remained there until he died, and was buried somewhere nearby, in what is today Toyserkan.
On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, his feast day is December 2. He is commemorated with the other Minor prophets in the Calendar of saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 31.

The half-length relief shows that Donatello could express tenderness and intimacy. Its youthful style, seen in details like the baby's foreshortened foot, suggests a date in the 1420s or 1430s.

Its melancholy and idealized types are indebted to ancient sculpture like Greek "stelai". The Madonna gazes penetratingly into her son's eyes, foreseeing his death.

The seemingly casual yet powerful genre scene is carved with economy - the haloes have been eliminated, an innovation not generally adopted until the next century. The relief was meant to be seen from below, revealing Donatello's interest in the spectator's point of view.

Fra Angelico, (c. 1395 - February 18, 1455) was an Early Italian Renaissance painter, referred to in Vasari's Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent".
Known in Italy as il Beato Angelico, he was known to his contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Brother John from Fiesole).

In Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, written prior to 1555, he is already known as Fra Giovanni Angelico (Brother Giovanni the Angelic One).

Within his lifetime or shortly thereafter he was also called Il Beato (the Blessed), in reference to his skills in painting religious subjects. In 1982 Pope John Paul II conferred beatification, thereby making this title official. Fiesole is

sometimes misinterpreted as being part of his formal name, but it was merely the name of the town where he took his vows, used by contemporaries to separate him from other Fra Giovannis.

He is listed in the Roman Martyrology as "Beatus Ioannes Faesulanus, cognomento Angelicus" - "Blessed Giovanni of Fiesole, nicknamed Angelico".
The 16th century biographer Vasari says of him:
"But it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety."

Biography: Early life, 1395-1436

Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro, at Rupecanina, in the Tuscan area of Mugello, near Fiesole towards the end of the 14th century and died in Rome in 1455. Nothing is known of his parents. He was baptized Guido or Guidolino. The earliest recorded document concerning Fra Angelico dates from Oct. 17, 1417 when he joined a religious confraternity at the Carmine, still under the name of Guido di Pietro.

This record also reveals that he was already a painter, a fact that is subsequently confirmed by two records of payment to Guido di Pietro in January and February of 1418 for work done in the church of Santo Stefano del Ponte. The first record of Angelico as a friar dates from 1423, when he is first referred to as Fra Giovanni, following the custom of those in Holy Orders of taking a new name. He was a member of the Observant Branch of the Dominican Order at Fiesole.

Fra Angelico initially received training as an illuminator, possibly working with his older brother Benedetto who was also a Dominican. His illumination tutor is unknown. San Marco in Florence holds several manuscripts that are thought to be entirely or partly by his hand.

The painter Lorenzo Monaco may have contributed to his art training, and the influence of the Sienese school is discernible in his work. He had several important charges in the convents he lived in, but this did not limit his art, which very soon became famous. According to Vasari, the first paintings of this artist were an altarpiece and a painted screen for the Carthusian Monastery of Florence; none such exist there now.

From 1408 to 1418 Fra Angelico was at the Dominican Convent of Cortona where he painted frescoes, now destroyed, in the Dominican Church and may have been assistant to or follower of Gherardo Starnina.

Between 1418 and 1436 he was at the convent of Fiesole where he also executed a number of frescoes for the church, and the Altarpiece, deteriorated but restored. A predella of the Altarpiece remains intact in the National Gallery, London which is a superb example of Fra Angelico's ability. It shows Christ in Glory, surrounded by more than 250 figures, including beatified Dominicans.

San Marco, Florence, 1436-1445

In 1436 Fra Angelico was one of a number of the monks from Fiesole who moved to the newly-built monastery of San Marco in Florence. This was an important move which put him in the centre of artistic activity of the region and brought about the patronage of one of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the city's Signoria, Cosimo de' Medici, who had a large cell (later occupied by Savonarola) reserved for himself at the monastery in order that he might retreat from the world.

It was, according to Vasari, at Cosimo's urging that Fra Angelico set about the task of decorating the monastery, including the magnificent Chapter House fresco, the often-reproduced Annunciation at the top of the stairs to the cells, the Maesta with Saints and the many smaller devotional frescoes depicting aspects of the Life of Christ that adorn the walls of each cell.

In 1439 he completed one of his most famous works, the Altarpiece for St. Marco's, Florence. The result was unusual for its times. Images of the enthroned Madonna and Child surrounded by saints were common, but they usually depicted a setting that was clearly heavenlike, in which saints and angels hovered about as divine presences rather than people.

But in this instance, the saints stand squarely within the space, grouped in a natural way as if they were able to converse about the shared experience of witnessing the Virgin in glory. Paintings such as this, known as Sacred Conversations, were to become the major commissions of Giovanni Bellini, Perugino and Raphael.

The Vatican, 1445-1455

In 1445 Pope Eugenius IV summoned him to Rome to paint the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at St Peter's, later demolished by Pope Paul III. Vasari claims that at this time Fra Angelico was offered by Pope Nicholas V the Archbishopric of Florence, and that he refused it, recommending another Friar for the position.

While the story seems possible and even likely, if Vasari's date is correct, then the pope must have been Eugenius and not Nicholas. In 1447 Fra Angelico was in Orvieto with his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, executing works for the Cathedral. Among his other pupils were Zanobi Strozzi.

From 1447 to 1449 he was back at the Vatican, designing the frescoes for the Niccoline Chapel for Nicholas V. The scenes from the lives of the two martyred Deacons of the Early Christian Church, St. Stephen and St. Lawrence may have been exectuted wholly or in part by assistants. The small chapel, with its brightly frescoed walls and gold leaf decorations gives the impression of a jewel box.

From 1449 until 1452, Fra Angelico was back at his old convent of Fiesole, where he was the Prior. In 1455 he was staying at a Dominican Convent in Rome, perhaps in order to work on Pope Nicholas' Chapel. It was there that he died, his body being buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. The Pope said:
"Angelico was reported to say "He who does Christ's work must stay with Christ always". This motto earned him the epithet "Blessed Angelico", because of the perfect integrity of his life and the almost divine beauty of the images he painted, to a superlative extent those of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

W.M.Rossetti writes:

"From various accounts of Fra Angelico's life, it is possible to gain some sense of why he was deserving of canonization. He led the devout and ascetic life of a Dominican friar, and never rose above that rank; he followed the dictates of the order in caring for the poor; he was always good-humored.

All of his many paintings were of divine subjects, and it seems that he never altered or retouched them, perhaps from a religious conviction that, because his paintings were divinely inspired, they should retain their original form. He was wont to say that he who illustrates the acts of Christ should be with Christ. It is averred that he never handled a brush without fervent prayer and he wept when he painted a Crucifixion. The Last Judgment and the Annunciation were two of the subjects he most frequently treated."

Epitaph

The words engraved on Fra Angelico's tomb translate as

When singing my praise, don't liken my talents to those of Apelles.
Say, rather, that, in the name of Christ, I gave all I had to the poor.
The deeds that count on Earth are not the ones that count in Heaven.
I, Giovanni, am the flower of Tuscany.

Liqueur

Fra Angelico's fame has been commemorated by the Italian hazelnut liqueur Frangelico, which is named in his honour. It is shipped in a bottle shaped like a monk's habit with a rope belt round the waist.

Evaluation

Fra Angelico was working at a time when the style of painting was in a state of change. This process of change had begun a hundred years previous with the works of Giotto and several of his contemporaries, notably Giusto de' Menabuoi, both of whom had created their major works in Padua, although Giotto was trained in Florence by the great Gothic artist, Cimabue, and painted a fresco cycle of St Francis in the Bardi Chapel in Santa Croce. Giotto had many enthusiastic followers, who imitated his style in fresco, some of them, notably the Lorenzetti, achieving great success.

Patronage

The patrons of these artists were most often monastic establishments or wealthy families endowing a church. Because the paintings often had devotional purpose, the clients tended to be conservative. Frequently, it would seem, the wealthier the client, the more conservative the painting. There was a very good reason for this. The paintings that were commissioned made a statement about the patron.

Thus the more gold leaf it displayed, the more it spoke to the patron’s glory. The other valuable commodities in the paint-box were lapis lazuli and vermilion. Paint made from these colours did not lend itself to a tonal treatment. The azure blue made of powdered lapis lazuli went on flat, the depth and brilliance of colour being, like the gold leaf, a sign of the patron’s ability to provide well. For these reasons, altarpieces are often much more conservatively painted than frescoes, which were often of almost life-sized figures and relied upon a stage-set quality rather than lavish display in order to achieve effect.

Contemporaries

Fra Angelico was the contemporary of Gentile da Fabriano. Gentile’s altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, 1423, in the Uffizi is regarded as one of the greatest works of the style known as International Gothic. At the time it was painted, another young artist, known as Masaccio, was working on the frescoes for the Brancacci Chapel at the church of the Carmine.

Masaccio had fully grasped the implications of the art of Giotto. Few painters in Florence saw his sturdy, life-like and emotional figures and were not affected by them. His work partner was an older painter, Masolino, of the same generation as Fra Angelico. Sadly Masaccio died at 27, leaving the work unfinished.

Altarpieces

The works of Fra Angelico reveal elements that are both conservatively Gothic and progressively Renaissance. In the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin, painted for the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella, we see all the elements that a very expensive altarpiece of the 14th century was expected to provide- a precisely tooled gold background, lots of azure, lots of vermilion and an obvious display of arsenic green.

Frescoes

The series of frescoes that Fra Angelico painted for the Dominican Brothers at San’ Marcos realise the advancements made by Masaccio and carry them further. Away from the constraints of wealthy clients and the limitations of panel painting, Fra Angelico was able to express his deep reverence for his God and his knowledge and love of humanity. The meditational frescoes in the cells of the convent have a quieting quality about them. They are humble works in simple colours.

There is more mauvish-pink than there is red while the brilliant and expensive blue is almost totally lacking. In its place is dull green and the black and white of Dominican robes. There is nothing lavish, nothing to distract from the spiritual experiences of the humble people who are depicted within the frescoes. Each one has the effect of bringing an incident of the life of Christ into the presence of the viewer. They are like windows into a parallel world. These frescoes remain a powerful witness to the piety of the man who created them.

It may have been Cosimo de' Medici who inspired Fra Angelico to create these remarkable works. If so, he did not let his wealthy patronage influence the Friar’s artistic expression.
Masaccio ventured into perspective with his creation of a realistically painted niche at Santa Maria Novella. Subsequently, Fra Angelico demonstrated an understanding of linear perspective particularly in his Annunciation paintings set inside the sort of arcades that Michelozzo and Brunelleschi created at San’ Marco’s and the square in front of it.

Lives of the Saints

When Fra Angelico and his assistants went to the Vatican to decorate the chapel of Pope Nicholas, then the artist was again confronted with the need to please the very wealthiest of clients. In consequence, walking into the small chapel is like stepping into a jewel box. The walls are decked with the brilliance of colour and gold that one sees in the most lavish creations of the Gothic painter Simone Martini at the Lower Church of St Francis of Assisi, a hundred years earlier.

Yet Fra Angelico has succeeded in creating designs which continue to reveal his own preoccupation with humanity, with humility and with piety. The figures, in their lavish gilded robes, have the sweetness and gentleness for which his works are famous.

According to Vasari:

"In their bearing and expression, the saints painted by Fra Angelico come nearer to the truth than the figures done by any other artist."
It is probable that much of the actual painting was done by his assistants to his design. Both Benozzo Gozzoli and Gentile da Fabriano were highly accomplished painters. Benozzo took his art further towards the fully developed Renaissance style with his expressive and life-like portraits in his masterpiece of the Journey of the Magi, painted in the Medici’s private chapel at their palazzo.

Artistic legacy

Through Fra Angelico's pupil Benozzo Gozzoli’s careful portraiture and technical expertise in the art of fresco we see a link to Ghirlandaio, who in turn painted extensive schemes for the wealthy patrons of Florence, and through Ghirlandaio to his pupil Michelangelo and the High Renaissance.

Apart from the lineal connection, superficially there may seem little to link the humble priest with his sweetly pretty Madonnas and timeless Crucifixions to the dynamic expressions of Michelangelo’s larger-than-life creations. But both these artists received their most important commissions from the wealthiest and most powerful of all patrons, the Vatican.

When Michelangelo took up the Sistine Chapel commission, he was working within a space that had already been extensively decorated by other artists. Around the walls the Life of Christ and Life of Moses were depicted by a range of artists including his teacher Ghirlandaio, Raphael’s teacher Perugino and Botticelli.

They were works of large scale and exactly the sort of lavish treatment to be expected in a Vatican commission, vying with each other in complexity of design, number of figures, elaboration of detail and skilful use of gold leaf. Above these works stood a row of painted Popes in brilliant brocades and gold tiaras. None of these splendours have any place in the work which Michelangelo created.

Within the cells of San’Marco, Fra Angelico had demonstrated that painterly skill and the artist’s personal interpretation of his subject can create a truly great work of religious art, (or for that matter, any art). In the use of the unadorned fresco technique, the clear bright pastel colours, the careful arrangement of a few significant figures and the skilful use of expression, motion and gesture, Michelangelo shows himself to be the artistic descendant of Fra Angelico.

Early works, 1408-1436

Cortona

Annunciation

Fiesole

Altarpiece - Coronation of the Virgin, with predellas of Miracles of St Dominic; Louvre.

Altarpiece - Virgin and Child between Saints Peter, Thomas Aquinas, Dominic and Peter Martyr; see detail, right.

Predella - Christ in Majesty, National Gallery, London.

Florence, Santa Trinita

Deposition of Christ, said by Vasari to have been “painted by a saint or an angel”. Now in the National Museum of San Marco, Florence.

Florence, Santa Maria degli Angeli

Last Judgement, Accademia. Florence, Santa Maria Novella

Altarpiece - Coronation of the Virgin, Uffizi.

San Marco, Florence, 1436-1445

Altarpiece for chancel - Virgin with Saints Cosmas and Damian, attended by Saints Dominic, Peter, Francis, Mark, John Evangelist and Stephen. Cosmas and Damian were patrons of the Medici; the altarpiece was commissioned in 1438 by Cosimo de' Medici. It was removed and disassembled during the renovation of the convent church in the seventeenth century. Two of the nine predella panels remain at the convent; seven are in Washington, Munich, Dublin and Paris. Unexpectedly, in 2006 the last two missing panels, Dominican saints from the side panels, turned up in the estate of a modest collector in Oxfordshire, who had bought them in California in the 1960s. (San Marco Altarpiece)

Altarpiece ? – Madonna and Child with twelve Angels (life sized) ; Uffizi.

Altarpiece - The Annunciation

Two versions of the Crucifixion with St Dominic; in the Cloister

Very large Crucifixion with Virgin and 20 saints; in the Chapter House

The Annunciation; at the top of the Dormitory stairs. This is probably the most reproduced of all Fra Angelico's paintings.

Virgin enthroned with Four Saints; in the Dormitory passage
Each cell is decorated with a fresco which matches in size and shape the single round-headed window beside it. The frescoes are apparently for contemplative purpose. They are have a pale, serene, unearthly beauty. Many of Fra Angelico’s finest and most reproduced works are among them. There are, particularly in the inner row of cells, some of less inspiring quality and of more repetitive subject, perhaps completed by assistants.

The Adoration of the Magi

The Transfiguration

Noli me Tangere

The three Marys at the tomb.

The Road to Emmaus, with two Dominicans as the disciples

There are many versions of the Crucifixion

Late works, 1445-1455

Orvieto Cathedral

Three segments of the ceiling in the Cappella Nuova, with the assistance of Benozzo Gozzoli.

Christ in Glory

The Virgin Mary

The Apostles

Niccoline Chapel

The Chapel of Pope Nicholas V, at the Vatican, was probably painted with much assistance from Benozzo Gozzoli and Gentile da Fabriano. The entire surface of wall and ceiling is sumptuously painted. There is much gold leaf for borders and decoration, and a great use of brilliant blue made from lapis lazuli.

The life of St Stephen

The life of St Lawrence

The Four Evangelists.

Discovery of lost works

The Daily Mirror reported on 14 November 2006 that two missing masterpieces by Fra Angelico had turned up in the possession of an unsuspecting family, having hung in the spare room of an aunt, the late Jean Preston, in her "modest terrace house" in Oxford, England. She bought them for £200 20 years ago.

They are two of eight side panels of a large altarpiece painted in 1439 for Fra Angelico's monastery, but split up by Napoleon's army 200 years ago. While the centre section is still at the monastery, the other six small panels are in German and US museums. These two panels were presumed lost forever. The Italian Government had hoped to purchase them but they were outbid at auction on 20 April 2007 by a private collector for £1.7M.

In Christianity, the Annunciation is the revelation to Mary, the mother of Jesus by the archangel Gabriel that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God.

The Christian churches celebrate this with the feast of Annunciation on March 25, which as the Incarnation is nine months before the feast of the Nativity of Jesus, or Christmas.

The date of the Annunciation also marked the New Year in many places, including England (where it is called Lady

Day) and the American colonies. The traditional location of the Annunciation is in the town of Nazareth, Israel, where is currently located the Church of the Annunciation.

The Annunciation in the Bible
In the Bible, the Annunciation is narrated in the book of Luke, Chapter 1, verses 26-38 (NWT):

26 In her sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent forth from God to a city of Gal´i·lee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin promised in marriage to a man named Joseph of David’s house; and the name of the virgin was Mary. 28 And when he went in before her he said: “Good day, highly favored one, God is with you.” 29 But she was deeply disturbed at the saying and began to reason out what sort of greeting this might be.

30 So the angel said to her: “Have no fear, Mary, for you have found favor with God; 31 and, look! you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and you are to call his name Jesus. 32 This one will be great and will be called Son of the Most High; and God will give him the throne of David his father, 33 and he will rule as king over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end of his kingdom.”

34 But Mary said to the angel: “How is this to be, since I am having no intercourse with a man?” 35 In answer the angel said to her: “Holy spirit will come upon you, and power of the Most High will overshadow you. For that reason also what is born will be called holy, God’s Son. 36 And, look! Elizabeth your relative has also herself conceived a son, in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her, the so-called barren woman; 37 because with God no declaration will be an impossibility.” 38 Then Mary said: “ May it become of me according to your word.” At that the angel departed from her.

The feast of the Annunciation, as the action initiating the Incarnation of Christ, has such an important place in Eastern Orthodox theology that the Festival Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is always celebrated on this day, regardless of what day it falls on.

The only time a divine liturgy is ever celebrated on Great and Holy Friday is if it is on March 25, although this only occurs in the Julian Calendar (this calendar is used to calculate the date of Pascha so that all Orthodox celebrate Pascha at the same time, though most dioceses use the Gregorian Calendar for celebration of fixed feast days, such as Christmas and Theophany). Due to this, the rubrics regarding the celebration of the feast are the most complicated of all those in Orthodox liturgics.

Related dates
In the Roman Catholic and Lutheran liturgical calendar, the feast is moved if necessary to prevent it from either falling on a Sunday (because Sundays at that time of year are of the highest liturgical rank), or during Holy Week or Easter Week (the week in which Easter occurs). To avoid a Sunday before Holy Week, the next day (March 26) would be observed instead.

In years when March 25 falls during Holy Week or Easter Week the Annunciation is moved to the Monday after Octave of Easter, which is the Sunday after Easter. (If the Feast of St. Joseph, normally falling on March 19, must also be moved to a later date as a consequence of Easter falling on one of its earliest possible dates, the Annunciation remains on Low Monday, with the feast of St. Joseph on the following Tuesday, as the higher-ranking person is transferred first.)

The date is close to the vernal equinox, as Christmas is to the winter solstice; because of this the Annunciation and Christmas were two of the four "Quarter days" in medieval and early modern England, which marked the divisions of the fiscal year (the other two were Midsummer Day, or the Nativity of St. John the Baptist—June 24—and Michaelmas, the feast day of St. Michael, on September 29).

The first authentic allusions to it are in a canon, of the council of Toledo (656), and another of the council of Constantinople "in Trullo" (692), forbidding the celebration of all festivals in Lent, excepting the Lord's day and the Feast of the Annunciation. An earlier origin has been claimed for it on the ground that it is mentioned in sermons of Athanasius and of Gregory Thaumaturgus, but both of these documents are now admitted to be spurious.

A synod held at Worcester, England (1240), forbade all servile work on this feast day. See further Lady Day.

Annunciation in the Quran
Annunciation is also cited in the Quran, in chapters 3 (Aal 'Imran - The family of Imran) verses 45-51 and 19 (Maryam - Mary) verses 16-26, although never with the mention or insinuation that Jesus is the son of God.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (pronounciation (help·info)), April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and writer.

The illegitimate son of a notary, Messer Piero, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci."

Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever

to have lived.

It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most imitated portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic.

Perhaps fifteen paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise an unmatched contribution to later generations of artists.

As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualising a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.

Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Early life, 1452–1466
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, at Anchiano, a hamlet near the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of Florence. He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant. Little is known about his early life, which has been the subject of historical conjecture by Vasari and others.

Leonardo was later to record only two incidents of his childhood. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a hawk dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face. The second incident occurred while he was exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and recorded his emotions at being, on one hand, terrified that some great monster might lurk there and on the other, driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.

At the age of five, he went to live in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci, where his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but unfortunately died young.
Vasari, the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters, tells the story of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque.

Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a plaque decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow which he gave to the peasant.

Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476

In 1466 Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most proficient artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. The workshop of this renowned master was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Among the painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop and also to become famous, were Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.

In a Quattrocento workshop such as Verrocchio's, artists were regarded primarily as craftsmen and only a master such as Verrocchio had social standing. The products of a workshop included decorated tournament shields, painted dowry chests, christening platters, votive plaques, small portraits, and devotional pictures. Major commissions included altarpieces for churches and commemorative statues. The largest commissions were fresco cycles for chapels. As a fourteen-year-old apprentice Leonardo would have been trained in all the countless skills that were employed in a traditional workshop.

Although many craftsmen specialised in tasks such as frame-making, gilding and bronze casting, Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the obvious artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.
Although Verrocchio appears to have run an efficient and prolific workshop, few paintings can be ascertained as coming from his hand. And on one of those, according to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated.

The painting is the Baptism of Christ. According to Vasari, Leonardo painted the young angel holding Jesus’ robe. Verrocchio, overwhelmed by the sweetness of the angel’s expression, its moist eyes and lustrous curls, put down his brush and never painted again.

This is probably an exaggeration. The truth is that on close examination the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint. The landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bears witness to the hand of Leonardo.

The other creation of Verrocchio’s which is particularly pertinent to the young Leonardo is the bronze statue of David, now in the Bargello Museum. Apart from the exquisite quality of this work of art, it is significant in holding the claim to be a portrait of the apprentice, Leonardo. If this is the case, then in the figure of David we see Leonardo as a thin muscular boy, quite different to the rounded androgynous figure made by Verrocchio’s teacher, Donatello.

It is also suggested that the Archangel Michael in Verrocchio's Tobias and the Angels is a portrait of Leonardo.
When Leonardo was twenty he joined the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to work with him.

Professional life, 1476–1519

The earliest known dated work of Leonardo's is a drawing done in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473.
It is assumed that Leonardo had his own workshop in Florence between 1476 and 1481. He was commissioned in 1478 to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard and in 1481 by the Monks at Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi.

In 1482 Leonardo, whom Vasari tells us was a most talented musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici was so impressed with this that he decided to send both the lyre and its maker to Milan, in order to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.

At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint.
Between 1482 and 1499, when Louis XII of France occupied Milan, much of Leonardo’s work was in that city.

It was here that he was commissioned to paint two of his most famous works, the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina as among his dependants in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the detailed list of expenditure on her funeral suggests that she was his mother rather than a servant girl.

For Ludovico, he worked on many different projects which included the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico’s predecessor. Leonardo modelled a huge horse in clay, which became known as the "Gran Cavallo". It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello’s statue of Gattemelata in Padova and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it.

The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not in the least unusual for Leonardo. Michelangelo rudely implied that he was unable to cast it. In 1495 the bronze was used for cannons to defend the city from invasion under Charles VIII.
The French returned to invade Milan in 1498 under Louis XII and the invading French used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice.

With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salaino and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice. In Venice he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.
Returning to Florence in 1500, he entered the services of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. In Forlì he met Caterina Sforza, of whom it is speculated by some that the Mona Lisa may be a portrait.

At Cesenatico he designed the port. In 1506 he returned to Milan, which was in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries had driven out the French. Many of Leonardo’s most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione.

Old age

From 1513 to 1516, Leonardo lived in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. In Florence, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist’s will, Michelangelo’s statue of David.
In 1515, François I of France retook Milan. Leonardo was commissioned to make a centrepiece (a mechanical lion) for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé[14] next to the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life.

The King granted Leonardo and his entourage generous pensions: the surviving document lists 1,000 écus for the artist, 400 for Count Francesco Melzi, (his pupil, named as "apprentice"), and 100 for Salaino ("servant"). In 1518 Salaino left Leonardo and returned to Milan, where he eventually perished in a duel.
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed by Ingres in a romantic painting, has been shown to be legend rather than fact.

Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament. According to his wish, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Although Melzi was his principal heir and executor, Salaino was not forgotten, receiving half of Leonardo's vineyards and the Mona Lisa.

Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, François was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying:
“ No man ever lived who had learned as much about sculpture, painting, and architecture, but still more that he was a very great philosopher. ”

Relationships and influences

Florence — Leonardo's artistic and social background

Leonardo commenced his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio’s master, the great scuptor Donatello, died. The painter Uccello whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters Piero della Francesca and Fra Filippo Lippi, sculptor Luca della Robbia, and architect and writer Alberti were in their sixties.

The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio, Antonio Pollaiuolo and the portrait sculptor, Mino da Fiesole whose lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni.
Leonardo's youth was spent in a Florence that was ornamented by the works of these artists and by Donatello's contemporaries, Masaccio whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion and Ghiberti whose "Gates of Paradise", gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds.

Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective, and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Alberti's Treatise were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.

Massaccio's depiction of the naked and distraught Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden created of powerfully expressive image of the human form, cast into three dimensions by the use of light and shade which was to re-emerge in the works of Leonardo in a way that was to change the course of painting. The Humanist influence of Donatello's David can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly John the Baptist. A prevalent tradition in Florence was the small altarpiece of the Virgin and Child. Many of these were created in tempera or glazed terracottta by the workshops of Lippi, Verrocchio and the prolific Robbia family.

Leonardo's early Madonnas such as the The Madonna with a carnation and The Benois Madonna followed this tradition while showing indiosyncratic departures, particularly in the case of the Benois Madonna in which the Virgin is set at an oblique angle to the picture space with the Christ Child at the opposite angle. This compositional theme was to emerge in Leonardo's later paintings such as The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
Leonardo was the contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino who were all slightly older than he was.

He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the Academy of the Medici. Botticelli was a particular favourite of the family and thus his success as a painter was assured. Ghirlandaio and Perugino were both prolific and ran efficient workshops. They competently delivered commissions to well-satisfied patrons who appreciated Ghirlandaio's ability to portray the wealthy citizens of Florence within large religious frescoes, and Perugino's ability to deliver a multitude of saints and angels of unfailing sweetness and innocence.

These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel, the work commencing with Perugino's employment in 1479. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. His first significant commission, The Adoration of the Magi for the Monks of Scopeto, was never completed.

In 1476, during the time of Leonardo’s association with Verrocchio’s workshop, Hugo van der Goes arrived in Florence, bringing the Portinari Altarpiece and the new painterly techniques from Northern Europe which were to profoundly effect Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others. In 1479, the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, who worked exclusively in oils, travelled north on his way to Venice, where an older painter, Giovanni Bellini adopted the media of oil painting, quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo was also later to visit Venice.

Leonardo was also the contemporary of the two architects, Bramante and Sangallo. Like these artists, he experimented with designs for centrally-planned churches, a number of them appearing in his journals, as both plans and views, but none was ever realised. Leonardo’s political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478.

Ludovico il Moro who ruled Milan between 1479–1499 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo’s age.
With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neo Platonism and Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, were foremost.

Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo was to receive his important Milanese commissions, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment.
Although usually named together as the three giants of the High Renaissance,

Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were not of the same generation. Leonardo was 23 when Michelangelo was born and 31 when Raphael was born. The short-lived Raphael died in 1520, the year after Leonardo, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45 years.

Assistants and pupils
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed Salai or il Salaino ("The little devil), was described by Giorgio Vasari as "a graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair, in which Leonardo greatly delighted."
Il Salaino entered Leonardo's household in 1490 at the age of ten. The relationship was not an easy one.

A year later Leonardo made a list of the boy’s misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton." The "Little Devil" had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on apparel, among which were twenty-four pairs of shoes. Nevertheless, Leonardo’s notebooks during their early years contain many pictures of the handsome, curly-haired adolescent. Il Salaino remained his companion, servant, and assistant for the next thirty years.

As a painter, Salaino’s work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils such as Marco d'Oggione and Boltraffio. In 1515 he painted, under the name of Andrea Salai, a nude portrait of "Lisa del Giocondo", based upon the Mona Lisa and known as Monna Vanna. The Mona Lisa was bequeathed to Salaino by Leonardo, and in Salaino's own will it was assessed at the high value of £200,000.

In 1506, Leonardo took as a pupil Count Francesco Melzi, the fifteen-year-old son of a Lombard aristocrat. Salaino, at first jealous of Melzi, eventually accepted his continued presence and the three undertook journeys throughout Italy. Melzi became Leonardo's life companion, and is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo and was with him until his death.

Personal life

Leonardo had many friends who are figures now renowned in their fields, or for their influence on history. These included the mathematician Luca Pacioli with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s and Cesare Borgia, in whose service he spent the years 1502 and 1503. During that time he also met Niccolò Machiavelli, with whom later he was to develop a close friendship.

Also among his friends are counted Franchinus Gaffurius and Isabella d'Este. Isabella was probably his closest female friend. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through Mantua which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. He commented "the act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions".
Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women beyond his friendship with Isabella d'Este.

His most intimate relationships were with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi writing that Leonardo's feelings for him were both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of an erotic nature. Since that date much has written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of drawings.

Leonardo’s painting

Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his enormous fame rested on his achievements as a painter and on a handful of works, either authenticated or attributed to him that have been regarded as among the supreme masterpieces ever created.
These painting are famous for a variety of qualities which have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics.

Among the qualities that make Leonardo’s work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the Virgin of the Rocks.

Early works

Leonardo’s early works begin with the Baptism of Christ painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at the workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 cms long and only 14 cms high. It is a “predella” to go at the base of a larger composition, in this case a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm long.

In both these Annunciations, Leonardo has used the very formal arrangement of Fra Angelico’s two well known pictures of the same subject, the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily.

In the smaller picture Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God’s will. In the larger picture, however, Mary is not in the least submissive. The beautiful girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in greeting. This calm young woman accepts her role as the Mother of God not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting the young Leonardo presents the Humanist face of the Virgin Mary, a woman who recognises humanity’s role in God’s incarnation.

Paintings of the 1480s

In the 1480s Leonardo received two very important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Unfortunately two of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One of these paintings is that of St Jerome in the wilderness.

Although the painting is barely begun the entire composition can be seen and it is very unusual. Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction.

Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.
The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama were to reappear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto.

It is a very complex composition about 250 cm square. For it Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined Classical architecture which makes part of the backdrop to the scene. But in 1482 Leonardo went off to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro and the painting was abandoned.

The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks which was commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece, already constructed.

Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the Infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene, as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild and rocky landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.

While the painting is quite large, about 200 x 120 cms, it is nowhere as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about 50 and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de Predis their payment, until the next century.

Paintings of the 1490s

The most famous painting the 1490s is Last Supper, also painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his desciples before his capture and death. It shows, specifically the moment when Jesus has said “one of you will betray me.” See painting reproduced further down this page.
Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.

Vasari describes in detail how he worked on it, how some days he would paint like fury, how other days he would spend hours just looking at it, and how he walked the streets of the city looking for the face of Judas, the traitor.
When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation. But its artist was also denounced for the fact that it was no sooner finished than it began to fall off the wall.

Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco had experimented with different paint-binding agents, which were subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos.

Paintings of the 1500s

Among the works created by Leonardo in the 1500s is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or “la Gioconda”, the laughing one. The painting is famous, in particular, for the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined.

The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called “sfumato” or Leonardo’s smoke. Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and beautiful hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils, but laid on much like tempera and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.

In the Virgin and Child with St. Anne the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape. It harks back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely-set figures, superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to support the Christ Child as he plays (rather roughly) with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice. In the composition of this painting, Leonardo is showing trends which would be adopted in particular by the Venetian painters, Titian and Tintoretto as well as by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Correggio.

Leonardo's drawings

Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper. His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.

Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body, the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre, a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of the The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London. This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa.

It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to The Virgin and Child with St. Anne in the Louvre.
Other drawings of interest include numerous studies of facial deformities which are frequently referred to as "caricatures", while close examination of the skeletal proportions indicates that the majority are based directly on live models.

There are numerous studies of the beautiful young man, Salaino, with his rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile". He is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated.

Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leornardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernado Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de'Medici, in the Pazzi Conspiracy. With dispassionate integrity Leonardo has registered in neat mirror writing the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died.

Anatomy

Leonardo's formal training in the anatomy of the human body began with his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.
As a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the hospital Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome.

From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting.

Leonardo drew many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, as well as muscles and sinews, the heart and vascular system, the sex organs, and other internal organs. He made one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero.
He also studied and drew the anatomy of many other animals as well. He dissected cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans.

He also made a number of studies of horses.
As an artist, Leonardo closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He also drew many models among those who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.

Leonardo, the "Legend"

Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Vasari, in his "Lives of the Artists" written about thirty years after Leonardo's death, described him as having talents that "transcended nature".
The interest in Leonardo has never slackened.

The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, T-shirts bear his most famous drawing and writers, like Vasari, continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in.
Vasari's "Lives"
Giorgio Vasari, in his "Lives of the Artists", in its enlarged edition of 1568 introduces his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words:

“ In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease. ”

On Leonardo's genius

The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians can be appreciated from the following quotations.

Boltraffio c.1520

“ The man Leonardo
alone above all others
surpasser of Phidias
conqueror of Apelles
and over every one
of their victorious followers!”

Castiglione, 1528

"…Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled…"
"Anonimo Gaddiano" c. 1540
"His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf…"

H. Fuseli, 1801
"Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius…"

A. E. Rio, 1861
"He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."

H. Taine, 1866
"There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."

Berenson, 1896
"Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values."

Liana Bortolon, 1967
"Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge, … Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe."

List of Leonardo's paintings

None of Leonardo's paintings are signed. Certain works still in existence are cited by Vasari or are referred to in contracts.

Entirely by Leonardo

The Last Supper (1498) — Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy

Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1505/1507) — Louvre, Paris, France

Adoration of the Magi unfinished painting (1481) — Uffizi, Florence, Italy

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510) — Louvre, Paris, France

Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre, Paris, considered by most historians to be the earlier of two versions and to therefore date from 1483–1486.

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist large drawing (c. 1499–1500) — National Gallery, London, UK.
St. Jerome in the Wilderness, (c.1480), Vatican. unfinished painting.

Leonardo with other hands

The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475) — Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Cited by Vasari as by Verrocchio, with the angel on the left-hand side by Leonardo. It is generally considered that Leonardo also painted the background landscape and the torso of Christ. One of

Leornardo's earliest extant works.

Virgin of the Rocks, National Gallery, London, genarally accepted as postdating the version in the Louvre, possibly 1505–1508, with collaboration of de Predis and perhaps others.

Accepted attributions

Annunciation (1475–1480) — Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Generally thought to be the earliest extant work entirely by Leonardo.

The Benois Madonna (1478–1480) — Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

The Madonna of the Carnation, (1478–1480) Alte Pinakothek, Munich

St. John the Baptist (c. 1514) — Louvre, Paris, France

Attribution dependent upon each other

These two paintings are almost certainly by the same artist, generally accepted to be Leonardo, but not without critics.

Ginevra de' Benci (c. 1475) — National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., United States

Lady with an Ermine (1488–1490) — Czartoryski Museum, Kraków, Poland

Disputed

Portrait of a Musician (c. 1490) — Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy

Madonna Litta (1490–91) — Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia, thought perhaps to be by Marco d'Oggiono

La belle Ferronière (1495–1498) — Louvre, Paris, France
Madonna of the Yarnwinder 1501, perhaps an assistant's copy or painting from a lost drawing. Stolen.

The Dreyfus Madonna, previously attributed to Verrocchio or Lorenzo di Credi. (The anatomy of the Christ Child is so poor as to discourage firm attribution).
Bacchus (or St. John in the Wilderness) (1515) — Louvre, Paris, France (attribution disputed) considered by some to be a pastiche.

Recent attribution

The Holy Infants Embracing c. 1486–1490 private collection.
Madonna and Child with St Joseph, Borghese Gallery, previously attributed to Fra Bartolomeo.

After recent cleaning, the gallery sought attribution as a work of Leonardo's youth, based on the presence of a fingerprint similar to one that appears in The Lady with the Ermine. Result of investigation not available.

Mary Magdalene, recently attributed as a Leonardo by Carlo Pedretti. Previously regarded as the work of Giampietrino who painted a number of similar Magdalenes.
Christ Carrying the Cross, date unknown, private collection. Attribution by Carlo Pedretti.

Known only as a copy
Leda and the Swan (1508) — (Only copies survive—best-known example in Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy)

Journals

Renaissance humanism saw no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science).

These notes were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.

The journals are mostly written in mirror-image cursive. The reason may have been more a practical expediency than for reasons of secrecy as is often suggested. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it is probable that it was easier for him to write from right to left.

His notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirl pools, war machines, helicopters and architecture.

These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes, distributed by friends after his death—have found their way into major collections such as the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Library in London. The British Library has put a selection from its notebook (BL Arundel MS 263) on the web in the Turning the Pages section.

The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands. It is owned by Bill Gates, and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world.
Why Leonardo did not publish or otherwise distribute the contents of his notebooks remains a mystery to those who believe that Leonardo wanted to make his observations public knowledge.

Technological historian Lewis Mumford suggests that Leonardo kept notebooks as a private journal, intentionally censoring his work from those who might irresponsibly use it (the tank, for instance). They remained obscure until the 19th century, and were not directly of value to the development of science and technology.

In January 2005, researchers discovered what some believe to be a hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence

Human anatomy

“ ...to obtain a true and perfect knowledge [of the vascular system]... I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other members, and removing the very minutest particles of the flesh by which these veins are surrounded, ... and as one single body would not last so long, since it was necessary to proceed with several bodies by degrees, until I came to an end and had a complete knowledge; this I repeated twice, to learn the differences...

Topographic anatomy
Leonardo began the formal study of the topographical anatomy of the human body when apprenticed to Andrea

del Verrocchio. As a student he would have been taught to draw the human body from life, to memorise the muscles, tendons and visible subcutaneous structure and to familiarise himself with the mechanics of the various parts of the skeletal and muscular structure. It was common workshop practice to have plaster casts of parts of the human anatomy available for students to study and draw.

If, as is thought to be the case, Leonardo painted the torso and arms of Christ in The Baptism of Christ on which he famously collaborated with his master Verrocchio, then his understanding of topographical anatomy had surpassed that of his master at an early age as can be seen by a comparison of the arms of Christ with those of John the Baptist in the same painting.

In the 1490s he wrote about demonstrating muscles and sinews to students:
“ Remember that to be certain of the point of origin of any muscle, you must pull the sinew from which the muscle springs in such a way as to see that muscle move, and where it is attached to the ligaments of the bones.”

His continued investigations in this field are demonstrated by many fine drawings in his journals. In conjunction with studies of aspects of the body are drawings of faces displaying different emotions and many drawings of people suffering facial deformity, either congenital or through illness. Some of these drawings, generally referred to as "caricatures", on analysis of the skeletal proportions, appear to be based on anatomical studies.

Dissection
As Leonardo became successful as an artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the hospital Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. Later he dissected in Milan at the hospital Maggiore and in Rome at the hospital Santo Spirito (the first mainland Italian hospital). From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre.

“ I have removed the skin from a man who was so shrunk by illness that the muscles were worn down and remained in a state like thin membrane, in such a way that the sinews instead of merging in muscles ended in wide membrane; and where the bones were covered by the skin they had very little over their natural size.”
In 30 years, Leonardo dissected 30 male and female corpses of different ages. Together with Marcantonio, he prepared to publish a theoretical work on anatomy and made more than 200 drawings. However, his book was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting.

Among the detailed images that Leonardo drew are many studies of the human skeleton. He was the first to describe the double S form of the backbone. He also studied the inclination of pelvis and sacrum and stressed that sacrum was not uniform, but composed of five fused vertebrae. He dissected and drew the human skull and cross-sections of the brain, transversal, sagittal, and frontal.

Not only interested in structure but also in function, Leonardo was a physiologist in addition to being an anatomist. He studied internal organs, being the first to draw the human appendix and also drawing detailed images of the lungs, mesentery, urinary tract, sex organs, the muscles of the cervix and a detailed cross-section of coitus.
Leonardo was one of the first to draw a scientific representation of the fetus in the intrautero. He studied the vascular system and drew a disected heart in detail.

He correctly worked out how heart valves ebb the flow of blood yet he did not fully understand circulation as he believed that blood was pumped to the muscles where it was consumed. Leonardo's drawing inspired a British heart surgeon to pioneer a new way to repair damaged hearts in 2005.

His study of human anatomy led also to the design of the first known robot in recorded history. The design, which has come to be called Leonardo's robot, was probably made around the year 1495 but was rediscovered only in the 1950s. It is not known if an attempt was made to build the device.

Comparative anatomy
Leonardo not only studied human anatomy, but the anatomy of many other animals as well. He dissected cows, birds, monkeys and frogs, comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. On one page of his journal Leonardo drew five profile studies of a horse with its teeth bared in anger and, for comparison, a snarling lion and a snarling man.

“ I have found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser... I have seen in the Lion tribe that the sense of smell is connected with part of the substance of the brain which comes down the nostrils, which form a spacious receptacle for the sense of smell, which enters by a great number of cartilaginous vesicles with several passages leading up to where the brain, as before said, comes down.”

In the early 1490s Leonardo was commissioned to create a monument in honour of Francesco Sforza. In his notebooks are a series of plans for an equestrian monument. There are also a large number of related anatomical studies of horses. They include several diagrams of a standing horse with the angles and proportions anotated, anatomical studies of horses' heads, a dozen detailed drawings of hooves and numerous studies and sketches of horses rearing.

He studied the topographical anatomy of a bear in detail, making many drawings of its paws. There is also a drawing of the muscles and tendons of the bear's hind feet. Other drawings of particular interest include the uterus of a pregnant cow, the hindquarters of a decrepit mule and studies of the musculature of a little dog.

Botany
“ All the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk [below them]. ”
The science of Botany was long established by Leonardo's time, a treatise on the subject having been written as early as 300 BCE Leonardo's study of plants, resulting in many beautiful drawings in his notebooks, was not to record in diagramatic form the parts of the plant, but rather, as an artist and observer to record the precise appearance of plants, the manner of growth and the way that individual plants and flowers of a single variety differed from one another.

One such study shows a page with several species of flower of which ten drawings are of wild violets. Along with a drawing of the growing plant and a detail of a leaf, Leonardo has repeatedly drawn single flowers from different angles, with their heads set different on the stem.
Apart from flowers the notebooks contain many drawings of crop plants including several types of grain and a variety of berries including a detailed study of bramble. There are also water plants such as irises, bullrushes and sedge.

His notebooks also direct the artist to observe how light reflects from foliage at different distances and under different atmospheric conditions.
A number of the drawings have their equivalents in Leonardo's painting. An elegant study of a stem of lilies may have been for one of Leonardo's early Annunciation paintings, carried in the hand of the Archangel Gabriel.

In both the Annunciation pictures the grass is dotted with blossoming plants.
The plants which appear in both the versions of The Virgin of the Rocks demonstrate the results of Leonardo's studies in a meticulous realism that makes each plant readily identifiable to the botanist.

Geology
As an adult, Leonardo had only two childhood memories, one of which was the finding of a cave in the Apennines. Although fearing that he might be attacked by a wild beast, he ventured in driven "by the burning desire to see whether there might be any marvelous thing within."

Leonardo's earliest dated drawing is a study of the Arno Valley, strongly emphasizing its geological features. His note books contain landscapes with a wealth of geological observation from the regions of both Florence and Milan, often including atmospheric effects such as a heavy rainstorm pouring down on a town at the foot of a mountain range.

It had been observed for many years that strata in mountains often contained bands of sea shells. Conservative science said that these could be explained by the Great Flood described in the Bible. Leonardo's observations convinced him that this could not possibly be the case.

“ And a little beyond the sandstone conglomerate, a tufa has been formed, where it turned towards Castel Florentino; farther on, the mud was deposited in which the shells lived, and which rose in layers according to the levels at which the turbid Arno flowed into that sea. And from time to time the bottom of the sea was raised, depositing these shells in layers, as may be seen in the cutting at Colle Gonzoli, laid open by the Arno which is wearing away the base of it; in which cutting the said layers of shells are very plainly to be seen in clay of a bluish colour, and various marine objects are found there. ”

This quotation makes clear the breadth of Leonardo's understanding of Geology, including the action of water in creating sedimentary rock, the tectonic action of the earth in raising the sea bed and the action of erosion in the creation of geographical features.

In Leonardo's earliest paintings we see the remarkable attention given to the small landscapes of the background, with lakes and water, swathed in a misty light. In the larger of the Annunciation paintings is a town on the edge of a lake. Although distant, the mountains can be seen to be scored by vertical strata.

This characteristic can be observed in other paintings by Leonardo, and closely resembles the mountains around Lago di Garda and Lago d'Iseo in Northern Italy. It is a particular feature of both the paintings of The Virgin of the Rocks, which also include caverns of fractured, tumbled and water eroded limestone.

The Vitruvian Man is a world renowned drawing with accompanying notes created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1492 as recorded in one of his journals.

It depicts a nude male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man. It is stored in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy, but is only displayed on special occasions.

Description
This image exemplifies the blend of art and science during

the Renaissance and provides the perfect example of Leonardo's keen interest in proportion. In addition, this picture represents a cornerstone of Leonardo's attempts to relate man to nature. Encyclopaedia Britannica online states, "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm).

He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe." It is also believed by some that Leonardo symbolised the material existence by the square and spiritual existence by the circle. Thus he attempted to depict the correlation between these two aspects of human existence.

According to Leonardo's notes in the accompanying text, written in mirror writing, it was made as a study of the proportions of the (male) human body as described in a treatise by the Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote that in the human body:

a palm is the width of four fingers

a foot is the width of four palms

a cubit is the width of six palms

a man's height is four cubits (and thus 24 palms)

a pace is four cubits

the length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height

the distance from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of a man's height

the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is one-eighth of a man's height

the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of a man's height

the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is one-fifth of a man's height

the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of a man's height

the length of the hand is one-tenth of a man's height

the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose is one-third of the length of the

head
the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows is one-third of the length of the face
the length of the ear is one-third of the length of the face
Leonardo is clearly illustrating Vitruvius' De architectura 3.1.3 which reads:
The navel is naturally placed in the centre of the human body, and, if in a man lying with his face upward, and his hands and feet extended, from his navel as the centre, a circle be described, it will touch his fingers and toes.

It is not alone by a circle, that the human body is thus circumscribed, as may be seen by placing it within a square. For measuring from the feet to the crown of the head, and then across the arms fully extended, we find the latter measure equal to the former; so that lines at right angles to each other, enclosing the figure, will form a square.

The multiple viewpoint that set in with Romanticism has convinced us that there is no such thing as a universal set of proportions for the human body. The field of anthropometry was created in order to describe these individual variations. Vitruvius' statements may be interpreted as statements about average proportions.

Vitruvius goes through some trouble to give a precise mathematical definition of what he means by saying that the navel is the center of the body, but other definitions lead to different results; for example, the center of mass of the human body depends on the position of the limbs, and in a standing posture is typically about 10 cm lower than the navel, near the top of the hip bones.

Note that Leonardo's drawing combines a careful reading of the ancient text, combined with his own observation of actual human bodies. In drawing the circle and square he correctly observes that the square cannot have the same center as the circle, the navel, but is somewhat lower in the anatomy. This adjustment is the innovative part of Leonardo's drawing and what distinguishes it from earlier illustrations. He also departs from Vitruvius by drawing the arms raised to a position in which the fingertips are level with the top of the head, rather than Vitruvius's much higher angle, in which the arms form lines passing through the navel.

The drawing itself is often used as an implied symbol of the essential symmetry of the human body, and by extension, to the universe as a whole.
It may be noticed by examining the drawing that the combination of arm and leg positions actually creates sixteen different poses. The pose with the arms straight out and the feet together is seen to be inscribed in the superimposed square. On the other hand, the "spread-eagle" pose is seen to be inscribed in the superimposed circle.

The drawing was in the collection of Giuseppe Bossi, who illustrated it in his monograph on Leonardo's The Last Supper, Del Cenacolo di Leonardo Da Vinci libri quattro (Milan 1810). The following year he excerpted the section of his monograph concerned with Leonardo's "Vitruvian Man" and published it as Delle opinioni di Leonardo da Vinci intorno alla simmetria de'Corpi Umani (Milan: Stamperia Reale, 1811), with a dedication to his friend Antonio Canova.

Dedicated by the author to his friend, the neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, this discussion of Leonardo's theory of human proportions is extracted from Bossi monograph on the Last Supper, pp. 202-26 (No. 318).
After his death in 1815 it was acquired with the bulk of his drawings by the Accademia.
The Vitruvian Man remains one of the most referenced and reproduced artistic images in the world today.

The proportions for the human body, as proposed by Vitruvius, have inspired many other artists in drawing their version of the Vitruvian Man:

Cesare Ceasariano (1521) who edited the important 1521 edition of “De Archtectura” of

Vitruvius (Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have provided the illustrations for this edition).

Albrecht Dürer (1528) in his book Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Four books on human proportions)

Pietro di Giacomo Cataneo (1554)

Heinrich Lautensack (1618)

William Blake (1795) “Glad Day” (now known as "Albion rose"). This representation is without the circle and square.

Rob ten Berge Vitruvian Man (2), Vitruvian Female, Vitruvian Brain etc. Cosmology.

Leonardo's approach to science was an observational one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanation.

Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book Divina Proportione, published in 1509.

It has also been said that he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects though none survives; it appears he did complete a coherent treatise on anatomy, which was observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis D'Aragon's secretary in 1517.

Geometry

While in Milan in 1496 Leonardo met a traveling monk and academic, Luca Pacioli. Under him, Leonardo studied mathematics. Pacioli, who devised the double entry system of bookkeeping, had already published a major treatise on Mathematical knowledge, collaborated with Leonardo in the production of a book called "De divina proportione" about mathematical and artistic proportion. Leonardo prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates. "De divina proportione" was published in 1509.

“ All the problems of perspective are made clear by the five terms of mathematicians, which are:—the point, the line, the angle, the superficies and the solid. The point is unique of its kind. And the point has neither height, breadth, length, nor depth, whence it is to be regarded as indivisible and as having no dimensions in space.

Engineering and inventions

Fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, Leonardo produced detailed studies of the flight of birds, and plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter powered by four men (which would not have worked since the body of the craft would have rotated) and a light hang glider

which could have flown. On January 3, 1496 he unsuccessfully tested a flying machine he had constructed.

During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River in order to flood Pisa.

In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn.

Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On 17 May 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn.

Hydrodynamics
“ All the branches of a water [course] at every stage of its course, if they are of equal rapidity, are equal to the body of the main stream. ”

Among Leonardo's drawings are many that are studies of the motion of water, in particular the forms taken by fast-flowing water on striking different surfaces.
Many of these drawings depict the spiralling nature of

water. The spiral form had been studied in the art of the Classical era and strict mathematical proportion had been applied to its use in art and architecture. An awareness of these rules of proportion had been revived in the early Renaissance. In Leonardo's drawings can be seen the investigation of the spiral as it occurs in water.

There are several elaborate drawings of water curling over an object placed at a diagonal to its course. There are several drawings of water dropping from a height and curling upwards in spiral forms. One such drawing, as well as curling waves, shows splashes and details of spray and bubbles.

Leonardo's interest manifested itself in the drawing of streams and rivers, the action of water in eroding rocks, and the cataclismic action of water in floods and tidal waves. The knowledge that he gained from his studies was employed in devising a range of projects, particularly in relation to the Arno River. None of the major works was brought to completion.

Astronomy

“ The earth is not in the centre of the Sun’s orbit nor at the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements, and united with them. And any one standing on the moon, when it and the sun are both beneath us, would see this our earth and the element of water upon it just as we see the moon, and the earth would light it as it lights us. ”

Alchemy

Claims have sometimes been made that Leonardo da Vinci was an alchemist. However, his scientific process was based mainly upon observation. His practical experiments are also founded in observation rather than belief. Leonardo, who questioned the order of the solar system and the deposit of fossils by the Great Flood, had little time for the notion that a lead could be turned into gold or that a potion could be created that gave eternal life.

Leonardo said about alchemists:-

“ The false interpreters of nature declare that quicksilver is the common seed of every metal, not remembering that nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world. ”
“ And many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude.”

Vasari in "Lives of the Artists" says of Leonardo:

“ He made designs for mills, fulling machines and engines that could be driven by water-power... In addition he used to make models and plans showing how to excavate and tunnel through mountains without difficulty, so as to pass from one level to another; and he demonstrated how to lift and draw great weights by means of levers, hoists and winches, and ways of cleansing harbours and using pumps to suck up water from great depths. ”

Practical inventions and projects

Leonardo was master of mechanical principles. He utilised leverage and cantilevering, pulleys, cranks, gears, including angle gears and rack and pinion gears; parallel linkage, momentum, centripetal force and the aerofoil.

Because Leonardo's inventions date from an era before the issue of patents, it is impossible to say with any certainty how many or even which of his inventions passed into general and practical use, and thereby had impact over the lives of many people. Among those inventions that are

credited with passing into general practical use are the strut bridge, the automated bobbin winder, the machine for testing the tensile strength of wire and the lens-grinding machine pictured at right.

In the lens-grinding machine, the hand rotation of the grinding wheel operates an angle-gear, which rotates a shaft, turning a geared dish in which sits the glass or crystal to be ground. A single action rotates both surfaces at a fixed speed ratio determined by the gear.

As an inventor, Leonardo was not prepared to tell all that he knew:

“ How by means of a certain machine many people may stay some time under water. How and why I do not describe my method of remaining under water, or how long I can stay without eating; and I do not publish nor divulge these by reason of the evil nature of men who would use them as means of destruction at the bottom of the sea, by sending ships to the bottom, and sinking them together with the men in them. And although I will impart others, there is no danger in them; because the mouth of the tube, by which you breathe, is above the water supported on bags of corks. ”

Bridges and hydraulics

Leonardo's study of the motion of water led him to design machinery that utilised its force. Much of his work on hydraulics was for Ludovico il Moro. Leonardo wrote to Ludovico describing his skills and what he could build:

“ ...very light and strong bridges that can easily be carried, with which to pursue, and sometimes flee from, the enemy; and others safe and indestructible by fire or assault, easy and convenient to transport and place into position. ”
Among his projects in Florence was one to divert the course of the Arno, in order to flood Pisa. Fortunately, this was too costly to be carried out. He also surveyed Venice and came up with a plan to create a movable dyke for the city's protection against invaders.

In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 240 m (720-foot) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosphorus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On 17 May 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn.

War machines

Leonardo's letter to Ludovico il Moro assured him:
“ When a place is beseiged I know how to cut off water from the trenches and construct an infinite variety of bridges, mantlets and scaling ladders, and other instruments pertaining to sieges. I also have types of mortars that are very convenient and easy to transport.... when a place cannot be reduced by the method of bombardment either because of its height or its location, I have methods for destroying any fortress or other stronghold, even if it be founded upon rock. ....If the engagement be at sea, I have many engines of a kind most efficient for offense and defense, and ships that can resist cannons and powder. ”

In Leonardo's notebooks there is an array of war machines which includes a tank to be propelled by two men powering crank shafts. Although the drawing itself looks quite finished, the mechanics were apparently not fully developed because, if built as drawn, the tank, with a lot of effort, might be made to rotate on the spot, but would never progress in a forward direction.

In a BBC documentary, a military team built the machine and found it not working, until they changed only one of the gears. It is believed that Da Vinci deliberately left this error in the design, in order to prevent it from being put to practice by unauthorized people.

Another machine, propelled by horses with a pillion rider, carries in front of it four scythes mounted on a revolving gear, turned by a shaft driven by the wheels of a cart behind the horses.
Leonardo's notebooks also show cannons which he claimed "to hurl small stones like a storm with the smoke of these causing great terror to the enemy, and great loss and confusion."

He also designed an enormous crossbow. Following his detailed drawing, one was constructed by the British Army, but could not be made to fire successfully.
Leonardo was the first to sketch the wheel-lock musket c. 1500 AD (the precedent of the flintlock musket which first appeared in Europe by 1547), although the Chinese of the earlier 14th century had used a flintlock 'steel wheel' in order to detonate land mines.

Flight

In Leonardo's infancy a hawk had once hovered over his cradle. Recalling this incident, Leonardo saw it as prophetic.

“ An object offers as much resistance to the air as the air does to the object. You may see that the beating of its wings against the air supports a heavy eagle in the highest and rarest atmosphere, close to the sphere of elemental fire. Again you may see the air in motion over the sea, fill the swelling sails and drive heavily laden ships. From these instances, and the reasons given, a man with wings large enough and duly connected might learn to overcome the resistance of the air, and by conquering it, succeed in subjugating it and rising above it".

The desire to fly is expressed in the many studies and drawings. His later journals contain a detailed study of the flight of birds and several different designs for wings based in structure upon those of bats which he described as being less heavy because of the impenetrable nature of the membrane. On January 3, 1496 he unsuccessfully tested a flying machine he had constructed.

One design that he produced shows a helicopter to be lifted by a rotor powered by four men. It would not have worked since the body of the craft itself would have rotated in the opposite direction to the rotor.
While he designed a number of man powered flying machines with mechanical wings that flapped, he also designed a parachute and a light hang glider which could have flown.

Leonardo's inventions made reality

In the late 20th century, interest in Leonardo's inventions has escalated. There have been many projects which have sought to turn diagrams on paper into working models. One of the factors is the awareness that, although in the 15th and 16th centuries Leonardo had available a limited range of materials, modern technological advancements have made available a number of robust materials of light-weight which might turn Leonardo's dreams into reality. This is particularly the case with his designs for flying machines.

A difficulty encountered in the creation of models is that often Leonardo had not entirely thought through the mechanics of a machine before he drew it, or else he used a sort of graphic shorthand, simply not bothering to draw a gear or a lever at a point where one is absolutely essential in order to make a machine function.

Matters like this were probably so obvious to a person of Leonardo's skills that he didn't need to record them, but to a technical college student, creating a model for a display, this lack of refinement of mechanical details can cause considerable confusion. Thus many models that are created, such as some of those on display at Clos Luce, Leonardo's home in France, do not work, but would work, with a little mechanical tweaking.

“ The art of perspective is of such a nature as to make what is flat appear in relief and what is in relief flat. ”
During the early 15th century, both Brunelleschi and Alberti made studies of linear perspective. In 1436 Alberti published "della Pittura" ("On Painting"), which includes his findings on linear perspective.

Piero della Francesca carried his work forward and by the 1470s a number of artists were able to produce works of art that demonstrated a full understanding of the principles of linear perspective. One of these is Perugino's Marriage of the Blessed Virgin which is one of the frescoes depicting the Life of Christ on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.
Leonardo studied linear perspective and employed it in his earlier paintings. His use of perspective in the two

Annunciations is daring, as he uses various features such as the corner of a building, a walled garden and a path to contrast enclosure and spaciousness.

The unfinished Adoration of the Magi was intended to be a masterpiece revealing much of Leonardo's knowledge of figure drawing and perspective. There exists a number of studies that he made, including a detailed study of the perspective, showing the complex background of ruined Classical buildings that he planned for the left of the picture. Leonardo wrote:

“ Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this Perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.”

The Virgin of the Rocks (sometimes the Madonna of the Rocks) is the usual title used for both of two different paintings with almost identical compositions, which are at least largely by Leonardo da Vinci. They are in the Louvre, Paris, and the National Gallery, London.

The paintings

In the National Gallery, London

This is a painting ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci, probably before 1508. Assistants, perhaps the de Predis brothers, probably painted some parts of the work. It was painted for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan.

It was sold by the church, very likely in 1781, and certainly by 1785, when it was bought by Gavin Hamilton, who took it to England. After passing through various collections, it

was bought by the National Gallery in 1880.
In June 2005, infra-red reflectogram imaging revealed a previous painting beneath the visible one. This is believed to portray a woman kneeling possibly holding a child with one hand with the other hand outstretched. Some researchers believe that the artist's original intention was to paint an adoration of the infant Jesus. Many other pentimenti are visible under x-ray or infra-red examination.

In the Louvre

An almost identical painting is in the Louvre, painted around 1483-1486, or earlier. Most authorities agree that the work is very largely by Leonardo, and is the earlier of the two works. The fine brush work and use of chiaroscuro, or contrast between light and dark, are considered characteristic of many of Leonardo's works. It is about 8cm taller than the London version. The first record of this picture is in 1625, when it was in the French royal collection. The Louvre version is featured in The Da Vinci Code although art historians are dismissive of the "hidden meaning" there ascribed to it.

History of the paintings

Commission and execution

In 1483 (April 25th) Leonardo and the brothers Ambrogio and Evangelista de Predis were commissioned by the Milanese Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception to paint a work celebrating the Immaculate conception for their new chapel. The contract survives, as does much of the documentation from the later disputes over it.

There had already been a previous contract in 1480 with Giacomo del Maino, which had evidently not been completed; among the work stipulated in the second contract was the completion and gilding of various carvings for the wooden framework of the altarpiece (none known to survive).

Three paintings were stipulated, a central Virgin and Child with "the angels", and two side panels with angels, described only in the earlier contract with del Maino. These panels are also in the National Gallery, with different provenances from the main panel. They were painted entirely by the brothers de Predis, according to both modern art historians and a contemporary statement by the brothers in the legal dispute.

All the work was to be completed by the Feast of the Conception (December 8th) 1483, but this did not happen. At some later date the legal dispute began; the main issue being that the main painting was unfinished, and Leonardo had left Milan. Meanwhile the de Predis brothers had completed their portion of the work, and wanted payment. The dispute was settled on April 27th, 1506, with the requirement that should Leonardo return to Milan within two years he should complete the painting, and receive further specified sums beyond those in the original contact.

This appears to have happened, as a sum was paid to him in 1507. The surviving documentation casts no light on the existence of two versions, nor does it give any support to claims that the clients were unhappy with the subject or treatment of the paintings. At what point the first version was diverted, or if it was at all, remains unclear, and the subject of many theories.

On stylistic grounds some writers, including Martin Davies, feel that 1483 is too late a date for the Louvre version; for the commission Leonardo may have simply repeated a composition he had already produced. Alternatively, the Louvre version may have been painted for the confraternity soon after the commission, and then sold to another buyer.

Subject and style

The paintings seem to draw on a legend of the meeting between the baby Jesus and John the Baptist on the flight into Egypt. According to the standard interpretation of the paintings, they depict the Madonna in the centre ushering John towards Jesus, who is seated with the angel Uriel. Jesus is blessing John, who holds out his hands in a gesture of prayer. In the Louvre version, Uriel points towards John while looking out at the viewer.

This gesture is missing in the London version. The London version also contains attributes missing from the Louvre version, notably haloes and John's traditional cruciform stick. These clarify the identification of the babies Jesus and John. Davies says it is "not certain" if these are contemporary; they may have been added by a later artist.

It is generally believed that the Louvre version is the earlier work, because it is stylistically close to Leonardo's other work of the 1480s. The London painting suggests Leonardo's maturer style, but it is thought likely to have been painted with the assistance of other artists, perhaps the de Predises.

Both versions were painted on wood. While the Louvre version was transferred to canvas from the original wooden panel, the London painting is still on panel. Several drawings can be related to the paintings, although Leonardo's authorship of many is doubtful. None amount to a full study for either version.
Geologist Ann C. Pizzorusso, argues the geological inaccuracies of the London version, unlike the Louvre version, mean it is unlikely to have come from Leonardo's own hand.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/65-1636) was a Flemish painter, known for numerous copies after his father Pieter Brueghel the Elder's paintings and nicknamed "Hell Brueghel" for his fantastic treatments of fire and grotesque imagery.

Although his precise date of birth is unknown, he was 36 years old on May 22, 1601 and died on October 10, 1636 at the age of 72. Therefore, he was born in late 1564 or early 1565.

Life

Pieter Brueghel the Younger was the oldest son of the famous sixteenth-century Netherlandish painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder (known as "Peasant Brueghel") and Mayken Coecke van Aelst. His father died in 1569, when Pieter the younger was only five years old. Then, following

the death of his mother in 1578, Pieter, along with his brother Jan Brueghel the Elder ("Velvet Brueghel") and sister Marie, went to live with their grandmother Mayken Verhulst (widow of Pieter Coecke van Aelst). She was an artist in her own right, and according to Carel van Mander, possibly the first teacher of the two sons.

The family moved to Antwerp sometime after 1578 and Pieter possibly entered the studio of the landscape painter Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1607). In the 1584/1585 registers of Guild of Saint Luke, "Peeter Brugel" is listed as an independent master. On November 5, 1588 he married Elisabeth Goddelet, and the couple had seven children.
He painted landscapes, religious subjects and fantasy paintings. For this last category he often made use of fire and grotesque figures, leading to his nickname "Hell Brueghel".

Apart from these paintings of his own invention, Pieter Brueghel the Younger also copied the works his father had created by using a technique called pouncing. His genre paintings of peasants lack Pieter the Elder's subtlety and humanism, and emphasize the picturesque.

Works include:

Village Fair

The Crucifixion

Winter, Hunter in the Snow

"Construction of the Tower of Babel"

Pieter Bruegel the Elder or Brueghel (c.1525 – September 9, 1569) was a Netherlandish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (Genre Painting).

He is nicknamed 'Peasant Brueghel' to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which "Brueghel" is being referred to. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.

Life

There are records that he was born in Breda, Netherlands, but it is uncertain whether the Dutch town of Breda or the Belgian town of Bree, called Breda in Latin, is meant. He was the son of a peasant residing in the village of Breughel.

He was an apprentice of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose daughter Mayken he later married. He spent some time in France and Italy, and then went to Antwerp, where in 1551 he was accepted as a master in the painters' guild. He traveled to Italy soon after, and then returned to Antwerp before settling in Brussels permanently 10 years later. He died there on 9 September 1569.

He was the father of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Both became painters, but as they were very young children when their father died, neither received any training from him. According to Carel van Mander, it is likely that they were instructed by their grandmother.

Style

In Bruegel's later years he painted in a simpler style than the Italianate art that prevailed in his time. The most obvious influence on his art is the older Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch, particularly in Bruegel's early "demonological" paintings such as The Triumph of Death and Dulle Griet (Mad Meg).

It was in nature, however, that he found his greatest inspirations as he is identified as being a master of landscapes. It was in these landscapes that Bruegel created a story, with almost several scenes seemingly combined in one painting. Such works can be seen in The Fall of the Rebel Angels and the previously mentioned The Triumph of Death.

Themes

Bruegel specialized in landscapes populated by peasants. He is often credited as being the first Western painter to paint landscapes for their own sake, rather than as a backdrop to a religious allegory.

Attention to the life and manners of peasants was rare in the arts in Brueghel's time. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life.

For example, the painting Netherlandish Proverbs illustrates dozens of then-contemporary aphorisms, and Children's Games shows the variety of amusements enjoyed by young people. His winter landscapes of 1565 are taken as corroborative evidence of the severity of winters during the Little Ice Age.

Using abundant spirit and comic power, he created some of the early images of acute social protest in art history. Examples include paintings such as The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (a satire of the conflicts of the Reformation) and engravings like The Ass in the School and Strongboxes Battling Piggybanks. On his deathbed he reportedly ordered his wife to burn the most subversive of his drawings to protect his family from political persecution.

Works

There are 45 authenticated surviving paintings, one-third of which are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A number of others are known to have been lost. A large number of drawings, engravings and etchings also exist.

Landscape with Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias, 1553, probably with Maarten de Vos, private collection

Large Fish Eat Small Fish, 1556, Albertina, Vienna

Ass at School, 1556, Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Parable of the Sower, 1557, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1554-55, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Naval Battle in the Gulf of Naples, 1560, Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome

Portrait of an Old Woman, 1560,

Children's Games, 1560, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Temperance, 1560

Saul (Battle Against The Philistines On The Gilboa), 1562, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Two Small Monkeys, 1562, Staaliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

The Triumph of Death, c. 1562, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), c. 1562, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp

The Tower of Babel, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Flight To Egypt, 1563, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London

The "Little" Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam

The Death of the Virgin, 1564, Upton House, Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK

The Procession to Calvary, 1564, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Adoration of the Kings, 1564, The National Gallery, London

The Months. A cycle of 6 or 12 paintings of the months or seasons from the Book of Hours of which five remain:

The Hunters in the Snow (Dec.-Jan.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Gloomy Day (Feb.-Ma.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Hay Harvest (June-July), 1565, Nelahozeves château, Czech Republic

The Harvesters (Aug.-Sept.), 1565, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Return of the Herd (Oct.-Nov.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, 1565, Bruxelles, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone

Kunsten van Belgie, inv. 8724

The Calumny of Apelles, 1565, British Museum, London

Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1565, Hampton Court, UK/Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Painter and the Connoisseur, c. 1565, Albertina, Vienna

Preaching Of John The Baptist, 1566, Beaux Arts Museum, Budapest

Census at Bethlehem, 1566, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

The Wedding Dance, c. 1566, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit

Conversion Of Paulus, 1567, Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna

The Land of Cockaigne/Land Of Milk And Honey, 1567, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The Magpie on the Gallows, 1568, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt

The Misanthrope, 1568, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

The Blind Leading the Blind, 1568, Museo Nazionale, Naples

The Peasant Wedding, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Peasant Dance, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Beggars, 1568, Louvre, Paris

The Peasant and the Nest Robber, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Three Soldiers, 1568, Frick Collection, New York City

The Storm at Sea, an unfinished work, probably Bruegel's last painting.

Pietro Perugino (1446–1524) is a well-known painter of the Umbrian school, who developed some of the qualities that found classic expression in the High Renaissance.

Biography

Early years

He was born Pietro Vannucci in Città della Pieve, Umbria, the son of Cristoforo Vannucci; his nickname characterizes him as from Perugia, the chief city of Umbria.
By the age of nine, Pietro was articled to a master, a

painter at Perugia. Benedetto Bonfigli is generally surmised to be the man; if he is rejected as not being above mediocrity, either Fiorenzo di Lorenzo or Niccolò da Foligno may possibly have been the man.

Pietro painted at Arezzo, thence moved to Florence. The date of this first Florentine sojourn is by no means settled; some make it as early as 1470, others push the date to 1479. According to Vasari, he apprenticed in the atelier of Andrea del Verrocchio alongside Leonardo de Vinci. He may have learned perspective from Piero della Francesca. In 1472 he must have completed his apprenticeship, for he was enrolled as a painter in the confraternity of St Luke.

Perugino was one of the earliest Italian practitioners of oil painting. Some of his early works were extensive frescoes for the convent of the Ingesati fathers, destroyed during the siege of Florence, 1537; he produced for them also many cartoons, which they executed with brilliant effect in stained glass. A good specimen of his early style in tempera is the tondo (circular picture) in the Louvre of the Virgin and Child Enthroned between Saints.

In Rome

Perugino returned from Florence to Perugia, where his Florentine training showed in the Adoration of the Magi for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi (ca 1476). In about 1480, he was called to Rome to fresco panels for the Sistine Chapel walls by Sixtus IV including Moses and Zipporah (often attributed to Luca Signorelli), the Baptism of Christ, and The Delivery of the Keys (illustration, right).

Pinturicchio accompanied Perugino to Rome, and was made his partner, receiving a third of the profits. He may have done some of the Zipporah subject. The Sistine frescoes were the major high renaissance Patronage in Rome. The altar wall was also painted with the Assumption, the Nativity, and Moses in the Bulrushes. These works were later ruthlessly destroyed to make a space for Michelangelo Last Judgement,
Perugino, age forty, left Rome after completion of the Sistine Chapel work in 1486, and by autumn was in Florence.

Here he figures by no means advantageously in a criminal court. In July 1487 he and another Perugian painter named Aulista di Angelo were convicted, on their own confession, of having in December waylaid with staves someone (the name does not appear) in the streets near Pietro Maggiore. Perugino merely intended assault and battery, but Aulista meant to commit murder. The more illustrious culprit, guilty of the lesser offence, was fined ten gold florins, and the other was exiled for life.

Between 1486 and 1499 Perugino worked chiefly in Florence, making one journey to Rome and several to Perugia, where he may have maintained a second studio. He had an established studio in Florence, and received a great number of commissions. His Pietà (1495) in the Palazzo Pitti is an uncharacteristically stark work that avoids Perugino's sometimes too easy sentimental piety.

In 1499 the guild of the cambio (money-changers or bankers) of Perugia asked him to decorate their audience-hall. This extensive scheme, which may have been finished by 1500, comprised the painting of the vault with the seven planets and the signs of the zodiac (Perugino being responsible for the designs and his pupils most probably for the execution) and the representation on the walls of two sacred subjects: the Nativity and Transfiguration;

in addition, the Eternal Father, the cardinal virtues of Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude, Cato as the emblem of wisdom, and numerous life-sized figures of classic worthies, prophets and sibyls figured in the program.

On the mid-pilaster of the hall Perugino placed his own portrait in bust-form. It is probable that Raphael, who in boyhood, towards 1496, had been placed by his uncles under the tuition of Perugino, bore a hand in the work of the vaulting.
Perugino was made one of the priors of Perugia in 1501. On one occasion Michelangelo told Perugino to his face that he was a bungler in art (goffo nell arte): Vannucci brought an action for defamation of character, unsuccessfully.

Put on his mettle by this mortifying transaction, he produced the masterpiece of the Madonna and Saints for the Certosa of Pavia, now disassembled and scattered among museums: the only portion in the Certosa is God the Father with cherubim. An Annunciation has disappeared; three panels, the Virgin adoring the infant Christ, St. Michael and St. Raphael with Tobias are among the treasures of the National Gallery, London.

This was succeeded in 1505 by an Assumption, in the Cappella dei Rabatta, in the church of the Servi in Florence. The painting may have been executed chiefly by a pupil, and was at any rate a failure: it was much decried; Perugino lost his students; and towards 1506 he once more and finally abandoned Florence, going to Perugia, and thence in a year or two to Rome.

Pope Julius II had summoned Perugino to paint the Stanza of the Incendio del Borgo in the Vatican City; but he soon preferred a younger competitor, Raphael, who had been trained by Perugino; and Vannucci, after painting the ceiling with figures of God the Father in different glories, in five medallion-subjects, retired from Rome to Perugia from 1512. Among his latest works, many of which decline into repetitious studio routine, one of the best is the extensive altarpiece (painted between 1512 and 1517) of the church of San Agostino in Perugia, also now dispersed.

Perugino's last frescoes were painted for the church of the Madonna delle Lacrime in Trevi (1521, signed and dated), the monastery of Sant'Agnese in Perugia, and in 1522 for the church of Castello di Fortignano. Both series have disappeared from their places, the second being now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was still at Fontignano in 1524 when he died of the the plague. Like other plague victims, he was hastily buried in an unconsecrated field, the precise spot now unknown.

Vasari is our chief, but not sole, authority for saying Perugino had very little religion, and openly doubted the soul's immortality. It is difficult to reconcile this discrepancy, and certainly not a little difficult also to suppose that Vasari was totally mistaken in his assertion; he was born twenty years before Perugino's death, and must have talked with scores of people to whom the Umbrian painter had been well known.

We have to remark that Perugino in 1494 painted his own portrait (illustration, upper right), now in the Uffizi Gallery, and into this he introduced a scroll lettered Timete Deum. That an open disbeliever should inscribe himself with Timete Deum seems odd.

The portrait in question shows a plump face, with small dark eyes, a short but well-cut nose, and sensuous lips; the neck is thick, the hair bushy and frizzled, and the general air imposing. The later portrait in the Cambio of Perugia shows the same face with traces of added years. Perugino died possessed of considerable property, leaving three sons.

In 1495 he signed and dated a Deposition for the Florentine convent of Santa Chiara (Palazzo Pitti). Towards 1496 he frescoed a Crucifixion, commissioned in 1493 for Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, Florence (the Pazzi Crucifixion).

The attribution to him of the picture of the marriage of Joseph and the Virgin Mary (the Sposalizio) now in the museum of Caen, which indisputably served as the original, to a great extent, of the still more famous Sposalizio painted by Raphael in 1504 (Accademia di Brera, Milan), is now questioned, and it is assigned to Lo Spagna. A vastly finer work of Perugino's was the polyptych of the Ascension of Christ painted ca 1496–98 for the church of S. Pietro of Perugia, (Municipal Museum, Lyon); the other portions of the same altarpiece are dispersed in other galleries.

In the chapel of the Disciplinati of Città della Pieve is an Adoration of the Magi, a square of 6.5 m containing about thirty life-sized figures; this was executed, with scarcely credible celerity, from the 1st to 25th of March (or thereabouts) in 1505, and must no doubt be in great part the work of Vannucci's pupils.

In 1507, when the master's work had for years been in a course of decline and his performances were generally weak, he produced. nevertheless, one of his best; pictures — the Virgin between Saint Jerome and Saint Francis, how in the Palazzo Penna.

In the church of S. Onofrio in Florence is a much lauded and much debated fresco of the Last Supper, a careful and blandly correct but uninspired work; it has been ascribed to Perugino by some connoisseurs, by others to Raphael; it may more probably be by some different pupil of the Umbrian master.

Among his pupils was Giovanni di Pietro (lo Spagna).

Major works

St. Sebastian (c. 1490–1500) — Panel, 176 × 116 cm, Louvre, Paris

St. Sebastian (after 1490) — Oil on wood, 110 × 62 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome

St. Sebastian (1493–1494) — Oil and tempera on panel, 53.8 × 39.5 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Marriage of the Virgin (1500–1504) — Oil on wood, 234 × 185, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen

St. Sebastian Bound to a Column (c. 1500–1510) — Oil on canvas, 181 × 115 cm, São Paulo Art Museum, São Paulo, Brazil

The Delivery of the Keys (1481–1482) — Fresco, 335 × 600 cm, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

Crucifixion (the Galitzin triptych, 1480s) — painted for San Domenico at San Gimignano, National Gallery, Washington

The Nativity: the Virgin, St Joseph and the Shepherds adoring the Infant Christ (ca. 1522) — Fresco transferred to canvas from S. Maria Assunta, at Fontignano, 254 x 594 cm, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Andrea del Sarto, true name Andrea d'Agnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore, (July 16, 1486 - January 21, 1531), was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and Mannerism.

Though regarded by his contemporaries as an artist "senza errori" (i.e., faultless), he was frequently overshadowed in fame by equally talented but more ambitious contemporaries like Raphael.

Early life and training

Andrea was born in Gualfonda, close to Florence, in either

1486 or 1487: he was one of four children to Agnolo, a tailor (sarto). Since 1677 some have attributed the surname Vannucchi with little documentation. By 1494 Andrea was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and then to a skillful woodcarver and inferior painter named Gian Barile, with whom he remained until 1498. According to Vasari, he then apprenticed to Piero di Cosimo, and later with Raffaellino del Garbo (Carli).

Andrea and an elder friend Franciabigio decided to open a joint studio at a lodging together in the Piazza del Grano. Their first partnership may have been the Baptism of Christ for the Florentine Compagnia dello Scalzo, the beginning of a monochrome fresco series. By the time the partnership was dissolved, Sarto's style bore the stamp of individuality. It "is marked throughout his career by an interest, exceptional among Florentines, in effects of colour and atmosphere and by sophisticated informality and natural expression of emotion".

Frescoes at SS Annunziata in Florence

From 1509 to 1514 the brotherhood of the Servites employed Sarto, Franciabigio, and Andrea Feltrini in a programme of frescoes at Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze. Sarto completed three frescoes in the portico of the Servite convent illustrating the Life of Filippo Benizzi, a Servite saint who died in 1285. He executed them rapidly, depicting the saint sharing his cloak with a leper, cursing some gamblers, and restoring a girl possessed with a devil.

These paintings met with respect, the correctness of the contours being particularly admired, and earned for Sarto the nickname of "Andrea senza errori" (Andrea the perfect). After these, the painter depicted in two frescoes the death of S. Filippo and then children cured by touching his garment; all five works were completed before the close of 1510.

The Servites engaged him to do two more frescoes in the forecourt of the Annunziata: a Procession of the Magi (or Adoration, containing a self portrait) finished in 1511. Towards 1512 he painted an Annunciation in the monastery of S. Gallo and a Marriage of Saint Catherine (Dresden).

By 1514 Andrea had finished his last two frescoes, including his masterpiece, the Birth of the Virgin, which fuses the influence of Leonardo, Ghirlandaio and Fra Bartolomeo.[1] By November 1515 he had finished at the Scalzo the Allegory of Justice and the Baptist preaching in the desert, followed in 1517 by John Baptizing, and other subjects.

Visit to France

Before the end of 1516 a Pietà of his composition, and afterwards a Madonna, were sent to the French court. They led to invitation of Sarto to come to the court of François I in 1518. He journeyed to Paris towards June of that year, along with his pupil Andrea Squarzzella, leaving his wife in Florence.

Lucrezia, however, wrote urging his return to Italy. The king assented, but only on the understanding that his absence from France was to be short; and he entrusted Andrea with a sum of money to be expended in purchasing works of art for his royal patron. Instead, the temptation of having a goodly sum encouraged its expenditure in the building of a house for himself in Florence. This necessarily brought him in conflict with François, who refused to be reingratiated with Andrea. No serious punishment, however, apparently befell the artist.

Later works in Florence

In 1520 he resumed work in Florence, and executed the Faith and Charity in the cloister of the Scalzo. These were succeeded by the Dance of the Daughter of Herodias, the Beheading of the Baptist, the Presentation of his head to Herod, an allegory of Hope, the "Apparition of the Angel to Zacharias" (1523), and the monochrome Visitation.
This last was painted in the autumn of 1524, after Andrea had returned from Luco in Mugello, whence an outbreak of bubonic plague in Florence had driven him and his family.

In 1525 he returned to paint in the Annunziata cloister the Madonna del Sacco, a lunette named after a sack against which Joseph is represented propped[5]. In this painting the generous virgin's gown and her gaze indicate his influence on the early style of pupil Pontormo.

His final work at the Scalzo was the Birth of the Baptist (1526). In the following year he completed at S. Salvi, near Florence, a celebrated Last Supper in which all the personages seem to be portraits. It is the last monumental work of importance which Andrea del Sarto lived to execute. He died in 1531 in Florence.

Madonna of the Harpies

Perhaps the best known painting by Andrea del Sarto is the Madonna of the Harpies, a depiction of the Virgin and child on a pedestal, flanked by angels and two saints (Bonaventure or Francis; and John the Evangelist). Originally completed in 1517 for the convent of San Francesco dei Macci, the altarpiece is displayed in a privileged location in the Uffizi.

In an Italy swamped with a tsunami of Madonnas, it would be easy to overlook this work; however, this commonly copied scheme also lends itself to comparison of his style with painters of his century. The figures have a Da Vinci-like aura, and the stable pyramid of their composition provides a unified structure. In some ways, his rigid adherence is more classical than Da Vinci's but less so than Fra Bartolomeo's representations of the Holy Family, but there is an elegance that is lacking in the more sculptural paintings of other contemporaries.

Details of personal life

Andrea fell in love with Lucrezia (del Fede), wife of a hatter named Carlo, of Recanati; the hatter dying opportunely, Andrea married her on 26 December 1512. She has come down to us in many a picture of her lover-husband, who constantly painted her as a Madonna and otherwise; even in painting other women he made them resemble Lucrezia.

She was less gently handled by Giorgio Vasari, a pupil of Andrea, who describes her as faithless, jealous, and vixenish with the apprentices; her offstage character permeates Robert Browning's poem-monologue "Andrea del Sarto called the 'faultless painter'" (1855) .

He dwelt in Florence throughout the memorable siege of 1529, which was soon followed by an infectious pestilence. He caught the malady, struggled against it with little or no tending from his wife, who held aloof, and he died, no one knowing much about it at the moment, on 22 January 1531, at the comparatively early age of forty-three. He was buried unceremoniously in the church of the Servites. His wife survived her husband forty years.

A number of paintings are considered to be self-portraits. One is in the National Gallery, London, an admirable half-figure, purchased in 1862. Another is at Alnwick Castle, a young man about twenty years, with his elbow on a table. Another youthful portrait is in the Uffizi Gallery, and the Pitti Palace contains more than one.

Very noticeable incident in the life of Andrea del Sarto relates to the copy, which he produced in 1523, of the portrait group of Pope Leo X by Raphael; now in the Naples Museum: the original remains at the Pitti. This painting was requested by Federico II Gonzaga, duke of Mantua from Ottaviano de' Medici. Unwilling to part with it, Ottaviano had Andrea to make the copy, and passed it to the duke as the original.

So deceptive was the imitation that even Giulio Romano, who had himself manipulated the original to some extent, was completely fooled; and, on showing the supposed Raphael years afterwards to Vasari, who knew the facts, he could only be undeceived when a private mark on the canvas was named to him by Vasari and brought under his eye.

Critical assessment and legacy

It was Michelangelo who had introduced Vasari in 1524 to Andrea's studio. He is said to have thought very highly of Andrea's powers. Of those who initially followed his style in Florence, the most prominent would have been Jacopo Pontormo, but also Francesco Salviati and Jacopino del Conte.

Other lesser known assistants and pupils include Bernardo del Buda, Lamberto Lombardi, Nannuccio Fiorentino, and Andrea Squazzella
Vasari, however, was highly critical of his teacher, alleging that, though having all the prerequisites of a great artist, he lacked ambition and that divine fire of inspiration which animated the works of his more famous contemporaries, like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Partial anthology of works

Holy Family with St Peter Martyr (1507-8, Pinacoteca Bari)

Madonna and Child with St. John (c.1513, Whitfield Fine Art)

Madonna of the Harpies (Virgin and Child, with St Francis, St John the Evangelist, and two angels), (painted S. Francesco, now in Uffizi, Florence)

Fathers disputing on the doctrine of the Trinity (Saints Augustine, Dominic, Francis, Lawrence, Sebastian and Mary Magdalene)(1517, altarpiece for the monastery of S. Gallo, now in Ufizzi, Florence)

Charity (Louvre)

Pieta (Belvedere, Vienna)

Julius Caesar receives tribute (fresco at Poggio a Caiano, 1521) completed by Alessandro Allori.

Virgin surrounded by Saints (Pitti Palace, Florence)

Pieta (Pitti Palace)

Virgin, Child, Joseph, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, and an Archangel (Prado)

Holy Family with John the Baptist (Louvre)

In Berlin a portrait of his wife.

At Panshanger, Berkshire, a fine portrait named "Laura."

Annunciation (Pitti Palace)

Antonio Allegri da Correggio (August 1489 – March 5, 1534) was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Rococo art of the 18th century.

Biography

Antonio Allegri was born in Correggio, a small Lombard town near Reggio Emilia. His date of birth is uncertain (around 1489). His father was a merchant. Otherwise, little

is known about Correggio's life or training. In the years 1503-1505 he apprenticed to Francesco Bianchi Ferrara of Modena. Here he probably knew the classicism of artists like Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia, evidence of which can be found in his first works. After a trip to Mantua in 1506, he returned to Correggio, where he stayed until 1510.

To this period is assigned the Adoration of the Child with St. Elizabeth and John, which shows clear influences from Costa and Mantegna. In 1514 he probably finished three tondos for the entrance of the church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, and then returned to Correggio: here, as an independent and increasingly renowned artist, he signed a contract for the Madonna altarpiece in the local monastery of St. Francis (now in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie).

Works in Parma

By 1516, Correggio was in Parma, where he generally remained for the rest of his career. Here, he befriended Michelangelo Anselmi, a prominent Mannerist painter. In 1519 he married Girolama Francesca di Braghetis, also of Correggio, who died in 1529. One of his sons, Pomponio Allegri, became an undistinguished painter. From this period are the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John, Christ Leaving His Mother and the lost Madonna of Albinea.

Correggio's first major commission (February-September of 1519) was the decoration ceiling of the private dining salon of the mother-superior (abbess Giovanna Piacenza) of the Convent of St Paul, called the Camera di San Paolo (Parma). Here he painted a delightful arbor pierced by oculi opening to glimpses of playful cherubs. Below the oculi are lunnetes with monochromic marble images.

The fireplace is frescoed with an image of Diana. The iconography of the unit is complex, joining images of classical marbles to whimsical colorful bambini. While it recalls the secular frescoes of the pleasure palace of the Villa Farnesina in Rome, but is also a strikingly novel form of interior decoration.

He next painted the illusionistic Vision of St. John on Patmos (1520-21) for the dome of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Three years later he decorated the dome of the Cathedral of Parma with a startling Assumption of the Virgin, crowded with layers of receding figures in Melozzo's perspective (from down to up).

These two works would represent a highly novel treatment of dome decoration, using an illusionistic sotto in su perspective, and would exert a profound influence upon future fresco artists, from Carlo Cignani in his fresco Assumption of the Virgin, in the cathedral church of Forlì, to Gaudenzio Ferrari in his frescoes for the cupola of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Saronno, to Pordenone in his now-lost fresco from Treviso, and to the baroque elaborations of Lanfranco and Baciccio in Roman churches.

The massing of spectators in a vortex, creating both narrative and decoration, the illusionistic obliteration of the architectural roof-plane, and thrusting perspective towards divine infinity, was a device without precedent, and which depended on the extrapolation of the mechanics of perspective. The recession and movement implied by the figures all presage the dynamism that would characterize baroque painting.
Other masterpieces include The Lamentation and The Martyrdom of Four Saints [1], both at the Galleria Nazionale of Parma.

The Lamentation is haunted by a lambence rarely seen in Italian painting prior to this time. The Martyrdom is also remarkable for resembling later Baroque compositions such as Bernini's (Truth) and Ercole Ferrata's (Death of Saint Agnes), showing a gleeful saint entering martyrdom.

Mythological series based on Ovid's Metamorphoses

Aside from his religious output, Correggio conceived a now-famous set of paintings depicting the Loves of Jupiter as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The voluptuous series was commissioned by Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua, probably to decorate his private Ovid Room in the Palazzo Te. However, they were given to the visiting Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and thus left Italy within years of their completion.

Leda and the Swan, now in Staatliche Museen of Berlin, is a tumult of incidents: in the centre Leda straddles a swan, and on the right, a shy but satisfied maiden. Danaë, now in Rome's Borghese Gallery, depicts the maiden as she is impregnated by a curtain of gilded divine rain.

Her lower torso semi-obscured by sheets, Danae appears more demure and gleeful than Titian's 1545 version of the same topic, where the rain is more accurately numismatic. The picture once called Antiope and the Satyr is now correctly identified as Venus and Cupid with a Satyr.

Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle depicts the young man aloft in literal amorous flight. Some have interpreted the conjunction of man and eagle as a metaphor for the evangelist John; however, given the erotic context of this and other paintings, this seems unlikely. This painting and its partner, the masterpiece of Jupiter and Io (reproduced above), are in Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna.

Evaluation

Correggio was remembered by his contemporaries as a shadowy, melancholic and introverted character, traits possibly conditioned by his birth into a large and poor family.
Correggio is an enigmatic and eclectic artist, and it is not always possible to identify a stylistic link between his paintings. He appears to have emerged out of no major apprenticeship, and to have had little immediate influence in terms of apprenticed successors, but his works are now considered to have been revolutionary and influential on subsequent artists.

A century after his death Correggio's work was well known to Vasari, who felt that he had not had enough "Roman" exposure to make him a better painter. In the 18th and 19th centuries, his works were often remembered in the diaries of foreign visitors to Italy, which led to a reevaluation of his art during the period of Romanticism.

The flight of the Madonna in the vault of the cupola of the Cathedral of Parma inspired numerous scenographical decorations in lay and religious palaces during the 20th centuries.

Corregio's illusionistic experiments, in which imaginary spaces replace the natural reality, seem to prefigure many elements of Mannerist and Baroque stylistic approaches. In other words, he appears to have fostered artistic grandchildren, despite having no direct disciples outside of Parma, where he was influential on the work of Giovanni Maria Francesco Rondani, Parmigianino, Bernardo Gatti, and Giorgio Gandini del Grano.

His son, Pomponio Allegri became a painter.
In addition to the influence of Costa, there are echoes of Mantegna's style in his work, and a response to Leonardo da Vinci, as well.

Selected works

Madonna (1512-14) - Oil canvas, Castello Sforzesco, Milan

The Adoration of the Magi (1516-18)- Oil canvas, 84 x 108 cm, Brera, Milan

Ecce Homo - Oil canvas, National Gallery, London

The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (1510-15) - National Gallery of Art, Washington

Madonna with St. Francis (1514) - Oil on wood, 299 x 245 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Madonna of Albinea (1514, lost)

Virgin and Child with an Angel (Madonna del Latte) - Oil on wood, 68 x 56 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John (1516) - Oil canvas, 48 x 37 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Rest on the Flight to Egypt with Saint Francis (1517) - Oil on canvas, 123,5 x 106,5 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Portrait of a Gentlewoman (1517-19) - Oil on canvas, 103 x 87,5 cm, Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Adoration of the Child (1518-20) - Oil on canvas, 81 x 67 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Camera di San Paolo (1519) - Frescoes, Nunnery of St Paul, Parma

Correggio's famous frescoes in Parma seem to melt the ceiling of the cathedral and draw the viewer into a gyre of spiritual ecstasy.

Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (c. 1520) - Wood, 105 x 102 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Passing Away of St. John (1520-24) - Fresco, S. Giovanni Evangelista, Parma

Madonna with St. Jerome (c. 1522) - Oil on canvas, 205,7 x 141 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
Madonna della Scala (c. 1523) - Fresco, 196 x 141,8 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma

Deposition from the Cross (1525)- Oil canvas, 158,5 x 184,3 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma

Noli me Tangere (c. 1525) - Oil canvas, 130 x 103 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Madonna della Scodella (1525-30) - Oil canvas, 216 x 137 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma

Assumption of the Virgin (1526–1530) — Fresco, 1093 x 1195 cm, Cathedral of Parma
Nativity (Adoration of the Shepherds, or Holy Night (1528-30) - Oil on canvas, 256,5 x 188 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

The Education of Cupid (c. 1528) - Oil canvas, 155 x 91 cm, National Gallery, London

Venus and Cupid with a Satyr (c. 1528) - Oil on canvas, 188 x 125 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Madonna with St. George (1530-32) - Oil on canvas, 285 x 190 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Ganymede abducted by the Eagle (1531-32) - Oil on canvas, 163,5 x 70,5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Jupiter and Io (1531-32) - Oil canvas, 164 x 71 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Leda with the Swan (1531-32) - Oil canvas, 152 x 191 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Danaë (c. 1531) - Tempera panel, 161 x 193 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome

Allegory of Virtue (c. 1532-1534) - Oil canvas, 149 x 88 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Filippino Lippi (c. 1457 – April 1504) was a well-known painter working during the High Renaissance in Florence, Italy.

Biography

Born Filippo Lippi in Prato (Tuscany), the illegitimate son of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi and nun Lucrezia Buti, Filippino first trained under his father.

They moved to Spoleto, where Filippino served as shop adjuvant in the construction of the Cathedral there. When his father died in 1469, he completed the frescoes with Storie della Vergine (Histories of the Virgin) in the cathedral. Filippino Lippi completed his apprenticeship in

the workshop of Botticelli, who had been a pupil of Filippino's father. In 1472, Botticelli also took him as his companion in the Compagnia di San Luca.
His first works greatly resemble those of Botticelli's, but with less sensitivity and subtlety.

The very first ones (dating from 1475 onwards) were initially attributed to an anonymous "Amico di Sandro" ("Friend of Botticelli"). Eventually Lippi's style evolved into a more personal and effective one in the years 1480-1485. Works of the early period include: the Madonnas of Berlin, London and Washington, the Journeys of Tobia of the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, Italy, the Madonna of the Sea of Galleria dell'Accademia and the Histories of Ester.

Together with Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Botticelli, Lippi worked on the frescoed decoration of Lorenzo de Medici's villa at Spedaletto. On December 31, 1482 he was commissioned to work on a wall of Sala dell'Udienza of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (a work never begun).

Soon after (probably in 1483-1484) he was called to complete Masaccio's decoration of Brancacci Chapel in the church of the Carmine, left unfinished by the artist's death in 1428 . Here he realized the Stories of Saint Peter on the following frescoes: Quarrel with Simon Magus in face of Nero, Resurrection of Teophilus' Son, Saint Peter Jailed, Liberation and Saint Peter's Crucifixion.

The work on the Sala degli Otto di Pratica, in the Palazzo Vecchio, started on February 20, 1486. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery. In the same years Piero di Francesco del Pugliese asked him to paint the altarpiece with Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard, now in the Badia Fiorentina, Florence. This is Lippi's most popular picture: a composition of unreal items, with its very particular elongated figures, backed by a phantasmagorical scenario of rocks and almost anthropomorphic trunks. The work can be dated to the 1480-1486 years.

Eventually he worked for Tanai de' Nerli in the Saint Spirit's Church.
On April 21, 1487, Filippo Strozzi asked him to decorate the family chapel in Santa Maria Novella with the Stories of St. John Evangelist and St. Philip. He worked on this piece intermittently, only completing it in 1503, after the customer's death. The windows with musical themes, also designed by Filippino, were completed between June and July 1503.

These paintings can be seen as a mirror of the political and religious crisis in Florence at the time: the theme of the fresco, the clash between Christianity and Paganism, was hotly debated in the Florence of Girolamo Savonarola.

Filippino showed his characters in a landscape which recreated the ancient world in its finest details, showing the influence of the Grottesco style he had seen in his journey to Rome. He created in this way an "animated", mysterious, fantastic but also disquieting style, showing the unreality of something as a nightmare.

In this way, Filippino portrayed ruthless executioners deformed by grim faces, who raged against the Saints. In the scene with St. Philip expelling a monster from the temple, the statue of the pagan god is a living figure which seems to dare the Christian saint.

On 1488 Lippi moved to Rome, where Lorenzo de' Medici had advised Cardinal Oliviero Carafa to entrust him the decoration of the family chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. These frescoes show a new kind of inspiration, quite different from the earlier works, but confirm his continued research on the themes of the Ancient era. Lippi finished the cycle by 1493.

Lippi's return to Florence is variously assigned to the years going from 1491 to 1494 . Works of this period include: Apparition of Christ to Madonna (1493, now in Munich), Adoration of the Magi (1496, for the church of San Donato in Scopeto, now in the Uffizi), Sacrifice of Lacoön (end of the century, for the villa of Lorenzo de' Medici at Poggio a Caiano), St. John Baptist and Maddalena (Valori Chapel in San Procolo, Florence, inspired in some way to Luca Signorelli's art).

He also worked outside of his mother-country, namely on the Certosa of Pavia and in Prato, where in 1503 he completed the Tabernacle of the Christmas Song, now in the City Museum; in 1501 Lippi realized the Mystic Wedding of St. Catherine for the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna.
Lippi's last work is the Deposition for the Santissima Annunziata church in Florence, which at his death in April 1504 was unfinished.
He was so renowned that all the workshops of the city closed on the day of his burial.

Major works

The Coronation of the Virgin (c. 1480) - Tempera on panel, 90,2 x 223 cm - National Gallery of Art, Washington

Madonna with Child, St Anthony of Padua and a Friar (before 1480) - Tempera on wood, 57 x 41,5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Tobias and the Angel (c. 1480) - Tempera on panel, 33 x 23 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Portrait of an Old Man (1485) -Detached fresco, 47 x 38 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Three Angels with Young Tobias (1485) - Oil on panel, 100 x 127 cm, Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Self-Portrait - Detached fresco on flat tile, 50 x 31 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Portrait of a Youth (c. 1485) - Wood, 51 x 35,5 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Signoria Altarpiece (Pala degli Otto) (1486)) - Tempera on wood, 355 x 255 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Annunciation with St. Thomas and Cardinal Carafa (1488-1493) - Fresco, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome

Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard (1486) - Oil on panel, 210 x 195 cm, Church of Badia, Florence

Madonna with Child and Saints (c. 1488) - Oil on wood, Santo Spirito, Florence

St. Jerome, (1490s) - Oil on wood, 136 x 71 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Adoration of the Magi (1496) - Oil on wood, Uffizi, Florence

Allegory (c. 1498) - Oil on wood, 29 x 22 cm, Uffizi, Florence

Allegory of Music (Erato) (c. 1500) - Tempera on panel, 61 x 51 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (c. 1501-1503 -Panel, Basilica di San Domenico, Bologna

Deposition (1504, finished by Perugino in 1507) - Oil on panel, 333 x 218 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Florence

Hans Baldung known as Hans Baldung Grien/Grün (c. 1480 - 1545). German Renaissance artist as painter and printmaker in woodcut. He was considered the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer.

Life

He was born Hans Baldung at Schwäbisch Gmünd in Swabia, Germany, the son of a lawyer, who moved to Strassburg in 1492. He was the only male member of his family not to attend university; this background was unusual for an artist at the time. His uncle became a doctor to the Emperor. He spent the greater part of his life at

Strassburg and Freiburg im Breisgau. He joined Dürer's Nuremberg workshop in 1503, probably after some initial training in Strassburg, and stayed until 1507. He seems to have been left in charge of the workshop during Dürer's second trip to Italy.

It is presumed that he acquired his nickname of "Grien" (meaning "green") in Nuremberg; the workshop seems to have had three Hanses in it at one point. He later included it in his monogram; it has also been suggested that it came from "grienhals", a German word for witch. In his later trip to the Netherlands in 1521 Dürer's diary shows that he took with him and sold prints by Baldung. On Dürer's death Baldung was sent a lock of his hair, which suggests a close friendship.

In 1509 Baldung purchased a citizenship of the city of Strassburg (then a German city, now in France), and lived there there till 1513. He then moved to Freiburg im Breisgau after being contacted to paint a large altarpiece for Freiburg Cathedral, which he finished in 1516 (still in situ). He returned to Strassburg in 1517, and died as a member of the town council in 1545. He had married Margarethe Herlin, from a prominent family in the city, and owned a number of properties. Baldung died before the year of 1700.

Work

The earliest pictures assigned to him by some are altar-pieces with the monogram H. B. interlaced, and the date of 1496, in the monastery chapel of Lichtenthal near Baden-Baden. Another early work is a portrait of the emperor Maximilian, drawn in 1501 on a leaf of a sketch-book now in the print-room at Karlsruhe. "The Martyrdom of St Sebastian and the Epiphany" (Berlin Museum), fruits of his labour in 1507, were painted for the market-church of Halle in Saxony.

Baldung's prints, though Düreresque, are very individual in style, and often in subject. They show little direct Italian influence. His paintings are less important than his prints. He worked mainly in woodcut, although he made six engravings, one very fine. He joined in the fashion for chiaroscuro woodcuts, adding a tone block to a woodcut of 1510.

Most of his hundreds of woodcuts were commissioned for books, as was usual at the time; his "single-leaf" woodcuts (ie prints not for book illustration) are fewer than 100, though no two catalogues agree as to the exact number.
He was extremely interested in witches and made many images of them in different media, including several very beautiful drawings finished with bodycolour, which are more erotic than his treatments in other techniques.

Without absolute correctness as a draughtsman, his conception of human form is often very unpleasant, whilst a questionable taste is shown in ornament equally profuse and baroque. Nothing is more remarkable in his pictures than the pug-like shape of the faces, unless we except the coarseness of the extremities. No trace is apparent of any feeling for atmosphere or light and shade.

Though Grün has been commonly called the Correggio of the north, his compositions are a curious medley of glaring and heterogeneous colours, in which pure black is contrasted with pale yellow, dirty grey, impure red and glowing green. Flesh is a mere glaze under which the features are indicated by lines. (1911)

His works are mainly interesting because of the wild and fantastic strength which some of them display. We may pass lightly over the "Epiphany" of 1507, the "Crucifixion" of 1512, or the "Stoning of Stephen" of 1522, in the Berlin Museum. There is some force in the "Dance of Death" of 1517, in the museum of Basel, or the Madonna of 1530, in the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna.

Grün's best effort is the altarpiece of Freiburg, where the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Twelve Apostles, the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity and Flight into Egypt, and the Crucifixion, with portraits of donors, are executed with some of that fanciful power which Martin Schongauer bequeathed to the Swabian school.

As a portrait painter he is well known. He drew the likeness of Charles V, as well as that of Maximilian; and his bust of Margrave Philip in the Munich Gallery tells us that he was connected with the reigning family of Baden, as early as 1514.

At a later period he had sittings from Margrave Christopher of Baden, Ottilia his wife, and all their children, and the picture containing these portraits is still in the grand-ducal gallery at Karlsruhe. Like Dürer and Cranach, Grün became a hearty supporter of the Reformation. He was present at the diet of Augsburg in 1518, and one of his woodcuts represents Luther under the protection of the Holy Ghost, which hovers over him in the shape of a dove.