Leonardo Da Vinci: a pioneer to STEAM, 500 years before timeline

Vinci, Republic of Florence
He was the out-of-wedlock son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant.
(Note: The biografy of Leonardo Da Vinci based on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci)

Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.
Leonardo would have been exposed to both theoretical training and a vast range of technical skills, including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.

Αt the age of 14, Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio, whose bottega (workshop) was "one of the finest in Florence". (1466 - 1478)

At the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, Frorence. The Leonardo's earliest known drawing is the "Arno Valley", 1473.

In 1478, he left Verrocchio's studio. Anonimo Gaddiano, claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and working in the Garden of the Piazza San Marco in Florence, a Neo-Platonic academy that the Medici had established. In 1478, he received an independent commission to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St. Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio; in 1481, he received a second independent commission for "The Adoration of the Magi" for the monks of San Donato a Scopeto.

Donato Bramante's Heraclitus and Democritus is thought by some to portray Leonardo as Heraclitus (left) and Bramante as Democritus (right).
It would be the only portrait made of Leonardo in his young adulthood.

Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the "Virgin of the Rocks" for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and "The Last Supper" for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to Hungary on behalf of Ludovico Sforza to meet Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.

Leonardo was employed on many different projects for Ludovico, including 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. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it.

The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492, the clay model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello in Padua and Verrocchio in Venice, and became known as the "Gran Cavallo". In November 1494, Sforza gave the bronze to be used for cannon to defend from invasion by Charles VIII. At 1499, the invading French troops used the life-size clay modelfor target practice.

Between 1493 and 1495, Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditures suggests that she was his mother.

With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.

On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of "The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist", a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".

In Cesena in 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan of Imola in order to win his patronage. Maps were extremely rare at the time and it would have seemed like a new concept. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect.

Leonardo returned to Florence, where he rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke on 18 October 1503. He spent two years designing and painting a mural of "The Battle of Anghiari" for the Signoria, with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, "The Battle of Cascina". In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of David.

In 1506, Leonardo returned to Milan. Many of his most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco d'Oggiono. At this time he may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of Charles II d'Amboise, the acting French governor of Milan. A wax model survives and, if genuine, is the only extant example of Leonardo's sculpture.

Leonardo did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508, Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.

From September 1513 to 1516, under Pope Leo X, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time.

In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan.On 19 December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna. Leonardo was commissioned to make for Francis a mechanical lion that could walk forward then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.

In 1516, he entered Francis' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé, now a public museum, near the king's residence at the royal Château d'Amboise. He spent the last three years of his life here, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi.

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67. The cause is generally stated to be recurrent stroke; this diagnosis is consistent with accounts of the state of Leonardo's alleged remains as described in 1863.Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari describes Leonardo as lamenting on his deathbed, full of repentance, that "he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should have done."

Leonardo Da Vinci: a pioneer to STEAM, 500 years before

Born

Young

At Verrocchio's Bottega

Master

Florence

Florence

Milan

Hungary

Milan

Milan

Milan

Venice

Florence

Cesena

Florence

Milan

Florence

Rome

Bologna

Paris

Dead