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LEONARDO DA VINCI 1452-1519 B by ANY STANDARDS, Leonardo da Vinci was an extraordinary man. He epitomized the Renaissance ideal of the polymath - artist, raconteur, musician, scientist, mathematician and engineer - a man of many talents with an insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge. He was born at Anchiano, a village near the little town of Vinci, on 15 April, 1452. His father was to become a successful notary while his mother, Caterina, was a peasant with whom his father conducted a somewhat irregular liaison.

The young Leonardo thrived in the countryside, where he developed an enduring love of nature. As a boy, he was asked to design a shield for one of his father's connections. He is said to have produced an extraordinary bestiary, based on first-hand observation of lizards, crickets, snakes, butterflies, grasshoppers and bats. From all reports, this was the first occasion when he revealed his fascination with mobile, twisting, living forms.

He is also recorded as having a great love and skilful mastery of horses. They featured so prominently in many of his mature works that this seems very likely. Some time before 1469, Leonardo went with his father to live in Florence and in 1472, he was inscribed on the roll of the guild of St Luke the guild of painters. His master was Andrea Verrocchio, and records show that he was still employed in Verrocchio's workshop in the Via dell'Agnolo in 1476. Verrocchio's influence on the younger man is difficult to assess. Certainly, the master's use of curved and curling forms found an echo in his pupil. Verrocchio's paintings have a certain grandeur but do not really stir the imagination, whereas his sculptures have a greater force and seem to have been a stronger influence on Leonardo. ­

Although they never liked each other and Leonardo made no secret of the fact that he considered sculpture inferior to painting, but Michelangelo's fame was an irritant. Once again, Leonardo became an engineer; draining marshes, drawing maps and designing a canal system. He met Niccolo Machiavelli in U rbi no and this encounter was to lead to a close association and his most important commission. Meanwhile, he produced some magnificent red chalk drawings of Cesare Borgia. In 1,503, he embarked on his three most prolific years as a painter. His most famous portrait, the Mona Lisa, with her renowned enigmatic smile,may have been painted at this time. Much of Leonardo's work in Florence between 1503 and 1507 has been lost, including Leda.

He found the mechanics of painting tedious and preferred to concentrate his imaginative skills on drawing and planning his compositions. As a result of his flourishing association with Machiavelli, Leonardo was commissioned to paint a fresco in the Sala del Gran Consiglio of the Palazzo Vecchio. He began work on the cartoon for the fresco - the Battle of Anghiari - in October 1503, but progress seems to have been slow. Leonardo completed his cartoon by the end of 1504 and began painting, using an unusual, possibly encaustic technique. This dried erratically and was generally unsuccessful. The fresco was never finished but later, a special frame was made to enclose the completed part and it was regarded by some as one of the best things to see when visiting Florence. It was eventually over painted by Vasari. Throughout 1507, Leonardo was working for the King of France, although his immediate patron was Charles d'Arnboise, Lord of Chau­mant and Governor of Milan.

In many ways, d'Arnboise reinstated the glories of the Sforza court. Leonardo was in his element, working as a painter, engineer and general artistic advisor. D'Arnboise died in 1511, but Leonardo remained in Milan until 24 September, 1513. Then he left for Rome, drawn, as were many, by Giovanni de' Medici who had recently become Pope Leo X. Leonardo was installed in rooms in the Belvedere of the Vatican but the bustle caused by the country's leading artists and their entourages all ­ .. living together was not to his taste. Michelangelo's unassailable position in Rome as a result of his work on the Sistine Chapel was also unpalatable. Perhaps Leonardo's obsessive fascination with the power of water and his many sketches for the Deluge reflect a turbulence of mind and spirit. Leonardo's last surviving picture is almost certainly St john and it was probably painted in 1514-15. In March 1516 he accepted an invitation from Francois I to live in France and was given a manor near Cloux. On 10 October, 1517, Leonardo was visited by Cardinal Louis of Aragon whose secretary wrote an account of the meeting. He mentions three paintings, two identifiable as The Virgin and Child and St Anne and St john and the third a portrait of a Florentine lady.

He also states that Leonardo was suffering from some kind of paralysis of the right hand. Leonardo was left-handed, but this observation may, in fact, refer to his 'working' hand, meaning his left. It is obvious from manuscripts that this paralysis did not prevent Leonardo using his fingers, as his writing was as clear and firm as always. Some of his drawings, however, have a lack of firmness and clarity that suggest that the problem may have affected the movement of his arm. On 2May, 1519, Leonardo died at Cloux. He left his drawings and manuscripts to his loyal friend Francesco Melzi. Melzi guarded the work jealously throughout his lifetime but, foolishly, made no provision in his will for its continued care. His son, Orazio, who had absolutely no interest in art or science, allowed this priceless collection to be broken up, lost, stolen and vandalized in a manner that can only be described as criminal. NOTE: It is often very difficult to define the medium used in Leonardo's works.

He was extremely experimental, and often tried out new recipes, or mixed paints from recipes found in classical sources: the exact ingredients are often obscure or completely unknown. Also much of Leonardo's work has been 'restored' at different times in the last 400 years. Often heavy-handed and with little respect for the original, these restorers paid scant regard to the medium originally used. Some paintings on wooden panels have been transferred to canvas.

A Study for the Adoration of the Magi 1481 Metal point drawing THE HORSES in the background of Leonardo's mysterious and visionary painting, Adoration of the Magi are only one aspect of many that has exercised the minds of art historians for centuries., Some have a down ­to- earth, no-nonsense, natural quality to them, while others are strange and dream-like, their bodies twisted into agitated shapes. This metal point drawing is a study somewhere between these two extremes. The animals have a quality of solid reality, but there is an underlying current of the frantic and confusing.

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The Life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci by Linda Doeser

Rembrandt Sketch

RemBrandt

Bob Haak! Rembrandt Drawings Rembrandt's drawings are the most original expressions of his art. Spontaneous sketches, notations of things he saw round about him - this was the reserve always available to him when he was busy with the works he made for sale, the paintings and the etchings. Besides the figure pieces in red and black chalk, it is especially in the pen drawings that, often with just a few strokes, he was able to capture the essence of a situation. Rembrandt drew throughout his whole life, as the large number of surviving drawings prove, and his drawing style gained in intensity with the years. In his mature period, when the expressiveness increased, he often used a reed pen, which enabled him to achieve strong, rugged lines. This book offers a selection of Rembrandt's most beautiful drawings, chosen by Bob Haak, an expert pert on Rembrandt's work. The chronological order permits the reader to follow the artist's development as a draftsman from the beginning up to his last drawings. Throughout this development it is clear that certain subjects fascinated the artist from his youth onward, whereas others-such as landscape-were of interest to him only during particular periods of his life. The author discusses Rembrandt's choice of subject matter and the materials he used as well. To Rembrandt, drawings were seldom independent works of art; they served primarily as a storehouse for his memories and as preparation for his etchings and paintings. In a few instances, where the link is very clear, the drawings here reproduced are accompanied by the related etching or painting. In conclusion, Haak examines the question of the extent to which it is permissible to deduce an artist's personal fortunes and misfortunes from his work. By surveying Rembrandt's life in the light of his most important creations, he is able to settle accounts with several widely held myths about this master.

Rembrandt Drawings by Bob Haak

FRANCE AND IMPRESSIONISM

JONGKIND

The Sainte Catherine's Market at Honfleur oil on canvas 1865.42 x 66 cm (DETAIL) HE IMPRESSIONISTS DID NOT choose their name it was foisted upon them in 1874 by a critic hostile to their work, However the name soon stuck and was used to describe a group of artists who never intended to be a unified radical movement, who never set out to shock or be revolutionaries. What they had in common was that they were all in Paris in the early 1860s and quickly got to know each other - some in art schools which they abandoned early on, some in the cafes where they would meet - and realized that they shared a desire to paint the landscape, cityscape, and modern life in new ways. The first Impressionist exhibition took place because none of these artists had achieved any regular success at the official Salon, the major venue for the Paris art market, whose juries were notoriously inconsistent and reactionary. The first exhibition by this group did little to challenge the all-powerful Salon, but it crystallized critical opinion and pushed the so-called Impressionists into the limelight, They were pilloried by hostile critics and supported by writers such as Baudelaire and Zola who saw in their work an important advancement of art into the modern era. But the Impressionists did not seek to criticize their society; they were largely middle class and politically conservative in an age permanently on the brink of upheaval. They remained true to aesthetic ideas which, with few exceptions, kept them from depicting the grinding poverty caused by rapid industrial expansion, and the sporadic outbursts of war and violence that punctuated the history of their times.

THE BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM

SEVERAL INFLUENCES IN THE EARLIER PART OF THE 19th CENTURY

Influences in the earlier part of the nineteenth century are crucial to the development of Impressionism. In the first three decades of the century the inspiration of Dutch and English landclaps began to have an important effect on French landscape painting and art in general. Eugene Delacroix - who was to influence many of the Impressionists, especially Renoir - had brought a new brilliance of colour and virtuosity of brushwork to his paintings of exotic subjects and was a keen admirer of Constable, as were the Barbizon School of plein-air, or open air painters attempting a new naturalism in and around the Fon­ tainebleau Forest. The latter were the precursors of Monet and Pissarro, who were also deeply influenced by the landscapists Eugene Boudin and Johan Jongkind working on the Normandy coast. By mid-century the Realists had come to prominence headed by Gustave Courbet, who had rejected the fanciful nature of Delacroix's Romanticism and was painting down-to-earth contemporary and allegorical subjects. All of these trends were significant in creating a world of art where Impressionism could flourish.

The Impressionists by Robert Katz and Celestine Dars

Renoir

Renoir

Renoir