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Autobiography Writing of Great Artist Leonardo Da Vinci The word polymath is only applicable to a handful of people in the world. Leonardo Da Vinci is perhaps the first person in the history of humankind for whom this word was used, and with time, it is proven how appropriate the word is for him. Even to this day, researchers are trying to discover new information about this enigmatic figure of the high renaissance period. From being one of the greatest artists of all time to an avant-garde inventor of his time, Da Vinci was known for a lot of things. Although the world knows his name mostly for his two-era defining painting, "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper", he also worked on a number of other subjects such as anatomy, botany, astronomy, painting, cartography, and paleontology. Such a wide range of expertise made him of the most enigmatic figures of human history. He is also part of countless historical fictions and conspiracy theories. However, it is not uncommon for a man of his stature. Who Was Leonardo Da Vinci? The great artist and scholar Leonardo Da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci. His original name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. It is pretty difficult to dig out information about his childhood since there are no valid documents to support most of the facts. Leonardo Da Vinci Early Days He's the illegitimate son of a well-to-do and rising notary, involved in creating and witnessing legal documents. While Leonardo couldn't follow in his father's footsteps, his artistic talent was spotted, and an apprenticeship in Florence was sought. During his teenage years, Leonardo trained in the workshop of the famous Renaissance artist Andrea del Verrocchio, where he learned everything from drawing to painting to sculpture to metalwork, where he made armour. Although Leonardo was still studying under Verrocchio at the time, it is thought that he may have been involved in making the gilded copper ball that sits on top of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral. He was certainly present when it was raised in 1471 and made sketches of the lifting apparatus. Most of the things regarding his childhood are often covered in myths and legends and since there is no particular biography of Da Vinci, validating these facts is quite challenging. However, the fantastic achievements he achieved later in his life made him this enigmatic figure in history. He was mainly prolific during the high renaissance period. While most people are only aware of his incredible abilities as a painter, few people know that he had also worked as a draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. Later, while researching about him, a few researchers unearthed his notebooks, which left everyone in absolute shock. In his notebook, one could find drawings related to various subjects like human anatomy, botany, astronomy, painting, cartography, and paleontology. In one of the parchments recovered from his personal collection, it was discovered that he was the first person to draw the design of a machine which is now known as the helicopter. There were even some drawings depicting other machines which can be used in war to massacre the troop of your enemies. Writing an autobiography of such a personality is never easy; hence, I will only try to cover some of the most important and prolific stages of his life. Florence was 20 miles away… I found out later in my life, probably when I was about five, that I was born on 15 April 1452 in this small town from which Florence was only 20 miles away. I had always wondered what it was like in the city. What kind of people lived there? But my curiosity was not because of any high-ambition but purely out of the desire to explore more. The things that I didn't know had always made me think and made me question about life, about the definition of art, and the definition of beauty. Painting used to come naturally to me, but maybe I was searching for my own expression; I was searching for myself and a new form. Probably that's why I wanted to visit the city of Florence. I wanted to get close to what was happening there. Finally, the chance presented itself to me. In the mid-1460s, my family decided to move to Florence. This was around that time when Florence was slowly becoming the center of Christian Humanist thought and culture. I remember I was around the age of 14 when I had first stepped into the studio as a Garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. He was very famous or perhaps the most famous Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. But at the same time, I had also heard that he had recently lost his master and his mentor for ages, the great sculptor Donatello. It was exactly what I had thought about. I wanted to find my own style and expression, and Verrocchio had played an enormous role in that. I was made an apprentice by the age of 17, and I continued my training for seven years. It is where I had learned most of the things about art, painting, and sculpting. My master was an expert in many things, and thus, he made me learn various kinds of technical skills like drafting, metallurgy, chemistry, plaster casting, metalworking, leatherworking, mechanics, and woodwork. But he had equal importance for artistic skills as well. Hence, I was taught the skills of drawing, sculpting, painting, and modeling. At this time, I never started to work on my own compositions, but I always used to help others finish their work. Like, I had contributed a lot with Verrocchio, especially on his painting called The Baptism Of Christ. On this painting, we used something called tempera, a new form of oil painting. It wasn't until 1473 that I had started to work on my own compositions. My earliest work was a pen-and-ink drawing of the Arno valley. I always thought that the rive Arno could be a navigable channel between Florence and Pisa. After some unfinished commissioned work here in the city, I decided to travel to Milan. I had worked there from 1482 until 1499. During this period, one of the most significant of my works was Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. But it was also the time when I was trying to understand everything that was around me, and I wanted to understand my expression as well. The human anatomy has always fascinated me, and that's precisely why I wanted to understand the proportion of the human body. Whatever I had learned from books and scriptures, I wanted to validate them after meeting the models of Milan. This led to the drawing and additional notes of the Vitruvian Man. It was actually created as 'The proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius.' The notes, along with the drawing, were based on the works of Roman architect Vitruvius. This drawing was very special to me because through this, I wanted to present my understanding of proportions and the combination of Mathematics and Art. This motive later became a very famous thing of my period, perhaps known as the Renaissance Period. The human figure is perhaps the most remarkable creation of nature, and through my work, I wanted to establish this, while my work being an analogy to the creation of nature. The study of human proportion and anatomy has intrigued me from childhood. How do our muscles work beneath our skin is something that has always fascinated me. But not just the human body but every creation of nature like a plant or a bird, one can see this excellent symmetry. From every cell in the human body to the most complex-looking plant bodies, it can be found everywhere. Thus, I had studied dead bodies, plants, animals, birds; their shape, size, and proportion have intrigued me a lot. I had made notes of all this in my notebook. But what if we use these ideas to create machines? What if these ideas are used to create machines that can change the course of war or even the course of human history? Man has always wanted to fly like the birds high over the cloud. I had studied very closely the anatomy of a bird and how its wings work their way through the wind. Based on my findings, I had designed a machine that will allow a human being to fly just like a bird. I never had enough resources to build these machines in reality out of the pages of my notebook. But I do hope that someday these pages might help someone get some idea and create these machines in the future. In the 16th century, while working on finding new techniques, I stumbled upon a new way to use shadows in a painting. It was later called "sfumato," or Leonardo's smoke. Once successfully used, this technique can create a sense of intrigue in the composition, making it difficult to understand the true expression of the character. Perhaps the most successful use of this technique was done by me in a small portrait I had made around this time. It was titled as La Gioconda. But now, I believe the painting is known as "Mona Lisa." Leonardo's writings will soon be on display at the British Library in a collection known as the Codex Leicester owned by Bill Gates. Legacy of Leonardo Da Vinci It's a bit of a red herring to raise the question of Leonardo's legacy. It is essentially a self-centered question, similar to asking what the Romans did for us. His work is of a high quality without necessarily implying he had an influence on it. It would be inaccurate to imply Leonardo was only known for his paintings. His writings and drawings were transcribed and available to scholars throughout the centuries, possibly inspiring others. Giorgione points out that decades after Leonardo sketched his idea of using air currents and a small turbine to rotate meat on a spit, a somewhat similar device appears in the design of a machine by another Italian engineer, Vittorio Zonca. Although Da Vinci is primarily regarded as an artist because of the surviving paintings, the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks reveal the most eclectic and brilliant of minds. He used left-handed mirror script while writing on subjects as diverse as geology, anatomy which he studied to more accurately paint the human form, flight, gravity, and optics. Often flitting from subject to subject on a single page, he sold his art at auction. Some 500 years before their time, he invented the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute. Why is Leonardo da Vinci known as Renaissance Man? Leonardo da Vinci was a true Renaissance Man who combined his artistic, scientific, musical, and engineering abilities for exceptionally creative output. His drawings were not limited to pen and paper. It seems he tested how much lift he could get from his flying machine's wings. In order to explore various aspects of fluid dynamics, he had specially designed tanks constructed. Flying Machine The flying machine he tried to build in January 1496 failed to fly. An engineer rarely created unsuccessful designs. The majority of his designs languished in his notebook because they would not have been possible to build in da Vinci's lifetime, including a calculator, but he did design a machine that resembled a helicopter. Over the course of his life, Da Vinci came up with a number of different machines to fly. A four-man rotor lifted the machine in this test design. As a result, the machine body itself rotated differently than the rotor. Da Vinci was a pacifist who objected to his designs being used for military purposes, and a flying machine would certainly be used for military purposes. Mona Lisa She was the wife of Francesco Del Giocondo and also known as La Gioconda. This oil painting depicts her. It measures 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) and is on display at the Louvre in Paris, France. The painting is owned by the Government of France. His Mona Lisa represents a single individual as a miracle of nature as well as the entire species. The portrait transcends an individual's social confines and assumes a universal significance. Even though Leonardo worked on this picture as a scholar and thinker in addition to being a painter and poet, his scientific and philosophical research did not inspire any followers. Yet the formal aspect the new presentation, the nobler attitude, and the increased dignity of the model, had an indelible impact on Florentine portraits in the next twenty years, as well as on classical portraiture. Leonardo created a new formula for the Mona Lisa, at the same time more monumental, more fluid, more concrete, but more poetic than his predecessors. The portraits before him lacked mystery; artists merely portrayed outward appearances with no soul, or tried to express the soul through gestures, symbols, or inscriptions. There is a soul in the Mona Lisa, but it is inaccessible. Last Supper A work of art that would become one of history's most important works of art was begun by Leonardo da Vinci in 1495 called The Last Supper Leonardo's Last Supper depicts an event mentioned in all four Gospels. As Christ was about to be betrayed by one of his close disciples, he gathered his disciples together to eat, tell them what was coming and wash their feet. Christ gave the disciples instructions on how to eat and drink in the future, in remembrance of him, as they ate and drank together. The Eucharist was celebrated for the first time; it is still celebrated today. Leonardo had never completed such a large painting and had no experience with fresco, which is the standard mural medium. In contrast to frescoes, where the pigments are mixed with wet plaster, the painting was made with experimental pigments directly on the dry plaster wall. Thus, unlike frescoes, it has not lasted very long. As soon as it was finished, Leonardo had to repair the paint flaking off the wall. Through the years, the building has crumbled, been bombed, destroyed, and rebuilt. There is likely very little left of the original building. Tank Although he is said to have disliked war, he was employed as a military engineer for most of the time, developing new defenses and weapons. It depicts a prototype "tank" circa 1485, with armor plating and the ability to fire in any direction. In reality, Leonardo's "tank," as it was drawn, was unfeasible; it had errors in its gearing and would have been so heavy that it could not have been maneuvered. In addition to the giant crossbow, the weapon also had 33 barrels and ammunition that resembles today's cluster bombs, as well as the first aerodynamically stabilized artillery shells. Conclusion The legacy of Leonardo Da Vinci goes beyond his painting of "Mona Lisa" or "The Last Supper." The fact that even to this day, researchers are talking about him and trying to discover new information is what makes him still relevant. From historical fiction to top bestsellers, Vinci and his creations are everywhere. This is what cements his legacy forever. You can check our few interesting essays for further study,Essay on global warmingEssay on festivalsEssay on friendshipEssay on loveEssay on leadershipThank you letter Types of letter Letter on justice How to write a letter