![]() ![]() In this unfinished painting, Leonardo's new approach is far more developed. In 1481 he received a major church commission for an altarpiece, the Adoration of the Magi. ![]() Independent Master in FlorenceĪbout 1478 Leonardo set up his own studio. A little later is Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, the young wife of a prominent Florentine merchant, in which her oily face with softly contoured lips is seen against a background of mysteriously dark trees and a pond. It is much nearer to Verrocchio in the stability of the two figures shown in profile, the clean precision of the decorative details, and the large simple shapes of the trees, but it already differs in the creamier modeling of the faces. Lighting and is emphatically developed in the spiral turn of the angel's head and body and the vast depth of the landscape.Īpparently Leonardo had painted one extant work, the Annunciation in Florence, before this. This "soft union," as Giorgio Vasari called it (1550), is also present in the special By changing hard metallic surface effects to soft yielding ones, making edges less cutting, and increasing the slight modulations of light and shade, Leonardo evoked a new flexibility within the figures. It completely possesses all the fundamental qualities of Leonardo's mature style and implies a criticism of the early Renaissance. ![]() What is special is that Leonardo's work is not, as was usual, a slightly less skilled version of Verrocchio's manner of painting but an original approach altering it. Collaboration on a major project by a master and his assistant was standard procedure in the Italian Renaissance. 1475), Leonardo executed one of the two angels, a fact already recorded in the 16th century, as well as the distant landscape, and he added the final touches to the figure of Christ, determining the texture of the flesh. Assistant in Verrocchio's WorkshopĪfter completing his apprenticeship, Leonardo stayed on as an assistant in Verrocchio's shop, and his earliest known painting is a product of his collaboration with the master. Indeed, much in Leonardo's approach to art was evolutionary from tradition rather than revolutionary against it, although the opposite is often true of his results. Verrocchio, a sculptor, painter, and goldsmith, was a remarkable craftsman, and his great skill and passionate concern for quality of execution, as well as his interest in expressing the vital mobility of the human figure, were important elements in Leonardo's artistic formation. When Leonardo was 15, his father apprenticed him to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading artist of Florence and a characteristic talent of the early Renaissance. Ser Piero raised his son himself, a common practice at the time, arranging for Leonardo's mother to marry a villager. He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci, a prominent notary of Florence, who had no other children until much later. Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, near the village of Vinci about 25 miles west of Florence. He was one of the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance, and his influence on the painting of the following generations was enormous. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. ![]()
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